Rochester

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ROCHESTER

ROCHESTER , seaport in S.E. England. Jews are recorded here from 1187 onward and are mentioned as a group in 1231. At the entrance to the cathedral chapter house, there is a fine specimen of the conventional medieval statues representing Church and Synagogue, the latter as a dejected female bearing a broken staff and the Ten Commandments. In modern times, Rochester lost its primacy as a port to adjacent *Chatham. No organized Jewish community remains in Rochester today.

bibliography:

J. Jacobs, Jews of Angevin England (1893), index; Rigg-Jenkinson, Exchequer, index; Edwards, in: jhset, 18 (1958), 66f. add. bibliography: P. Skinner (ed.), The Jews in Medieval Britain (2003).

[Cecil Roth]

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