This issue of Jewish Historical Studies, the second we have produced as an editorial team, brings together a wide variety of articles and reviews that range from the medieval to the modern period.
Benedict Wiedemann’s article, “Papal legates, Jews, and the Fourth Lateran Council in England, 1215–1221”, provides a fresh interpretation of the visits of Pandulf Verracclo and Guala Bicchieri to England – perhaps the best-known papal legations of medieval England. Weidemann argues that it is in the distance between the decree and implementation of the canons of Lateran IV that a deeper understanding of the experience of medieval Jewry is to be found. Ali Erginsoy’s “Keeping the faithful: Sephardi poverty, welfare, and cohesion in Georgian London” reframes conventional understandings of Anglo-Jewish history by using the lens of “gravity of place” to reassess the transformation of the Portuguese Jewish diaspora community to a distinct branch of Anglo-Jewry in the late eighteenth century.
Jonathan Lewis’s “Religiosity in the Jewish Legion and Reverend Leib Aisack Falk” details Falk’s wartime career as a chaplain to a near-all-Jewish battalion in the British Army, reputedly the first to exist since the days of the Bible and the first to soldier in the Land of Israel. Rob Thompson’s account, “‘To work with Jews, not for Jews’: a Christian relief worker in the aftermath of the Holocaust”, details the work of Alison Wood, a Quaker and member of the Jewish Relief Unit (JRU) who, in 1946, arrived at Belsen as Personnel Officer for the Unit’s operations in the British Occupation Zone of postwar Germany. This microhistory sheds light on the role of women in providing relief to survivors in the immediate postwar period and the complexities of Jewish/non-Jewish relations in these efforts.
Todd Endelman offers a refreshing and sometimes irreverent account of the evolution of scholarship on Anglo-Jewish history. As he reflects on his own career against the backdrop of the field’s development and professionalization, Endelman affirms its continued vitality and points to an increasingly diversified historiography. Hilit Surowitz-Israel’s “Caribbean Jewish studies of the colonial era: state of the field” essay provides a similarly broad-brush perspective on Caribbean Jewish studies in the colonial period, illustrating the impact of transnational historical studies on the field. Her article illustrates how historians of English-speaking Jewry have explored the experience of Caribbean Jewish communities to illuminate larger questions of power and agency among free, minority religious groups.
Alongside these articles are reviews of books spanning the premodern to the contemporary period. We thank our book review editors Miriamne Ara Krummel (medieval and early modern) and Roni Mikel Arieli (modern) for their thoughtful curation. Finally, a new section on public history illustrates how this scholarship is communicated to wider audiences. Reviews of Holocaust exhibitions in England (at the Imperial War Museum) and South Africa (at the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre) provide insight into how the Shoah is remembered in countries with radically different histories and contemporary political milieux. Closing the section is Asa Simon Mittman and Miriamne Ara Krummel’s interview with Ian Rank-Broadley, Fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors, about his recently completed life-size sculpture of a medieval English Jewish woman, Licoricia of Winchester, now standing in Winchester’s centre. The sculpture marks the inclusion of Anglo-Jewish history in the contemporary British landscape.
This issue of the journal would not have been possible without the dedicated work of our managing editor Katharine Ridler, editorial assistant Jemima Jarman, contributing editor Jeremy Schonfield, and designer Tony Kitzinger. We extend our thanks to all of them as well as to our Editorial Board.