I found out something today about Jewish people & it really shocked me - I am struggling to deal with it

[KatyMac]

Apparently (I don't know how true it is), there are so few Jews in Norfolk they struggle to maintain a synagogue & this is (historically) because of the persecution they received in the middle ages.

I was really shocked

I have always (previously) lived in very Jewish areas and to find out they are 'missing' makes me feel a bit lost (which is daft because I was aware I didn't know any here - but just assumed that they were 'in the next village' so to speak)

Also that history has left the area bereft of such a valuable part of society

I guess I now need to do research about the persecution because I know nothing about it and I feel ignorant

katy!

Motherinferior - I am speechless - nothing I can say can deal with your Mum's time on Norfolk

sorry to hear about your mum's dreadful experience MI.

There were virtually no black people in Norwich at the time, and there was I believe a thriving branch of the National Front.

Lucky, under the circumstances, that my sister and I look so white!

even more mi. bloody hell.

Dont think Norwich is that bad now though MI, I think it is slowly becoming more mulit-cultural, its just a bit behind many other cities...

Motherinferior - I wish I could say I was shocked, but actally I'm just angry.

I'm not from Norwich, but have lived here for 16 years now and in that time it has definately become a lot more multicultural. Whether the native Norfolk are any more tolerant I'm less sure. I think the reason is, as someone earlier said, that Norfolk is the end of the line - no-one ever passes through en-route to anywhere else. I know many people who have never been out of the county.

aah, i was moved to norwich when the BNp still referred to it as the 'last white city in england', it must have been....1984.

i moved from white minority london comp (v. near kenton, as it happens) to a white totality comp there.

i'm white, but my three best mates were pakistani, jewish and afro-caribbean. after a visit by each of them i always went to see them, the treatment direct to them and indirect through me was actively vile when it wasn't just jaw droppingly ignorant. left the poor benighted place as soon as financially independent, back to london.

Yes a lot of Norfolk is insular, rellies live there, and their experience of other cultures is through television and tv and the occasional visit to Norwich! I wouldn't wish to repeat the unenlightened words I heard used, it was like going back an episode of some embarrassing 70s sitcom.

MerryBerry, I too hail from a comp nr Kenton although at the time I attended it was ethnically very mixed: about a third white (largely Jewish), third Asian (mostly Hindu/Urdu), third Afro-Caribbean. But as I said, there has been a shift in population in the last 10yrs.

lulu - not got cat = do you want to e-mail me at milkfloatquack at yahoo dot co dot uk

oooh, how do you know i tried to CAT you if you don;t have CAT!?!? spooky !

I didn't, I was just lurking till you were back from dinner before posting my e-mail address, tis pure coincidence

well, you have mail !!

KatyMac... I don't know if it'll have information specific to Norfolk in it, but a very good book about the persecution of 'outsider' figures in the Middle Ages (not only Jews) is R. I. Moore's The Birth of a Persecuting Society. No idea if it's in print... I think it was first published in the 80s. It's an academic book, but eminently readable.

Oops, I got the title wrong. But it seems to be available from Amazon here.