Caledonian Jews

Book excerpt: This is the first full history of the Jews in Scotland who lived outside Edinburgh and Glasgow. The work focuses on seven communities from the borders to the highlands: Aberdeen, Ayr, Dundee, Dunfermline, Falkirk, Greenock, and Inverness. Each of these communities was of sufficient size and affluence to form a congregation with a functional synagogue and, while their histories have been previously neglected in favor of Jewish populations in larger cities, their stories are important in understanding Scottish Jewry and British history as a whole. Drawn from numerous primary sources, the history of Jews in Scotland is traced from the earliest rumors to the present.