Scottish Jews

Scottish Jews
Iùdhach ann an Alba
יהודים סקוטיים

Alfred Edersheim Esta Henry Emmanuel Lord Shinwell Sir Isaac Wolfson, FRS Charlotte Auerbach, FRS, FRSE Louis Rabinowitz Leonard Schapiro Dame Muriel Spark, DBE, CLit, FRSE, FRSL Ivor Cutler Eric Woolfson Sir Malcolm Rifkind, KCMG, QC Derek Shulman Mark Knopfler, OBE J. David Simons Rebecca Pidgeon Kevin Macdonald
Total population
5,887 (according to 2011 census)
Regions with significant populations
Newton Mearns,Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee
Languages
Scottish English, Scots, Scottish Gaelic, Hebrew, Yiddish
Religion
Judaism

The earliest date at which Jews arrived in Scotland is not known. It is possible that Jews visited Scotland at the time of the Roman Empire's conquest of southern Britain, but there are no records of this. The earliest concrete historical references to Jews in Scotland are from the late 17th century. The vast majority of Scottish Jews today are Ashkenazi who mainly settled in Edinburgh, then in Glasgow in the late 19th century. Most histories of Jews in Scotland deal with the subject from a British perspective, thus tending to marginalise any distinctly Scottish dimension.

Evidence of Jews in medieval Scotland is scanty. In 1180, the Bishop of Glasgow forbade churchmen to "ledge their benefices for money borrowed from Jews". This was around the time of anti-Jewish riots in England so it is possible that Jews may have arrived in Scotland as refugees, or it may refer to Jews domiciled in England from whom Scots were borrowing money. While Jews in England during the Middle Ages faced state persecution, culminating in the Edict of Expulsion of 1290 (some Jews may have fled to Scotland at this time) there was never a corresponding expulsion from Scotland, suggesting either greater religious tolerance or the simple fact that there was no Jewish presence. In his autobiographical Two Worlds: An Edinburgh Jewish Childhood the eminent Scottish-Jewish scholar David Daiches wrote that there are grounds for asserting that Scotland is the only European country with no history of the state persecution of Jews.

In the Middle Ages, much of Scotland's trade was with Continental Europe, the wool of the Border abbeys being the country's main export to Flanders and the Low Countries. Scottish merchants from Aberdeen and Dundee had close trading links to Baltic ports in Poland and Lithuania. It is possible therefore that Jews may have come to Scotland to do business with their Scottish counterparts, although no direct evidence of this exists.

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Wikipedia