The book provides a comprehensive history of the third-largest Jewish community in Britain and fills an acknowledged gap in both Jewish and urban historiography. Bringing together the latest research and building on earlier local studies, the book provides an analysis of the special features which shaped the community in Leeds. Organised in three sections, Context, Chronology and Contours, the book demonstrates how Jews have influenced the city and how the city has influenced the community. A small community was transformed by the late Victorian influx of poor migrants from the Russian Empire and within two generations had become successfully integrated into the city’s social and economic structure. More than a dozen authors contribute to this definitive history and the editor provides both an introductory and concluding overview which brings the story up to the present day. The book will be of interest to both historians and general readers.

Ever since the children of penniless immigrants caught the train from Whitechapel to White Hart Lane--to be greeted with the refrain: 'Does Your Rabbi Know You're Here?'--this forgotten tribe have helped to shape the Beautiful Game. In telling the fascinating lives of these largely unsung trailblazers, Clavane uncovers a hidden history of Jewish involvement in English football. From Louis Bookman, the first Jew to play in England's top division, to the pugnacious winger Mark Lazarus, whose last-gasp goal won the 1967 League Cup for QPR, to shady figures like One-Armed Lou, a ticket tout who never told the story of his missing limb the same way twice, through to the businessmen who helped form the breakaway Premier League, and in the process changed the English game for ever.

"The story of the first Jewish public library in Europe"--

This is a book about football. It's about unconditional love for a club, even when it doesn't always seem to love you back. But it is also a book about much more than that. Anthony Clavane loves Leeds - certainly the football club, but also the city, and the tribes that make it. Now that he is an exile in the South, his frequent pilgrimages to the stadium speak for themselves. But he no less loves the rarely-glimpsed back-streets of his youth; and even has a feel for the long-gone slums where his ancestors once settled. Leeds is his promised land; idealised and unreachable, yet still it defines him. 'Sports writing at its very best' Daily Telegraph