Jewish Small Communities Network

‘REP Presents’ is the Jewish Representative Council’s newsletter for the Jewish Communities of Greater Manchester and Region, Blackpool, Lytham St Annes, Preston and Stoke on Trent.

Issue 20 August 2009 contains:
Outreach & Education
What Have MEPs Got to do with You and Me?
Caring for the Elderly
A Two Way Link
Events Diary
Zionism is the Pride of Joy
Where it’s tough for Jewish Students
Funding that’s just the Job
Training Our Leaders of the Future
Our Afternoon at the Palace

Click here to download a copy

In 2001, 114 actively practising Jews lived in Sunderland, but the number has since fallen. Sonia and Charles Slater are two of the remaining Jewish worshippers in the Sunderland area.

Charles, who was once the leader of Sunderland Council for almost two decades, talks about the congregation’s demise:

“Many of our congregation left to study in places like Manchester, London or Leeds and stayed there.

“It was probably the active all-round Jewish community that kept them there.”

In the 1960s, the Jewish community was large and thriving, but as Charles puts it: “The rest of us left here [in Sunderland] are simply dying.”

Synagogue closes

Since the Ryhope Road Synagogue closed in March 2006, there isn’t a place for the remaining Jews to worship, except in their own homes. Continue reading

FURRIERS, GLAZIERS, DOCTORS AND OTHERS: A HISTORY OF THE PRESTON JEWISH COMMUNITY
~ author John Cowell

John Cowell has mined the Jewish Chronicle online archives, local and national newspapers, local directories, birth, death and marriage records, and some of the surviving archives of the Preston Hebrew Congregation, all of them after the 1930s. Many of the early Jewish residents, and regular visitors, were dentists, one of whom was in the town for over thirty years. There were also, in the 19^th century, opticians, pedlars and hawkers (some of them spectacularly boastful about their wares), clothiers, and jewellers. From 1881 onwards a larger trickle of Jewish settlers arrived, many of them in the drapery and tailoring trades, but also a bicycle dealer, a glazier, and eventually, from the late 1920s, a set of doctors who made this rather an unusual small community. Further increase in numbers came in the 1930s and Second World War with the arrival of refugees from Continental Europe and from British cities, but after the War numbers declined, and with them the range of activities that could be undertaken, not to mention opportunities for work and marriage, and the availability of kosher food. The synagogue closed, and people moved away, as improved access to universities and the professions made movement in the pursuit of good jobs easy.

There is a full bibliography, appendices give a breakdown of where people came from, and where they went on to, their occupations in Preston, and the population in the 1911 census. The set of short biographies of members of the community is an outstanding feature of the book, filling out details of members of the Goodman and Goldberg families, the Lewises and Schwalbes, as well as others less well known The author has deliberately set out to be inclusive, particularly of Jewish people who were not members of the Congregation, as well as of those who were. The book is more than 220 pages long, with illustrations and some tables.

Available in paperback at £9.99 + £1 post and packing,
or as a CD, at £5.25 + £1 post and packing
from the author John Cowell
email: jcowellnix AT yahoo.com