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The census ordered in 1341 by Robert, count of Provence, gave the Jewish population of Aix at the times as 1205, representing the 203 families grouped together in the Jewish quarter. In her book Provincia Judaica: Dictionary of historical geography of the Jews in medieval Provence, Danièle Iancu-Agou recalls a text quoted by JS Pitton from Archbishop Peter IV which authorizes the Jews to ...
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The Jewish presence in Marseille dates back at least to the 6th century as is attested by Grégoire de Tours, but probably dates back to the Roman Empire. One of their main commercial activities was to act as an intermediary between Gaul and the Levant. In 576, the Jews of Clermont, victims of the intolerance of Bishop Avitus, took refuge in Marseille, enlarging the Phocaean community. In the ...
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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, ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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”.
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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During the Nazi occupation, this village in the department of Ain was the scene of a raid ordered by Klaus Barbie on 6 April 1944. Forty-four Jewish refugee children and their seven teachers were arrested and deported. Only one survived. (Musée-Mémorial des enfants d’Izieu) exhibits letters and drawings in honor of these victims of Nazi barbarity, who lived in the village for nearly a ...
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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 ...
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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.
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Strasbourg, the regional capital, is also home to the European Parliament, as the flags tell you as soon as you leave the train station. This magnificent city, at the heart of many political, national and religious conflicts over the centuries, offers visitors a wide range of treasures and cultural walks… Jewish history is constantly present here. Is it not said that the rue de la ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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.
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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 ...
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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.
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The Jewish community of Latvia traces its origins to the middle of the fourteenth century. Numbering today some 15000 persons, it developed in the principalities of Kurland and Livonia, territories that have often changed hands. The presence here of Baltic barons contributed to the Germanization of the country and placed the Jews themselves under this cultural influence. The gradual ...
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The Jewish community of Lithuania numbers only some 6000. People It is no more than a shadow of what it once was: until the Shoah, it was a center of the Yiddish-speaking lands. In a sense, everything began here from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries when European Judaism's center of gravity shifted from Germany and France to Poland and Belarus. As a reaction to the pietisitic practices ...
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The Republic of Belarus is a state formed of the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It has retained, however, close ties to Moscow. Historically, Belarus belonged to Lithuania in the fourteenth century, Poland in the fifteenth, and later the Russian Empire in the late eighteenth century. From 1920 to 1939, its western regions (including Grodno and Brest-Litovsk) were integrated within ...
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