This facsimile edition has been produced to mark the centenary of the publication of the first Jewish Year Book by Joseph Jacobs in 1896. It includes a new preface and a historical introduction, both of which serve to highlight the significance of this outstanding, historic communal document.

Joseph Jacob's first Jewish Year Book, published by Greenberg and Co. and Simpkin, Marshall and Co., was an instant success, running to a second impression immediately on publication. It was dubbed the 'Hebrew Whitaker' by the national press, acknowledging its importance as an indispensable guide to the composition and organisation of the Jewish community in the British Isles and the Empire at the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.