Some Ashkenazi Charities* in London at the End of the Eighteenth and the Beginning of the Nineteenth Centuries

WHEN, some time ago, I undertook to address you, I had found a hitherto unknown MS. in the Mocatta Library, which contains the rules and minutes of a charity for the feeding, clothing, teaching and apprenticing of orphans. The MS. was written in 1795, partly in mediaeval aramaizing Hebrew, partly in Judaeo-German, with only a very occasional sprinkling of an English terminus technicus in between.

It was obvious from the outset that the programme of this charity cannot be put before you by way of a mere descriptive account of its contents. Other, earlier and later, Jewish and non-Jewish institutions of its kind will have to be discussed to set the Hebhra Qaddisha De-rahme Le-ghaddel Yathme Qetannim2 [sic] into its proper frame.

The end of the eighteenth century marks a decisive, though long prepared and clearly foreseeable turning point in European and particularly in Jewish history. The establishment and re-organization

Written by

Siegfried Stein1

Published in

Volume 20

1959

Other articles within the volume

• John Braham, Singer
• The Russian Background of the Anglo-American Jewish Immigration
• The Hope of Israel, A Breife Epistle, and Silex Scintillans
• Lewis Way and His Times
• The Jews in Medieval York
• Notes on the Jews’ Tribute in Jamaica
• Address [in Celebration of the 70th Anniversary of the Foundation of the Society]
• Lucien Wolf and Theodore Herzl
• The Pre-Expulsion Cemetery of the Jews in London
• Emunat Omen by Meyer Sch?mberg
• Dr. Meyer Schomberg’s Attack on the Jews of London, 174
• Some Ashkenazi Charities* in London at the End of the Eighteenth and the Beginning of the Nineteenth Centuries
• The Wanderers and Other Jewish Scholars of My Youth1
• The Correspondence of the Mahamad of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation of London during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
• Preface