The city of Leeds, in West Yorkshire, England has a Jewish community, where many notable people originated or settled.
They have played a major part in the clothing trade, the business, professional and academic life of the City, and the wider world.
[6][5] With the addition from 1933 of refugees from Nazi Germany, evacuees from the London Blitz, and later Holocaust survivors, the Leeds community may have peaked around 1945 to 1950 at 25 to 29,000 people.
[11][5] Steady emigration to Israel began post-war and has continued,[5][12] but during the 1970s Leeds still had the highest Jewish proportion of population of any British city.
[18][6] As Leeds was a city undergoing economic expansion, on this migration route, and as Jews had tailoring experience or local contacts, a sizeable community developed.
[22][3] The great majority of Jewish immigrants in this period were Lithuanian Jews from within the Northern Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire.
[24][23][5] With the slum clearance of 1936–7,[7] the Jews of Leeds moved northwards, from the central Leylands area, up around Chapeltown, and then further into Moortown and Alwoodley.
[1][11] Many 1930s European refugees came to Leeds, often well-educated, including in 1937 the ORT training school from Berlin,[25] and in 1938–40, Kindertransport children,[26][27] followed by later survivors of the Holocaust.
[29] The first synagogue in Leeds opened in 1846 in a converted private house in Back Rockingham Street, on the site of the current Merrion Centre.
An office block was built on the site, and the synagogue is commemorated by a blue plaque placed by Leeds Civic Trust in 1991.
[31][32] It was replaced by the New Synagogue in Chapeltown Road of 1932, built in Byzantine style; the building closed in 1985, and is now used by the Northern School of Contemporary Dance.
[34] Etz Chaim has its roots in the Leeds Jewish Workers' Burial and Trading Society of 1899, the Psalms of David Congregation originally in Bridge Street in 1884, as well as the New Synagogue.
[18] The Jewish Board of Guardians (est.1878) covered a range of activities, especially loans and grants in great numbers for immigrants to set up in business, or to continue on to North America.
[8] The Amalgamated Jewish Tailors', Machinists' and Pressers' Union was officially founded in 1893, arising out of early organisations and strikes.