The Jewish Girls' Brigade

The earliest Jewish youth clubs in Britain were set up for girls - not boys - largely because girls were thought to be more 'at risk' from bad influences. In 1886, Lady Magnus founded the Jewish Girls' Club and, in 1893, Lily Montagu established the West Central Jewish Girls' Club.

By the 1930s, the North London Girls' Club began sending girls to the JLB summer camp. A Girls' Section was formed at Grove House in Manchester after the Second World War, and units of the Girls' Training Corps were set up in both Manchester and Glasgow.

It was the newly revived Liverpool Company (1958) that formally introduced girls into the Brigade. The Parents' Association of the Merseyside Jewish Lads' Brigade took the initiative in 1963, and girls' units, staffed by women officers, were soon established.

In the 1970s, the gradual trend towards mixed companies transformed 'The Jewish Lads' Brigade incorporating the Jewish Girls' Brigade' into the combined 'Jewish Lads' and Girls' Brigade'.

The basic requirements of Jewish observance were respected at Company meetings and camp. However, unlike the Church Brigades, which grew out of the Sunday School movement, JLB activities were not punctuated with Bible readings or hymn singing. Formal religious education was left to parents, teachers and rabbis. Instead, the JLB concentrated on moral behaviour, social action and inculcating English values into immigrant youth.

"My father was very religious but he insisted that if you were on duty [in camp] on Friday or Shabbat it was the same as being in the army. You couldn't say you weren't going to do the duty for religious reasons."

"On the High Holy Days every area had youth services in the East End - held at Brady Street Club, Camperdown House and the other clubs. Our Brigade had a very good bugle band and the buglers were asked to blow the shofar."

Brigade founder Colonel Goldsmid worked with Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, and one of his favourite mottos was "Israel is my father and Britain my mother".

Although in the 1930s and 1940s, Zionism gained ground within the Anglo-Jewish community, the JLB did not actively participate in Zionist activities. Other youth groups such as Maccabi and Habonim were Zionist oriented, and these received a boost from the influx of refugees from Central Europe, who already had a Zionist background. By 1939, Habonim boasted 4,000 members - twice as many as the JLB, and continued to expand in membership in the immediate post-War years.

By the 1990s the uniformed Brigade had about 2,500 members all over Britain, equally divided between boys and girls. Of 26 companies in the London area, the Brigade is strongest in Redbridge, where its headquarters is now based. Outside the capital, there are active companies in Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Leeds and Cardiff. Companies also exist in Southend, Fylde, Southport and Nottingham, as well as at Ravenswood Village in Berkshire and Delamere Forest School for children with special needs in Cheshire. The JLGB is the only Jewish Operating Authority in the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme.

Taken from interviews compiled by the Jewish Museum London for the temporary exhibition: Living Up West: Jewish Life in London's West End, first shown in 1994. It is also available as a touring exhibition, and also an accompanying 332-page book written by Gerry Black. The full interviews and transcripts are available for consultation in the Oral History archive at the Jewish Museum, London. To find out more about the Jewish Museum, London visit www.jewishmuseum.org.uk.