Old Jewry Synagogue, London

סקירה

הסיפור של Old Jewry Synagogue, London

Old Jewry, the street running from Poultry north to Gresham Street in the City of London, was the core of the Jewish quarter that grew up after the Norman Conquest; a vicus Judaeorum is first recorded in the St Paul's terrier of about 1128. Several synagogues stood in and around it. One of them, at the north corner of Old Jewry in what was then called Colechurch Street, stood next to the house of a small mendicant order, the Friars of the Sack. According to the Victoria County History, the friars complained that the 'howling' of the Jews at prayer disturbed their services, and Henry III gave them the synagogue to enlarge their house; the royal order is recorded on the Close Roll of the king's 56th regnal year, which ran from October 1271 to October 1272. The building became the friars' chapel. In March 1305 Edward I licensed the friars to make the chapel over to Robert Fitzwalter, whose mansion adjoined it. John Stow traced its later life as a nobleman's house, a merchant's house where a mayor lived, and finally a tavern with the sign of the Windmill. The Grocers' Company acquired land here from the Fitzwalters in the fifteenth century. Nothing of the synagogue is known to survive. A modern City plaque at 11 Old Jewry calls it the Great Synagogue; this medieval building is unrelated to the eighteenth-century Great Synagogue in Duke's Place, which was destroyed in the Blitz in 1941.

מיקום

Where it stood

Historic: north corner of Colechurch Street (Old Jewry), parish of St Olave in the Jewry, beside Robert Fitzwalter's house, later the Grocers' Hall site (approximate). Today: Old Jewry, City of London EC2R; pin at 11 Old Jewry, where a City plaque marks the site (approximate).

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הקהילה היהודית

Jews came to London from northern France soon after 1066, and the community is first mentioned under William Rufus. Until 1177 its cemetery served the Jews of all England. Leading figures included Joseph, son of Jacob, known as Rubi Gotsce, who paid a fine to the Crown in 1130 and whose sons led the community later in the century, and in the thirteenth century the grammarian Moses of London and the physician Elijah Menahem. Numbers are uncertain: the Jewish Virtual Library suggests the community probably did not exceed 500, while Jewish writers of the time spoke of 2,000 households. The Jewry was repeatedly attacked. At the coronation of Richard I in September 1189 rioters set the quarter on fire and about thirty people died, among them the Tosafist Rabbi Jacob of Orleans. In 1215 the barons opposing King John sacked the quarter, and in the civil war of the 1260s the Jewry was looted again. After 1189 Jews spread from Old Jewry into Gresham, Milk and Wood streets around Cheapside.

אדריכלות ועיצוב

No description, drawing, plan or excavation of this building has been found. Its size, materials, date of construction, seating capacity and internal arrangement are all unknown, and no architect or builder is recorded. What can be said is limited to its setting. Stow places it at the north corner of Old Jewry, next to the town house that Robert Fitzwalter held in the early fourteenth century, on ground where Grocers' Hall was later built. Thomas Allen, quoting the 1305 grant, gives its address as Colechurch Street in the parish of St Olave in the Jewry. The building was large and solid enough to serve the Friars of the Sack as their chapel for some thirty years and then to be converted into a dwelling, which suggests a substantial stone or timber hall rather than a room in a house, but this is an inference. The Jewish Encyclopedia notes that London's chief synagogue appears to have stood elsewhere, on the site of Bakewell Hall, so this may not have been the community's largest building.

החיים בבית הכנסת

Almost nothing is recorded about worship in this particular synagogue. The one surviving detail comes from its Christian neighbours: the Friars of the Sack, whose house stood next to it, complained that they were disturbed at their own devotions by what the Victoria County History, following medieval sources, calls the howling of the Jews in their church, meaning the sound of Hebrew prayer and chanting carried through the walls. Henry III's answer was to hand over the synagogue. More generally, London's synagogues were also places where royal business touching the Jews was conducted: the Jewish Encyclopedia records that proclamations were made in the synagogues so that debts owed to Jews could be established. The community had its own religious officials, and the 1194 ransom list names three Jewish 'bishops' of London, Deulesalt, Vives and Abraham. Which rabbis or officers served this synagogue, and how long it was in use before about 1272, is unknown.

הרס

The synagogue was not pulled down but taken from the Jewish community by the Crown. The Victoria County History states that Henry III gave the synagogue to the Friars of the Sack to increase their house, because the friars were disturbed by the sound of Jewish worship, and that he ordered the Jews to be less noxious to the friars. Its source, Tovey's Anglia Judaica, cites the Close Roll of 56 Henry III, a regnal year running from October 1271 to October 1272; the exact day has not been confirmed. The building had already suffered in the violence of the 1260s: Stow writes that in 1262 the citizens of London killed 700 Jews and defaced the synagogue. After the grant it served as the friars' chapel until 1305, when Edward I allowed them to assign it to Robert Fitzwalter. Stow then describes it passing to private and commercial use. When and how the fabric itself finally disappeared has not been established; nothing of it is known to stand today.

גורל הקהילה

The loss of this synagogue came in the last decades of the medieval community, which was weakened by heavy royal taxation and repeated violence. Easter 1263 saw the Jewry sacked and several Jews killed; Simon de Montfort's followers put the quarter to the sword in 1264, and in 1266 the so-called disinherited knights attacked what remained. In 1283 all synagogues in the diocese of London were ordered closed. On 18 July 1290 Edward I issued the edict expelling all Jews from England, and the London community ceased to exist. The houses the Jews had held fell to the king; about twenty-five can still be traced in the records. Jews were not formally readmitted to England until the 1650s, and the later London congregations, including the Great Synagogue in Duke's Place, have no institutional link with this building.

האתר כיום

The north end of Old Jewry is lined with modern office buildings, and no trace of the synagogue, the friars' chapel or the medieval Jewish houses survives above ground. In the fifteenth century the Grocers' Company bought the chapel and the adjoining Fitzwalter house and built its hall there, east of the street. Nearby, only the tower of St Olave Old Jewry survives, and in 2001 archaeologists found a medieval ritual bath at the corner of Gresham Street and Milk Street, a short distance to the west. A City plaque at 11 Old Jewry marks the approximate site of the synagogue.

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