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Bath

BATH, spa in Somerset, England. A fashionable resort from the 18th century, Bath early attracted Jewish residents, among them the physician Isaac *Schomberg , as well as visitors. Shortly after 1800, Moses Samuel, formerly warden of the Great Synagogue in London who had retired to Bath, organized a congregation there, and on his death in 1839 left money for building a synagogue. The community subsequently dwindled, and regular services had ceased by 1874. The synagogue closed in 1910. Short-lived congregations have since been set up more than once. By the 1960s there was no Jewish community in Bath, but in 2004 services were being revived under Progressive Jewish auspices.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

C. Roth, Rise of Provincial Jewry (1950), 27–29. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: JYB, 2004; M. Brown and J. Samuel, "The Jews of Bath," in: JHSET, 29 (1982–86), 135–64.


Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.