BRADFORD

BRADFORD, city in Yorkshire, England. A Jewish community existed in Bradford by the middle of the 19th century, composed largely of German Jews attracted by the industrial and commercial growth of the city. Services are said to have been held in Bradford in the 1830s, but the first synagogue was built in 1873. A Reform community (after that of London, the second in England) was founded in 1880. The Jewish population was later reinforced by refugees from the Russian persecutions. The German Jewish group was of great significance in the cultural life of the city. The artists sir william rothenstein and Albert Rutherston were born in Bradford. The poet humbert wolfe went to school there and described his childhood in his autobiography (Now a Stranger, 1933). jacob moser was lord mayor of Bradford in 1910–11. The Jewish population numbered about 700 in 1968 but dropped to approximately 170 in the mid-1990s. Nevertheless, the optional religious question asked for the first time in the 2001 British census found 356 declared Jews in Bradford. In 2004 an Orthodox and Reform synagogue existed. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: V.D. Lipman (ed.), Three Centuries of Anglo-Jewish History (1961), 84, 100 n. 48; Lehmann, Nova Bibl. 78, 185, 214. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: JYB, 2004. (Cecil Roth)