The Jews of Wales
A History
Author(s) Cai Parry-Jones
Language: English
Genre(s): Religion, Welsh Interest, History
- June 2017 · 272 pages ·216x138mm
- · Paperback - 9781786830845
- · eBook - pdf - 9781786830852
- · eBook - epub - 9781786830869
- · Hardback - 9781786830937
About The Book
This study considers Welsh Jewry as a geographical whole and is the first to draw extensively on oral history sources, giving a voice back to the history of Welsh Jewry, which has long been a formal history of synagogue functionaries and institutions. The author considers the impact of the Second World War on Wales’s Jewish population, as well as the importance of the Welsh context in shaping the Welsh-Jewish experience. The study offers a detailed examination of the numerical decline of Wales’s Jewish communities throughout the twentieth century, and is also the first to consider the situation of Wales’s Jewish communities in the early twenty-first, arguing that these communities may be significantly fewer in number and smaller than in the past but they are ever evolving.
Endorsements
‘This important study is a major addition to our knowledge of ethnic diversity in modern Wales. The author skilfully charts the formation of Jewish communities and the role of religious institutions in them, as well as furnishing perceptive insights into changing identities. The humane discussion of refugees in the years preceding and during the Second World War makes this a timely and necessary book that speaks directly to today’s concerns.’
-Professor Paul O’Leary, Aberystwyth University
‘Cai Parry-Jones’s book provides the first comprehensive study of the Jewish diaspora in and from Wales. He uses the widest possible range of sources, including oral histories, to broaden our picture of Jewish life the length and breadth of the principality. The Jews of Wales will be an essential text for anyone studying Welsh history and its treatment of its minorities, as well as for anyone wishing to learn more about Jewish life in the United Kingdom.’
-Professor Nathan Abrams, Bangor University
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Map of Jewish communities established in Wales between 1768 and 1996
Introduction
1. Migration and Settlement
2. Religious and Communal Life
3. Evacuation, Refuge and the Second World War
4. Jewish and Non-Jewish Relations in Wales
5. Jewishness and Welshness
6. Decline and Endurance
Conclusion
Appendix: The Population of Wales’s Jewish Communities
Glossary
Notes
Select Bibliography