Director: Archie Baron
UK, 1990, 50 mins
+ Panel discussion chaired by Jonathan Cowap and he'll be joined by Rabbi Elisheva & Benjamin Till
On 18 July 1290, Edward I issued a royal decree expelling the Jews from England. The king’s edict was the culmination of a particularly turbulent time for English Jews: invited to settle in the country by the Normans, they were first tolerated as wealth makers, then increasingly outcast for political, religious and financial reasons.
This fascinating BBC programme, produced and aired in 1990, partly filmed in York, explores the events that led to the Jews’ banishment as well as England’s little-discussed contribution to the invention of antisemitism as we know it today: it is, after all, the place where Jews were first falsely accused of ritual killings of Christian boys, and from which they were eventually methodically deported.
