Jews in London

In London and sporadically in the rest of England, Jews have been resident since about 1070.

The East End of London was already since the early modern times the gateway to the metropolis for refugees and migrants, first from Europe, later from all over the world. Especially in the 17th century, Huguenots settled here, persecuted for their faith in France. Various French street names in Whitechapel still testify to this settlement, and houses on it of the prosperity to which some of them - especially the silk weavers - brought.

This prosperity and the progressive integration led since the end of the 18th century to the departure of the Huguenots. They were replaced by Jews, mostly from Eastern Europe, who fled the pogroms and persecution in the Tsarist Empire, especially in the second half of the 19th century. They also succeeded in integration and economic advancement, around the middle of the 20th century they left the East End, today the largest Jewish residential areas of the city are no longer east of the center, but in its north, in neighborhoods such as Golders Green, Hackney and Haringey.

They were followed by migrants from the Caribbean, but especially from South Asia, from the successor states of the former British India, and they now dominate the street scene in Whitechapel and the surrounding area.