Nadene Goldfoot
The Jews of medieval England
In 1290, Jews were expulsed from England. They were not allowed to return until 1655. That means that for 365 years,, Jews were not living in England. Jewish people first began arriving in England following the Norman Conquest in 1066 and their histories can be traced in the country’s major cities today. They had been living in England for 224 years before their exile. Why were Jews expelled from England?
The reason given is that to make the tax more palatable, Edward, in exchange, essentially offered to expel all Jews. The heavy tax was passed, and three days later, on 18 July, the Edict of Expulsion was issued. One official reason for the expulsion was that Jews had declined to follow the Statute of Jewry and continued to practice usury. Usury is the practice of making unethical or immoral monetary loans that unfairly enrich the lender. The term may be used in a moral sense—condemning, taking advantage of others' misfortunes—or in a legal sense, where an interest rate is charged in excess of the maximum rate that is allowed by law .
Yellow badges were used for discrimination long before the HolocaustThe Statute of Jewry was a statute issued by Henry III of England in 1253. In response to antisemitic feelings in medieval England, it attempted to segregate the Jews, including imposing the wearing of a Jewish badge. It is uncertain to what extent this legislation was put into effect.
There were a few Jews who were to remain in England during this period; people like doctors, who the king didn't really want to lose. Members of the existing Jewish community in London (yes, there were Jews in Britain before 1656, albeit in hiding, then petitioned Cromwell to let them worship openly, but their petition was ignored. A merchant named Thomas Violet reflected the views of the majority when he declared, in 1661, that "it is Felony for any Jew to be found in England". In the centuries that followed, Jews were repeatedly threatened with harassment and expulsion, and continued to be classed as aliens. 
Menasseh Ben Israel petitions Oliver Cromwell in 1657 for the readmittance of the Jews to England following their expulsion by King Edward I in 1290. Manoel Dias Soeiro,1604 -1657, aka Menasseh ben Israel and Menasheh ben Yossef ben Yisrael. Portuguese rabbi, kabbalist, writer, diplomat, printer and publisher, founder of the first Hebrew printing press in Amsterdam in 1626. From Hutchinson's History of the Nations, published 1915.
- Image ID: HW0PTBWhat caused England to finally allow Jews back into England? Certainly they'd been expelled, by Edward I in 1290. In 1655, Menasseh ben Israel, a leader of the Jewish community in Amsterdam, came to England to persuade Cromwell to let them back in. In December that year, a conference of lawyers, merchants and theologians met to discuss the issue, but failed to reach a verdict. According to one account, "the Preachers kept pelting one another so furiously with Texts of Scripture, and wiping their Spectacles, that the Debates continued for four Days; though very little was said on the Question of the Jews' resettlement.
Lord Allenby, Lord Balfour, and Sir Herbert Samuel in 1925. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images..From 1914 to 1918, the world had an earth-shaking war, World War I. Lord Arthur James Balfour, British statesman and philosopher was the head of the government with which Theodore Herzl negotiated in 1902 and 1903 and later was strongly impressed by the personality and Zionist philosophy of Chaim Weizmann. As foreign secretary in 1917, he issued the BALFOUR DECLARATION, issued on November 2, 1917 declaring that "the British government favors "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine; or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
The public commitment Britain made to the Jews in Palestine is very different from the Sykes-Picot accord and other secret “treaties” carving up land England first promised to the Jews. The Sykes-Picot Accords were between Britain, France and Russia and later included Italy. They took place between 1914 and 1916 and provided for the postwar partition of the Ottoman Empire. Sir Mark Sykes was the British member and Georges Picot was the French member. This affected Palestine and Syria. At the end of the war, England held the 30 year mandate over Palestine as decided by the League of Nations. Before the mandate ended at the beginning of World War II, Britain was allowing Arabs into Palestine but keeping out the Jews who were escaping the Holocaust of Europe. There was that anti-Semitic hatred of Jews showing in their act of not allowing the Jews to enter.
The territory partitions described in the Sykes-Picot Agreement were later reaffirmed and ratified at the inter – Allied San Remo conference in April of 1920, which further resulted in mandates from the League of Nations in July of 1922.
1933-1939 was the beginning of the Holocaust as far as Germany was concerned. Jews began to feel the hatred for them by all the sudden changes. From 1933 to the outbreak of the Second World War, the persecution of Jews, the Roma, homosexuals, and political opponents to National Socialism in Germany and Austria caused many refugees to flee Europe for Great Britain. These refugees came in two waves—the first from 1933 to 1937, followed a much larger migration in 1938 and 1939.
1939-1945 was the Holocaust that slaughtered 6 million Jews. Jews had to enter Palestine illegally because of the English barriers towards them. Jews could not enter other countries because they were Jews and needed baptism papers showing they weren't Jewish. That's how badly countries treated Jews. Even to get into the USA, they needed someone to take on all the responsibility and become their sponsors. We had a great uncle who did this for my soon-to-be German-Jewish uncle and father of my cousins. My father took him on as a butcher in his new enterprise at that time and he was saved. My uncle made it to America, but his parents and 16 year old sister were killed in Auschwitz. My uncle never got over that horror. His whole family was wiped out.
Golda Meir announcing the State of Israel on RadioThe British mandate was relinquished and the establishment of the State of Israel was affirmed by a United Nations General Assembly resolution. The conflict with the insurgents continued until the last British soldier left Palestine; at the end of April 1948, British forces fought a small battle against Zionist militias near Jaffa, temporarily preventing a Jewish takeover of the city, while failing to expel the militias from Menashiya. Relations between Israel and Britain were hostile during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, at one point bringing the two countries to the edge of direct military confrontation.
During the battles in Sinai, the Royal Air Force conducted almost daily reconnaissance missions over Israel and the Sinai. RAF reconnaissance aircraft took off from Egyptian airbases and sometimes flew alongside Royal Egyptian Air Force planes, and high-flying British aircraft frequently flew over Haifa and Ramat David Airbase. The British government planned military action against Israel codenamed Operation Clatter in the event of an Israeli invasion of Egypt and the flights were deployed to discover the strength of the Israeli Air Force and locate its forward bases.Following a British ultimatum to vacate the Sinai, Israeli forces pulled back. War between Israel and the United Kingdom was thus avoided after having some very close calls.
Documents reveal UAE president owns multibillion-pound property portfolio spanning London’s most expensive neighbourhoods
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the UK was seen as pro-Arab, maintaining close relations with Jordan and the Gulf states. However, in 1975 the UK voted against the motion in the UN that “Zionism is racism.”Relations were strained in the 1980s. During the 1982 Lebanon War, Britain imposed an arms embargo on Israel, which were not lifted until 1994. Relations further worsened after Israel supplied weaponry to Argentina during the 1982 Falklands War.
There were also two diplomatic incidents during the 1980s that involved operations by the Mossad (Israeli secret service). In 1986, a bag containing eight forged British passports was discovered in a telephone booth in West Germany. The passports had been the work of Mossad, and were intended for the Israeli Embassy in London for use in covert operations. The British government, furious, demanded that Israel give a promise not forge its passports again, which was obtained. In 1988, two Israeli diplomats from the Mossad station of the Israeli Embassy in London were expelled and the station closed after it was discovered that a Palestinian living in London. Ismail Sowan, had been recruited as a double agent to infiltrate the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Relations improved significantly in the 2000s and 2010s. In June 2019, the Royal Air Force and the Israeli Air Force carried out their first-ever joint exercise. In December 2020, the countries signed an agreement on military cooperation, significant details of the agreement are classified. The situation between Israel and Britain has been very testy.
In January 2017, Al Jazeera aired a series entitled The Lobby. The last episode showed Shai Masot, an official at the Israeli embassy in London, proposing an attempt to "take down" British "pro-Palestinian" politicians, including Alan Duncan. The leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn wrote an open letter to Theresa May objecting to what he called an "improper interference in this country’s democratic process" and urging the prime minister to launch an inquiry on the basis that "[t]his is clearly a national security issue". Jeremy Corbyn has come under fire for not saying he is sorry for anti-Semitism in the Labour Party in a BBC interview.
Arthur Mourant(11 April 1904 – 29 August 1994) was a British chemist, hematologist and geneticist who pioneered research into biological anthropology and its distribution, genetics, clinical and laboratory medicine, and geology. He was born 4 years before my father's birthday. He pioneered a study of hematology of the worldwide distribution of blood groups.
The strange thing is that much later, when Jews did return, there was a school teacher, a British Jew, referred to by Arthur Mourant, a British hematologist who worked with Jewish populations involving the study of blood types, as a British Israelite, who believed that all the British people were descended from THE LOST TRIBES OF ISRAEL.
HARARE, Zimbabwe — Tudor Parfitt has spent years chasing a theory that a lost tribe of Jews wound up in Southern Africa. But his latest leap has landed him in a minefield.
Tudor Parfitt, (born 10 October 1944) in Wales, the son of Vernon (a headmaster) and Margaret (Sears) Parfitt;; professor and President Navon Professor of Sephardi and Mizrahi studies at Florida International University. He is also director of the Global Jewish Studies Program. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and corresponding fellow of the Académie Royale des Sciences d’Outre-Mer, Belgium. He was professor—now emeritus—of Modern Jewish Studies at SOAS. His latest books are In The Shadow Of Moses: New Jewish Movements In Africa And The Diaspora, ed. D. Lis, W. Miles and T. Parfitt (Africa World Press, 2016); Black Zion, ed. Ed. Bruder and T. Parfitt (Cambridge Scholars’ Press, 2012) and Black Jews in Africa and the Americas (Harvard University Press, 2013). I have his book, The Lost Ark of the Covenant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5wCJ8zy_lI
In 1964 he spent a gap year with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) in Jerusalem, where he worked with handicapped people, some of whom were Holocaust survivors. Upon his return to Britain, he studied Hebrew and Arabic at the University of Oxford. In 1968 he was awarded the Goodenday Fellowship at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He completed a D.Phil. at Oxford with David Patterson and Albert Hourani, on the history of the Jews in Palestine and their relations with their Muslim neighbours. He expanded it for publication by the Royal Historical Society. I have not found any information saying that he or his parents were Jewish. His surname is simply, an English one. However, his mother could have been Jewish as I have 3 male 4th Sears cousins, and being his mother was Jewish would automatically make him Jewish. Parfitt's pioneering work has contributed to the expanding study of the spread of Judaism and Judaising movements throughout the African continent.
Parfitt's other academic interests have been: the Sephardi/Mizrahi communities of the Muslim world, Jewish-Muslim relations, Hebrew and Hebrew Literature, Judaising movements, Jewish genetic identity and the discourses surrounding it, and Jews in Asia and Africa. He has published widely on the margins of the Jewish world. His most recent work is on the history of race as it affected blacks and Jews. His book on the history of race as it affects Jews and Blacks — Hybrid Hate: Conflations of Antisemitism & Anti-Black Racism from the Renaissance to the Third Reich — was published by Oxford University Press in 2020.
The English anthropologist, Tudor Parfitt, had noted, "In England, as in other parts of Britain, however, there was a long-running discourse celebrating the notion that the English themselves were literally of Jewish extraction and that the ancestors of the English people were in fact, Israelites.
He went on to note, "British Israelites became a sanctification and validation of the British empire. " Can't the English bring themselves to call us the British Jews?" I ask? Evidently not, as they are identifying with the 10 northern tribes of Israel who were taken by the Assyrians in 721 BCE, leaving the largest tribe which was the northern one, Judah for which we Jews are named.
British Israelism (also called Anglo-Israelism) is a pseudoarchaeological belief that the people of the British Isles are "genetically, racially, and linguistically the direct descendants" of the Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel. With roots in the 16th century, British Israelism was inspired by several 19th century English writings such as John Wilson's 1840 Our Israelitish Origin. Numerous British Israelite organizations were set up throughout the British Empire as well as in the United States from the 1870s onwards; a number of these organizations are independently active as of the early 21st century. In America, the idea gave rise to the Christian Identity movement.
The central tenets of British Israelism have been refuted by evidence from modern archaeological, ethnological, genetic, and linguistic research.
Born in 1892, and died in 1986; Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong experienced the advent of the industrial age, the transportation age, the nuclear age, the space age and the information age. He witnessed two world wars and revolutions in culture, economics, warfare and society. Swaggart’s, Roberts’s and Falwell’s programs were aired in 197, 192 and 172 television markets, respectively, but The World Tomorrow with Herbert Armstrong could be viewed on 382 stations and 36 radio outlets around the world.Beginning in the 1960s, the teaching of British Israelism was vigorously promoted by Herbert W. Armstrong, founder and former Pastor General of the Worldwide Church of God. Armstrong believed that the teaching was a key to understanding biblical prophecy: "One might ask, were not biblical prophecies closed and sealed? Indeed they were—until now! And even now they can be understood only by those who possess the master key to unlock them." Armstrong believed that he was called by God to proclaim the prophecies to the Lost Tribes of Israel before the "end-times". Armstrong's belief caused his separation from the Church of God Seventh Day because of its refusal to adopt the teaching.
Research shows that the Pashtuns of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India are actually the Lost Tribes.. Perhaps not all of the Pashtuns, but at least some of them, are our very distant cousins.
What the British English coveted was to be the descendants of the 10 Israelite Tribes who would have been called Jews, being we were all of the same belief, obeying the laws of Moses. Yet they banned Jews from their country and double-crossed them about the Jewish Homeland that they had given Jews such high hopes. This certainly seems to be some sort of Love-Hate relationship.
Resource;
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/dec/09/religion.uk#:~:text=Certainly%20they'd%20been%20expelled,failed%20to%20reach%20a%20verdict.
book: Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People, by Harry Ostrer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Mourant
https://jewishjournal.com/rosnersdomain/215832/becoming-jewish-exchange-part-3-millions-africans-believe-israelite-ancestry/
https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/the-jews-of-medieval-england/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tudor_Parfitt
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/dec/09/religion.uk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Israelism
https://goddesschess.blogspot.com/2010/06/ark-of-covenant-interesting-twist.html
