A mid-winter message

Dear JHSE members,

I write to you a fortnight after Holocaust Memorial Week. Perhaps because it is the 80th anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz, perhaps because many are motivated to explore the long history of the Jews in so troubled a world, I have found this year full of interesting and worthwhile events: films, concerts, lectures, and TV programmes, and tried to join some of them. It reminded me that history is contained in academic research, but also in more ephemeral - passing - traces: testimony, visual tributes, visits to sites and more. I was also struck by how active university students have been in organising such events.

I am delighted to announce that two of JHSE's new initiatives will be bearing fruit this month. On 18 February 2025, the Cambridge Branch of JHSE will be launched with a lecture by Professor Christopher Clark, at Trinity College at 8pm. On this occasion we will gauge interest and consult on the local group's interests. Please write to me if you wish to become a member of this Branch, whose meetings will take place in person.

Another is the creation of a Manchester Branch under the leadership of JHSE Trustee Gavin Schaffer. Here too, the inaugural meeting will take place at an event organised at the Manchester Jewish Museum, a talk on 20 February 2025 associated with the publication by Jay Prosser of Secrets of My Camphorwood Chest: A Family History of Jews in Iraq, India and Singapore. The Manchester Jewish Museum plans a few more lectures this spring, and we will inform you of them.

Our long-established branches are also planning interesting events. The Sussex Branch will be hosting Professor Tessa Rajak on the Excavations at Massada in the 1960s. You are all welcome: The Masada Dig 1964/65: Reminiscences of Yadin and of the British contribution.

Some of you may have seen the excellent review of the just-published book by Gavin Schaffer, member of our Advisory Board, a history of British Jews since 1945. This book is being celebrated later this month in Cambridge, and if you can make it, please sign up here.

There will be other opportunities to celebrate this important book, of which we will inform you, of course. Gavin is not only an historian of Britain's Jews, but has a deep understanding of other groups with distinctive religious, cultural or ethic identities, hence his history is a particularly rich one.

It is so pleasing to inform you of opportunities to visit interesting exhibitions. One such has been developed at the Parkes Institute of the University of Southampton to which we owe so much. There, researcher Anoushka Alexander-Rose curated an exhibition about the myth of the Wandering Jew, hundreds of years old, as it was imagined in visual art, stories, films and more. The exhibition is an itinerant one, and may be coming to a venue near you, so please visit the website to ascertain its itinerary.

The image of the Wandering Jew was developed in centuries (15-16c) when European Jews experienced expulsions from many territories. In the history of expulsions, England was early in its country-wide effort of 1290. But even before Edward I decreed this dramatic act, his widowed mother - Queen Eleanor of Provence - had already done so 15 years earlier, in 1275. She ordained that the Jews leave the cities she controlled: Worcester, Cambridge, Marlborough, and Gloucester, each community ordered to join a specific Jewish community.

A string of interesting lectures on medieval English history of the Jews is coming our way, and I hope many of you will join. On the anniversary of the (re)issuing of the 1225 Magna Carta, the Bodleian Library in Oxford has organised a series of lectures. They are keen to highlight the way this important Charter dealt with Jews as part of the political landscape of England at the time. Our own Dean Irwin will be delivering one of these prestigious lectures planned for the event on 20 February 2025, and there is an online option for joining. See details here.

And if you are keen to hear more about the medieval history of the Jews in Europe, I shall be delivering a lecture online for The National Archives on 26 March 2025. I hope you can join by signing up here.

Members may be interested to know that the Advisory Board at its meeting last night is forging ahead with an exercise aimed at defining new goals for the JHSE with the view of reaching new audiences and fulfilling new tasks. As ever, we aim to promote interest in Jewish history that is based on valid research arising from communities and universities; we are keen to spread an understanding of how the history of the Jews forms part of the larger England/British history; and we aim to make those histories available in a variety of formats - books, walks, films, lectures, podcasts, journal - to wide audiences in the UK and beyond.

If you have ideas about our aims and hopes, or about how these may be achieved, please get in touch with me, or any member of the Trustees of Advisory, all listed on the website.

With best wishes, your President, Miri Rubin