NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE

NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE , port in Northumberland, N.E. England. Its small medieval Jewish group was expelled in 1234 at the request of the townspeople. Although there were individual Jews in the city by 1775, the organized community dates from 1831 – a year after a cemetery had been acquired–by which time there were about 100 Jewish residents. A synagogue was built in 1838, but by 1868 it had become too small for the growing population and a second congregation was formed. In 1873 the two groups amalgamated and a new synagogue was opened in 1880. The community increased during the mass immigration from Eastern Europe (1881–1914) and by 1900 numbered about 2,000. The small but very Orthodox community of *Gateshead is on the opposite bank of the River Tyne from Newcastle. Newcastle itself has an Orthodox and a Reform congregation. In addition there is the normal structure of communal institutions which is headed by a Representative Council of North-East Jewry. The estimated Jewish population for Tyneside (Newcastle, Gateshead, etc.) was 3,500 (0.38% of the total population) in 1969. In the mid-1990s, the Jewish population of Newcastle numbered approximately 1,230. The 2001 British census found 960 Jews by religion in Newcastle, with another 1,564 in Gateshead.

bibliography:

C. Roth, Rise of Provincial Jewry (1950), 84–85; Roth, England, index. add. bibliography: L. Olsover, The Jewish Communities of North-East England, 1755–1980 (1980).

[Vivian David Lipman]