NGG Commentary: Todd Endelman, 'Reflections'

JHSE New Generation Group select an article from the recently published Jewish Historical Studies: A Journal of English Speaking Jews and share their commentary below.

In his latest reflection, historian Todd Endelman offers a refreshing account of the evolution of scholarship and its relation to Anglo-Jewish history, charting the remarkable professionalisation of the field over the past fifty years. What was once a niche, under-resourced area of study is now a mature scholarly discipline, with journals, archives, and academic rigour to match.

Endelman points to a lingering challenge for Anglo-Jewish history: full integration into the broader school curriculum. Despite major advances, many Britis

h historians still view the field as little more than ‘minority-group cheerleading’.

Endelman first became intrigued in Harvard’s Widener Library when he stumbled upon a forgotten trove: 18th-century London guidebooks filled with gritty, outsider views of the city's Jewish poor, ‘the uneducated, the undisciplined, and, frequently, the criminal’. This encounter reshaped his path and deepened his commitment to social history.

In early fieldwork in London he was granted access to synagogue records stored not in an archive but in a cupboard in the Chief Rabbi’s office at Woburn House. Unsupervised, Endelman read centuries-old documents at a table where he rested his tea.

This sweeping overview of Anglo-Jewish historiography also offers an indirect but revealing history of the Jewish Historical Society of England (JHSE), for decades the primary resource for Anglo-Jewish history but with only a narrow focus on elite lives in the 17th and 18th centuries viewed in a filiopietistic, celebratory, uncritical way and isolated from broader social contexts. The JHSE lagged behind institutions such as the Wiener Library and the Parkes Institute which were advancing in new, critical directions. Only in the 1990s did new voices - David Cesarani, Tony Kushner, Anne Kershen, and Sharman Kadish - join the JHSE council. Real change continued with Michael Berkowitz's editorial leadership and Miri Rubin’s presidency.

Todd Endelman offers a vision of what it means to be a historian. The historian, he writes, must be a kind of ‘accomplished multi-tasker’.

Endelman, T., (2025) “Reflections”, Jewish Historical Studies: A Journal of English-Speaking Jewry 56(1), 1–14. doi: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.jhs.2025v56.02 

Read the full article: https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/jhs/article/id/3431/