Jews and the British Empire c.1900

In the years of high imperialism at the beginning of the twentieth century what bearing did the British Empire have on the Jews, or Jews on the British Empire? The silence of scholarship might lead us to answer 'not very much'. Concerned with the legacy of Jewish emancipation, the dynamics of social integration, the challenge of large-scale migration, and the representation of Jewish difference in political argument, historians of the Jews have barely touched on the subject. Historians of empire, for their part, have had other preoccupations too. Perhaps the identification of imperialism with Jewish finance by J. A. Hobson and other radical critics of empire in the 1890s and early 1900s, as well as the Jew-baiting rhetoric of some critics, has rendered the relationship of Jews to the Empire a difficult problem for later generations to address.¹

Yet the subject itself is scarcely hidden from view. If we look at some of the Jewish community's central institutions we find they held an imperial dimension. The Chief Rabbi was the religious head of the United Hebrew Congregations not merely of England or Britain but of the British Empire.² The Anglo-Jewish pulpit was fulsome in its support for empire. In 1897 Queen Victoria's jubilee was celebrated in every synagogue in Britain. Here, as in the nation at large, the celebrations delivered an imperial message. The Chief Rabbi – Nathan Adler – marvelled that 'Nothing in the history of the world has been more remarkable than the growth and expansion by leaps and by bounds, of the prosperity of the Empire, of its population, and of its wealth, its commerce and industry'.³ The Rev. Michael Adler, minister at Hammersmith Synagogue, surveyed 'the political and social condition of our coreligionists at the present moment in the British Empire' and found it 'better than at any previous period of the exile'.

At the Central Synagogue, Israel Abrahams connected the success of Jewish emancipation to the practice of toleration that, in his view, was required by successful imperial rule. 'With off-shoots in all countries and climes, embracing under its banner men widely differing on race, in religion, and in language, England alone of all the empires of Europe has grown to understand that national life needs differentiation in a union of many forces on behalf of progress and righteousness.'⁴

The Board of Deputies of British Jews, the body that represented Jewry to the British government, tried to influence colonial affairs when it deemed Jewish interests were at stake. In 1902, when the Cape of Good Hope Immigration Act required immigrants to sign their name in a European language but did not count Yiddish among the European languages, the Board made representations to the Cape government.⁵ The Jewish Chronicle was the pre-eminent communal newspaper, and provided the community with one widely-circulated representation of itself. It is significant that at the turn of the century it carried a regular column titled 'Colonial and Foreign News' as well as another which presented 'Jottings from South Africa'. The Jewish Year Book, first published in 1896, fulfilled a similar role defining the parameters of the community and it too acknowledged the community's imperial dimension as it listed synagogues, associations and personages across the Colonies. But it is not only in the official and quasi-official institutions of Anglo-Jewry that we can find an imperial presence. Among the Jewish friendly and benefit societies in the East End of London there were lodges and associations named after Major General Baden Powell or which gave an 'imperial' prefix to their name.⁶

If we move from institutions to individuals we can see that the empire offered careers for English Jews as well as for non-Jews. Many, of course, emigrated permanently. However, others, such as Henry Herman Gordon returned. Gordon was born in Germany of Russian Jewish parents. His father came to London to serve as a minister and the young Henry, having been educated at the Jews' Free School and at Cambridge University, went to India as a railway engineer before returning at the turn of...