The Jewish Communities of Western Europe and Scandinavia

The Jews of England and France

We should begin by reminding ourselves how small its Jewish communities were as of 1880. In Britain, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, there were only about 60,000 Jews all throughout England, Scotland, and Wales as of 1880, most of whom had come from German and Polish lands; a full 40,000 of these lived in London, the capital of the empire and a center of world capitalism. 

Approximately 80,000 Jews lived in France in the early 1880s. These Jews had enjoyed full political equality since the days of the French Revolution and were already deeply enmeshed in French culture. 

The Jews of England and France enjoyed full equality of civil rights, and the Jews of France particularly stood out for the degree of their participation in the life of the French state, with growing numbers entering state service and army service. 

Internal Ethnic Differences

There were important differences of class and origin in both communities. Anglo-Jewry included Sephardim as well as Ashkenazim from German and Polish origins, and French Jewry on the eve of the era of massive immigration consisted of Provençal Jews in southeastern France, Spanish-Portuguese Jews in Bordeaux and other cities in the southwestern region, and Yiddish-speaking Jews of Alsace and Lorraine. But such internal ethnic differences were declining in significance, and both small Jewish populations of these great world powers were, as noted, ever more fully integrated and acculturated into the urban middle classes. 

Jewish life in France and Britain was profoundly reshaped, demographically if not institutionally, by the mass migration of East European Jews that began in the 1880s. At the same time, the integration of French Jewry, like that of German Jewry, was challenged with growing force by new forms of antisemitism; but this only served to consolidate French Jewish devotion to the French republic.

The Jews of Italy

A fulsome integration marked the trajectory of a Jewry at once ancient and new, that of Italy. In 1881, there were 37,401 Jews in Italy. A small minority within a vast Catholic majority, with roots reaching back to antiquity, they did not gain full emancipation until the unification of Italy in 1870. Yet in this new country, still divided regionally, Jews stood out for their quick and full integration, acculturation to a still-young Italianness, and their commitment to Italian secular-liberal nationalism.

The Netherlands Jewish Community

The Jewish community of the Netherlands offered an interesting parallel to that of France and the pre-1880s United States. Here was another older community in a democratic country with a developing capitalist economy and an overseas empire, made up of remnants of an early modern Spanish and Portuguese Jewish merchant elite and a much larger, poorer, but ever more integrated Ashkenazic component. 

In 1879, there were 81,693 Dutch Jews, of whom 3,618 were Spanish-Portuguese. By 1899, following waves of immigrants from Eastern Europe, the number of Ashkenazim rose to 98,343. 

The Jews of Belgium

Belgium, which gained independence in 1831 in territories torn away from Holland and France, was home to a small Jewish community. In 1880, there were roughly 8,000 Jews in Antwerp alone, the important commercial city in the Flemish region. Another group of Jews from the Ottoman Empire immigrated to Antwerp and joined the city’s older community of Portuguese Jews. 

Stasis in Scandinavia

Tiny Jewish communities in the Scandinavian countries were little altered in our era, mostly avoiding any substantial immigrant influx during the great migration from the neighboring Russian Empire.