Author(s): Harry Freedman

Judaica

Jews in Britain have risen to the top of nearly every profession, they run major companies, sit at the top tables in politics and are prominent in science, arts and media. Of course there is poverty and disadvantage, just as there is in any community, but objectively, British Jews have done well. Particularly when we consider where they came from- the impoverished, often oppressed lives that many Jews lived in Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire less than 200 years ago.

British Jews have lived safely and continuously in Britain longer than any other modern Jewish community has lived anywhere else in the world. Jews are so ingrained into the national fabric of Britain that they are often not considered to be a minority at all.

They have organised themselves in a way that serves as a model both to more recent immigrant communities in Britain and to Jewish communities elsewhere. Being British, they wear their distinctions lightly, they don't trumpet their achievements. But they give back quietly- Jewish organisations help more recently arrived minorities, charities draw on the Jewish experience of persecution to help oppressed people in the developing world, philanthropists support causes far beyond their own communities' boundaries.

Based on conversations with Jews from all walks of life, Britain's Jews depicts what it is like to be Jewish in 21st century Britain and why Jewish life is still a subject of fascination.