Herefordshire Jewish Community

and former Liberal congregation

Hereford, Herefordshire

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City of Hereford

The historic city of Hereford, in the English West Midlands, close the the Welsh border, lies on the river Wye and has a population of about 50,000. It was a municipal borough within the county of Herefordshire until 1974, when it became a local government district within the newly created county of Hereford and Worcester. In 1998, the county of Herefordshire was reconstituted and became a unitary authority, the city of Hereford accordingly losing its administrative status.

Jewish Community

Although Jews lived in Hereford during the Medieval period, no organised Jewish community existed in the town until the founding of a Liberal Jewish community (data below), which existed from the 1990s until 2019.

There were. however, a number of Jewish residents of Ross (now Ross-on-Wye), Herefordshire, some 25 miles to the west of Heredord, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.⁽ⁱ⁾

Data of Former Congregation
Name:	Herefordshire Jewish Community (HJC)
Former Name:	Hereford Jewish Community (until about 2004)⁽ⁱⁱ⁾
Address:	The congregation held services at several venues.
Date Founded:	1991, although an earlier entity of the same name appears to have existed briefly in the 1970s.^(iv)
Current Status:	In 2019, members of the congregation joined the Gloucestershire Liberal Jewish Community (GLJC) to form the Three Counties Liberal Jewish Community,⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾ and the congregation became defuct.
Ritual:	Liberal / Progressive
Affiliation:	The congregation was a constituent community of Liberal Judaism (formerly Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues) and was previously, until about 2000, an associate community.^(vii)
Former Website:	http://www.herefordshirejc.org (no longer operating)
Congregation's Magazine:	The congregation published on its website a regular Newsletter approximately seven to eight times a year.
Ministers:	None listed
Membership Data:	National Reports and Surveys:^(viii) 1977 - 12 male (or household) members and 7 female members 2001 - 35 members (comprising 16 households, 6 individual male and 13 individual female members) 2010 & 2016 - listed as having under 50 members (by household)
Legal and Charitable Status:	No data on congregation's charitable status - it does not appear to have been a registered charity.
Registration District:	Herefordshire^(ix) - link to register office website
Cemetery Information:	There was no Jewish cemetery in Hereford.
Notes & Sources (↵ returns to text above) (i) Paragraph on the residents of Ross in the Gloucester section of The Rise of Provincial Jewry by Cecil Roth, 1950, ↵ (ii) Based upon this being the name under which the congregation was listed in Jewish Year Books through 2004. ↵ (iii) Liberal Judaism news report dated 30 May 2019. ↵ (iv) The report on "Synagogue Affiliation in the United Kingdom 1977" (see note (viii) below) includes a return from the Hereford Jewish Community. ↵ (v) and (vi) Reserved. (vii) The change of status first appeared in the Jewish Year Book 2001. ↵ (viii) Reports on synagogue membership in the United Kingdom, published by or on behalf of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and which can be viewed on the website of the Institute of Jewish Policy Research. Click HERE for links to the various reports. ↵ (ix) The former Registration District was Hereford, from 1 July 1837 until 1 April 2008. Any registers would now be held by current register office (situated in Hereford). ↵

Search the All-UK Database

The records in the database associated with Hereford include:

1851 Anglo Jewry Database - includes also Ledbury (12 miles to the east) (updated 2016)

Individuals in the 1851 Anglo Jewry Databasewho were living in:
Hereford during the 1830s (1 record), 1840s (7 records), 1850s (11 records), 1860s (3 records), 1870s (5 records), 1880s (2 records) and 1890s (2 records); and
Ledbury during the 1810s (1 record), 1830s (3 record), 1840s (1 record) and 1850s (1 record).

Online Articles and Other Material
relating to this Congregation

Hereford Medieval Jewish Community
Paragraph on the residents of Ross (now Ross-on-Wye), Herefordshire, in the Gloucester section of The Rise of Provincial Jewry by Cecil Roth, 1950.
Bibliography:
- Hereford bibliography.

List of Liberal Judaism Congregations

Jewish Congregations in Herefordshire

Jewish Communities of England home page

Page created: 9 November 2005
Page most recently amended: 10 November 2023

Research and formatting by David Shulman

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