That all changed when the Jewish Telegraph, a local newspaper, approached a leading kilt-maker and asked them to come up with three possible tartans to represent Scotland’s Jews. Designs had to conform not only to Scottish tradition, but also to Jewish law: that meant no mixing wool and linen fibers, which the Torah forbids. Three all-wool patterns were developed, and the Jewish Telegraph’s readers voted for the winning pattern: a blue-and-white tartan that echoes both the blue and white of Israel’s flag, and the Saltire, the national flag of Scotland. I went through life never thinking much of this, but it always bothered me that I did not have cousins or aunts or uncles like normal people. The cryptic and evasive responses to my inquiries about the subject only made me more curious over the years, until finally I turned to commercial DNA testing to see who else I was related to..

The sanction was also applied over an “inappropriate” emblem, believed to be a Palestinian flag, that was waved at the game. of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Many came with the large waves of late nineteenth-century East-West Jewish migration, escaping economic hardship and They may pride themselves as being the best fans in the world but the Tartan Army has seen its reputation tarnished on the international stage following incidents involving the Israeli national football team.You can explore Scotland’s Jewish history further with the online exhibition The Jewish Experience in Scotland, and through educational programmes offered by the Schwartzapfel, Beth (17 July 2008). "Sound the Bagpipes: Scots Design Jewish Tartan". Forward . Retrieved 1 May 2010.

Christians, the document also says, “need to empathise and listen more to Jewish connections with the land [of Israel] and the complex and deep ways that this subject connects to Jewish history, emotion, identity, autonomy, safety etc”.The first Jewish congregation in Edinburgh was founded in 1817, when the Edinburgh community consisted of 20 families. [8] The first congregation in Glasgow was founded in 1821. [11] Much of the first influx of Jews to Scotland were Dutch and German merchants attracted to the commercial economies of Scottish cities. [12] In the Middle Ages, while Jews in England faced state persecution culminating in the Edict of Expulsion of 1290, there was never a corresponding expulsion from Scotland, suggesting either greater religious tolerance or the simple fact that there was no Jewish presence at that time. In his autobiographical work Two Worlds, the eminent Scottish-Jewish scholar David Daiches, son of Rabbi Salis Daiches, wrote that his father would often declare that Scotland is one of the few European countries with no history of state persecution of Jews. [33] Modern antisemitism [ edit ]

In 1878, Jewish Hannah de Rothschild (1851–1890), the richest woman in Britain at the time, married Scottish aristocrat Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, despite strong antisemitic sentiments in court and the aristocracy. They had four children. Their son, Harry, would become Secretary of State for Scotland in 1945 during Winston Churchill's postwar caretaker government.

a b "Scotslanguage.com - Scots-Yiddish: A Dialect Re-imagined". www.scotslanguage.com . Retrieved 28 March 2023.

Daiches describes how this language was spoken by the band of itinerant salesmen known as "trebblers" who travelled by train to the coastal towns of Fife peddling their wares from battered suitcases. He notes that Scots preserves some Germanic words lost in standard English but preserved in Yiddish, for example "licht" for light or "lift" for air (German "Luft"). [48] [49] Describing The Inheritance of Abraham? as “a direct example of supersessionist thinking”, it adds that “the central importance of the land in Judaism and Jewish thinking needs to be recognised and understood within the Church of Scotland”. He suggests Scotland has plotted a more sustainable course, adopting “a different and more durable model of multiculturalism, and its diverse communities have joined with politicians of all parties in uniting behind the campaign for One Scotland – Many Cultures”. Judaism began about 4000 years ago with the Hebrew people in the Middle East. Abraham, a Hebrew man, is considered the father of the Jewish faith because he promoted the central idea of the Jewish faith: that there is one God. At the time many people in the Middle East worshipped many gods. It is said that Abraham and his wife Sarah, who were old and childless, were told by God that their children would be as plentiful as the stars in the sky and that they would live in a land of their own -- the Promised Land. This gradually came true. According to the 2011 census, 5,887 Jews lived in Scotland; a decline of 8.7% from the 2001 census. [1] The total population of Scotland at the time was 5,313,600, making Scottish Jews 0.1% of the population.There are three basic groups of Jewish people who have a different understanding of the interpretation of the Torah. The Glasgow Friends of Israel stall further down Buchanan Street is now routinely subject to low-level harassment and intimidation: spitting; yelled insults; literature being defaced. Sammy Stein, chairman of the group that supports peace and a two-state solution in the region has told of insults about the Holocaust. Labour MSP 'ashamed of party' over anti-Semitism". BBC News. 28 January 2020 . Retrieved 14 November 2021. But from the middle of the twelfth century, there was growing antisemitism in England and across Europe. In part, this was fuelled by something called the ‘blood libel’: fabricated allegations that Jews abducted and murdered Christian children for magical rituals. The official stance of the Church slowly shifted from tolerance of Jews to increasing hostility. This influenced the views of ordinary people.