Jewish London. A city guide

Not only London's East End is a place rich of Jewish history. Although the Jews have all the time been only a small part of the urban population they have coined the social life of London decidedly, what demonstrates this new volume of Mandelbaum's city guides by means of many stories and anecdotes.

»I have seen the strangest things that the world can show the wondering mind, I have seen it and I still wonder - in my memory this stony wood of houses and the pestering stream of living human faces with all their variegated passions, their atrocious hurry of love, hunger and hatred is still alive - I speak from London,« wrote Heinrich Heine, in his »Travel Pictures« of the late 1820s. Like Heine many European Jews were fascinated by the British metropolis, but the grander part didn't become acquainted with London through travelling, but instead had to find its new home in this cosmopolitan city.

The time travel through Jewish London begins with the first Jewish immigrants of the Year 1070 and ends with the refugees from German, Austria and the occupied Europe of the 1930s and 1940s. Also the international role of London through the Palestinian mandate after the First World War till the founding of Israel is discussed.

A part of the city guide contains many addresses that give information to the Jewish daily life of the present.

Travelling with Mandelbaum – Jewish Europe city guides: These guides offer historical and practical information on past and present Jewish life in European cities together with cultural pointers and the stories behind the visible world. They also contain addresses, photos and maps to illustrate the past and Jewish life today. Guides on Vienna, Budapest, Prague and Amsterdam have already been published.