Kehillas Federation
federation of Synagogues: British Jewish organization
Kehillas Federation is a British Jewish organisation with headquarters in Hendon, London. It comprises a network of 19 constituent and seven affiliated communities.
As well as looking after its member synagogues, the Federation has a beis din, a Burial Society and runs a Kosher Food Licensing organisation that issues local kosher catering licences as well as undertaking product certification at home and abroad.
The Federation Beis Din’s dayonim are internationally recognised authorities and are available to discuss halachic matters. As a formal beis din they hear civil cases and deal with matrimonial matters.
The current av beis din (chief rabbi) of the Federation is Rabbi Shraga Feivel Zimmerman.
History
The Federation was first established in 1887 as the Federation of Synagogues, primarily due to the vision and efforts of Samuel Montagu MP (later to become the first Lord Swaythling). Montagu, a prosperous banker who was pious and generous as well as practical, saw a need to unify the numerous small and mostly ill-housed congregations and chevras that had mushroomed in London’s East End following the mass influx of refugees from antisemitic terror in Imperial Russia.
The relationship between the newcomers and the existing Anglicised community was an uncomfortable one; the immigrants suspected the Orthodoxy of the English Jews, while the latter, who lived and worshipped in greater affluence, tended to look down on their less fortunate brethren – who were by now a majority, but with no effective say in community affairs.
Within half a century the pre-eminent Anglo-Jewish Historian Cecil Roth was able to write: "The Federation of Synagogues is ...
The public source identifies “Kehillas Federation” as federation of Synagogues: British Jewish organization. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Kehillas, Federation and federation.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q55611539. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1887.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kehillas Federation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.