The Jews of South Wales

Book excerpt: The Jews of South Wales focuses on the Jewish communities in Cardiff, Swansea, and the South Wales valleys in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, examining their everyday lives as well as more dramatic and sensational events, such as the Tredegar Riots in 1911 and the Jewess Abduction Case of 1867. A new introduction by Paul O'Leary considers scholarship published since the book's first publication and also discusses the polarized views about the Tredegar Riots of 1911: Were the riots the result of anti-Semitism, or was South Wales a philo-Semitic place, where the Welsh and Jewish communities had much in common?