Beyond Borehamwood: Where are British Jews moving to?

His role at the local shul includes rabbinic responsibility for Hatfield, the neighbouring area that’s been deemed a “community of potential” by the US.

Despite not yet having its own synagogue, Hatfield has been steadily expanding its Jewish presence thanks to a small but dedicated Jewish community, which organises weekly events like a Sunday cheder and Shabbat dinners at the homes of local families.

Simi Bennet Ben Sur, who moved to Hatfield from Edgware four years ago with her husband and daughter, has been among the community’s most active volunteers. With the financial help of the US, Bennet Ben Sur and her husband have been hosting children’s services in their home once a month on Shabbat, usually attended by 20 to 25 people.

“We know that the real magic of community weaving is when people are sitting together outside of any kind of formal educational programme or service,” she says. “So people come to our house in the morning and they stay until the evening sometimes – it’s a really nice kind of Shabbat feeling.”

While Hatfield doesn’t yet have a dedicated Jewish bakery, the Chabad rebbetzin (Chabad established a branch in Hatfield last summer) bakes challah every week and sells it in the community.

“It’s an industrious group of people, so whatever we need, we find a way to make it happen,” says Bennet Ben Sur.

She feels Hatfield is an inclusive space for people who may have felt they didn’t belong in the more traditionally Jewish north-west London areas.

“In our community, everybody is welcome and everybody really fits. It’s not about your religious level or practice that defines you, and I think that is quite special.”

For estate agent Ivan Ziff, moving from Borehamwood to Hatfield with his young family helped them find that perfect fit.

“We found that Borehamwood was too big a community for us, and it could be too cliquey,” says Ziff. “So when we moved to Hatfield, it was actually refreshing to find a much smaller community that was also more personable.”

Ziff adds that Hatfield has “a lot of potential” to be a new Jewish hub – but just needs a few more Jewish businesses and kosher-friendly restaurants to attract a bigger influx.

Bennet Ben Sur is hoping Hatfield will ultimately have its own Jewish community centre, because she believes non-religious spaces are equally important for community-building: “I think that there is an opportunity, certainly for Hertfordshire anyway, which is a growing Jewish county, to build something a bit different, a bit experimental.”

Other emerging Jewish communities are appearing in less likely places, like the once-thriving medieval hub of York, still best known in the community for the horrific events of 1190 when the city’s Jewish community were trapped inside Clifford’s Tower and many committed suicide rather than be murdered or forcibly baptised.

“This is going to be a place where there will absolutely be a growing Jewish community,” says Ben Rich, former chief executive of the Movement for Reform Judaism, who established York Liberal Jewish Community (YLJC) in 2014. “I’d like people to stop being surprised that there’s a Jewish community in York – I’d like it to just be known that we’re here.
We don’t want to be defined by what happened here in Clifford’s Tower 850 years ago.”

Rich founded YLJC after noting that there was significant Jewish population in the area but no central body or space to organise around. In the past decade, YLJC has taken on roughly 120 members and expanded its programme from one service per month, which was attended by 30 to 40 people, to four services per month, each attracting double the number of attendees.

The number of services increased with the appointment of Rabbi Dr Elisheva Salamo in 2023, when she became the small Progressive community’s first resident rabbi in more than 800 years.

Rabbi Salamo lights a chanukiah at Clifford’s Tower, York (Photo: Getty Images)[Missing Credit]

“When we started, I used to text every single member individually, before each service, for fear that there would be a service where literally nobody showed up,” says Rich.
”And now, people just come.”

With its inclusive ethos, the community has had a “very steady stream of people going through the Liberal Judaism conversion process with us,” and currently has about a dozen people on Rabbi Salamo’s conversion course.

And with the number of Jewish students at York University rising over the last few years, in large part thanks to YLJC’s presence in the city, Rich hopes that will translate into more Jewish people staying to build their lives in York.

Meanwhile, a Jewish leader in one of London’s less expected Jewish areas has been putting in the work to build a community up from nothing.

Rabbi Moshe Adler started Chabad Battersea in 2017, and with the nearest shul as far away as Streatham, he went door-to-door around Battersea to meet Jews and integrate them into a local community of their own.

“We were looking for a place where the people were underserved, and it seemed like the area was growing,” Rabbi Adler says.
”The only data we had on the amount of Jews was from the census, so we saw that there was an uptick in people moving there, and we saw the area was developing.”

With younger Jewish families attracted to the Wandsworth borough for “its proximity to central London and some very good state schools”, Rabbi Adler is now getting calls from potential new community members every week.

“We have about 400 contacts, which, including families, is probably 700 to 800 people that we’re in touch with – most of them from around Battersea and Clapham, but also even further out along the South Bank, Streatham, Dulwich, Croydon – and the list of contacts just keeps growing.”

Battersea Power Station's chimneys lit up for Holocaust Memorial Day (Via Twitter) [Missing Credit]

In 2023 Rabbi Adler opened a new community centre in Battersea, which finally gave his congregation a space to unite in apart from his home. “It made people really feel like they’re part of a proper Jewish community,” he says. “Especially after October 7, people felt very isolated being away from the rest of the Jewish community, and it was very important to them to have somewhere local where they could come together and connect.”

He’s since hosted holiday celebrations, Shabbat dinners and speaker events at the community centre.

“I think people will continue moving here for the reasons that they do: cheaper housing, close to central London,” says Rabbi Adler. “And one day we will have Jewish schools here, and I’m sure kosher restaurants as well. I don’t know why the whole community doesn’t just move down here.”

Though Vos notes that Jewish community life traditionally centres on a synagogue, communities like Hatfield, Battersea and York prove that the willingness to connect and collaborate with other local Jews can sometimes outweigh having a centralised religious space.

And in Welwyn Garden City, there’s a warm and welcoming synagogue too. “Just the fact that you have loads of Jewish people living next to each other doesn’t mean that you have a community,” says Rabbi Herszaft. “For me it’s about the connection you have with everyone – when I come to shul on Shabbos morning, it feels like everyone is a big family.”