The presence of Jews in this industrial city in northern England is relatively recent. At the end of the 19th century, Zachariah Bern from Newcastle-upon-Tyne created the impetus for the establishment of a community in Gateshead.
Under the direction of Rabbi Nachman Landinski and his assistant Eliezer Kahan, it welcomed students from all over Europe fleeing Nazism. Dessler founded a kolel there. At the turn of the century, there were 1, Jews in Gateshead. The yeshiva has nearly students from all over the world.
The first administrative traces of the presence of Jews in the city of Cambridge seem to date from the 13th century. About fifty Jewish families are recorded in documents between and In , the Jews were expelled from Cambridge and the rest of the region under the tutelage of Eleonore de Provence, mother of Edward I.
The latter expelled the Jews of the Kingdom by the Edict of which was not annulled until by Oliver Cromwell. Returning to Cambridge several centuries later, therefore, the Jews contributed to the intellectual life of the university town. While there were many Jewish teachers over the centuries, students were only admitted as non-graduate free listeners until When this discrimination ended, Jews actively participated in the development of the university, in as students, professors and administrators.
Fifteen years later, the library housed the Hebrew books of Italian rabbi Isaac Faragi. The visit to the Jewish cultural heritage of Cambridge, a prestigious university town, takes place above all within its collection of rare and ancient manuscripts which total more than 3, sources. Another university acquisition is the Taylor-Schechter Cairo collection. It is the largest collection of medieval Jewish manuscripts.
