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, a fortress island opposite Helsinki, was the site of the first Jewish place of worship. According to legal developments, a decree from 1869 and the letter from the Senate from 1876, demobilised soldiers were allowed to work in the civilian sector. The city of Helsinki decided to donate a plot of land to the Jewish community in 1900 in order to build a synagogue. It is located on Malminkatu ...
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The first Jews who settled in Finland were of Russian origin and were soldiers of the czar's army, called cantonists. With its independence in 1917, the country promptly granted civil rights to the Jews. In 1939, when Finland became an ally of the Third Reich against the Soviet Union, Finnish Jews found themselves in the uneasy position of serving in an army allied with the Nazis: a prayer ...
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The Jewish community of Copenhagen has been active since the end of the 17th century. Today, most of Denmark’s 7000 Jews live in Copenhagen. Abraham Salomon of Rausnitz was its first rabbi, appointed in 1687. Six years later, a Jewish cemetery was established in Mollegade. Destroyed by a fire in 1795, no synagogue was active until a liberal one was built in 1833 in Krystalgade. Years ...
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Despite the prohibition against Jews living in Russia, beyond a clearly defined zone, there were a few remarkable exceptions in the eighteenth century, particularly in the capital, Saint Petersburg, where the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia was concentrated. In 1900, Jews in Saint Petersburg already numbered 20385, or 1,4% of the population. This figure would climb to 50000 by 1917 (2%), 95000 ...
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Due to the expulsion of Jews from Russia and their strict confinement within the “residential zone”, they were few Jews in Moscow prior to 1900, which explains the absence of a Jewish quarter in the capital. The 1902 census lists 9048 Jews in Moscow, or well below 1% of the city’s population. The synagogues With columns worthy of a Roman temple, the was built in 1891 in ...
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Until the early twentieth century, the history of Russia's Jews unfolded primarily in territories that no longer belong to the present-day Russian federation (Ukraine, Belarus, Bessarabia, and Lithuania). With a few rare exceptions, Jews were forbidden to settle in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and the city of Central Russia. Of course, Jewish colonies have existed since antiquity on the shores ...
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The modern synagogue is a low building, resembling a large majority of synagogues before the Shoah. The Jewish presence in the city of Tallinn seems to date from at least the 14th century, according to documents found. From 1561 to 1710, when the city was captured by the Swedish army, the settlement of Jews was prohibited in the area. After the Swedish rule, Tallinn was captured by Russia. ...
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The number of active Jewish communities in Latvia is much smaller since the Shoah. All information concerning them is likely to quickly prove obsolete, since demographic trends in the communities leave little doubt about their dying out in the near future. The aliyah toward Israel is likewise becoming increasingly significant. Inquiries can be made at the offices of the . Despite present ...
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Around 9000 Jews live in Riga. Riga is also home to to the only Jewish hospital in the former Soviet Union. The Latvian Society for Jewish Culture is the principal organization of the Jewish community. Today, the Latvian capital remains an important financial and cultural center. The Jewish presence in Riga dates back at least to the 13th century. Expelled in the 14th century, they resettled ...
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Panevezys is Lithuanian for Ponevezh, famous for its yeshiva that its prewar leader, Rav Yosef Kahaneman, reestablished following the war in Bnei Brak, the Orthodox quarter of Tel Aviv. The Ponevezh yeshiva in Israel is today the principal center for the Mitnagdim sect and has given birth to the Israeli political party Degel Hatorah. Rav Eliezer Schach, Degel Hatorah’s leader was, until ...
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Klaipeda is the former German city of Memel, a place where Judaism came under the influence of the modern nineteenth-century Orthodoxy originating in Germany. The city is still home to some 300 Jews.
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Nothing of the Jewish presence in Kaunas remains but the synagogue, whereas before the war there was a yeshiva, a kosher slaughterhouse, and a prison. The birthplace of Emmanuel Levinas, Kaunas was before the Shoah a major center of European Judaism, with a population of 40000 Jews. The large yeshiva of Slobodka was located in a suburban district today called Vilijampole. The Jewish presence ...
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The capital of Vilnius, once known as the “Jerusalem of the east” has few Jewish monuments today. However, in the last few years, the Museum of the Gaon of Vilnius has made significant efforts to promote the city’s Jewish culture and heritage. The Shulhof, the large 3000-seat synagogue built in 1630, was partly destroyed by the Nazis in 1941. The remains of the synagogue ...
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The city’s Jewish cemetery, which dates back to the eighteenth century, was severely damaged during the 1992-95 war, though it has been partly rebuilt since. The city still houses a tiny Jewish community.
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Within the Venetian outer walls of ancient Candia, the old Jewish quarter is found right beside the seafront. Four synagogues once stood in this district, its perimeter today delimited by Venizelou, Makariou, and Giamalki streets. The last, still active at the start of the Second World War, was bombed. The Hotel Xenia has been built upon its ruins. Several neighboring Venetianhouses were ...
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The oldest synagogue in Canea, , lives again after a half century of neglect. Raised from its ruins by Nicholas Stavroulakis, former director and founder of the Jewish Museum of Athens, it was rededicated in October 1999. (It should be noted that its reopening was violently protested by the island’s prefect.) Etz Hayyim appears to have been the former Venetian oratory of Santa ...
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The Jews have a unique and turbulent history on Crete, one of the most important islands in the Mediterranean. Under the Byzantine Empire, Cretan Jews believed the hour of the final redemption had rung: in 430 C.E., a false messiah, the rabbi Moses, promised to lead them all to Jerusalem; they then threw themselves en masse into the raging sea and drowned. Several centuries later, the hand of ...
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In the fourteenth century, a Jewish community settled behind the ramparts of Rhodes erected by the knights of Saint John after their flight from the Holy Land. These Jews had the strange destiny of finding common ground with the Crusaders in their war against the Ottomans, only to be forced by Grand Master Pierre d’Aubusson to convert to Christianity or flee. The waves of expulsion from ...
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Visiting the site in Delos is quite easy throughout the summer, the island being accessible by boat from nearby Mykonos. If one place attests to the presence of a Jewish community in Ancient Greece, it is certainly that of Delos, an arid island of the Cyclades. The existence of Jews here is referred to in the Book of Maccabees, while Flavius Josephus mentions them as well. Too tiny to flex ...
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In the late twelfth century, Jewish traveler Benjamin de Tudela encountered a lone Jew on Corfu. Three centuries later, however, Jews had become so numerous here that the Venetians, then in control of this much-coveted, strategically important Adriatic island, had them confined to ghettos. A local Christian legend, which, strangely, spoke of Judas as a native of Corfu, made Jewish life here ...
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When David Ben Gurion moved to Thessaloníki to learn Turkish in 1910, he was surprised to discover a city like none found in “Eretz Israel”: The Shabbat marked the day of rest here, and even the dockworkers were Jewish. He was advised not to admit he was Ashkenazic (all the procurers were). Jewish and Sephardic, Thessaloníki had been called “Mother of ...
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3,2,1… go! Set off on a marathon walk through time, 2500 years to be precise, to discover the monuments of Athens and its Jewish cultural heritage. Starting with the Panathenaic Stadium. An ancient stadium dating back to 330 BC, it was renovated in 1896 to host the first Olympic Games of the modern era, with 28,400 spectators cheering the athletes. Then, cross over. Either to the right, ...
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Sumptuous and decadent, immense and frenetic, Istanbul is “the world in one city”, as it is often described by Western travelers overwhelmed by the city’s splendor. The skyline of Istanbul is punctuated by hundreds of minarets, majestic onion domes, and bell towers. “An aged hand covered with rings held out toward Europe”, according to Jean Cocteau, the great ...
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The synagogue here has been transformed into an art gallery. Built at the turn of the century following plans of the Italian architect Ricardo Toscani, during the 1960s it was completely remade into an exhibition space for some 2500 works by contemporary Bulgarian painters, as well as for a collection of old icons. A terrorist attack was carried out against Israeli tourists in Burgas in 2012.
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The Zion Synagogue dates from the nineteenth century. It is still active, but only a small minority of 300 to 400 Jewish inhabitants are still practicing. Restored in 2003, the synagogue is adorned with a delightful Venetian-glass chandelier and a richly decorated dome. In the surrounding area, traces of what was once a sizable Jewish quarter can still be found today. This includes Stars of ...
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Some of the richest Sephardic families in Europe made their fortune in the small city of Samokov, located about thirty-seven miles south of Sofia. A branch of the Apollo family, which originated in Vienna, founded a veritable empire here, with ventures in metallurgy, tanning, weaving, banking, and real estate. The beautiful synagogue, today a national historic monument, along with a number of ...
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The first Jews probably settled in Timisoara in the 17th century. Gravestones were found in the city dating from that era. At the end of the conflict between the Austrians and the Turks, a Jewish Community life quickly developed. Both Sephardic and Ashkenazic. Places of worship were created but also cultural establishments as well as schools. Facing regular waves of anti-Semitism, the results ...
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At the northern border of Transylvania lies Sighet Marmatiei, unquestionably the region’s most original and charming little city, where Romanian, Hungarian, Roma and Ruthenian populations all coexist. Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel was born in this Hasidic township. Jews settled in this town, located in the region of Maramures, in the 17th century. The Jewish population grew from ...
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Jewish Bucharest has almost completely disappeared. Of a population estimated at 158000 souls in 1948, there remain only 2000 people today. Spread out across the four corners of the capital, the are doubtlessly too old or in too precarious an economic situation to contemplate emigration. The old Jewish quarter The old Jewish quarter was located near the Unirei (Union) Square on the other side ...
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Jews began settling in Wlodawa in the seventeenth century. By the turn of the twentieth century, they numbered 3670 (66% of the population), then 4200 (67%) in 1921, and 5650 (75%) in 1939. The Germans created a ghetto to which they deported 800 Jews from Kraków and 1000 from Vienna, before exterminating them all in the camp near Sobibór, a mile or two from here in the forest, beside the Bug ...
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