Centre for Jewish History and Heritage

UEA has an ambition to establish a Centre for Jewish History and Heritage. Ranked in the top three in the UK for research quality in History, UEA is well placed to explore the research and education opportunities offered by a new focus on Jewish history and heritage studies.

Why a Centre for Jewish History and Heritage at UEA in Norwich?

Norwich is a city of global significance to Jewish history, home to one of the largest and most distinguished Jewish communities in medieval England, giving its name to a school of medieval commentators on the Talmud. Meir ben Eliyahu, or Meir of Norwich, was medieval England’s greatest Hebrew poet. Yet the city is also notorious for its contribution to the most harmful of all antisemitic myths. In 1144, Jews were falsely accused of the ritual murder of a boy, William of Norwich. This represents the earliest known instance of what has come to be called the ‘blood libel’. Similar accusations followed in other cities, leading to massacres of Jewish residents, often with the specific claim that Jews used Christian blood in their rituals. The antisemitic lie has endured, spurring massacres and pogroms in Europe and beyond and infusing contemporary conspiracy theories.

In 2004, 17 bodies, dated to the time of an anti-Jewish massacre in 1190, were unearthed during the construction of a Norwich shopping centre and given a Jewish burial. DNA testing established a strong genetic link to contemporary Ashkenazi Jews: evidence of the foundational and hitherto underappreciated place of England as a point of origin in the world Jewish story. In 1290, Jews were expelled from England on the order of King Edward I: this would have included Meir of Norwich, whose most profound poetry was written in exile and later recovered from a manuscript held in the Vatican in the 19th century. A Norwich community was only re-established after 1656, when Oliver Cromwell permitted Jewish people to return to Britain and practise their faith freely.

A remarkable house

Norwich is also home to the preserved remains of the oldest surviving Jewish dwelling in England. The 12th-century house, on the city’s historic King Street, is known as the Music House but is also called ‘Jurnet’s House’, after early 13th-century owners. The remarkably preserved undercroft, with its medieval vaulted ceiling, is a historically significant space for Jewish history. A local charity is working towards its restoration as a cultural venue – a key driver of our ambition to establish an academic centre.

A new academic centre at UEA and a community programme for Jewish learning and culture

Working with Norwich Synagogue, Norwich City Council (NCC) and Norfolk Museums Service, we have re-imagined Jurnet’s House as a site of Jewish learning and culture with i) a new programme of research and teaching in Jewish studies hosted by UEA, drawing inspiration from the stories of our communities; ii) the renovation and display of Jurnet’s House itself, the project’s touchstone, with spaces for learning, performance and the celebration of culture led by a community charitable trust; and iii) a cultural programme featuring heritage, craft, music, and the exhibition of Jewish art for diverse audiences: local, national and international, Jewish and non-Jewish.

Our foundational steps:

• UEA is delighted to have secured funding from the Wingate Foundation for the reprinting of the Meir of Norwich poetry collection, with Sir Simon Schama providing a new foreword for the volume.

• Working with Norfolk Museums Service and a technology partner, we are developing a Jewish History Walk for Norwich, using augmented reality to bring these historic periods and places to life.

Our next steps:

Our immediate priority is to establish the intellectual foundations and a clear direction for the new academic centre at UEA.

Will you fund our Centre?

To put the Centre on a secure and confident footing from the outset, we need to raise funding to endow it permanently. This will create a part-time Director role and a full-time Professor in premodern Jewish history/heritage studies and enable the Centre to flourish, with PhD studentships, fellowships and support staff. By immediately securing its future, we will create a thriving academic Centre with confidence and provide vital academic support to the local community’s efforts to restore the oldest surviving Jewish dwelling in the United Kingdom, Jurnet’s House on Norwich’s King Street.

Contact us:

Dr Oren Margolis - Strategic Innovation Lead for Jewish Heritage and Culture at UEA email: o.margolis@uea.ac.uk

Margolis is Associate Professor of Renaissance Studies in the School of History and Art History and is taking forward this project as the Strategic Innovation Lead for Jewish Heritage and Culture at UEA. An internationally recognised scholar in cultural and intellectual history, he has written multiple books and articles and won significant competitive fellowships and grants. Margolis co-founded the Norwich Jewish Heritage Group, which brought together UEA, the Norfolk Record Office, and the local Jewish community to catalogue the Norwich Synagogue’s historic archive and he is a trustee of the Jurnet’s House Charitable Trust. He is convenor of the UEA Research Seminar in Jewish Studies and teaches ‘Life and Art in the Jewish Diaspora, c. 1290—c. 1790’. In 2024 he won a UEA Engagement Award (Arts and Culture) for his work with Jurnet’s House.

Justine Mann, Strategic Cultural Funding Manager - justine.mann@uea.ac.uk