For the first time since the Jews of York were wiped out in a pogrom more than 800 years ago, the small progressive community rebuilding a presence in the historic city has its own resident rabbi.
Elisheva Salamo arrived in York this week to take up her new post. As well as overseeing synagogue services, she will bring new ways of reaching people in the north-east of England who have some Jewish heritage or an interest in exploring the faith.
Salamo said she was “beyond words excited” about her new position. “Helping to rebuild what was once one of England’s most vibrant Jewish communities is an honour and a privilege,” she said.
For the York Liberal Jewish Community, founded 10 years ago and now counting 100 members, it is a hugely significant moment.
“Rabbi Elisheva will bring a whole range of new skills, ideas and different ways of doing things,” said Ben Rich, co-founder of the community. “I’m sure it will produce a really vibrant and dynamic community.”
For centuries, Jews had little visible presence in York. The massacre of the York Jews is among the most notorious in history and is commemorated by Jews all over the world in a lamentation recited on the fast day of Tisha B’Av.
In March 1190, about 150 Jews, the entire community within the city walls, barricaded themselves inside the castle as antisemitic riots raged outside. The rioters, fuelled by the crusader fervour of the new king, Richard I, bayed for blood.
Faced with either death or forced baptism, the Jews chose to kill each other and themselves in an echo of the 1st-century siege of Masada, the mountaintop fortress overlooking the Dead Sea. In York, there were no survivors.
By the late 1200s, a series of laws had been created restricting the rights of the Jewish people to own land and pass money on to their children after death. Finally in 1290, Jews were banished from England altogether, and not allowed to return until 1656.
A myth grew out of the York pogrom that Jewish leaders placed a herem (censure) on the city after the slaughter, forbidding Jews to live or sleep within its walls. “In Jewish communities, you will still find plenty of people who think Jews can’t live in York,” said Rich.
He and his family moved to York from London in 2013, and set about finding Jewish people in the city and creating a new community based on liberal, inclusive values.
The community welcomed people with a Jewish heritage who did not conform to the traditional requirement of clear maternal bloodlines. Rich came across people who said they were “sort of Jewish”, or who had drifted away after marrying a non-Jew, or who were interested in exploring Judaism. All were invited in.
Salamo, a Californian who has been a rabbi, teacher and youth leader in Jewish communities in Geneva, the US and South Africa, shares those inclusive values.
“If someone wants to explore their Jewish ancestry, or has a Jewish partner, or is just interested in Judaism, our doors are open,” she said.
The shadow of the 12th-century pogrom would never entirely disappear, but “like the Shoah [Holocaust], we need to learn the lessons of the past to build on the future”.
One of her priorities is to cement and extend relations between the Jewish community and other faiths in the city, “to take the fangs out of our differences”.
Salamo’s first formal engagements will be to lead the community’s Rosh Hashana (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) services, which bracket 10 days of Jewish high holy days in September.
The community, which has been volunteer-led for 10 years, knows there will be no opportunity to put their feet up, said Rich. He hopes York will become a hub for progressive Judaism across the north-east of England.
“Rabbi Elisheva will demand more of us. We don’t see this as, or want it to be, a comfortable option. We’re sharks – if we don’t keep moving forward, we’ll drown,” he said.
