The Daily News Letter

J.T.A. Staff Correspondent

So often is Great Britain referred to incorrectly as England that most people are apt to forget that an integral part of the British Isles is Scotland, in which a considerable number of Jews have settled within the last twenty or thirty years.

In the absence of any definite statistics, it is reckoned, more or less accurately, that something like 25,000 Jews are resident in the land o’ the heather and the haggis, the biggest portion —about 18,000—having settled in Glasgow, and 5,000 in the capital of Scotland, Edinburgh. A few hundred families are to be found in Greenock, Falkirk, Dunfermline, Dundee, Ayr, and they have even taken by storm that stronghold of thrift and Scots stories—Aberdeen.

Actually Edinburgh was the first Scottish city to attract Jewish settlers and in 1816 some twenty families were resident in that East of Scotland town, while it was thirteen or fourteen years afterwards that a community was established in Glasgow. The latter city, with its great industrial activity, proved most popular with the Jews as is seen by the figures of the present-day dispersion of Scottish Jewry.

We find the Jews of Glasgow driving their first bargain in 1832, when one of their number died of cholera. The community, small as it then was, had not obtained a burial ground, and they immediately applied to the committee which was arranging for the opening of the new Necropolis in Glasgow. The Jewish delegation to the committee pleaded the urgency of their case and, although the ground had not been officially opened, they offered £100 if the committee would grant them space for a Jewish cemetery. The committee agreed but later stated that the Jewish offer had been much less than afterwards obtained from other parties for similar pieces of ground!

Let us briefly survey Glasgow Jewry, for in this case Scotland and Glasgow are synonymous. At one time in Glasgow, Gorbals was the recognized Jewish quarter, but with their material progress, the Jews have wandered out to the new suburbs, and are thus causing a serious disruption in the community. Charitable institutions find it difficult to follow up subscribers who suddenly remove: synagogues lose their members and are faced with financial disaster; new synagogues are being built and are used merely on the festivals; in many districts there are as yet no schools, with the result that Hebrew education is being seriously neglected.

Figures just issued show that the Glasgow Talmud Torah, situated in the Gorbals, has suffered so much by the removal of Jewish families, that the number of pupils has dropped from 400 to 250 in the last two years. A further sign of the general disinterest shown by the community in communal activity is the manner in which officials of the various institutions—who for the most part would willingly relinquish their posts—are annually returned to office without the slightest opposition.

Is it a good sign when healthy criticism and competition is not forthcoming?

On the first German Fund appeal, Glasgow Jews responded nobly with subscriptions totalling £3,000, but in succeeding appeals the enthusiasm was not so great and the funds suffered accordingly.

This forgetfulness of what has happened in Germany is emphasized in the way in which local Jewish firms are displaying in their windows goods clearly marked, “Made in Germany.” The boycott campaign was hopeless, because of a lack of leadership. This dearth of men to take the reins and guide the community is responsible for its gradual distintegration.

Glasgow Jewry has the material of which leaders are made, but those who might attain positions of responsibility are either too intent on improving their business connections or are “studying medicine,” for we are told that all the Jewish students at Glasgow University are without exception brilliant. Someone has prophesied that within a decade there will be more Jewish doctors in Glasgow than patients.

The community has two really fine organizations—the Board of Guardians and the Jewish Representative Council.

The Guardians, well organized, disburses some £5,000 annually amongst the poor of the local community; grants loans to help small traders who find themselves in temporary difficulties; assist families in which death or illness has meant a serious reduction in the income: and supplies about a tenth of the community with the necessaries for the observing of the Passover every year.

The other institution, the Representative Council, is a body of great possibilities, and it must be admitted that it has done good work in the twenty-one years it has been in existence. The Council is composed of delegates from all the principal senior organizations; eleven synagogues; and from the main charitable institutions, and its business is to look after the affairs of Jewry in general.

One of its latest cases is an excellent example of how the Council, which is a miniature Board of Deputies, works. Recently one of the delegates brought to the notice of the Council the fact that a certain insurance company had issued instructions to its agents not to accept motor insurance business from Jews. The Council communicated with the company concerned with such good effect that the cir-