Englishmen and Jews: Social Relations and Political Culture, 1840-1914.

This detailed and well researched study examines a key period in the history of Jewish life in England. The years between 1840 and 1914 witnessed the transformation of English Jewry from a small, politically and legally disadvantaged minority characterized by a disproportionately middle-class orientation to a much larger emancipated community, significantly altered in fundamental ways by a massive influx of Eastern European working-class immigrants. David Feldman analyzes this important development in English Jewish history in the broader context of English political culture and concludes that the position of the Jews within the state and the nation remained a cause for political controversy throughout the period. His book offers a new perspective on the Jewish experience in Victorian and Edwardian England and provides an interesting example of the recent trend toward historical explorations of the links between state and society.

The book is organized chronologically and thematically into three sections. Its geographical focus is on London, which remained the center of Jewish life in England during the period between 1840 and World War I. Feldman draws on an impressive array of primary sources and thoroughly examines the relevant secondary literature to describe and explain several related topics: the politics of Jewish emancipation between 1840 and 1880; the experience and impact of Eastern European immigration between 1880 and 1914; and the process of acculturation and the relationship of the Jews to the state and the nation between 1880 and 1914. In contrast to historiographic approaches that focus on Jewish exceptionalism or, conversely, question the particularity of Jewish experiences, this volume stresses the dynamic interaction between English and Jewish history, and the potential value of such an approach for the illumination of important issues in both modern English history and Anglo-Jewish history.

In the first section, the author offers a sophisticated analysis of that interaction in the context of the nineteenth-century English controversy over Jewish emancipation. Challenging the prevalent interpretation of emancipation as a product of the twin influences of capitalism and liberalism, he contends that the dialogue over Jewish rights was part of a larger political argument. That argument reflected the contending visions of the nation held by those who remained committed to the idea of a Christian England and those who sought to reform or dismantle the confessional state. Furthermore, Feldman points out that once achieved, emancipation was not necessarily stable. As conceptions of the nation and of national identity were debated in the context of new policy issues, the questions of how and on what terms the Jews could be contained within the English national community resurfaced.

The second part of Englishmen and Jews provides a comprehensive description of the background and impact of Eastern European immigration and of the structure of industry in London's Jewish East End. Feldman maintains that the surge of Jewish immigration in the post-1880 period further complicated the ongoing debate over the issue of Jewish integration. Here he challenges the views of historians who have portrayed the Eastern European immigrants either as unique upwardly mobile economic individualists or as inchoate members of the collective mass of English workers. Emphasizing the complexity of their economic and social relationships in the absence of a dynamic Jewish labor movement, he argues that they functioned as independent historical actors who developed their own patterns of association and communal politics.

These activities in turn produced conflict with the elite leadership of the established Anglo-Jewish society, whose efforts to reform and anglicize the newcomers reflected both the general attitudes of the propertied classes toward the problems of poverty and their own social insecurities as Jews. The final section of the book examines the dynamic of this intracommunal conflict and also reconsiders the relation of Jews to the state and to the idea of the nation. While the presence of an expanding immigrant population created new social issues, various ideological currents in the period following 1880 generated different visions of the national community which raised the general question of Jewish integration once again. For example, both Liberal ideas about the obligations of citizenship and Conservative visions of empire drew attention to the Jewish minority and the issue of its status within English society: Were immigrants who either could or would not contribute to the well-being of society entitled to the protection of the state? Was there a legitimate place for foreign laborers in an imperial and protectionist nation? Feldman concludes that the implementation of state policies based on these ideologies promoted the development of vigorous forms of politics in the East End. Such policies also resulted in a new relation between Jews and the state, one that emphasized the interests of native-born and immigrant Jews as a group rather than their constitutional position or their rights as a religious minority.

This volume presents a comprehensive treatment of the central issues in English Jewish history during the Victorian and Edwardian eras and offers many substantive insights into the connections between that history and the broader national history. It is an ambitious and complex work that contributes to the developing sophistication in contemporary Jewish historiography, which has moved significantly beyond the more conventional narratives of the older, less critical tradition. The book's strengths include its focused examination of the connections between state and society and the plethora of specific data through which the author documents his claims. At certain points, however, the level of detail and the ensuing complexity detract from the clarity of the author's argument. This problem seems especially evident in the final section which merges the issues of acculturation and East End politics and associational life with those pertaining to the relation of the Jews to the state and the nation. Occasional cumbersome and wordy passages and some repetitious sections also give parts of the work a ponderous quality that could have been avoided through more rigorous editing. Overall, however, this is a valuable work based on fine research and solid analysis.

Linda W. Rosenzweig Chatham College