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 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.

We wish you a pleasant visit!

Denis Lévy-Willard, Steve Krief and the editorial team of the Cultural Guide to European Jewry – JGuideEurope