Jewish National Fund certificate recording the planting of trees in the Winston Churchill Forest, Israel by the Swansea Hebrew Congregation, May 1966

A certificate from the Jewish National Fund, (an organisation that plants trees in Israeli forests), recording the planting of trees in the Winston Churchill Forest, Israel by the Swansea Hebrew Congregation in May 1966. A row of fifteen trees are recorded as planted in the name of the late Mrs R Britz. The "Churchill Forest" was donated by the Jewish community of the United Kingdom in memory of Sir Winston Churchill and lies between Nazareth and Jezreel Valley, Israel.

 

The Swansea Jewish Community is the oldest modern Jewish community in Wales with records going back to the 1740s. The first formal mention of a congregation dates in 1768 when a small Jewish cemetery was established on Town Hill. After worshipping at several temporary locations, a purpose-built synagogue was erected for the Swansea Hebrew Congregation in 1818. It was replaced by a bigger synagogue on Goat Street in 1859. In 1906, a group of recently arrived Yiddish-speaking immigrants set up a more orthodox congregation as supplementary to the main synagogue. This community, the Swansea Beth Hemedrash, developed independently while maintaining close ties to the Swansea Hebrew Congregation. In 1941, the Goat Street synagogue was destroyed in a German air raid and the congregation continued to worship in temporary premises at Cornhill House on Christina Street (note: JCR-UK incorrectly refers to the location as Christina  Street). A new synagogue was finally built in 1955 on Ffynone Road. Around the same time, the Swansea Beth Hemedrash was incorporated into the Swansea Hebrew Congregation. The Ffynone Road synagogue was sold in 2009 but the congregation continues to rent a hall in the building for worship.

 

Sources:

'The History of the Jewish Diaspora in Wales' by Cai Parry-Jones (http://e.bangor.ac.uk/4987);

JCR-UK/JewishGen (https://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/community/swansea.htm);

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazareth_Illit.

 

Depository: West Glamorgan Archives.