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Bologna
Bologna is famous for having been one of Europe’s leading cities in the Middle Ages. Thanks to its large population living within its walls, the wealth of local agriculture, the development ...
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La Chaux-de-Fonds
Founded in 1833, the Jewish community of La Chaux-de-Fonds met in a flat on rue Jaquet-Droz. Then, in 1853, a private house was used as a synagogue. From 1872, a was used in the commune of Les ...
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Frankfurt am Main
Like the opera house in the business district, Frankfurt is above all a city of encounters and fruitful exchanges in all fields and between different populations since the Middle Ages, but also a ...
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Friedberg
The small city of Friedberg possesses the deepest mikveh in Germany: seventy-two steps carved into the basalt lead the visitor to a natural spring situated eighty-two feet below the surface. At ...
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The Rhineland
The oldest vestiges of a Jewish presence in Germany are found in the Rhineland. For a long time, the river constituted the western border of the Roman Empire. In the fortified cities of the ...
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Berlin
Once again the capital of a unified Germany, Berlin today has the largest Jewish community in the country (11 000 people). This is nonetheless far fewer than the some 170 000 Jews who lived here ...
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Liège
Liege is a city known, like Ghent, for its large university population, but also for its cathedral, its waffles, and its film makers, the Dardenne brothers. The Jewish presence in Liege seems to ...
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Charleroi
Charleroi is a city known for having been a very important coal basin, but also as an industrial centre. Since the decline of these industries, the city has invested heavily in cultural ...
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Antwerp
The last real shtetl in western Europe, Antwerp is known for its Orthodox Jews and its diamonds industry. Barely twenty years ago, approximately 80% of Antwerp’s Jewish population used to ...
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Drente-Westerbork
A memorial was erected in 1983 in the former transit and deportation camp in the northeastern Netherlands. It depicts two broken railway tracks, a symbol of the dead trains. The monument was ...
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Bordeaux
For three centuries, the cellars of tumbledown houses in the old town were home to a hidden Jewish community, that of the conversos who came here from Spain after 1474. Used to hiding their faith ...
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Bayonne
On the day of tishah b’ab commemoration of the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, the old synagogue resounds to these words in Spanish: “Hemos perdido Sion pero tambien hemos ...
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Nouvelle-Aquitaine
After many years of English domination, the southwest was returned to France in the fifteenth century, at the end of the Hundred Years War. In an effort to stimulate growth in this ravaged ...
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Narbonne
The (Musée d’Art et d’Histoire) in Narbonne has the oldest known inscription relating to the Jewish presence in France. It is an epitaph for the three children of Paragorus: Justus, ...
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Occitanie
Occitanie is a very rich region geographically, thanks to its proximity to the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean, but it is also culturally rich. It brings together territories with very different ...
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Pézenas
It was around 1298 that the Jews settled in Pézenas, coming from Spain, Portugal and Italy. In the trade of clothes and cattle, they added the activity of the sale of wool and sheets. In 1332, a ...
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Montpellier
The traveler Benjamin of Tudela visited Montpellier in 1165. In his travel diaries, he noted the existence of Batey midrashot kevouot le-Talmud in the city. In addition to these intellectual ...
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Antibes
A seaside resort, Antibes is best known for its jazz festival. The Jewish community of Antibes-Juan-les-Pins was created in the 1960s, following the arrival of Jews from North Africa. The was ...
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Trets
An important village in the Middle Ages -it has a studium papale– Trets had a Jewish community that lived in the present-day rue Paul Bert, known in those days as the carriera judaica or ...
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Aix-en-Provence
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 ...
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Marseille
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 ...
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Arles
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. ...
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Nîmes
The Archaeological Museum (Musée Archéologique) possesses a funerary inscription stating “This is the sepulcher of the venerated sage Isaac”. has copies of three funerary inscriptions ...
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Tarascon
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 ...
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Saint-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 ...
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Cavaillon
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. ...
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Pernes-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 reveal the Jewish presence in this town: ...
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Carpentras
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 ...
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Avignon
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 ...
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Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur
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 ...