Rosh Hashanah this year feels even more solemn and significant than usual, coming so soon after the death of our beloved Queen and the succession of King Charles III.

It is a time of the closing of chapters and the opening of new ones. For us as the Jewish Chronicle — the world’s oldest and proudest Jewish newspaper — this rings particularly true, as we are concluding our 180th anniversary year.

This week, to mark this historic moment, we launch a celebration of the flourishing of Anglo-Jewry over the last 18 decades, in the fields of politics, literature, art, fashion, theatre, food and more.

This unique multi-week series of retrospective essays, covering every dimension of Jewish life in Britain, aims to enhance our sense of rootedness and belonging as we turn the page in the story of our people in this great country.

When the Jewish Chronicle was first printed, on 28 Cheshvan 5602 (1841), Anglo-Jewry was going from strength to strength. That same year, Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, a leading figure in Jewish emancipation, became the first Jew to receive a hereditary title, a baronetcy.

Grand synagogues, such as Singers Hill in Birmingham, were springing up. The movement from the East End to prosperous suburbs was under way (though the waves of Yiddish-speaking refugees from the Russian pogroms were beginning to arrive, and the horrors of the 20th century were to come).

By 1857, patriotic London Jews formed a volunteer rifle corps to bolster the King’s forces in the event of an invasion. The JC described it as “a sight never before seen in Britain, and very rarely if ever since the rising of Bar Cochba”.

What would the Editor of those days have made of the modern state of Israel, with its Hebrew military might and cultural blossoming? The stage for that miracle — coming after the very darkest days of world Jewry — was, of course, also set in this country, with the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

I have been Editor of this paper for almost a year. One of my concerns is to use our journalistic firepower to expose and combat the rise of antisemitic anti-Zionism, recently described by Howard Jacobson as “old poison decanted into new bottles”.

But that is far from the totality of my mission. In the years to come, I hope that this venerable paper will continue to entertain, provoke, instruct and delight as a home for all British Jews from all parts of the religious and political spectrum.

After all, celebrating our culture and people in all their richness is a powerful rebuke to those who would wish us harm.

I hope you enjoy this brilliant collection of essays. Chag Sameach.