Spanish and Portuguese Jews Congregation

Item

Country

GB

Name of institution (official language of the state)

London Metropolitan Archives

Language of name of institution

eng

Contact information: postal address

40 Northampton Road, London EC1R 0HB

Contact information: phone number

0044 20 7332 3820

Contact information: web address

https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/london-metropolitan-archives/Pages/default.aspx

Contact information: email

ask.lma@cityoflondon.gov.uk

Reference number

LMA/4521

Type of reference number

Archival reference number

Title (official language of the state)

Spanish and Portuguese Jews Congregation

Language of title

eng

Creator / accumulator

Spanish and Portuguese Jews Congregation

Date(s)

1598/1997

Language(s)

eng
heb
por
spa

Extent

57.66 linear metres

Type of material

Textual Material

Physical condition

Good

Scope and content

This collection comprises records of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation of London and materials relating to other Jewish congregations.
The first section, Congregation and Synagogues (LMA/4521/A), includes records regarding the administration of the London Congregation, namely laws and regulations (Ascamot); orders and resolutions; minutes and agendas for meetings of the Mahamad, Elders and Yehidim of the Congregation and other committees; membership lists; reports including annual reports of the Mahamad to the Elders; correspondence of the Mahamad, Synagogue and associated organisations; records of the Portuguese Marranos Committee (founded in 1926); records of denization relating to members of the Congregation (denization was a legal process allowing foreigners to gain the certain privileges equivalent to British subjects, including the right to hold land, through letters patent); records relating to shehita (ritual slaughter of animals in accordance with Jewish dietary laws); and "livros dos pleitos", case books which record the Mahamad's arbitration of various disputes amongst the Congregation. Also, it contains records relating to the Synagogue's services (LMA/4521/A/02), including registers of births; register of circumcisions; marriage registers (ketubot) and marriage licences; registers of burials in the Old and New Cemeteries, Mile End; seats lists; sermons; apprentice books and records of religious classes. In addition, this series is completed with documents relating to property and legal matters (LMA/4521/A/03); finance (LMA/4521/A/04); records of branch synagogues in London, namely the Lauderdale Road Synagogue (LMA/4521/A/05/01, LMA/4521/A/05/02 and LMA/4521/A/05/05) and the Mildmay Park Synagogue (LMA/4521/A/05/03 and LMA/4521/A/05/04); documents on the history of the congregation (LMA/4521/A/06/01 and LMA/4521/A/06/02); indexes (LMA/4521/A/06/04) and a small poetry collection (LMA/4521/A/06/05).
The second section (LMA/4521/B) comprises records of congregational and related organisations, including almshouses (LMA/4521/B/01 and LMA/4521/B/02); the Beth Holim hospital (LMA/4521/B/03); schools and colleges (LMA/4521/B/05-LMA/4521/B/08); charities and dower societies (LMA/4521/B/09 and LMA/4521/B/10); welfare organisations (LMA/4521/B/011 and LMA/4521/B/12); burial and mourning societies (LMA/4521/B/13-LMA/4521/B/18); records regarding the Montefiore endowment (LMA/4521/B/19-LMA/4521/B/21); among others. This series also includes an address of the Congregation Shearith Israel of New York to the London Congregation (LMA/4521/B/32/001).
Another section of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation collection contains deposited records of individual members of the congregation (LMA/4521/C), including documents of the Meldola/de Sola families (LMA/4521/C/01); the diary of James Petiver containing a description of the Cree Church Lane Synagogue (LMA/4521/C/02/02/002); diaries of Samuel Montefiore (LMA/4521/C/02/02/003) and Miss S. Lindo (LMA/4521/C/02/02/004, LMA/4521/C/02/02/019); Solomon Almosnino's ledgers, account books and correspondence (LMA/4521/C/02/02/006-LMA/4521/C/02/02/008, LMA/4521/C/02/02/011); William Villa Real's account book (LMA/4521/C/02/02/010); Edward Toledano's drawings (LMA/4521/C/02/02/017), among others.
The forth section of this collection (LMA/4521/D) gathers documentation from other Sephardic congregations, namely several records of the Nidhe Israel of Barbados, including minute books and correspondence (LMA/4521/D/01/01), accounts and ledgers (LMA/4521/D/01/02), and registers of births, ketubot, marriages and deaths (LMA/4521/D/01/03); a photocopy of the minute book of the Portuguese nation of Bordeaux in 1710 (LMA/4521/D/02/001); miscellany records from the Talmud Torah of Amsterdam, including a book of elections (LMA/4521/D/03/001), a sermon by Abraham Mendes Chumaceiro in 1740 (LMA/4521/D/03/002), a liturgical book (Order of Hazanut) dating from 1744 (LMA/4521/D/03/003), and English translations of Saul Levi Mortera's Treatise on the Truth of the Law of Moses (LMA/4521/D/03/004) and D. H. Castro's paperback on the 275th Anniversary of the Synagogue (LMA/4521/D/03/005); financial records of the Venice Congregation (LMA/4521/D/04); and a book of minutes and proceedings of the Mahamad and Parnassim of the German Congregations in 5601/1840-1 (LMA/4521/D/05/001).
The last three sections of the collection include records relating to Public Appeals (LMA/4521/E), correspondence with other organisations namely the Board of Deputies of British Jews (LMA/4521/F), and papers relating to associated congregations in Manchester and Ramsgate (LMA/4521/G).

Archival history

The collection was deposited at the London Metropolitan Archives in 2007, 2013, and 2015.

Administrative / Biographical history

In 1290, anti-Jewish feeling in England led to the expulsion of all Jews from the country. In the 17th century, a small number of conversos arrived in London, fleeing persecution by the Inquisition in Portugal and Spain. Part of them outwardly behaved as Christians while holding secret prayer meetings. They began to petition Protector Oliver Cromwell for the official re-admittance of Jews to England. Eventually, their petition was successful and the first official Jewish place of worship was opened in Creechurch Lane, London, in 1657. This building soon became too small and, in 1699, work began on a new synagogue, to be situated on a street named Bevis Marks, around the corner from Creechurch Lane. The building, known as the Bevis Marks Synagogue, was opened in September 1701. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, immigrants joined the Congregation, coming from Portugal and Spain or from Jewish communities elsewhere, including Holland, France, Italy and North Africa, the Middle East, Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq. The congregation began to leave the City of London and the East End to settle in the west of London, leading to the establishment of a branch synagogue which after several moves of premises settled in Lauderdale Road, Maida Vale, in 1896. Another synagogue was constructed at Mildmay Park in North London in 1883, which closed in 1936. A further synagogue was opened in North London at Wembley in 1962.
The Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation is led by a small group (Mahamad) consisting of four Wardens (Parnassim) and a Treasurer (Gabay), chosen annually by the community (Yehidim) from amongst the Elders. In the mid-19th century, this body became an elected Executive. The Mahamad compiled the first Laws of the Congregation (Ascamot) which were intended to maintain a pious, united, and ordered community. The Mahamad levied taxes on members, selected and paid the Haham (Chief Rabbi) and other officials, received offerings and legacies, authorised the solemnisation of marriages, and distributed charity (both money and goods such as matzot, coal, and blankets). The synagogue also established various charities to help its members. These included an orphanage; the Shaare Tikvah (Gates of Hope) School for boys, founded in the 17th century; the Villareal School for girls, established by Joseph/Isaac da Costa Villareal in 1729; Dower Societies which provided assistance for brides to set up their homes; the Welfare Board offering assistance to people in need; and medical provision through the Beth Holim, now an old people's home but formerly a hospital founded in 1747. From 1885, the Elders of the Congregation also became responsible for the Montefiore Endowment, established by Sir Moses Montefiore in 1866, which financed the Judith Lady Montefiore College in Ramsgate, Kent, and Ramsgate Synagogue. The Endowment also took over the Ramsgate Jewish Burial Ground in 1887.

Access points: locations

Amsterdam (Netherlands)
Barbados
Bordeaux (France)
Livorno (Italy)
London (UK)
Manchester (UK)
New York, N.Y. (USA)
Ramsgate (UK)
Venice (Italy)

Access points: persons, families

Aboab
Almosnino
Almosnino, Solomon
Castro, Hananel de
Cohen d'Azevedo, Daniel
Costa Vila Real, José (Joseph) da
Israel, Menasseh ben (Manuel Dias Soeiro)
Lindo
Lindo, Sarah
Mattos
Meldola
Meldola, David
Meldola, Raphael
Mendes da Costa
Mocatta
Montefiore, Moses
Montefiore, Samuel
Mortera, Saul Levi (Saul Levi Morteira)
Sola
Sola, Abraham de
Sola, Raphael de
Sola, Samuel de
Toledano, Edward
Villa Real, William

Access points: corporate bodies

Beth Holim Hospital (London)
Board of Deputies of British Jews
Congregation Nidhe Israel (Barbados)
Congregation Sha'ar Hashamayim (London)
Congregation Shearith Israel (New York, N.Y.)
Congregation Talmud Torah (Amsterdam)
Hebra Guemiluth Hasadim (London)
Honen Dalim (London)
Lauderdale Road Synagogue (London)
Mahasim Tobim (London)
Medrash Heshaim (London)
Mehil Sedaca (London)
Menahem Abelim (London)
Mildway Park Synagogue (London)
Nation portugaise de Bordeaux
Santa Irmandade de Orah Haim (London)
Shaare Tikva School (London)
Università degli Ebrei of Venice
Villareal School (London)

Access points: subject terms

Italian Jewish communities
Sephardim in France
Sephardim in Germany
Sephardim in Great Britain
Sephardim in the Caribbean
Sephardim in the Netherlands
Aid and relief
Assimilation, acculturation
Circumcision
Education
Herem and excommunication
Jewish cemetery
Jewish daily life and religious practices
Jewish ministers
Kashrut
Ketubot
Rabbis
Synagogues
17th century
18th century
19th century
20th century

Access points: document types

Jewish community records

System of arrangement

The collection is arranged in seven sections: Congregation and Synagogues; Congregational and Related Organisations; Deposited personal and family records; International Congregations; Public Appeals; Papers of the Board of Deputies of British Jews; Provincial congregations.

Access, restrictions

These records are available only with written permission from the depositor. Records containing personal information may be subject to additional restrictions.
Digital copies of some records are available on:
The National Library of Israel online archive

Links to finding aids

London Metropolitan Archives Collections Catalogue

Author of the description

Description from the Yerusha database. Survey by Nicola Avery, London Metropolitan Archives, 2018
Additions by Carla Vieira, 2022

Bibliography

Barnett, Richard D. 1971. “Dr. Samuel Nunes Ribeiro and the Settlement of Georgia.” In Migrations and Settlement: Proceedings of the Anglo-American Jewish Historical Conference Held in London Jointly by the Jewish Historical Society of England and the American Jewish Historical Society, July 1970, 63–100. London: The Jewish Historical Society of England.
Barnett, Richard D. 1978-80. “Dr Jacob de Castro Sarmento and Sephardim in Medical Practice in 18th-Century London.” Transactions & Miscellanies (Jewish Historical Society of England) 27: 84–114.
Ben-Ur, Aviva. 2018. “Jewish Savannah in Atlantic Perspective: A Reconsideration of North America’s First Intentional Jewish Community.” In The Sephardic Atlantic, edited by Sina Rauschenbach and Jonathan Schorsch, 183–214. Cham: Springer.
Diamond, A. S. 1955. “The Cemetery of the Resettlement.” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 19: 163–90.
Diamond, A.S. 1962. “Problems on the London Sephardi Community, 1720-1733 – Philip Carteret Webb’s Notebooks.” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 21: 39–63.
Diamond, A. S. 1974. “The Community of the Resettlement, 1656-1684: A Social Survey.” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 24: 134–50.
Hyamson, Albert. 1951. The Sephardim of England: A History of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Community 1492-1951. London: Methuen & Co.
Kaplan, Yosef. 1992. “The Jewish Profile of the Spanish-Portuguese Community of London During the Seventeenth Century.” Judaism 41 (3): 229–40.
Ḳaplan, Yosef. 1996. Judiós nuevos en Amsterdam: estudios sobre la historia social e intelectual del judaísmo sefardi en el siglo XVII. Barcelona: Gesida.
Kaplan, Yosef. 2008. “Amsterdam, The Forbidden Lands, and the Dynamics of the Sephardi Diaspora.” In The Dutch Intersection: The Jews and the Netherlands in Modern History, Yosef Kaplan, 33–62. Leiden, Boston: Brill.
Kaplan, Yosef. 2018. “The Abduction of a Girl in Order to Marry Her and Other Clandestine Marriages in the Sephardic Community of London in the Early Eighteenth Century.” In Portuguese Jews, New Christians, and “New Jews”. A Tribute Do Robert Bachmann, edited by Claude Stuczynski and Bruno Feitler, 385–98. Leiden: Brill.
Kerner, Alex. 2017. “Setting the Boundaries of Punitive Jurisdition — a New Reading of a Query by the Mahamad of the Sephardic Congregation of London to the Attorney General and Its Political Implications (1707).” Jewish Culture and History 18 (2): 235–54.
Kerner, Alex. 2018. Lost in Translation, Found in Transliteration: Books, Censorship, and the Evolution of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation of London as a Linguistic Community, 1663-1810. Studies in Jewish History and Culture, Volume 53. Leiden: Brill.
Kerner, Alex. 2018. “A Yorkshire Botanist at the Synagogue. An Unknown Description of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation Synagogue at Creechurch Lane, London, Autumn 1691.” Revue Des Études Juives 176 (3–4): 355–80.
Kerner, Alex. 2019. “The «Livro de Pleitos»: The Leadership of the Spanish and Portuguese Community of London in the Eighteenth Century as a Court of Requests.” In Religious Changes and Cultural Transformations in the Early Modern Western Sephardic Communities, 258–89. Studies in Jewish History and Culture. Leiden ; Boston: Brill.
Lieberman, Julia R. 2017. “The Founding of the London Bet Holim Hospital in 1748 and the Secularization of Sedaca in the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Community in the Eighteenth Century.” Jewish Historical Studies 49 (1): 106–43. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.jhs.2017v49.047.
Lieberman, Julia R. 2019. “Few Wealthy and Many Poor: The London Sephardi Community in the Eighteenth-Century.” Ler História 74: 41–61. https://doi.org/10.4000/lerhistoria.4614.
Oliel-Grausz, Evelyne. 2008. ‘Patrocinio and Authority: Assessing the Metropolitan Role of the Portuguese Nation of Amsterdam in the Eighteenth Century’. In The Dutch Intersection: The Jews and the Netherlands in Modern History, Yosef Kaplan, 149–72. Leiden, Boston.
Vieira, Carla. 2020. “The Prisoner, the Fugitive, and the Returnee: Three Portrayals of the Eighteenth-Century Sephardi Diaspora to England.” Jewish Historical Studies 52 (1): 118–44. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.jhs.2021v52.007.
Vieira, Carla. 2022. A Colecção Hebraica de Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo. Lisbon: Cátedra de Estudos Sefarditas Alberto Benveniste.
Vieira, Carla. 2022. Nação entre impérios: judeus portugueses e a aliança luso-britânica (século XVIII). Ribeirão: Húmus.

Published primary sources

A Nação Hebraica: Account Book 5436-5438 (1676-1678) (LMA/4521/A/04/01/001)
Arnold, Arthur. 1962. “A List of Jews and Their Households in London.” Miscellanies (Jewish Historical Society of England) 6: 73–141. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29777129.
Barnett, Lionel D., ed. 1931. El Libro de Los Acuerdos Being the Records and Accompts of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of London from 1663 to 1681. Oxford: The Oxford University Press.
Barnett, Lionel D., ed. 1949. Abstracts of the Ketubot or Marriage-Contracts of the Congregation from the Earliest Times until 1837. Oxford: The Oxford University Press.
Barnett, Richard D. 1959. “The Correspondence of the Mahamad of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation of London during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” Transactions (Jewish Historical Society of England) 20: 1–50. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29777965.
Barnett, Richard D. 1962. “The Burial Register of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, London 1657-1735.” Miscellanies of the Jewish Historical Society of England 6: 1–62.
Barnett, Richard D., ed. 1991. The Circumcision Register of Isaac and Abraham de Paiba (1715-75)… in the Archives of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation of London. London: The Jewish Historical Society.
Rodrigues-Pereira, Miriam. 1993. The Birth Register (1767-1881) of the Spanish & Portuguese Jews’ Congregation, London : Together with the Circumcision Registers of Elias Lindo (1767-1785), David Abarbanel Lindo (1803-1820), Solomon Almosnino (1815-1827), David Bueno de Mesquita (1855-1869) ... and Including the Jewish Births (1707-1763) in the 18th-Century Register Books of the College of Arms. Bevis Marks Records, V. London: Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation.
Rodrigues-Pereira, Miriam, and C. Loewe, eds. 1997. The Burial Register (1733-1918) of the Nuovo (New) Cemetery of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation, London (with Some Later Entries). London: The Jewish Historical Society of England.
Samuel, Edgar. 2007. “The Mahamad as an Arbitration Court.” Jewish Historical Studies 41: 9–30. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29780091.
Samuel, Edgar. 2013. “Marriages at the Nidhe Yisrael Synagogue, Bridgetown, Barbados.” Jewish Historical Studies 45: 163–71. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23720251.
Samuel, Wilfred S., and M. N. Castello. 1921. “The First London Synagogue of the Resettlement.” Transactions (Jewish Historical Society of England) 10: 1–162. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29777707.

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Barbados Jewish community collection Existence and location of originals
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London Metropolitan Archives, City of London Collections (official language of the state)