The British Jewish community’s presence might be more obvious in larger urban places like London and Manchester but smaller cities also have rich histories of Jewish migration and influence. These histories are often uncovered in archive collections and can help to remind a city’s residents and current community that those stories exist and of their legacy through to today.

This was one of the first things we chatted about with Project Archivist, Frankie Drummond Charig when I met her at Sheffield Central Library to take a look at a display of archives related to Jewish life in the city. “Yeah, for a lot of people, they don’t realise that Jewish History is an important part of Sheffield’s history. What we wanted to do was sort of confront them with that, and to give an example of the kind of material that we’ve got in the city archives.”

Frankie Drummond Charig, Project Archivist • Kate Campbell-Payne

The large display case is in a busy stairwell with the occasional piano piece drifting up from people playing the free instrument in the hall below. Frankie and the team have packed the case full of fascinating objects and items from the whole history of the Jewish community in Sheffield, synagogue minutes to family photographs. It’s dominated by a 19th-century portrait of Elkanah Levison, one of the founders of the Sheffield Talmud Torah School. This is a copy of the original which is too delicate to put on display but is in the archive collections.

The display represents a pocket history of Jews in Sheffield from the first mentions of merchants passing through the city in the late 1700s on their way back and forth from Hull to Manchester and Liverpool and even America. Some settled in Sheffield and by the 19th century, evidence of an established Jewish community could be found including religious services held at the home of Solomon Myer followed by a Jewish burial ground founded nearby. The first burial there dated from 1831.

A photograph of the Jewish cemetery at Bowden Street (JCA/2/2/9) • Sheffield Libraries

Frankie also pointed out a bunch of large iron keys on display and explained that they were from the mausoleum of Horatio Bright, a partner in Turton, Bright & Co, which manufactured high-quality dyes for the Royal Mint. He was one of Sheffield’s more eccentric characters and buried his wife and son in the mausoleum himself, even playing the organ there. Unfortunately, the mausoleum is derelict but the keys have made their way into the archives.

The minute book showing a mix of English and Hebrew text (JCA/1/3/1/1) • Sheffield Libraries

The oldest item on display is the first minute book of the Sheffield Hebrew Congregation which is dated 1849. The minutes are written in longhand and are very detailed. Occasionally there are words in Hebrew script amongst the English text where no translation appeared to be suitable. Frankie described its significance: “This is incredibly important for our understanding of the early Jewish community in Sheffield. It’s even got some of the first of members of the congregation listed in the front.”

The community increased in size over the next few decades with influxes from London as well as Eastern Europe. Some went into the business most associated with the area – cutlery making – and as the community grew, so did Jewish social life with organisations such as the Board of Guardians, the Jewish Working Men’s Club and the Jewish Literary and Philharmonic Society established. Papers from these give insight into Jewish life outside of the synagogue congregations and religious centres of the city.

A page from the index (JCA/3/1/1) • Kate Campbell-Payne

The community reached its peak in the 1930s with recent refugees escaping the rise of fascism in mainland Europe joining the population already calling Sheffield home. One of the most poignant items on display is an index detailing immigrants’ names, countries of origin, former and current jobs and where they are hoping to emigrate to eventually. The index was put together by David Brown and Ena Glass, possibly as part of the work of the Sheffield Jewish Aid Committee. On this visit, it was open at a page for Viktoria Ohrenstein, a single woman from Vienna who had been a lawyer and was now working as a companion and home help. She hoped to go to Australia but there is no record of whether she did or not.

By the 1970s, the Jewish population had declined again with more people moving out of the city and a lot simply becoming older. At this point, David Brown, the original editor of the Sheffield Jewish Journal, and an archives committee appealed for materials from across the community. Some had already been preserved, including in a deed box held at the local branch of the Midland Bank. But through this call out, the archive was brought together and included more personal artefacts and stories.

One on display is a collection of family photographs from 1890s to 1950s belonging to Harry Isaacs. His parents had arrived in the 1880s and he grew up with seven siblings in a small house in the city centre where his father was a furniture dealer. Within a generation they moved out of the city to the suburbs and by the time he died, Harry was able to leave two houses to the United Sheffield Hebrew Congregation. His photographs show the family throughout the years and give a glimpse of what life was actually like. As Frankie told me: “I think the personal photographs and the personal items are always the thing that really resonate. Because it just humanises everything.”

Harry Isaac’s family photographs (JCA/3/10) on display next to the keys from the Bright mausoleum (JCA/1/2/5/4) • Kate Campbell-Payne

Womens’ and girls’ stories also feature in the display from the order of service for Sheffield’s first Bat Mitzvah in 1948 to programmes for the Maccabi Players in the 1960s, an amateur theatre group often staring Stella Blaskey and who performed many times in the library’s own theatre.

These more contemporary objects speak to the fact that collecting is still going on. It’s thanks to a grant from the Jane Goodman Charitable Trust that Frankie has been able to catalogue so much of the material and the project is hoping to digitise this display for an online exhibition too.

Another exciting aspect has been the Jewish Heritage Walking Trail Sheffield, developed by Dr. Carmen Levick at the University of Sheffield. It takes people on a tour of the city centre to places with significant connections to the history of the Jewish community including the site of the first purpose-built synagogue and the Talmud Torah School. The app alerts you when you’re near a site and you can listen to the story of that place from the people who remember it.

While little evidence of these connections still exists in the buildings that remain today, the map and the archives point to the rich history of Jews in Sheffield, something Frankie and the project continue to explore. This includes digitising copies of the Sheffield Jewish Journal and looking into future opportunities for volunteer indexing particularly around all the names they’ve found in the documents so far.

The exhibition and the cataloguing project have been important for the contemporary local Jewish community too. The archives team hosted an event in May about Sheffield’s Jewish history which many people from the Jewish community attended. The Steering Group for the cataloguing project is also made up of Archive staff, trustees’ representative and members of the two existing Jewish congregations in Sheffield. Frankie says, ‘We’ve had lots of visitors to the display who have links to the Sheffield Jewish community including some no longer living in Sheffield but still with connections to the area’.

The physical exhibition ends on 9 August but the cataloguing project continues with the catalogue being launched in early 2025. Frankie says there are about 80 boxes which will result in around 260 catalogue records when completed.

On the display, Frankie says she wants people to connect to what they find interesting. “For some people that will be ‘Oh, there were Jewish people in Sheffield in the 19th century’ …. and for other people it will be more personal or they’ll engage with particular items. Maybe they’ll even be able to read the Hebrew.”