Jewish Move To Ireland, Scotland, Wales

 Nadene Goldfoot

                            

When England's behavior turned against people for just being Jews, manyleft for Ireland.  Jews may have lived here in the 12th and 13th centuries,but none survived the expulsion of 1290.  A few Marranos settled in Dublinafter 1660 and more arrived as military purveyors after the 1689 revolu-tion.  The Original Sephardi group was displaced by the European Ashken-azim, but in the 18th century, this community, too, declined and in 1816,there were only 3 Jewish families in Dublin, and a few in the rest of Ireland.  The Dublin community was reconstituted in 1822 when  therewere 400 Jews in Ireland in 1800.  

The chief rabbinate was founded in 1918, its first rabbi being Yitzhak

Halevi HERZOG.  

By 1880 , emigration from Europe at the end of the 19th century, andother communities appeared at the cities of Cork, Waterford, Limerick,Belfast, etc. mainly in Belfast. 

                                 Ray Rivlin is the author

My family Goldfus were from Telsai, Lithuania and went to England and onto  Dublin, living there with a relative in a boarding house,  with name changes, leaving from Londonderry, Ireland for Quebec, and finally getting to theUSA.    His relatives in the boarding house went to South Africa and wereforgotten about by each group until the late 1900's.  It seems they hadleft an opera singer in London, somehow.  This is the problem;  siblingsleft each other for different refuges and lost touch with their family members.    Today with DNA testing, they can rejoin.           

Scotland's Jews

Jewish merchants were found in EDINBURGH and GLASGOW by the 17thcentury.  In the 18th, some Jews studied medicine at Scottish universities. 

A Jewish community leaves evidence in Edinburgh in 1780 but only reallyorganized by 1816, following one in Glasgow in 1823.  The Russian Jewishimmigration resulted in the growth of the latter, which is the 4th in size inGreat Britain.  Edinburgh has only 600 Jews.  Smaller communities weren Aberdeen and Dundee.  1990 was 12,000.which were under English rule.In 2025, the Jewish population in Scotland is estimated to be around 6,000 individuals, according to the 2022 census data, a figure that has remained stable in recent years. The majority of Scotland's Jewish community is concentrated in the Greater Glasgow area, particularly in East Renfrewshire, with a smaller community in Edinburgh. 

• Jews In Wales

Only a few Jews were found in Wales by the 13th century, but only inplaces under English influence like CHEPSTOW, CAERLEON, though theircharters of new northern Welsh boroughs excluded Jews. 

German Jews settled in SWANSEA from 1731-1741, and its communitymay be dated from 1768.  Later, communities were founded in miningcenters in southern Wales such as CARDIFF in  1840, MERTHYR TYDFIL in 1848, PONTYPRIDD in 1867, TREDEGAR in 1873 etc.  Several otherswere set up by Russian refugees after 1882.  They filled a useful fun-ction economically but during the strikes of 1911, anti-Jewish riotingdeveloped.  

The smaller Jewish communities have been shrinking, even some beingabandoned, and CARDIFF, WITH 1,700 Jews, contained 3/4 of the totalJewish population. 

       London and England: Medieval edicts against Jews

The Statute of Jewry (1275)
This major piece of anti-Jewish legislation enacted under King Edward I imposed severe restrictions on Jews across England, including in London. 

• Abolished moneylending: It prohibited Jews from usury (lending money with interest), which was one of the few professions legally available to them.
• Required identifying badges: The statute mandated that all Jews over the age of seven wear a distinguishing badge.
• Restricted movement: It dictated that Jews live in specific areas of the king's towns.
• Limited property rights: The ability of Jews to sell property or negotiate debts was severely restricted.    
•  Medieval Wales had no charters for Jews in London or elsewhere, but instead saw charters that explicitly banned Jews from newly established towns. The history of Jews in Wales is linked to that of Jews in England through the actions of English monarchs, especially during the period before the 1290 Edict of Expulsion, which drove Jews out of the entire kingdom. 

Charters in Wales:  The first organized Jewish communities in Wales did not appear until the 18th century. However, during the medieval period, some individual Jews lived in the Welsh Marches. When Edward I built his new borough towns in North Wales after conquering the region (1277–1283), he issued charters that banned Jews. 

England reacted and expelled the Jews in 1290, not letting any back in for 365 years, until the year of 1656.  I note that he did that before the  Spanish Inquisition acted.   England was going through losingPilgrims to Holland who left for a new land, America, on a ship called the Mayflower in 1620. 

Historically, Jews have been subject to a number of discriminatory edicts and restrictions in London, particularly during the medieval period, culminating in their expulsion from England in 1290. In contrast, the history of Jews in Greater Manchester began much later, centuries after the readmission of Jews to England, and is not defined by medieval edicts. 

• The expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 also applied to Wales and Ireland, which were under English rule at the time. However, it is unlikely that any official expulsion order was issued for Scotland because it was a separate kingdom from England during that period, and there is no evidence of a Jewish community in Scotland at the time. The expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 also applied to Ireland, since Ireland was part of the English kingdom at the time. However, small groups of Jews later resettled in Ireland in the centuries following the edict.