ABSTRACT
Complaints by historians about the ‘marginalization’ or ‘neglect’ of their own specialized subjects inevitably have a somewhat pathetic quality about them. Accusations about a ‘conspiracy of silence’ are more likely than not liable to provoke Oscar Wilde’s famous advice to join it. In historiography, it is too often the case that where there is no smoke, there is no fire. Historians of Anglo-Jewry are famous for their self-mortification. It is depressing, and even degrading, to see how often English historians pass over Jewish and Hebrew themes when discussing the Reformation or millenarianism, or to find that the standard work on English witchcraft and magic lacks the word ‘kab balah’ in the index. At one level, at least, historians of Anglo-Jewry have only themselves to blame for this lack of force. Jews in England never experienced any Haskalah (‘Enlightenment’) movement, nor did they suffer the sort of tireless physical persecution that was the lot of the Jews on the Continent. The historian of Anglo-Jewry who works within the framework of departments of Jewish history often has a
dormant inferiority complex when faced with his colleagues who study and chronicle the history of the Jews in the full flowering of Hebraic culture in Germany or Eastern Europe. Another reason for the lowkey nature of Anglo-Jewish history lies in the extremely cautious character of the historians themselves. Mostly gifted amateurs rather than university teachers, they have been clergymen, businessmen, lawyers, and civil servants, who saw the writing of Anglo-Jewish history as an act of testimony, reflecting their dual wish to praise their people and their country. Almost any subject that was liable to place the Jewish community in a negative light was self-censored, and any twist of interpretation which might spark gentile anger was banished and buried.
