Category Archives: England

My Ancestor was a Chut: More on Dutch and English Jews

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The Chuts” Synagogue Sandy’s Row London

After I wrote my last post saying I was going to put aside for now any attempt to find my four times great-grandfather’s family in Holland, I decided to look more generally into the question of why a Dutch Jew would have emigrated from Holland to England in the late 18th century.  After all, life seemed to be pretty good for the Jews in Amsterdam at that point.  They had acquired full legal rights as citizens, many were comfortable both socially and economically, and England was in fact still forty years away from giving Jews the same legal rights as Christian residents.  Why would someone have left Amsterdam to move to London?

Su Leslie of Shaking the Tree mentioned in a comment that she had seen some episodes of the British version of Who Do You Think You Are involving famous British Jews and recalled that there had been discussion of an immigration of Jews from Holland to England in the late 18th century.  I decided to search on line for more information and learned that there was in fact a whole community of Dutch Jews who settled in London during that time.  My research led me to several websites discussing this community, including the Bishopsgate Institute website describing a recent oral history project about this community being sponsored by the Institute and created under the direction of Rachel Lichtenstein, a well-known writer and artist.  According to this site:

The oldest Ashkenazi synagogue in London, Sandys Row in Spitalfields, was established by Dutch Jewish immigrants in 1854, who began arriving in the city from the 1840s onwards. They came in search of a better life, rather than fleeing persecution like the thousands of Ashkenazi Jews who came after them in the 1880s from the Pale of Settlements.  Mostly from Amsterdam, many settled in a small quarter of narrow streets in Spitalfields known as the Tenterground. Here they continued to practise the trades they had bought with them from Holland, which were predominately cigar making, diamond cutting and polishing, and slipper and cap making. Many small workshops were established in the area and businesses were passed on within generations of families.

With their own practises and customs, many of which were different from other Ashkenazi Jewish groups, they became a distinctive, tight knit community of about a thousand people. To the frustration of the more established Anglo-Jewish population living in the area at the time, ‘the Chuts’ (as they were known locally) refused to join any of the existing synagogues…

Sandys Row Synagogue

Sandys Row Synagogue (Photo credit: FarzanaL)

So my four times great grandfather Hart Levy Cohen was a Chut—a term I’d never heard before and a community I’d never known about before.  Other sites confirmed this information and also provided some other details.  Wikipedia provided this explanation for the name “Chuts.”

The origin of the name Chuts is uncertain. A popular assumption is that it derives from the Dutch word goed (meaning “good”) and is imitative of the foreign-language chatter that others heard. It is also Hebrew חוץ for “outside” or “in the street” and may have been applied to the Dutch Jews of London either because they were socially isolated or because many were street vendors. Another possibility is that the Hebrew word would have appeared increasingly in Amsterdam synagogue records as more and more emigrated to London, and others who followed would have “gone chuts” (i.e., emigrated).

Sandys Row Synagogue, London

Sandys Row Synagogue, London (Photo credit: nicksarebi)

The About Jewishness website revealed where in London the Chuts lived:

They settled mostly in a small system of streets in Spitalfields known as the Tenterground, formerly an enclosed area where Flemish weavers stretched and dried cloth on machines called tenters (hence the expression “on tenterhooks”). By the 19th century, the site had been built upon with housing, but remained an enclave where the Dutch immigrants lived as a close-knit and generally separate community. Demolished and rebuilt during the twentieth century, the area is now bounded by White’s Row, Wentworth Street, Bell Lane and Toynbee Street (formerly Shepherd Street).

I looked up these streets on the map of London and was not surprised that this area is very close to New Goulston Street where my ancestors were living in 1841.

The About Jewishness site also provided some insight into what happened to this community and perhaps why my ancestors left London and moved to the US.  According to this site, “the successful introduction of machinery for the mass-production of cigarettes ultimately led to the collapse of the cigar-making economy on which the Chuts community depended. Many Chuts returned to improved conditions in Amsterdam, some emigrated further afield to places such as Australia and the USA, some assimilated into other Jewish families, and some eventually lost their Jewish identity altogether.”

In addition, the huge influx of Eastern European Jewish immigrants in the late 19th century caused tensions between the older established Chuts community and the newer immigrants, most of whom were poor, not as well skilled, and not used to living in a big city.  Interestingly, the Chuts community had traditions and practices that made them different both from the older Sephardic community and from the newer Eastern European Ashkenazi community.  Again, from the About Jewishness site:

[T]he Chuts were treated with suspicion by other Jews because the former had developed specific customs and practices, many of their families having lived in Amsterdam since the first synagogues were established there in the early years of the 17th century. Uniquely in Amsterdam, Ashkenazim (so-called “German Jews”) and Sephardim (so-called “Spanish Jews”) lived in close proximity for centuries, resulting in a cultural blend not found elsewhere. Most remarkably, the Dutch Jews were well accustomed to the sea, and ate seafoods considered not kosher by other Jewish communities.

From this information, it seems reasonable to infer a couple of things.  First, it seems that despite the fact that the Amsterdam Jewish community was fairly well-established, there must have been those, my ancestor Hart among them, who believed that there was greater opportunity for financial success in London.  These Dutch Jews decided to emigrate in order to achieve greater economic security.  Secondly, it seems that at some point many of those Dutch Jews either left or assimilated into the greater Jewish or non-Jewish society.  Some may have left because economic conditions were not as good as they had hoped; others may have left because as a “Chut,” they were not well integrated into the world of London’s Jews.  With different traditions, different practices, different synagogues, they may have felt isolated and disrespected.  I don’t know specifically what motivated my ancestors first to leave Amsterdam and then to leave London, but I’d imagine it was a combination of these factors.

Once again I am finding out new things about my own history and about Jewish history by doing genealogy.  I never knew about the Chuts, and I certainly never knew I was descended from one.  I have written to Rachel Lichtenstein to learn more about her project and will report back with whatever else I learn.

Also, in researching more about the Dutch Jews in general, I came across a genealogy blog I’d not seen before written by Kerry Farmer called Family History Research.  Kerry had a post from two years ago about searching for a Dutch Jewish ancestor using information she was able to obtain from a book compiling information about marriages performed at the Great Synagogue in London, Harold and Miriam Lewin’s Marriage Records of the Great Synagogue- London 1791-1885.  I was very excited when I read this post and contacted Kerry, who generously looked up Hart Levy Cohen and Rachel Jacobs’ wedding for me in the Lewin book.  She was able to provide me with the information she found there:

(Groom) Cohen Hart Levy

(Groom’s father) Leib Katz

(Groom’s patronymic) Hertz b. Leib Katz

(Groom’s address) Not listed

(Bride) Jacobs Rachel

(Bride’s father) Yaakov

(Bride’s patronymic) Rechel b. Yaakov

She also suggested that I contact the owners of the Akevoth site to see if this additional information would help in locating the records of my ancestors, and I have done that.  Now I will wait to see if they can provide any further assistance.

So yesterday I was ready to put aside the search for my Dutch ancestors, and then, with the help of Su Leslie and Kerry Farmer, I was able to make some progress in understanding who they were and why they left Amsterdam and why they left London.  Once again I am humbled by and grateful for the generosity of the genealogy community.  Su and Kerry are from New Zealand and Australia, respectively, and they have helped me in my search to find a Dutch Jew who lived in England and moved to America.  What a small world it is when you find such wonderful, helpful and knowledgeable people.

 

 

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Hart Levy Cohen and A Very Brief History of Jews in London

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In my research so far, Hart Levy Cohen is the earliest verified ancestor I have found.  There are some others on other lines on my father’s side that are earlier, but not yet verified.  But I am quite certain that Hart was my three-times great grandfather based on the census reports I have been able to locate in both English and American records.

The earliest reference I have to Hart is a transcription of his wedding record from the Great Synagogue of London. I found this on a website called Synagogue Scribes, which provides a free, searchable database of transcriptions of the information from marriage and other records from the Ashkenazi synagogues in London.  According to this site, Hart Levy Cohen, whose Hebrew name was Hirts and whose father’s Hebrew name was Leib, married Rachel Jacobs on January 29, 1812.  I was thrilled when I first found this record because it provided me with not only my three-times great grandmother’s name, but also because it revealed my four-times great-grandfather’s first name.  It also revealed that by 1812 Hart was living in England.[1]

The Great Synagogue of London: This engraving ...

The Great Synagogue of London

The earliest actual record I have for Hart is the 1841 English census, which lists Hart, his wife Rachael (sp?), and four of his children, Elizabeth, Moses, John and Jacob.[2]  Jacob was my great-great grandfather. According to the census, Hart was then 65 years old, giving him a birth year of 1776.  Rachel was 55, giving her a birth year of 1786.  Elizabeth and Moses were both listed as twenty years old, Jacob was 15, and John was 14.  All of the children were listed as born in England, but Rachel and Hart were listed as foreign born.  Hart’s occupation was described as “Ind’t,” meaning he was of independent means, and Moses and Jacob were both described as china dealers.

Hart Cohen and family 1841 English census

Hart Cohen and family 1841 English census

The family was residing on New Goulston Street in the St. Mary Whitechapel parish of Middlesex County in East London.  Scanning through the names and occupations of other residents of that street and nearby streets, I noticed that many of the names were Jewish and that many of the residents were merchants of some sort or tradespeople.  I knew nothing about the history of Jews in London, and thus studying this census led me to research that history in order to learn more about the neighborhood where my ancestors lived in the early 19th century.  That, in turn, led me to read more about the history of Jews in England overall and specifically in London.

Although I cannot do justice to the long and complicated history of the Jews in England here, a very brief overview may suffice.  According to a number of sources, Jews had first settled in England during the reign of William I in the 11th century, but were expelled from England in 1290 by an edict of King Edward I, and there was no Jewish community thereafter until the 17th century when a community of Sephardic Jews from Spain arrived, although many of these Jews hid their religious identities.  Eventually for political and economic reasons, the English acquiesced in the growth of the Jewish community, although there was still a great deal of anti-Semitism.  Jews were not allowed to be citizens and were denied many of the legal rights of non-Jewish English citizens.

In the 18th century, the Sephardic community grew both in size and in wealth and became quite successful, but Jews were still denied full legal rights.  There was a short lived naturalization law passed in 1754 to enable Jewish men to become citizens, but it was repealed one year later due to widespread popular opposition.  It was not until 1833 that Jewish men were emancipated and given full legal rights as English citizens.

Meanwhile, there was also a growing Ashkenazi community during the 18th and 19th centuries, referred to as “Dutch Jews.”  My three-times great grandfather Hart Levy Cohen would have been one of those Dutch Jews, probably arriving at the end of the 18th century.   According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, “the bulk of the Ashkenazic community consisted of petty traders and hawkers, not to speak of the followers of more disreputable occupations.”  They settled in East London in the parish of Whitechapel, as did my ancestor Hart.  Whitechapel in the 1840s was described in Wikipedia as “classic “Dickensian” London, with problems of poverty and overcrowding.”

It would appear from the 1841 census listing, however, that Hart and his family were not among those poor.  Hart appears to have been retired, and his two sons were china dealers.  Perhaps their particular section of Whitechapel was not as poor as other sections.  For example, their street was very close to the Petticoat Market, a clothing manufacturing center that catered to the well-to-do of London.

File:Thomas Rowlandson - Rag Fair or Rosemary Lane - Google Art Project.jpg

Petticoat Market in the early 19th century

UPDATE:  Thanks to the help of my fellow blogger Su Leslie from Shaking the Tree, another of my very favorite genealogy blogs, I was able to find a map prepared by Charles Booth in the late 19th century that shows street by street the economic standing of the residents.  He rated each street on a seven level scale from poorest to upper class.  New Goulston Street appears to be purple on his map, meaning it was a mixed neighborhood with some poor residents and some comfortable residents.  That also seems consistent with my scan of the census of their street.

Charles Booth poverty map of London, New Goulston Street marked in center
https://booth.lse.ac.uk/map/18/-0.0757/51.5160/100/0?marker=533621.0,181427.0

In the later part of the 19th century, there was a tremendous influx of poor European Jewish immigrants to London, just as there was in New York and other American cities, coming to escape the oppression, violence and poverty in East Europe. There was also a large immigration of poor people from Ireland during this same period. The Whitechapel neighborhood became even more poverty-stricken, and crime became rampant, including widespread prostitution.  It was also during this period that Jack the Ripper, the serial killer, committed a string of murders and caused widespread terror.

By this time, however, most of my Cohen relatives had left England and come to the United States.  Only two of Hart’s six children remained in England by 1860.  Why did they leave? And why did Hart come to England from Holland in the first place? Those are questions that I want to answer if I can as I dig more deeply into my Cohen ancestors.

 

 

 

[1] I also thought I had found earlier records for Hart in tax records from 1798, but I now think that those records were for a different person because I found a record dated 1768 at the same address, also for a man named Hart Cohen.  These records require deeper investigation.

 

[2] There were six children altogether.  Lewis and Jonah are not accounted for on this census.  Lewis would have been 21, so perhaps was not living at home, but I have not yet found him elsewhere.  Jonah would have been 12, so I cannot account for the fact that he is not listed, except to note that this was the first English attempt for a comprehensive census and undoubtedly mistakes were made.

 

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My Father’s Family, Part I: The Cohens

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My surname is Cohen, and it always has been.  I have always been proud to be a Cohen.  It is a clear marker to the outside world that I am Jewish.  Because I grew up in a secular home and did not go to Hebrew School like almost all my Jewish classmates, some of them expressed skepticism about whether I was “really” Jewish, but my name always gave me some authenticity.

The Cohens (Cohanim) are the high priests, a line that is supposed to descend from Aaron, Moses’ older brother.  Observant Orthodox Jews who are Cohanim do not go into cemeteries or attend a funeral or touch a dead body in order to maintain their priestly purity.  In a traditional service, there is a special ritual where the Cohanim bless the congregation.  Cohanim get the first aliyah for the reading of the Torah.

Birkhat cohanim 4

Birkhat cohanim 4 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Although I do not believe in any of the “special holiness” of the Cohen tribe and in fact am not even sure my family are true Cohanim, I do feel proud to have the name and some of the tradition and history that goes along with it.  It was one reason that I did not change my name when I got married.  I wanted to remain a Cohen—it was my name, it was my family’s name, and it was my ancestors’ name.

So perhaps it is not surprising that one of my first genealogical tasks was to trace the Cohen line.  It was fairly easy to get as far back as my great-great-great-grandfather Hart Levy Cohen, who was born around 1772 in Amsterdam and emigrated to England as a young man.  The English records and then the American records on my Cohen line were clear and easy to find through ancestry.com, and thus within a short period of time I was able to create a tree that went from Hart Levy Cohen to Jacob Cohen, my great-great-grandfather, to Emanuel Cohen, my great-grandfather, to John Nusbaum Cohen, my grandfather, to John Nusbaum Cohen, Jr., my father, to me.  I have census reports going back as early as 1841 in England and 1850 in the United States as well as tax records and a marriage record from England.  I have the names of Hart’s children, his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren and so on.  I compiled a lot of information very quickly, but now I need to go back and learn from all those documents and see what I can find out about Hart Levy Cohen and all his descendants and also to see if I can find his ancestors from Amsterdam and before.

This research will require learning about English records and census reports and also about Pennsylvania records.  From the little bit of initial work I’ve done this week, I already know that it will be more difficult to obtain Pennsylvania records than New York City records.  There is not much online and not much available through the Family History Library.  Most of it will require snail mail requests or traveling to places that are not as accessible to me as New York City.  I do not foresee traveling to Harrisburg in the near future, so it may require hiring someone there to retrieve documents for me.  And as for the English records, well, a trip to London sounds a lot more fun than a trip to Harrisburg, but I don’t think it’s too likely either.

So I have a big learning curve ahead.  I am up for the challenge and ready to learn more about my Cohen relatives and about genealogical research.  I will start by posting what I already know, and then I will fill in the details as I learn more.

Meanwhile, I will also continue to look for more information about the Brotmans, the Goldschlagers, and the Rosenzweigs.  Tomorrow I hope to talk to David Goldschlager’s son and grandson and maybe learn more about the Goldschlagers. I am still hoping to work with Larry Brotman about a Brotmanville connection.  I am still hoping to hear from my cousin Lois about her family and Lizzie and Ray Rosenzweig.  I have written to descendants of Ray Strolowitz Adler and Zusi Rosenzweig Mintz, and I hope to hear back from them.  So at the moment I am depending on these others to help me break down the brick walls that remain on my mother’s side.  Without their help, I am at an impasse for now, but will keep on looking for any and all clues.

 

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