(ANGLO-AMERICAN JUDAICA)

John Baskett

London

1739

(British Parliamentary Act). Anno decimo tertio Georgii II. Regis. Thirteenth year of the reign of King George II]. An Act for Naturalizing such Foreign Protestants, and others therein mentioned, as are Settled, or shall settle in any of His Majesty’s Colonies in America

13 George II, c.7

First Emancipation Act for the Jews of English America Seeking to encourage foreigners to help populate the English colonies in America, the British Parliament passed an act enabling colonial settlers to become naturalized subjects after living in the colonies for seven years. Special provisions were made for Jews, as naturalization required the petitioner to have received communion in a Protestant church, and he was furthermore obligated to swear an oath including the words “upon the true faith of a Christian.” “The law was important . . . for it expressed a desire on the part of the English to incorporate the Jew into the body politic and not in medieval fashion, to fence him off into a separate corporation severed from the commonalty of Christians. It was an emancipatory act, the first (apart from Dutch grants to Surinamese Jewry) to be promulgated by a European government since [ancient Rome] . . . The Act was the harbinger of a new day” (Marcus, The Colonial American Jew, Vol. I, pp. 480-9; also see Schappes, A Documentary History of the Jews of the United States, pp. 26-30). The British Crown followed markedly differing policies regarding Jewish subjects residing in England and those in America. A similar law applying to Jews living in England itself was not passed until 1753. As opposed to the 1739 Act, the Act of 1753 faced much opposition, and it was repealed within the year. A landmark in the history of Jewish emancipation