Ridley Haim Herschell

Ridley Haim Herschell was born in Strzelno, Poland and arrived in Britain sometime in the 1820s/30s, initially settling in Woolwich. From his biography, it can be questioned whether he should be considered Jewish. But he was born Jewish, and is likely to have considered himself Jewish to the end of his days. 

A rabbinical student before he left Poland, by the time he was in Woolwich he would be a ‘lay preacher’, suggesting conversion to Christianity. Throughout the 19th century, Christian missionaries and evangelicals were active in Britain’s ports, seeking to convert new arrivals, and it can be imagined that, with his restless mind, Herschell would be quickly caught up. A devout believer in the restoration of the Jews to Israel as a condition for the coming of the Messiah, he never lost his loyalty, as he would see it, to the Orthodox faith. But he was convinced by the minority-Christian millenarian belief that the restoration of the Jews needed to be accompanied by their acceptance that the Messiah had already lived on Earth, in the form of Jesus Christ.

Herschell’s affiliations across the various Christian divisions shifted over the years, but by the late 1830s he was minister at the Chadwell Street Chapel in Clerkenwell, and then at its successor, the since-demolished Scottish Presbyterian Church in Colebrook Row. His home during this time was in Gibson Square, Barnsbury.

He is remembered today principally as the Founder of the British Society for Propagating the Gospel Among the Jews.  (This was the nonconformist churches’ counterpart to the largely-Anglican London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, but quite separate). He was, however, just as much concerned that mainstream Christians were in peril through their disregard for biblical prophecy, which always remained central to his beliefs and practice.