Hastings Jewish Community

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congregations throughout the British Isles and Gibraltar, both past and present.
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Borough of Hastings

The famous Sussex town of Hastings on the English south coast, has a population of some 85,000, and includes the more suburban areas of St. Leonards-on-Sea and Bexhill-on-Sea. Hastings was granted borough status in 1086. In 1888, it was made a county borough and in 1974 it became a local government district within the county of East Sussex.

Hastings Jewish Community

There have been Jewish residents of Hastings, St Leonards-on-Sea and Bexhill-on-Sea since the early nineteenth century, drawn in part to its status as a fashionable health resort, although for much of the time there was no organised Jewish community and the community never built a formal synagogue. There has also been a number of Jewish hotels in the towns.

Short-lived Orthodox congregations were founded in the 1880s and 1920s and in the 1970s a Reform-orientated Jewish society, centred in Bexhill, was established and the community acquired a Jewish cemetery. Other small groups were founded in the twenty-first century.