The Bikur Ḥolim (Visiting the Sick) and Gemilut Ḥasadim (Giving of Loving-Kindness) Society of London

Jewish tradition considers visiting the sick, preparing a body for burial, and burying the dead to be the greatest forms of kindness. Jewish communities throughout the diaspora established charitable societies to fulfill these functions. Inspired by other Sephardic communities, the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community in London founded, in 1665, the Bikur Ḥolim (Visiting the Sick) and Gemilut Ḥasadim (Giving of Loving-Kindness) Society, the community’s first charitable organization. Weekly donations were collected from the community, supplemented from the community’s general fund as necessary. The head of the society was responsible for its cemetery and burials. The society retained a doctor to attend the poor and a cantor to recite prayers for the sick, dying, and mourners. Provisions were also made for the burial of New Christians who had not fully returned to Judaism: uncircumcised men (and their families) could be buried in the cemetery with special permission from six elders. The society subsequently lapsed, though attempts were made to revive it in the last decades of the seventeenth century.