Scottish Jews Get Their Own Tartan

The first Scottish Jew is recorded to have come to Edinburgh in 1691--so this is over 300 years in the making:

It is the only Scottish Jewish Tartan approved and registered by the Scottish Tartans Authority.

Initiated by Rabbi Mendel Jacobs - the only Scottish born Rabbi living in Scotland, it's 100% Kosher - being a non wool-linen mix, and as it incorporates many aspects of Scottish-Jewish cultural and religious history, it is the perfect representation of our heritage.

A lot of thought went into the design:

Religious experts and Tartan Authorities worked meticulously to come up with a design that reflected religious values and Scottish history.

The colours, weave, and number of threads have all been picked for their importance in Judaism.

In the tartan design we have blue and white the colours of both the Israeli and Scottish flags with the central gold line representing the gold from the Ark in the Biblical Tabernacle and the many ceremonial vessels. The silver is to represent the silver that adorns the Scroll of the Law and the colour red is for the traditional red Kiddush wine.

There are seven lines in the central motif and three in the flag representations - both numbers of great significance in Judaism.

I looked around a little for the history of the Jewish community in Scotland and apparently Scotland holds a unique distinction in Europe:

Indeed the eminent Jewish-Scottish scholar David Daiches states in his autobiographical Two Worlds: An Edinburgh Jewish Childhood that there are grounds for saying that Scotland is the only European country which has no history of state persecution of Jews.

That same source--Wikipedia--has a section on Scots-Yiddish:

The Scottish literary historian David Daiches describes it in his autobiographical account of his Edinburgh Jewish childhood, Two Worlds: "Recently I received a letter from the son of the man who was stationmaster at one of the small railway stations where the earliest trebblers [Yiddish pronunciation of travellers, i.e. Jewish travelling salesmen] would alight; he told me how, at the very beginning of this century, these Jewish immigrants, not yet knowing any English, would converse with his father, they talking in Yiddish and he in broad Scots, with perfectly adequate mutual intelligibility. Scots-Yiddish as a working language must have been developing rapidly in the years immediately preceding the first World War. It must have been one of the most short-lived languages in the world. I should guess that 1912 to 1914 was the period of its flourishing. The younger generation, who grew up in the 1920s and 1930s, of course did not speak it, though they knew yiddish; and while there is an occasional old man in Edinburgh who speaks it today, one has to seek it out in order to find it, and in another decade it will be gone for ever. ‘Aye man, ich hob’ getrebbelt mit de five o’clock train,’ one trebbler would say to another. ‘Vot time’s yer barmitzvie, laddie?’ I was once asked. ‘Ye’ll hae a drap o’ bamfen (whisky). It’s Dzon Beck. Ye ken: “Nem a schmeck fun Dzon Beck.”’ (‘Take a peg of John Begg’, the advertising slogan of John Begg whisky.)

That must really be something to listen to.

[Hat tip: Rubicon3]

Technorati Tag: Scotland and Scottish Jews.