The Jews of Wales

The first nationwide historical study of Jewish communities and individuals in Wales, stretching from the establishment of the first Welsh-Jewish community in Swansea in 1768 to the present situation of Welsh Jewry in the early twenty-first century.

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This study considers Welsh Jewry as a geographical whole and is the first to draw extensively on oral history sources, giving a voice back to the history of Welsh Jewry, which has long been a formal history of synagogue functionaries and institutions. The author considers the impact of the Second World War on Wales's Jewish population, as well as the importance of the Welsh context in shaping the Welsh-Jewish experience. The study offers a detailed examination of the numerical decline of Wales's Jewish communities throughout the twentieth century, and is also the first to consider the situation of Wales's Jewish communities in the early twenty-first, arguing that these communities may be significantly fewer in number and smaller than in the past but they are ever evolving.