This important new book is best understood when located within the history of modern British Jewish Studies. Critical historical works in the field were slow to develop. The Jewish Historical Society of England (JHSE), formed in 1893, focused on the medieval and early modern periods, and its publications tended to be apologetic. First, emphasis was placed on the longevity of the Jewish presence in England (with claims even of extending back to the Roman occupation). Second, a narrative was produced illustrating how English responses to Jewish communities progressed from the hostile (leading to expulsion in 1290) to the tolerant (following readmission in the 1650s), climaxing in the nineteenth century with full political emancipation. The role of the Rothschilds, Moses Montefiore, and Benjamin Disraeli (the last, admittedly, a convert to Christianity) showed that toleration had led to acceptance whether in the social, political, cultural, or economic realms.

The transformation of British Jewry from a native, largely middle-class community of 50,000 in the 1870s to a majority alien-born grouping of 300,000 by the start of the First World War through Eastern European migration was conveniently ignored by the first generations of modern British Jewish historians. Indeed, it has been argued that the background of anti-alienism that attended the arrival of these Ostjuden was one of the major driving forces leading to the creation of the JHSE. If there were increasing claims that all Jews were un-English, what better way of disproving them than by showing that Jews had been part of the nation for hundreds of years? Jews had, to quote Peter Fryer's magnificent study of black British history, “staying power.” What was un-English and alien, then, according to the JHSE circle, was prejudice, which was little more than a remnant of the Middle Ages.

As late as the 1950s, this JHSE-style mixture of antiquarianism and ethnic cheerleading dominated historiography. It was not helped by the refusal of British scholars to take issues of immigration and national identity seriously. Britain, against all evidence to the contrary, was regarded mainly as a country of emigration rather than as one possessing its own tradition of newcomer entry. But from the second half of the twentieth century, three interrelated sources of change emerged from within and without Britain. First was the reemergence of immigration as a national issue in the light of increased New Commonwealth migration: race was once again in the news and in everyday politics. Second, the social history movement in Britain was emerging, and subjects such as class, race, and gender were coming to the fore. Third, and perhaps most important, was input from North American scholars that reframed the historical field.

Lloyd Gartner's The Jewish Immigrant in England, 1870–1914 (1960) was a path-breaking account, focusing on the period and subject matter that the JHSE had tended to avoid. American-trained in both Jewish history and immigration studies, Gartner proved a master of both English and Yiddish sources, exploring the subject from both the perspective of the newcomers to Britain and those responding to them (whether the settled Jewish community or wider society). In contrast to much subsequent scholarship, Gartner placed emphasis on ethnoreligious solidarity. He did not ignore class, but his model was ultimately one of consensus and the successful integration of the Jewish immigrant. Two decades later, and working initially on the Georgian era, Todd Endelman followed Gartner as an American specializing in British Jewish history. Endelman, however, was also a product of Warwick University's promotion of new social history—although he did not share the socialist perspective of its leader, E. P. Thompson.

Gartner and Endelman's work was supplemented and challenged from the 1980s with the emergence of a younger generation of British Jewish historians who inserted a stronger focus on class and gender. Susan Tananbaum was part of this new movement, although she was trained in Jewish studies at Brandeis University. Her book reflects several decades of scholarship that both complements and develops further the work of Gartner. Even so, there are perspectives from his book that more than fifty years later remain unmatched.

The strengths of Tananbaum's Jewish Immigrants in London, especially in the breadth of research carried out, are many, and they are manifested especially in relation to coverage and chronology. With regards to coverage, Tananbaum has been a pioneer in the study of Jewish immigrant childhood, but she has also developed expertise in the study of health, education, and immigrant women. Each of these topics is given a chapter in this study. In respect of chronology, this is the first detailed study to have crossed over the divide of the First World War. David Feldman's exceptional Englishmen and Jews (1994) was the first major scholarly work to explore the whole of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, shedding light on the aliens question by taking it back to the period when emancipation was being discussed inside and outside of Parliament. Tananbaum, by moving beyond 1914, enables a perspective of the long-term impact of the policies of acculturation adopted by the established Jewish community in dealing with the East European immigrants. She also, following Feldman, explores how the immigrants themselves shaped these processes.

Following Gartner, Tananbaum has adopted a largely consensual model, for the most part rejecting analysis based on class conflict or social control. And yet while some oral and written testimony of the immigrants and their children is utilized, it is a shame that this realm of inquiry is not further developed. Immigrant testimony tends to simply confirm or add color to Tananbaum's narrative rather than be taken seriously in its own right. Gartner's work was more at ease with the material generated by the immigrants themselves, albeit this material was partial and less substantial than that produced by the Jewish elite. Tananbaum has empathy with the Jewish immigrants and their children, but as social history this is largely of a “top-down” nature.

In terms of style, the writing is clear, but the use of subheadings, often one a page, leads to an episodic feeling with the need for stronger authorial control. Nonetheless, this book is a major achievement, adding rich elements to its topic, especially through the inclusion of women and children, who were generally absent in Gartner's earlier study. A new generation of British Jewish scholarship is now emerging to take these and other themes further. There is now simply no excuse for “mainstream” British social history and modern Jewish studies not to take this rich, multilayered and dynamic body of work seriously.