Amongst a lot of different themes, Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe discusses the controversial subject of racial prejudice in the form of two Jewish characters that are easily not remembered, but who play a very important role in the book. These characters are the Jew Isaac of York and his daughter Rebecca. This thesis investigates how Isaac and Rebecca of York fit in the cultural context of pre-World War Two Britain and how Scott's British readers handled Jewish characters portrayed as good and pure people. It attempts to establish whether Isaac and Rebecca of York had become anachronisms or if they represented a stable Jewish identity in pre-World War Two Britain.