Лондонға қоныс аударған голландтық еврейлер: «Chuts» қауымының тарихы

Jewish immigrants in London

Chuts '/x//ʊ//t//s/ is the name applied to Jews who immigrated to London from the Netherlands in the mid Victorian era (1850s–1860s). They typically came from the cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and brought to London their trades: most notably those of cigar , cap , and slipper making, and as small time ship chandlers. Their settlement began in the area beyond the Spitalfields known as the Tenterground, formerly an enclosed area where Flemish weavers stretched and dried their woven cloth on machines called tenters (hence the expression "on tenterhooks"). By the mid Victorian era, the weavers began to disperse as the open grounds disappeared beneath housing built by speculative developers and became an enclave for Chut immigrants who established themselves as a distinct community. Demolished and rebuilt piecemeal in sucessive slum clearance projects in the 1890s, 1930s and most notably after the devastation of The Blitz, the area is now bounded by White's Row, Wentworth Street, Bell Lane and Toynbee Street (formerly Shepherd Street). Following the assassination of Alexander II of Russia in 1881, many thousands of Jewish refugees, fleeing the consequential pogroms in Eastern Europe, arrived in the East End of London, including the Tenterground, by which time the Chuts had begun to disperse. Significantly, the successful introduction of machinery for the mass production of cigarettes ultimately led to the collapse of the cigar making economy on which the Chuts community depended. Many Chuts returned to improved conditions in Amsterdam, some emigrated further afield to places such as Australia and the United States, some assimilated into other Jewish families, and some eventually lost their Jewish identity altogether.

The origin of the name Chuts is uncertain. A popular assumption is that it derives from the Dutch word goed (pronounced and meaning "good") and is imitative of the foreign language chatter that others heard. It is also Hebrew חוץ for "outside" or "in the street" and may have been applied to the Dutch Jews of London either because they were socially isolated or because many were street vendors. Another possibility is that the Hebrew word would have appeared increasingly in Amsterdam synagogue records as more and more emigrated to London, and others who followed would have "gone chuts" (i. e., emigrated). In spite of the efforts of William III after the defeat of Napoleon, the Ashkenazi Dutch concentrated in Amsterdam in slum conditions and resisted integration. Prejudice against them, although not amounting to religious persecution, continued through the mid 19th century. These factors together with the ongoing decline of the Dutch economy prompted a flow of Jewish emigrants from Amsterdam. Notably, Jews in the UK benefited from formal emancipation in 1858, after which they could become skilled tradesmen and conduct business freely without taking Christian oaths.