The medieval rue des Juifs is the present-day . As in Aix-en-Provence, the Jewish quarter was totally transformed and integrated into the town after the expulsion of the Jews from Arles in 1493. This prefigured the expulsion of all the Provençal Jews in 1500-1501. (Musée de l’Arles Antique) holds two funerary inscriptions. On the first we read: “This is the burial place of Juda, ...
Plus d'infosContenus associés au mot-clé “history”
Nîmes
The Archaeological Museum (Musée Archéologique) possesses a funerary inscription stating “This is the sepulcher of the venerated sage Isaac”. The Museum is sadly closed until further notice. (Bibliothèque Municipale) has copies of three funerary inscriptions (the originals have been lost):”this is the sepulcher of Dame Dolcena, daughter of …”; “This is the ...
Plus d'infosTarascon
The only remaining trace of Tarascon’s Jewish community, which was large in the Middle Ages, is with its gray-fronted houses. Some of the houses have been restored. Not far from the town, near Fontvieille, there is a fine Romanesque chapel, Saint Gabriel, sheltered by a ruined tower with graffiti in Hebrew characters: T(av) T(av) Q(of) N(un) V(av) [4]956, which corresponds to the date ...
Plus d'infosSaint Rémy de Provence
The Jewish cemetery is not far from the Saint Paul de Mausol monastery. Most of the tombstones date from the nineteenth century, although this was also the site of the medieval cemetery. The Jewish presence in Saint-Rémy-de Provence dates from at least the 14th century. A document from 1339 signed by the judge of Tarascon concerning a Jewish butcher’s shop attests to this. Texts ...
Plus d'infosCavaillon
The Jewish presence in Cavaillon goes back to at least the thirteenth century. The Jews lived on rue Hébraïque, which became their obligatory residence in 1453 and has changed very little since. Permission to build a synagogue was granted in 1494, and it was probably on the vestiges of this older building that the new place of worship was built in 1772. On the second floor is the men’s ...
Plus d'infosL’isle sur la Sorgue
The Jewish presence in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue is attested from 1278 onwards and most probably dates from much earlier. Several families lived in the Villefranche district, where the is located. The Jews were then grouped together in quarries. This was the case until the French Revolution. The Jewish quarter of L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue covers an area of 6,000 m², and in the 18th century ...
Plus d'infosPernes Les Fontaines
Pernes-les-Fontaines remained the capital of Comtat Venaissin until Pope John XXII bought back the rights over Carpentras from its bishop. Two elements reveals the Jewish presence in this town: the name Place de la Juiverie and the traditional identification of the large house standing in that square as the old “Jewish baths”.
Plus d'infosCarpentras
Carpentras had a Jewish population when it was yielded to the papacy by the king of France in 1274. In the fourteenth century, the Jewish quarter on rue Fournaque, near the town walls, was home to ninety families. In 1459 it was sacked by rioters and sixty people were killed. The community was forced to move to rue des Muses in the town center, which became rue des Juifs, a carriere closed ...
Plus d'infosAvignon
The first attestation of a Jewish presence in Avignon dates from the fourth century. It is a seal representing a five-branch menorah and bearing the inscription avinionensis. Jewish commercial activity was intense under Avignon’s Popes. The tailor of Gregory XI was a Jew, as was his bookbinder. During the Black Death epidemic in 1348, the community in Avignon was spared popular wrath ...
Plus d'infosProvence
The term Provintçia in the Hebrew sources corresponds roughly to Provence and Languedoc. In the history of France’s Jews, this region is notable for the outstanding figures and works that it produced in the Middle Ages and by the unbroken presence of Jews in Comtat Venaissin for 2000 years. A lamp dating from the first century C.E. found near the oppidum at Orgon and kept in the ...
Plus d'infosLyon
The Jewish community in the historical capital of the Gauls and, for historians, capital of the French Resistance, has now regained an undeniable dynamism. There are many notable sites surrounding the , built in 1864, as well as some excellent kosher restaurants. All in all, they make Lyon a very pleasant stop. Event information is available from the Chief Rabbinate. As in many French ...
Plus d'infosAuvergne-Rhône-Alpes
Jews lived in Roman Lugdunum but disappeared from Lyon because of the expulsions. It was only under the reign of Louis XV that a community was re-created with immigrants from Comtat Venaissin and Alsace. The region is associated primarily with World War II and the French Resistance. The notorious war criminal Klaus Barbie, who was tried in 1986, was the head of the Lyon Gestapo.
Plus d'infosHegenheim
The Jewish presence in Hegenheim seems to date back at least to the 17th century. 14 Jewish families were counted in 1689. Jewish life developed there, the community growing to more than 400 people on the eve of the French Revolution. One of the largest in Alsace at the time, the number of its faithful declined over time. Thus, in 1936, there were only 36 Jews left in Hegenheim. On the ...
Plus d'infosColmar
The Jewish presence in Colmar probably dates from the 13th century. Administrative documents confirm this presence. A synagogue was destroyed in 1279. The community grew, in particular thanks to the arrival of Jews from Rouffach and Mutzig. Thus, in the 14th century, it managed a synagogue, a mikveh, a reception hall and a cemetery. Persecuted during the Black Death, the Jews were readmitted ...
Plus d'infosObernai
Traces of the old Jewish community can still be seen in this charming tourist town. On ruelle des Juifs, an arched doorway with an engraving in Hebrew signals the entrance to the old synagogue, dating to 1454. On rue du Général-Gouraud the voussoir of an arch bears the Hebrew date 5456, corresponding to 1696 C.E. In the porch, note the two blessings hands carved in stone with the inscription ...
Plus d'infosRosenwiller
The Jewish presence in Rosenwiller dates back at least to the 14th century, a writing by Charles IV, mentioning the Jewish cemetery. A letter dealing with a dispute with a certain Haym de Rosenwlller, addressed to the Strasbourg Magistrate in 1550, was also found. In 1727 the Jews, who had been burying their dead here for nearly four centuries, were granted permission to build a wooden fence ...
Plus d'infosBischheim
In this suburb of Strasbourg one can see a fine eighteenth-century . A room dedicated to Davis Sintzheim (the first Grand Rabbi of France and director of the Talmudic school in Bischheim between 1786 and 1792) retraces the history of the Jewish community and houses temporary exhibitions. The Jewish presence in Bischheim seems to be very old. Many Jews who worked during the day in Strasbourg ...
Plus d'infosStrasbourg
Jewish history is constantly present here. Is it not said that the rue de la Nuée-Bleue owes its name to the cloud that preceded the Jews expelled from the city in 1349, and that the rue Brûlée evokes the 2000 Jews burned alive that same year for refusing baptism? The Jewish presence in Strasbourg has been attested to since the 12th century and, according to some researchers, is even older. ...
Plus d'infosMarmoutier
This small town lying in the shadow of an old abbey once had a very active community. You can still see the birthplaces of its two famous Jewish sons: the painter , who was born here in 1843 and died in Algiers in 1918 and whose work bore witness to Alsace’s rural communities; and , born in 1860, who died in Boulogne-sur-Seine in 1940. , built in 1822 and now unused, can still be ...
Plus d'infosBouxwiller
The Jewish presence in Bouxwiller seems to date from the 14th century. The princes of Hanau-Lichtenberg adopted Protestantism and were open-minded towards Judaism and its presence during the Reformation, especially in their capital Bouxwiller. They authorized a yeshiva founded by the patron Seligmann Puttlingen and directed by the Chief Rabbi Wolf bar Jacob. Thus, the number of Jewish ...
Plus d'infosPfaffenhoffen
The Jewish presence in Pfaffenhoffen probably dates from the beginning of the 14th century. In 1683 the first synagogue in Pfaffenhoffen was built. However, it was destroyed shortly afterwards. This did not prevent the Jewish community from growing from three families at the turn of the 18th century to sixteen on the eve of the French Revolution. Following the three major wars and the rural ...
Plus d'infosAlsace
Alsace is rich in Jewish history. In the village of Schirrhoffen, for example, in around 1850, the population of 650 included some 450 Jews. Today, there are over 200 specific sites (synagogues, ritual baths, cemeteries). Unfortunately, though, there are many that visitors cannot see because they are closed, abandoned, or located on private property. Thus, while the small town of (in ...
Plus d'infosCaen and the rest of the region
Traveling rabbis served the small local communities, made up of several or more families (some ten at Evreux and Lisieux, around two hundred at Le Havre). The only sizable community structure, a small , was built by the Jews themselves after the liberation of France.
Plus d'infosRouen
In medieval times there was an intense intellectual life around the synagogue’s Talmudic school in what was called “Le Clos aux Juifs” (the Jews’ Enclosure). Contrary to what its name suggests, the enclosure in question was never a closed space. There were Jews living elsewhere in the town and Christians living in the Clos. All this disappeared in 1306, when the ...
Plus d'infosNormandy
Jewish life in Normandy was focused around Caen and Rouen. The Jewish community lives in the region since the Roman empire until their expulsion in 1182. During the middle-ages, Normandy was the region of France with the largest Jewish community. Their installation in London was favored by William the Conqueror. Rouen was an important center for judaism and Caen had a synagogue until 1306.
Plus d'infosEstonia
The Estonian Jewish community is the smallest of the Baltic states, and historically, the one that played the least important role in Yiddishland before the Shoah. Indeed, the community never counted more than 4500 members. Although present in Estonia since the fourteenth century, the Jews did not assume a permanent residence in Estonian territory until after 1865, when the czar abolished the ...
Plus d'infosBrussels
Brussels, the capital of the European institutions, a celebratory place appreciated by tourists, but also a city immortalised by the numerous comic strips born there, remains an amazing city. The cohabitation of a magnificent old town, office towers, and numerous bars where one finds the warm Belgian spirit. But also a worrying radicalism and its drifts, as illustrated by the terrorist attack ...
Plus d'infosEngland
There is no historical record of organised Jewish communities in the British Isles before the Norman invasion of 1066, when King William encouraged Jews -mainly merchants and craftsmen- to follow him. Those who did came mainly from France (Rouen) but also from Germany, Italy and Spain.
Plus d'infosNorthern Paris
“Here is buried the body of Sieur Salomon de Perpignan, one of the founders of the Free Royal Drawing School established in the year 1767 of the glorious reign of Louis XV in the city of Paris…Died 22 February 1781”. These are the words on one of the oldest tomb in Paris’s Jewish cemetery. They give an idea of the social importance acquired by the ...
Plus d'infosThe Opera Quarter
In addition to its architecture and activities, the (or Palais Garnier) is notable for its extraordinary ceiling painted by Marc Chagall in 1964. Not far from here, in a room at Hôtel de Castille (37 rue Cambon), Theodor Herzl wrote The Jewish State. This was the founding work of political Zionism, which bore fruit some fifty years later in the proclamation of the State of Israel. is the ...
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