The Jewish immigrants who arrived in Liverpool in the last quarter of the 19th century were caught between two cultures. From Eastern Europe they brought a distinctive way of life based very largely on the strict observance of traditional religious custom and the secular culture embodied in the Yiddish language. On arrival in Britain they were exposed at once to the very different traditions of the English working-class neighbourhood and, in the longer term, to all the practices, ideals and leisure pursuits of a major city. Gratitude to England for providing a haven of safety combined with practical considerations of survival to set the immigrants firmly on a pathway towards anglicisation.
In this they were encouraged by an older-established Jewish elite which saw the 'foreign culture' of the immigrants as a barrier to their acceptance and a threat to the repute of the community, based as this was on a close identification with city society. The children of immigrants were a particularly vulnerable target. The Liverpool Hebrew Institution exposed then to the first thrust of organised anglicisation. Outside school hours, they were encouraged to join the Jewish Lads Brigade, a national Jewish cadet force, of which the first provincial company was founded in Liverpool in February 1897. Based on the Church Lads Brigade, the JLB promoted a form of 'muscular Judaism', 'instilling into the rising generation habits of orderliness, cleanliness and honour', developing patriotism and civic virtue, and introducing children from Yiddish speaking homes to all the cultural and moral values of respectable England. The JLB was backed by a number of social clubs, particularly the Hope Place Girls Club and the Liverpool Jewish Lads Club, first opened in rooms in West Derby Street in 1904. Adult immigrants were persuaded into the Liverpool Jewish Working Mens Club, which ran classes in English and promoted the full range of English leisure-time activities in a safe Jewish setting.
Another organisation which promoted anglicised ways was the Liverpool Jewish Literary Society, founded in its final form in 1906, chiefly by members of families associated with the Old Hebrew Congregation in Princes Road. According to Bertram Benas, the society provided 'a united platform' for those who wished 'to co-operate in intellectual activity relating to Judaism and the Jewish heritage in the English language'. In other words, more aspiring immigrants were encouraged to join the elite in the kind of cultural activity-debates, talks, drama and so on - which might woo them away from an exclusive Yiddishkeit. Meeting at first in the Annexe to the Princes Road Synagogue, the society moved in 1916 into 'The Jewish Centre for the Maintenance of Literary Efforts' at 6 Princes Road, acquired for the society by the Benas family and maintained at its expense. It provided both a base for the cultural activity of the elite and a bridge for immigrant shopkeepers and workshop entrepreneurs towards English forms of cultural expression.
These organisations were the creation chiefly of Jewish families settled in Liverpool prior to 1875. In the field of philanthropy the picture is more complex. By 1875 a network of charities had already been created to serve the needs of a relatively small provincial centre. These continued to flourish, adapted to meet the need on a more substantial scale and often with the implicit object of anglicising their clients. Of the post-1875 charities, only the Eliza Jackson House opened in 1887 to provide accommodation and weekly allowances to six Jewish spinsters or widows without children, could be put down to the efforts of the elite. The remainder were the creation of the new immigrants themselves, deeply conscious of the needs of their landsleit and informed by a traditional spirit of open-handedness in sharp contrast to the cautious and investigative methods of the Jewish Board of Guardians. They included a Jewish Temporary Shelter (1889) at 23 Moon Street (and later Great Orford Street) to provide the Jewish wayfarer with food and lodging, a Hebrew Friendly Society (1902), which offered small, interest-free loans to tide immigrant families over periods of crisis, a Jewish Orphan Aid Society (1903), the Somech Noflim ('Helping the Fallen' 1908), responding to whatever need arose, and the Hebrew Bread, Meat and Flour Society (1918), which offered the poor free provisions, particularly at Passover and during the winter months.
Also a result of immigrant self-help were the many Liverpool lodges of the Jewish Friendly Society Movement. Modeled on similar organisations in the wider society, the Jewish Friendly Society lodge offered the solid material support of sickness, burial and shiva benefits (and often an annual dividend) in return for small weekly payments. With their glittering regalia, formal hierarchies and punctilious procedures, they also helped quench the thirst of immigrants for status in a new society. The first was the independent Hebrew Tontine Society, founded in 1882 and meeting at 132 Chatham Street. Most belonged to one of the major 'Orders' of which the Order Achei Brith (Brethren of the Covenant) was particularly well-represented in Liverpool before 1914. In 1913 the Lord Mayor of Liverpool provided a civic reception for delegates to a national Achei Brith conference held in the city. 'Beacons' (that is lodges) of the Zionist Friendly Society, the Order of Ancient Maccabeans, had been planted in Liverpool well before the First World War, the first branches of the Independent Order of B'nei Brith soon after it. Social institutions associated with Liverpool Friendly Society lodges were seen by Benas as providing a 'training under Jewish auspices in the ways of British citizenship'.
The influences at work in the new immigrants - educational, social and charitable, formal and informal - led in the long run to the virtual elimination of the Yiddish language and the traditions enshrined within it.
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