At the end of the 1990s, a team of journalists, historians and lovers of Jewish history, with the support of the Jacques and Jacqueline Lévy-Willard Foundation, undertook to write a cultural guide that would lead the curious traveller to discover an unknown Europe. « The Cultural Guide to European Jewry » was published in 2002 by Editions du Seuil. In 2016, this work, revised and expanded, was reborn in the form of this website thanks to the work of Laura Schwartz, editor-in-chief of the site from 2016 to 2019. Steve Krief is the current editor-in-chief, as of 2019.
Some places are famous and unmissable – such as the ghetto in Venice or the old Jewish quarter in Prague – but the treasures of a Jewish culture that has marked and still marks Europe are absent from the usual websites. At every step, you can now virtually visit the synagogues of Provence or the alleys of small towns in Romania or Ukraine, rediscover the Jewish life of yesteryear in Sarajevo, Istanbul or Sofia, know that at the corner of a street there is often a museum, a temple, a cemetery, a souvenir, an anecdote.
JGuideEurope is divided into large European geographical areas to better tell the story of this past and/or present culture. Of course, we hope that visitors to this site will send us their comments and contributions to make this virtual guide as complete and exhaustive as possible.
JGuideEurope is supported by Fondation Jacques et Jacqueline Lévy-Willard under the aegis of Fondation du Judaïsme français.
We wish you a pleasant visit!
The following journalists and historians wrote the original version of The Cultural Guide to Jewish Europe with the collaboration of Denis Lévy-Willard (2002) : Jean-Yves Camus (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden), Emmanuel Haymann (France), Florence La Bruyère (Hungary), Charles Lesselbaum (Spain, Portugal), Sandra Lumbrose (Ireland), Katinka Mezei (Austria), Alain Navarro (Greece), Elie Nicolas (France -Provence), Edgar Reichmann (Romanie), Luc Rosenzweig (Germany), Marc Sagnol (Belarus, Poland, Ukraine, Russia), Marc Semo (Italy, The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Turkey), Nicolas Shashahani (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovenia), Brigitte Sion (Switzerland), Catherine Taylor (Belgium, Great Britain), Olivia Zemor (The Netherlands).
Correction, and edition of this online guide under the direction of Laura Schwartz (2016-2019): Selim Bonfil (Turkey), Emmanuel Dreyfus (Ukraine, Moldavia, Georgia), Chantal Viotte-Rabinovitch – Jewish Memory Association of Beziers (Beziers), Carme Grau i Oliveras – Museum-treasure of the Sant Estève Church of Olot.
JGuideEurope is regularly updated by our current team.