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A mixture of British, Spanish and Moroccan influences, Jews are present in Gibraltar for over 650 years. There have been periods of persecution, but for the most part they have prospered, being one of the largest religious minorities in the city, where they have made contributions to the culture, defense, and Government.
The first record of Jews in Gibraltar dates back in the year 1356, when the community issued an appeal asking for the ransom of a group of Jews taken captive by pirates. Another document indicates that a number of Jews fleeing Córdoba sought refuge in Gibraltar in 1473. Jews were expelled from the entire Iberian Peninsula under the Alhambra Decree in 1492, effectively ending all Jewish activity there, except in the cases of Conversos or possible Crypto-Jews.
According to a clause from the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, Spain ceded Gibraltar to Britain: "Her Britannic Majesty, at the request of the Catholic King, does consent and agree that no leave shall be given, under any pretext whatsoever, either to Jews or Moors to reside or have their dwellings in the said town of Gibraltar." At the time, Jews were banned from Spain; they did live in the shadow of the Rock, before and after 1713. A couple of years after, Britain and Morocco signed a treaty allowing Jews to reside on the island.
Significantly, the Jews of Gibraltar have faced almost no official anti-Semitism during their time in the city (with the exception of the period of Spanish rule). In 1749, Gibraltar's first rabbi or chacham, Isaac Nieto, came from London to found the first synagogue, Shaar Hashamayim, which is still in use today. During Gibraltar's tercentenary celebration, Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth, was quoted as saying, "In the dark times of expulsion and inquisition, Gibraltar lit the beacon of tolerance," and that Gibraltar "is probably the community where Jews have been the most integrated."
The Jews of Gibraltar initially preserved some old customs. For example, in 1777, Issac Aboab, a Gibraltarian Jew born in Tetuan, was listed as having two wives, Hannah Aboab and Simah Aboab. Bigamy was illegal in the Kingdom of Great Britain at the time, but the law was apparently not fully operative in Gibraltar, and though polygamy had been forbidden in Judaism since approximately 1.000 CE, this shows that it was not the case in all groups (particularly some Sephardic and Mizrahi groups).
During the sieges of the city by the Spanish and during the Peninsular War, Jewish civilians valiantly helped defend Gibraltar from invaders.
Twentieth Century and today
Most of Gibraltar's Jews evacuated to the United Kingdom during the Second World War, when the Allies used Gibraltar as a base of operations. Some Jews opted to establish in the United Kingdom, but most returned, although there was a slackening in some of their religious practices. The efforts of Rabbi Josef Pacifici, who assumed the Gibraltar rabbinate and took control of Jewish education in Gibraltar, have helped reverse this tendency. In 1984 Rabbi Ron Hassid became the new Chief Rabbi and has been there ever since. Since he arrived he has impacted Gibraltar and much of the surrounding communities in Spain, Mellila and Ceuta.
Several Gibraltarian Jews have served in important positions in the Government there in the 20th century, particularly Sir Joshua Hassan, who served as Chief Minister of Gibraltar for two separate terms before his death. Solomon Levy served in the ceremonial role of Mayor of Gibraltar from 2008 to 2009. The city maintains five Kosher institutions, a Jewish Primary School and two Jewish secondary schools. In 2004, at a celebration of the 300 years since the British takeover, the congregants at the Great Synagogue (Shaar Hashamayim) performed the anthem "God Save the Queen" in Hebrew, the first time this has been done officially.
Demographics
In 1753, when the first census was taken, the Jewish population of Gibraltar was 575 out of about 1,800 civilian inhabitants. This had risen to 863 by 1777. In 1787 the population had fallen to 776. By 1830 the civilian population numbered 17,000, of which 1,300 were "native" Jews and 600 recent Jewish immigrants, and by 1878 the community had reached its numerical peak of 1,533. In 2001, there were 584 Jews (roughly 2% of the total population), of whom 464 were self-described Gibraltarian, 63 were "Other British", 4 were Moroccan and 18 Spanish. Five Jews came from other European Union countries, and 39 did not hail from Gibraltar, the United Kingdom, Morocco, Spain, or any other countries in the European Union. A large number of Gibraltar's Jews are Sephardic, but there are a number of English Jews.
Languages spoken in the Jewish community include English, Spanish, Ladino (spoken by the large Sephardic population) and Arabic (traditionally spoken by some of the population that traces its origins back to Morocco).
Llanito, the vernacular language for the majority of Gibraltarians, has significant Jewish influence. Some 500 words are of Hebrew origin, and the language also has features of influence from Haketia, a Judeo-Spanish language spoken by the Sephardic communities of Northern Morocco and the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.
Sources:
http://www.manfredlehmann.com/sieg287.html
http://www.haruth.com/jw/JewsGibraltar.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3878083.stm
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Gibraltar.html
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