The Haredi Jews in the UK

Abstract

Since the seventeenth century, Jews in the UK have lived predominately in certain areas. Following the Second World War and the annihilation of most of Eastern European Jewry, the organisation of Haredi society worldwide underwent dramatic change. Holocaust survivors, along with Jewish immigrants from Islamic countries, moved to major urban centres in the West and Israel, and the British Jewry community has expanded. The Jews in the UK had been gradually accepted both politically and socially into almost every sphere of activity and had followed the patterns of the wider host community. Most integrated slowly into the broader modern society, adopting different combinations of religious and ethnic lifestyle, education and employment, and the character of the Jewish life in Britain—their need to live among people of their group—has changed. To an outside observer, Anglo-Jewry is the product of British society. Today, the British Jewish community, the case study of this study, contains two main subcommunities: The Haredi and the mainstream. There is considerable heterogeneity among these subcommunities and a blurry boundary between them. The Haredi community is by far the fastest-growing component of contemporary British Jewry and Jewry worldwide. In its orthodox interpretation, a hierarchical spiritual leadership, which mediates between the religious commandments and their interpretation and implementation in practice, interweaves the life of the Haredi individual with a series of communal commitments whose fulfilment is not open to debate. The Haredi community, exhibit visually and locationally distinct characteristics, comprise an increasing proportion of the Jewish population of the UK.