The book focuses on the Jewish communities in Cardiff, Swansea and the South Wales valleys in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, looking at their everyday lives and also more dramatic and sensational events such as the Tredegar Riots in 1911 and the "Jewess Abduction Case" of 1867-8. A new introduction by Paul O'Leary considers scholarship on the subject which has been published since the book was first published and also discusses the polarised views about the Tredegar Riots of 1911: were the riots the result of ant-semitism, or was South Wales a philosemitic place, where the Welsh and Jewish communities had much in common?