¹ Within a large literature see Williams, Bill, The making of Manchester Jewry, 1740–1875, Manchester 1976Google Scholar; Feldman, David, Englishmen and Jews: social relations and political culture, 1840–1914, New Haven–London 1994Google Scholar; Marks, Lara V., Model mothers: Jewish mothers and maternity provision in East London, 1870–1939, Oxford 1994Google Scholar; Burman, Rickie, ‘Middle-class Anglo-Jewish lady philanthropists and East European Jewish women’, in Grant, Joan (ed.), Women, migration and empire, Stoke-on-Trent 1996, 123–49Google Scholar; and Endelman, Todd M., The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000, Berkeley 2002Google Scholar.

² Matthews, W. R., Memories and meanings, London 1969, 128Google Scholar. The founders ‘“pledged each other absolutely”’ on the strict privacy of the whole affair’: Barmann, Lawrence, ‘Confronting secularisation: origins of the London Society for the Study of Religion’, Church History lxii (1993), 27Google Scholar.

³ Other founding members included the Cambridge academic Israel Abrahams, the Revd Simeon Singer of the New West End Synagogue, the liberal Congregationalist John Hunter, the Revd George Ernest Newsom of King's College London, the Unitarian J. Estlin Carpenter, soon afterwards Principal of Manchester College, Oxford, and Francis Crawford Burkitt, subsequently Norrisian Professor of Divinity at Cambridge: Barmann, ‘Confronting secularisation’, 27–30. Burkitt was later a strong supporter of the Society of Jews and Christians.

⁴ de Vries, Jacqueline, ‘Challenging traditions: denominational feminism in Britain, 1910–1920’, in Melman, Billie (ed.), Borderlines: genders and identities in war and peace, 1870–1930, London 1998, 265–84Google Scholar, and ‘More than paradoxes to offer: feminism, history and religious cultures’, in Sue Morgan and Jacqueline de Vries (eds), Women, gender and religious cultures in Britain, 1800–1940, Abingdon 2010, 188–210; Summers, Anne, ‘Gender, religion and an immigrant minority: Jewish women and the suffrage movement in Britain, c. 1900–1920’, WHR xxi (2012), 399–418.Google Scholar

⁵ Alan Wilkinson writes of the impetus to ecumenical work given by wartime conditions: The Church of England and the First World War, London 1978, ch. ix. See also Methuen, Charlotte, ‘“Fulfilling Christ's own wish that we should be one”: the early ecumenical work of George Bell as chaplain to the archbishop of Canterbury and dean of Canterbury, 1914–1929’, in Chandler, Andrew (ed.), The Church and humanity: the life and work of George Bell, 1883–1958, Farnham 2012, 25–46Google Scholar.

⁶ In addition to the works cited in n. 2 above see also Newman, A., The United Synagogue, 1870–1970, London 1976Google Scholar; Alderman, G., The Federation of Synagogues, 1887–1987, London 1987Google Scholar; Hyamson, Albert, The Sephardim of England: a history of the Spanish and Portugese Jewish community, 1492–1951, London 1951Google Scholar; Umansky, Ellen M., Lily Montagu and the advancement of Liberal Judaism, New York 1983Google Scholar; and Kershen, Anne J. and Romain, Jonathan A., Tradition and change: a history of Reform Judaism in Britain, 1840–1995, London 1995Google Scholar. The significant contribution of refugees from Nazism to both Progressive and Orthodox Judaism in Britain falls outside the scope of this article, as it was felt only after 1945.

⁷ For example, in the Chief Rabbi's ‘Thought for the Day’ broadcast celebrating the CCJ's seventieth anniversary on 14 November 2011.

⁸ It is impossible to prove a negative, but a wide range of secondary sources has been consulted without result. The Society of Jews and Christians is mentioned in Simpson, W. W., ‘Jewish-Christian relations since the inception of the Council of Christians and Jews’, Jewish Historical Studies xxviii (1981–2), 89–101Google Scholar, and in the CCJ's official history by Braybrooke, Marcus: Children of one God, London 1991Google Scholar. However, Parkes, James, widely regarded as the CCJ's architect, omits all reference to the Society (of which he was a member) from his autobiography, Voyage of discoveries, London 1969Google Scholar. Kushner, Tonymerely comments of the informal founding meeting of November 1941 that ‘No one at the meeting … was new to the idea of a permanent organisation’: ‘The beginnings of the Council of Christians and Jews’, Common Ground iii, iv (1992), 6Google Scholar.

⁹ The JPS initially demanded arbitration as a substitute for war, but soon backtracked, for fear of being labelled unpatriotic, and subsequently argued that true pacifism would require defeating Germany: Ruth Abrams, ‘Jewish women in the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1899–1926’, unpubl. PhD diss. Brandeis 1996, 184; Ceadel, Martin, Semi-detached idealists, London 2000, 297Google Scholar. Morris Joseph, Senior Minister of the West London Synagogue (1892–1925), was a strong influence for ‘modernism’ in British Judaism. Dr Joseph Hochman/Hochmann, afterwards Hockman, of the New West End Synagogue (1906–15), might have been remembered similarly, but frequent clashes with the Chief Rabbi truncated his ministerial career.

¹⁰ Manchester Guardian, 17 May 1919, 10.

¹¹ JPS Report, 919–22; JRU Bulletin (Oct. 1924), 14; London Metropolitan Archive, ACC/3121/E1/54; Revd Davis, J. Tyssul, A league of religions, London 1927Google Scholar, 121.

¹² The Free Church Suffrage Times (Nov. 1913), 72.

¹³ Unsigned editorial, JRU Bulletin (Jan. 1918), 4–5. The writer was presumably unaware that a day of prayer for ‘the clear-sightedness and strength necessary to the victory of our cause’ may have been proclaimed to forestall a less politic request for one commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. It had nothing to do with the occupation of Jerusalem or the Balfour Declaration. See The Times, 7 Nov. 1917, 7.

¹⁴ On COPEC and its wider context see Shillito, Edward, Christian citizenship: the story and meaning of COPEC, London 1924Google Scholar; Wilkinson, The Church of England, passim; Kent, John, William Temple: Church, State and society in Britain, 1880–1950, Cambridge 1992Google Scholar; Grimley, Matthew, Citizenship, community and the Church of England: liberal Anglican theories of the state between the wars, Oxford 2004, 6, 16–19Google Scholar, 40; and Mark Rowland's essay at http://www.davidalton.com/rowland2.html

¹⁵ JC, 2 May 1924, 21. Mr McCormick died in August that year.

¹⁶ Montagu, Lily, ‘Jewish Christian relations’, Jewish Bulletin viii (Apr. 1942/5702)Google Scholar, unpaginated.

¹⁷ The Times, 18 Aug. 1924, 6.

¹⁸ JRU Bulletin (Feb. 1929), 4.

¹⁹ Letter from Irene Macarthur, ibid. (Oct. 1924), 6. She suggests, with reference to ‘Recessional’, asking Kipling to write replacement lines for ‘Such boastings as the Gentiles use, /And lesser breeds without the law.'

²⁰ Spence, Jean, ‘Working for Jewish girls: Lily Montagu, girls’ clubs and industrial reform, 1890–1914’, WHR xiii (2004), 491–509Google Scholar; Montagu, Lily H., My club and I, London 1954Google Scholar.

²¹ In 1944 Montagu was ordained a lay minister in the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St John's Wood, London. However, she maintained a high degree of Orthodoxy in her personal religious practice: Geoffrey Alderman, ‘Lily Montagu’, ODNB.

²² On the pacifism of Montagu and her sister Netta Franklin see Abrams, ‘Jewish women’, 186.

²³ For example, Mrs Arnold Glover (Girls' Clubs), Mrs Dorothy Wise (Church League for Woman Suffrage), Constance Smith (National Union of Women Workers and Women's Industrial Council): COPEC, Commission reports, ii–iv, viii, London 1924.

²⁴ Montagu, Lily H., The faith of a Jewish woman, London 1943Google Scholar, 53; Braybrooke, Children, 3.

²⁵ JC, 5 Dec. 1924, 8, 13–14; the hymns were not Trinitarian.

²⁶ JRU Bulletin (Dec. 1924), 13.

²⁷ SJC minutes, 9 Nov., 15 Dec. 1926; 17 May, 7 June 1927; 16 Jan. 1930, ACC/3686/01/01/001. Some of the 250 subscriptions were admitted to be overdue at the latter date.

²⁸ This was Yates, George A. (ed.), In spirit and in truth, London 1934Google Scholar.

²⁹ SJC minutes, 16 Feb., 15 Nov. 1928, ACC/3686/01/01/001; 26 Apr., 17 May, 21 June 1938, ACC/3686 /01/01/002.

³⁰ Remark of Miss L. Goodfellow, Society meeting, 16 Nov. 1933, ACC/3686/01/01/002.

³¹ Montagu, Faith, 53–4.

³² Resolution proposed by the Revd Albert E. N. Simms, rural dean of Marylebone, seconded by Dr Alexander Ramsay, former Moderator of the Church of Scotland: SJC minutes, 25 May 1933, ACC/3686/01/01/002.

³³ Letter signed by the Society's advisory council, The Times, 8 Feb. 1934, 10.

³⁴ SJC minutes, 2 Feb., 22 Mar. 1934, ACC/3686 /01/01/002.

³⁵ SJC minutes, 14 Dec. 1933; 22 Mar. 1934, ibid.

³⁶ Peace and progress through world fellowship: the proceedings of the third international congress of the World Fellowship of Faiths, London–New York 1938, 77, 179.

³⁷ Nettie Adler reminded a meeting of the Union of Jewish Women that women were still barred from synagogue boards of management ‘on account of the views of certain antiquated gentlemen’: JC, 7 May 1937, 12.

³⁸ Chandler, Andrew, ‘A question of fundamental principles: the Church of England and the Jews of Germany, 1933–1937’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, xxxviii, London–Jerusalem–New York 1993, 223–4Google Scholar.

³⁹ JC, 14 Nov. 1924, 8. Rather feebly, in 1938, the Society asked Levertoff if he would mind changing the name of his organisation as it could cause confusion; he refused: SJC minutes 17 May, 21 June 1938, ACC/3686 /01/01/002.

⁴⁰ SJC minutes, 16 Mar., 23 Apr. 1928, ACC/3686 /01/01/001.

⁴¹ SJC minutes, 19 Jan. 1933, ACC/3686 /01/01/002.

⁴² Israel Mattuck to James Parkes, 20 Feb. 1934, Parkes papers, USL (hereinafter cited as USL, ms 60), ms 60 17/8; Jean Miller to Miss Marshall, 4 July 1928, Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Dep. CMJ 68/14.

⁴³ Revd A. Herbert Gray to Parkes, 6 Apr [1930?], USL, ms 60 17/8.

⁴⁴ SJC minutes, 13 May 1942, ACC/3686 /01/01/003.

⁴⁵ Peace News, 10 Oct. 1936, 7; 17 Oct. 1936, 4; 22 Jan. 1938, 6; correspondence between Maude Royden and Parkes, 25 June, 18 July 1942, USL, ms 60 18/1/9. Royden was president of the Peace Army, which sent visitors to Palestine from 1937 onwards.

⁴⁶ Kushner, Tony, ‘Beyond the pale? British reactions to Nazi anti-Semitism, 1933–1939’, in Kushner, Tony and Lunn, Kenneth (eds), The politics of marginality, London 1990, 152Google Scholar; Ceadel, Martin, Pacifism in Britain, Oxford 1980, 282–3Google Scholar and n. 6.

⁴⁷ JC, 30 June 1939, 22.

⁴⁸ Ceadel, Semi-detached, 380–1, 393, 404. This was Beckett's principal colleague Ben Greene, formerly active in the Society of Friends and the Peace Pledge Union. Sent by the Friends to observe the aftermath of Kristallnacht, he later helped to facilitate the Kindertransport. He could, clearly, compartmentalise his responses to Jewish distress: Darton, Lawrence, An account of the work of the Friends Committee for Refugees and Aliens, first known as the Germany Emergency Committee of the Society of Friends, 1933–50 (FRCA, duplicated text, 1954)Google Scholar, 53; Oldfield, Sybil, ‘“It is usually She”: the role of British women in the rescue and care of the Kindertransport Kinder’, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies xxiii (2004)Google Scholar, 60. Greene was interned by the British government in 1940.

⁴⁹ JC, 13 Oct. 1939, 12. Royden subsequently renounced her pacifism: Griffiths, Richard, Patriotism perverted, London 1998Google Scholar, 182.

⁵⁰ Information from ODNB and SJC minutes.

⁵¹ Parkes's influential pre-war publications include The Jew and his neighbour: a study of the causes of anti-Semitism, London 1930, repr. New York 1931, London 1938; The conflict of the Church and the Synagogue: a study in the origins of anti-Semitism, London 1934; The Jew in the medieval community, London 1938; and The Jewish problem in the modern world, London 1939. Recent studies of Parkes include Everett, Robert A., Christianity without antisemitism: James Parkes and the Jewish-Christian encounter, Oxford 1993Google Scholar, and Richmond, Colin, Campaigner against anti-semitism: the Reverend James Parkes, 1896–1981, London 2005Google Scholar. Chertok, Haim espouses a Freudian analytical approach to Parkes's biography: He also spoke as a Jew: the life of James Parkes, London 2006Google Scholar.

⁵² Union of Jewish Women, Annual report, 1937–8, 24–5: USL, ms 129, AJ/73/32.

⁵³ See a letter from Lily Montagu to Parkes, written on 25 Sept. 1938 and thanking him for ‘yesterday's address’: ‘I only felt a little sad at your remarks about Liberal Judaism. We, in England, think, that it has helped us to find God anew … It is true, that the movement does not get as wide and vital response as we expected, but Dr Mattuck has a marvellous influence’: USL, ms 60 18/1/7.

⁵⁴ ‘Judaism is as Trinitarian a religion as Christianity but I am not going to ask any Jew to believe that yet. It does not worry me if they do not accept my views of the second person of the Trinity. The spirit moves slowly’: Parkes to Rose Strahan, 14 Nov. 1933, USL, ms 60 17/8; ‘It will be as hard to convince orthodox Jews that Christianity contains the missing section of their religion as to convince orthodox Christians that Judaism contains the missing half of theirs. But this is the ultimate path to be trodden’: Parkes to Zoe Fairfield, 14 Nov. (no year given), ibid.

⁵⁵ SJC minutes, 21 June 1938, ACC/3686/01/01/002; Parkes to Mattuck, 10 Oct. 1938, USL, ms 60, 15/76/1.

⁵⁶ Manuscript evidence may be lacking. See Parkes, Voyage, 142: anticipating invasion in 1940, ‘I burned all files which showed other Christians, especially prominent ones, associating themselves in pro-Jewish activities.’

⁵⁷ ‘[T]he strong temptation to turn the Society into one for combating anti-semitism should be resisted’: SJC minutes, 17 Jan. 1939, ACC/3686/01/01/002; ‘the new work would be to combat Anti-Semitism’: minutes, 20 June 1939, ibid.

⁵⁸ Parkes to W. W. Simpson and Leslie Edgar, 16 Dec. 1937; 8 Feb., 19 Mar. 1938, USL, ms 60 15/76/2. The Revd Wynn W. Simpson was then working for ‘non-Aryan’ Christians fleeing Germany and Austria, and, thanks to Parkes, had shed earlier opinions as an employee of the Methodist Missionary Society in London; he joined the committee of the Society shortly after Parkes.

⁵⁹ Parkes to Simpson, 27 June 1938, USL, ms 60 16/715/1.

⁶⁰ Parkes to Helen Ellershaw, 27 Jan. 1942, USL, ms 60 15/76/4.

⁶¹ SJC minutes, 19 Dec. 1939; 13 June 1940; 13 Feb. 1941, ACC/3686/01/01/003.

⁶² Parkes memorandum, May 1942, and Parkes to Mattuck, 18 June 1942, USL, ms 60 15/76/4.

⁶³ The literature within this field is being added to daily. Useful and balanced accounts are given by Shatzkes, Pamela, Holocaust and rescue: Anglo-Jewry, 1938–1945, London 2002Google Scholar; Darton, An account of the work; Hirschfeld, Gerhard, ‘“A high tradition of eagerness”: British non-Jewish organisations in support of refugees’, in Mosse, W. E. (ed.), Second chance: two centuries of German-speaking Jews in the United Kingdom, Tübingen 1991, 599–610Google Scholar. See also the secondary sources in nn. 64, 65 below.

⁶⁴ Chandler, The Church and humanity; Fast, Vera K, The children's exodus: a history of the Kindertransport, London, 2011Google Scholar; correspondence between Parkes and Bishop George Bell, 1938–41, USL, ms 60 16/51.

⁶⁵ Parkes to Simpson, 24 June 1938, USL, ms 60 16/715/1; Revd Dr Alan C. Don to Parkes, 24 June 1938, ibid. 18/1/2; letter of Helen Ellershaw, Honorary Secretary of the Society, Manchester Guardian, 11 July 1938, 16; Andrew Chandler, ‘The Church of England and the Jews of Germany and Austria in 1938’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, xl, London–Jerusalem–New York 1995, 231–2.

⁶⁶ Chandler, ‘Church of England’, 233; JC, 5 Aug. 1938, 26.

⁶⁷ Revd C. E. Raven and Revd H. Carter, circular letter, 12 July 1938, USL, ms 60 16/51.

⁶⁸ See, for example, Alan Wilkinson's account of Headlam, A. C., bishop of Gloucester 1923–45, an almost continuous peacetime apologist for the Nazi regime, in Dissent or conform? War, peace and the English Churches, 1900–1945, London 1986, 145–51Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ USL, ms 60 17/31.

⁷⁰ Correspondence between Parkes and A. G. Brotman, 9, 15, 17 Feb. 1940, ibid; correspondence between Parkes and Simpson, 16, 21 Feb. 1940, USL, ms 60 16/715/1.

⁷¹ SJC minutes, 2 Apr. 1940, ACC/3686 /01/01/003.

⁷² Bell agreed to join the Society's advisory council, on the assumption that he would not have to attend meetings: Bell to Ellershaw, 15 Apr., 31 May 1940, George Bell papers, LPL, 30, fos 56, 74. He stressed the constraints on his time with reference to a small meeting of Christians and Jews: Bell to Parkes, 8, 11 May 1940, ibid. fos 66–7.

⁷³ SJC minutes, 23 Apr. 1941, ACC/3686 /01/01/003. Entries are absent from the Society's minute book between June 1940 and February 1941, when very little of Parkes's correspondence relates to this project. He was also involved at this time in discussions of war aims and post-war settlement in Eastern Europe and Palestine: see Parkes to Albert Hyamson, 22 Oct. 1940, USL, ms 60 18/1/4; Parkes to Simpson, 1 July 1941, ms 60 16/715/1, Parkes to Anthony de Rothschild, 19 July 1941, ms 60 18/1/9. See also n. 56 above.

⁷⁴ SJC minutes, 15 Oct. 1941, ACC/3686 /01/01/003.

⁷⁵ Braybrooke, Children, 10–13.

⁷⁶ J. H. Hertz to W. Temple, 23 June 1942, LPL, William Temple papers 16, fo. 20v. correspondence cited in Kushner, ‘The beginnings of the Council’, 7.

⁷⁷ Parkes to Temple 16 Apr. 1942, USL, ms 60 17/10/2; correspondence between Parkes and Temple, 8, 11 May 1942, William Temple papers 3, fos 249, 258; correspondence cited in Kushner, ‘The beginnings of the Council’, 7. George Carey, on becoming archbishop of Canterbury in 1991, was the first in office to decline this invitation.

⁷⁸ Statement of the Provisional Committee of the World Council of Churches: The Times, 10 May 1939, 13.

⁷⁹ Kent, William Temple, 102–4; cf. the comments of the Revd A. Herbert Gray to Parkes, quoted above. In similar vein, Bishop Batty, suffragan bishop of Fulham and North and Central Europe, wrote in 1933 that the mission to convert the Jews ‘enables the Church to repay the Jewish nation the great debt we owe them for our Saviour’: Chandler, ‘A question of fundamental principles’, 224. He failed to consider that adherents of the Jewish faith might not wish to be repaid in this manner.

⁸⁰ Simpson to the Revd D. M. Lynch, 10 Feb. 1947, typed extract, Bodl. Lib., ms Dep. CMJ 68/15.

⁸¹ Simpson, ‘Jewish-Christian relations’, 93.

⁸² Taylor, Derek, Solomon Schonfeld, London 2009Google Scholar; Fast, Children's exodus, ch. vi.

⁸³ See, however, the sympathetic response of Bell and Archbishop Lang to Jewish requests for evacuated Jewish children not to be obliged to attend church services: Bell papers, 29, fos 428–503 passim.

⁸⁴ Hertz to Temple, 7 July 1942, William Temple papers, 16, fo. 46; correspondence cited in Kushner, ‘The beginnings of the Council’, 7.

⁸⁵ JC, 2 Oct. 1942, 8, cited in Braybrooke, Children, 19.

⁸⁶ Braybrooke, Children, 21–3. A deputation to the Foreign Office ‘which consisted of Christian members only’ in December 1942, followed by an approach by Temple to the prime minister, is thought to have influenced the Colonial Secretary in February 1943 to agree to the admission of a few more Jewish children and adults to Palestine.

⁸⁷ Ibid, 100, 108–9, 111–14.

⁸⁸ Correspondence between Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher and Simpson and Margaret Garratt, Jan.–Mar. 1945, LPL, Geoffrey Fisher papers 12, fos 321–5.

⁸⁹ Rowbotham, Sheila, Hidden from history: 300 years of women's oppression and the fight against it, London 1973Google Scholar. The 1976 New York edition had the more placatory subtitle: Rediscovering women in history from the seventeenth century to the present.