Hidden English Jewish Ancestry

If your family comes from England, and you have Hidden Jewish Ancestry, it could have come from many sources. 

I lived in England for a decade or more. Much to my surprise, I have a huge amount of  hidden English Jewish ancestry. Had I known, I would have toured the county in an entirely different manner. I would have visited many a graveyard and library. But, I didn't. Mostly because hidden English Jewish ancestry is especially well hidden. My English Jewish ancestry was of the seriously hidden variety. 

And that is what I would tell anyone whose family came FROM England, Scotland, or Wales, and discovers they Jewish ancestry. It may be of the seriously hidden variety or of the mildly hidden variety. I will address them separately. 

Seriously Hidden English Jewish Ancestry 

England has been home to several waves of Jewish immigration.

 The first dates to a time before the Romans came. Ingots of English tin were found in a sunken ship off the coast of Israel. The find indicates Jews were mining in the British Isles 5000 years before the Romans got there. 

The second wave would the the Jews that came with the Romans either as soldiers or merchants. 

The third wave came with William the Conqueror. Really ironically, I studied just outside  the town of Battle, the very spot  where William the Conqueror won the British Isles. William the conqueror is said to be the illegitimate son of a Jewish woman, Herleva, and a French king. That is speculative. But what is not is this. William brought loads of Jews to England to help him manage his new kingdom. They worked as accountants and managers. They were French speaking Jews. This migration lead to very early Jewish communities in England. 

Conventional Jewish history says that when the Jews were expelled from the British Isles, in 1292, that led to the end of Jewish people living on the Island. However, work done by my favorite researchers, Donald Yates and Elizabeth Hirschman show that this was not the case. Many of the Jewish families stayed in England and became the business backbone of English society. 

Between the third and fourth wave, there is evidence there was a Jewish presence following the expulsion of 1292. The court of Henry the 8th was filled with Italian Jewish musicians. The Bassano family being a prime example of a large Italian Jewish family living in England at a time when "there were no Jews in England". The Bassonos were most assuredly Jewish and after their time playing in the court, they assimilated, married, and disappeared into London's business community. 

A fourth wave of Jewish immigration followed the Spanish expulsion of Jews from Spain. When the Spanish Jews first arrived, they came as Christians. The ban on Jewish residence in England was still in place. They joined the "Italian London Church" and kept a low profile. Cromwell saw the opportunity the Spanish Jews afforded England and began a "don't ask don't tell policy" with the Spanish and Portuguese Jews.  

With each of these waves, many Jews either lived as hidden Jews or assimilated and disappeared into the general population.  Yates/Hirschman demonstrate in their books that not only was there a continuous Jewish presence in England, from the Roman times to present, but, many hidden English Jews made their way the American colonies. If your family came "from" the British Isles, and you find that you have Jewish ancestry, you could have gotten it with one of the many waves of Jewish immigration to England and then onto the colonies. 

Hidden English Jewish ancestry would have been very hard to track if it were not for the work of Yates and Hirschman. There three books are the best place to learn about your Jewish ancestry, if you got it from England, Scotland, or Wales. Their three books are mandatory reading if your family came FROM any of these three countries. 

To investigate hidden English Jewish ancestry, you need to get these books. And read them in the order they are listed. It is pretty mind blowing when you realize how many of the early American colonists were from families with Hidden Jewish Ancestry. 

1. Jews and Muslims in British Colonial America. Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman and Donald N. Yates. 

2. When Scotland was Jewish. Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman and Donald N. Yates. 

3. The Early Jews and Muslims of England and Wales. Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman and Donald N. Yates. 

Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman has continued her work identifying crypto-Jews in the American colony. She has written scores of papers on the subject. A few of them are made available here. But, google Elizabeth Caldwell occasionally, as she will no doubt have written another paper on the subject. 

In 1656, Cromwell re-admitted Jews into Great Britain and importantly, its colonies. The first in were Spanish and Portuguese Jews. It has to be said, there were already Spanish and Portuguese Jews in London and Bristol, but they were living undercover. The immigrants that came when the 250 plus year ban was lifted, came with a more obvious Jewish identity. Many set up businesses in the colonies and family went back and forth. 

This early wave of Spanish and Portuguese Jewish families became victims of their own success. Their rise often led to assimilation and disappearing into the general population. Benjamin Disreaeli would be a great example. Born into a Sephardic Jewish family, Benjamin’s father got into a fight with the management of the Bevis Marks synagogue and had Benjamin and his siblings baptized. 

Sir Manasseh Masseh Lopes, 1st Baronet of Maristow, was born to a rich Sephardic Jewish family in Jamaica. Born on the island in 1755, he came to England with a load of money, bought a family estate, converted to Christianity, and became a baronet. His great great grandson, several times over, is married to the current Queens daughter. These are two notable examples, but, in England and in the colonies, the early Sephardic Jewish families often assimilated and disappeared. 

In the 1800’s waves of impoverished German Jews made their way to England. Like the Sephardic Jews before them, they fanned out to the colonies, and many assimilated in Wales, Scotland, and England. More Jewish ancestry disappeared. The Rothschild family would be an widely known example of German Jews assimilating into English society and out of Judaism. 

Later still, from the 1850’s onward, immigrants from eastern Europe poured into England, Scotland, and Wales, and from there onto all the colonies. As with the Sephardic Jews and the German Jews before them, many assimilated and disappeared. 

The good news is that in these three waves of Jewish immigration to the United Kingdom, some people assimilated, and some remained true to Judaism. And there are lots of records and family trees for those families that disappeared and did not disappear. If your hidden Jewish ancestry comes from one of these three waves of immigration to the United Kingdom, there is a good chance you can track them down. 

This is why I call this class “Mildly Hidden English Jewish Ancestry”. 

There are a lot of resources available to you if your family became Hidden Jews in one of these three waves. 

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain, and the library of family trees they keep at their library, may be where you find out the details about your family. You will have to join to access this information, but it’s a small price to pay. 

Also check out my section on Colonial Jews, because many Jewish people transited through England, Scotland, and Wales, before ending up in the colonies. If you are from the colonies, this would be especially the case.