Since the Second World War, Liverpool Jewry has consolidated around the new geographic, economic and institutional framework of which the outlines were already clearly visible in the late 1930s. Slum clearance and the Blitz hastened the final evacuation of the old Jewish Quarter as the Jewish population acquired a new suburban coherence in Childwall, Allerton and Woolton, with a number of older families still anchored to Sefton Park. By the l970s, Dunbabin Road had decisively superseded Princes Road as the main artery of Liverpool Jewry. There, in 1956, King David School became the first Jewish secondary school to be opened under the provisions of the 1944 Education Act it was joined by the Jewish Primary School, which had held out in Hope Place, in 1964. There, too, was built a new Harold House as the focus of the Jewish youth organisations co-ordinated since 1951 by the Merseyside Youth Council and, more generally, as the major social, cultural and political centre of Liverpool's Jewish communal life.
Jewish cabinet-making and garment-making workshops still flourished in and around London Road until the eve of the Second World War, the workforce still backed b the militant unions. Since 1945, however, the economic structure generated by immigrants of the later 19th century has disappeared as completely as the old Jewish Quarter. Liverpool Jewry's suburban-dwelling community is now composed chiefly of professional and self-employed business people, fairly widely dispersed throughout the professions and the economy. It has been calculated that only some 10% of the Jewish population, and that in an older age group, remains in the older areas of settlement, where their livelihood continues to depend on small shop-keeping and manual work.
The shift of the Jewish population from Sefton Park towards Allerton was first signaled in 1952 by the development of a nascent Allerton Hebrew Congregation in Mossley Hill Church Hall, Rose Lane, where over 100 people attended the first Yom Kippur services. As the congregation attracted a nucleus of more regular worshippers, land in Mather Avenue was acquired from the Corporation and in January 1956 the first service was held in the hall of a new congregational building. The synagogue proper, funded in part from war damage compensation paid to the trustees of the old Central Synagogue, Islington, destroyed in the Liverpool Blitz, was formally opened in January 1960 by its treasurer, Leslie Lander. During the same period, the Nusach Ari Congregation moved from Crown Street to Dovedale Road, Allerton.
Following the outwards trend, the Liberal Synagogue moved in 1960 from Hope Place to rooms in the 18th century vicarage of Holy Trinity Church, Childwall, a purpose-built synagogue being added at the rear in 1964. Although the Old Hebrew Congregation retains an existence and continues to attract a nostalgic minyan, the surrounding streets have been deserted by their Jewish population and by the institutions which once served them.
Since the war, the role of the voluntary Jewish charity in Liverpool has been transformed by the growth of the Welfare State and the passage of the Public Assistance Act in 1948. Freed from much of the day-to-day investigation and relief of cases of primary poverty, the Jewish Board of Guardians has been able to focus on supplementary aid and on the social problems surrounding old age, mental illness, mental handicap and homelessness. Following a survey of the needs of the elderly undertaken by the Representative Council in 1945, a Home for Aged Jews was opened by the Board at 'Stapely', North Mossley Hill Road in September 1949. The Board undertook its first venture in housing in 1949, when sheltered units were opened at 64 Mulgrave Street. Twelve more units were added in 1950. Following two further successful projects, the Board's Housing Committee converted itself into the Liverpool Jewish Housing Association Limited to qualify under the Friendly Society Act for grants from local authorities and central government. The Board's most ambitious housing development was the creation of 60 units, a communal centre and laundry, with a full-time warden and caretaker at Rex Cohen Court, opened by Sir Rex Cohen, then president of the Board, in 1967. The offices of the Board, now one of several welfare agencies coordinated by a Jewish Welfare Council, moved into new buildings, at Rex Cohen Court in 1968.
A survey conducted in 1964 suggested that a Jewish Community of some 7,000 people was then declining in size at a rate of at least 1% a year, as the birth rate dropped and younger people sought the richer textures of communal life in London and Manchester and economic opportunities beyond an increasingly depressed city. By the mid-1970s the population had fallen to around 6,500 and it is now thought to lie in the region of 5,000 (1987). It seems unlikely that this trend will be reversed. Equally unlikely, however, is that a compact business and professional community, solidly integrated into the life of the city, its Zionist fervour undiminished, its welfare agencies streamlined, will cease to exercise an influence on Anglo-Jewry out of all proportion to its size.
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