Hakluyt
02-21-2006, 02:24 AM
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The making of a myth
>By Eliane Glaser
>Published: February 17 2006 19:17 | Last updated: February 17 2006 19:17
>>
Over the next few months, a lunch, a dinner, a garden party and two thanksgiving services will be held in honour of Queen Elizabeth turning 80 this year. Next month, the citizens of York will mark the moment 1,700 years ago when Constantine the Great was proclaimed emperor of Rome in their city, and heroic celebrations continue in Europe for the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart.
Imagine how odd it would be to discover that these anniversaries were based on nothing more than an enduring, but utterly inaccurate, myth. Yet that is precisely what is happening in Britain this year where events are about to get under way to mark the 350th anniversary of the “readmission” of Jews under Oliver Cromwell. Britain’s oldest synagogue will hold a commemorative service in June; Ken Livingstone’s office hopes to erect a huge menorah in Trafalgar Square; the Arts Council has funded a new play; and there are plans for events at Tate Modern and the Royal Society.
The only trouble is, Cromwell didn’t allow the Jews to return in 1656.
In fact, as I discovered when researching a doctorate in 17th-century religious history, the supposedly historic event of readmission and resettlement was nothing of the kind.
What is true is this: in the Middle Ages, a deeply anti-Semitic England became the first country in the world to expel Jews. In 1655, a Jewish leader from Amsterdam, Menasseh ben Israel, came to England to try to persuade Cromwell to let the Jews return. In December that year, Cromwell held a conference of merchants, lawyers and theologians in Whitehall to discuss the proposal. Some were in favour - many Jews were well connected merchants, after all. Furthermore, according to an eccentric millenarian prophecy then circulating, conversion of the Jews might hasten Christ’s second coming.
In the end, though, the Whitehall conference failed to reach a verdict. There was no great desire to welcome the Jewish people back from Europe.
A few hundred Jews did arrive in the second half of the 17th century, but their numbers paled in comparison with the more than 50,000 Huguenot immigrants who moved here in the same period, and the order of expulsion was never revoked.
It would take another 200 years before large numbers of Jews began to move to Britain: by the late 19th century, the Puritan revival was well under way and Cromwell had been elevated to the position of liberal hero. The 13th-century expulsion order had faded from public view, and persecution in eastern Europe prompted tens of thousands of Jews to seek a new home in this country.
This influx prompted a rise in anti-Semitism, which in turn made existing British Jews eager to find positive examples of past Jewish immigration. The community seized on the Whitehall conference and the idea that Cromwell had readmitted the Jews. The first “Resettlement Day”, an annual celebration featuring a public dinner, was held in 1894.
If you had been listening to Radio 4’s “Thought for the Day” last December however, you would have heard Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks give a different version of events: “In the Middle Ages, Britain led the world in its hostility to Jews, and in 1290 became the first country to expel them,” he said. “But in one of the great reversals of all time, in the 17th century it led the world in tolerance. Jews came back to Britain in 1656, and in a few weeks time will begin celebrating the 350th anniversary of that event.”
When I first attempted to interview the Chief Rabbi for this article, the executive director of his office, Syma Weinberg, told me that I should first read some books on the subject. I told her that I had actually read them all, and had written one myself.
Finally, after several days and many phone calls, I received a call from the Chief Rabbi. I put it to him that the readmission story was not what it was cracked up to be.
“You’re right - there were people for, people against; the whole thing is wrapped in obscurity,” he said. “Technically there was no moment at which you could say Jews were readmitted.”
Sacks defends the anniversary, nonetheless, on the grounds that there is something less obvious to celebrate: namely, the English tradition of informal toleration.
“The fact that there was no formal legislation readmitting the Jews, which we could view negatively, actually worked out rather positively,” he said, “because other countries which enacted specific legislation found that this became subject to enormous public debate, and sometimes these countries took several steps backwards, sooner or later revoking those laws.”
But what of Sacks’s earlier claim that the readmission was “one of the great reversals of all time”? Either something happened, or it didn’t.
It also seems perverse to argue that it was better that Britain did not formally readmit the Jews. After all, what is being celebrated this year is precisely Cromwell’s act of generosity.
And why is this year’s 350th anniversary such an extravagant affair?
Marlena Schmool, the co-ordinator of 31/2 Centuries of British Jewish Life, an umbrella group organising the events, said the initial discussions about the anniversary began at a time when the Jewish community “needed to have a better sense of itself in a positive way”.
“The aim of the year is that it should alert people to there being a Jewish community here, that it has been here for a long time, and that it does things,” she said.
As well as planning the Trafalgar Square event, Ken Livingstone’s office has produced a guide to Jewish events in London to mark the anniversary. When I asked the mayor’s office for a comment on the validity of the anniversary, they declined, saying they weren’t prepared to enter into a debate.
Geraldine Auerbach, who runs Jewish Culture UK, another umbrella group, laughed disarmingly when I put the problem to her. “Sure, what can I say? I think it doesn’t matter. The celebration is not of Cromwell or of what happened then, the celebration is of Jewish life in Britain.”
The thing is, I think it does matter. I think that even if you’re prepared to put aside, for the sake of a good story, the principle of historical accuracy, then you’d better be sure that that story will still stand up when the facts are in.
To be fair, the community leaders I’ve talked to don’t claim to be experts on the history of 1656. But Rabbi Jonathan Romain, a spokesman for Reform Judaism, does. He recently organised a poll to find the greatest British Jew as part of the celebrations.
“There’s no question that Jews, from 1656, could live openly as Jews in Britain, and there’s no doubt that Jews did re-enter at that point,” he said.
“The only ambiguity is the exact moment this happened, and the mystery is the lack of any official documentation, because the minutes of the Council of State for the day on which we think it was agreed have been torn out.”
He’s wrong. The authority for Rabbi Romain’s claim comes from the historian Cecil Roth, who in 1960 became very excited during a visit to the archives when he thought he’d found that two pages from the minutes containing Cromwell’s favourable decision had been removed. Roth later realised that his “discovery” had been the product of wishful thinking, and never referred to it again.
The setting aside of historical accuracy wouldn’t matter, at least not so much, if it weren’t so counterproductive.
Ultimately, the anniversary is of greatest benefit not to Britain’s Jews but to Britain itself, in its guise as a uniquely tolerant nation.
The community leaders organising the anniversary claim that they are only giving Britain credit where credit is due.
As Sacks put it in a recent BBC interview: “It seems to me a real cause for celebration because there’s no doubt that Jews in Britain have found this country one of the most tolerant places on the face of the earth.”
He is, it seems, happy to thank Britain for admitting the Jews by the back door.
But all this serves to obscure the absence of a genuine acknowledgement of religious difference in Britain. The July 7 bombings, and the recent, bitterly polarised debates about religious hatred, have exposed a gap between the perception that this is an exceptionally welcoming country, and the actual experience of some religious groups.
Unlike Sacks, I regard the informal nature of British tolerance as a sign of reluctance rather than affable accommodation. The Jews were not readmitted to England in 1656; a bill to give them equal rights was repealed in 1754, and they were only permitted to sit in parliament without taking an Anglican oath in 1858, after 11 years of debate.
Challenging the traditional faith in British tolerance is a better way of acknowledging true religious diversity than celebrating an event that didn’t happen.
Eliane Glaser is a radio producer and author of a forthcoming book on the history of Jews in Britain.
The making of a myth
>By Eliane Glaser
>Published: February 17 2006 19:17 | Last updated: February 17 2006 19:17
>>
Over the next few months, a lunch, a dinner, a garden party and two thanksgiving services will be held in honour of Queen Elizabeth turning 80 this year. Next month, the citizens of York will mark the moment 1,700 years ago when Constantine the Great was proclaimed emperor of Rome in their city, and heroic celebrations continue in Europe for the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart.
Imagine how odd it would be to discover that these anniversaries were based on nothing more than an enduring, but utterly inaccurate, myth. Yet that is precisely what is happening in Britain this year where events are about to get under way to mark the 350th anniversary of the “readmission” of Jews under Oliver Cromwell. Britain’s oldest synagogue will hold a commemorative service in June; Ken Livingstone’s office hopes to erect a huge menorah in Trafalgar Square; the Arts Council has funded a new play; and there are plans for events at Tate Modern and the Royal Society.
The only trouble is, Cromwell didn’t allow the Jews to return in 1656.
In fact, as I discovered when researching a doctorate in 17th-century religious history, the supposedly historic event of readmission and resettlement was nothing of the kind.
What is true is this: in the Middle Ages, a deeply anti-Semitic England became the first country in the world to expel Jews. In 1655, a Jewish leader from Amsterdam, Menasseh ben Israel, came to England to try to persuade Cromwell to let the Jews return. In December that year, Cromwell held a conference of merchants, lawyers and theologians in Whitehall to discuss the proposal. Some were in favour - many Jews were well connected merchants, after all. Furthermore, according to an eccentric millenarian prophecy then circulating, conversion of the Jews might hasten Christ’s second coming.
In the end, though, the Whitehall conference failed to reach a verdict. There was no great desire to welcome the Jewish people back from Europe.
A few hundred Jews did arrive in the second half of the 17th century, but their numbers paled in comparison with the more than 50,000 Huguenot immigrants who moved here in the same period, and the order of expulsion was never revoked.
It would take another 200 years before large numbers of Jews began to move to Britain: by the late 19th century, the Puritan revival was well under way and Cromwell had been elevated to the position of liberal hero. The 13th-century expulsion order had faded from public view, and persecution in eastern Europe prompted tens of thousands of Jews to seek a new home in this country.
This influx prompted a rise in anti-Semitism, which in turn made existing British Jews eager to find positive examples of past Jewish immigration. The community seized on the Whitehall conference and the idea that Cromwell had readmitted the Jews. The first “Resettlement Day”, an annual celebration featuring a public dinner, was held in 1894.
If you had been listening to Radio 4’s “Thought for the Day” last December however, you would have heard Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks give a different version of events: “In the Middle Ages, Britain led the world in its hostility to Jews, and in 1290 became the first country to expel them,” he said. “But in one of the great reversals of all time, in the 17th century it led the world in tolerance. Jews came back to Britain in 1656, and in a few weeks time will begin celebrating the 350th anniversary of that event.”
When I first attempted to interview the Chief Rabbi for this article, the executive director of his office, Syma Weinberg, told me that I should first read some books on the subject. I told her that I had actually read them all, and had written one myself.
Finally, after several days and many phone calls, I received a call from the Chief Rabbi. I put it to him that the readmission story was not what it was cracked up to be.
“You’re right - there were people for, people against; the whole thing is wrapped in obscurity,” he said. “Technically there was no moment at which you could say Jews were readmitted.”
Sacks defends the anniversary, nonetheless, on the grounds that there is something less obvious to celebrate: namely, the English tradition of informal toleration.
“The fact that there was no formal legislation readmitting the Jews, which we could view negatively, actually worked out rather positively,” he said, “because other countries which enacted specific legislation found that this became subject to enormous public debate, and sometimes these countries took several steps backwards, sooner or later revoking those laws.”
But what of Sacks’s earlier claim that the readmission was “one of the great reversals of all time”? Either something happened, or it didn’t.
It also seems perverse to argue that it was better that Britain did not formally readmit the Jews. After all, what is being celebrated this year is precisely Cromwell’s act of generosity.
And why is this year’s 350th anniversary such an extravagant affair?
Marlena Schmool, the co-ordinator of 31/2 Centuries of British Jewish Life, an umbrella group organising the events, said the initial discussions about the anniversary began at a time when the Jewish community “needed to have a better sense of itself in a positive way”.
“The aim of the year is that it should alert people to there being a Jewish community here, that it has been here for a long time, and that it does things,” she said.
As well as planning the Trafalgar Square event, Ken Livingstone’s office has produced a guide to Jewish events in London to mark the anniversary. When I asked the mayor’s office for a comment on the validity of the anniversary, they declined, saying they weren’t prepared to enter into a debate.
Geraldine Auerbach, who runs Jewish Culture UK, another umbrella group, laughed disarmingly when I put the problem to her. “Sure, what can I say? I think it doesn’t matter. The celebration is not of Cromwell or of what happened then, the celebration is of Jewish life in Britain.”
The thing is, I think it does matter. I think that even if you’re prepared to put aside, for the sake of a good story, the principle of historical accuracy, then you’d better be sure that that story will still stand up when the facts are in.
To be fair, the community leaders I’ve talked to don’t claim to be experts on the history of 1656. But Rabbi Jonathan Romain, a spokesman for Reform Judaism, does. He recently organised a poll to find the greatest British Jew as part of the celebrations.
“There’s no question that Jews, from 1656, could live openly as Jews in Britain, and there’s no doubt that Jews did re-enter at that point,” he said.
“The only ambiguity is the exact moment this happened, and the mystery is the lack of any official documentation, because the minutes of the Council of State for the day on which we think it was agreed have been torn out.”
He’s wrong. The authority for Rabbi Romain’s claim comes from the historian Cecil Roth, who in 1960 became very excited during a visit to the archives when he thought he’d found that two pages from the minutes containing Cromwell’s favourable decision had been removed. Roth later realised that his “discovery” had been the product of wishful thinking, and never referred to it again.
The setting aside of historical accuracy wouldn’t matter, at least not so much, if it weren’t so counterproductive.
Ultimately, the anniversary is of greatest benefit not to Britain’s Jews but to Britain itself, in its guise as a uniquely tolerant nation.
The community leaders organising the anniversary claim that they are only giving Britain credit where credit is due.
As Sacks put it in a recent BBC interview: “It seems to me a real cause for celebration because there’s no doubt that Jews in Britain have found this country one of the most tolerant places on the face of the earth.”
He is, it seems, happy to thank Britain for admitting the Jews by the back door.
But all this serves to obscure the absence of a genuine acknowledgement of religious difference in Britain. The July 7 bombings, and the recent, bitterly polarised debates about religious hatred, have exposed a gap between the perception that this is an exceptionally welcoming country, and the actual experience of some religious groups.
Unlike Sacks, I regard the informal nature of British tolerance as a sign of reluctance rather than affable accommodation. The Jews were not readmitted to England in 1656; a bill to give them equal rights was repealed in 1754, and they were only permitted to sit in parliament without taking an Anglican oath in 1858, after 11 years of debate.
Challenging the traditional faith in British tolerance is a better way of acknowledging true religious diversity than celebrating an event that didn’t happen.
Eliane Glaser is a radio producer and author of a forthcoming book on the history of Jews in Britain.