The terrifying war against Ukraine changes, of course, the function of these pages devoted to the Jewish cultural heritage of that country. Many of the places mentioned were razed to the ground by bombs. While these pages are not intended in the present time for tourism, they may be useful to researchers and students as historical references. References to so many painful histories during the ...
Plus d'infosContenus associés au mot-clé “jewish community”
Odessa
The terrifying war against Ukraine changes, of course, the function of these pages devoted to the Jewish cultural heritage of that country. Many of the places mentioned were razed to the ground by bombs. While these pages are not intended in the present time for tourism, they may be useful to researchers and students as historical references. References to so many painful histories during the ...
Plus d'infosKiev
The terrifying war against Ukraine changes, of course, the function of these pages devoted to the Jewish cultural heritage of that country. Many of the places mentioned were razed to the ground by bombs. While these pages are not intended in the present time for tourism, they may be useful to researchers and students as historical references. References to so many painful histories during the ...
Plus d'infosSaint Petersburg
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 ...
Plus d'infosMoscow
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 ...
Plus d'infosRussia
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 ...
Plus d'infosTallinn
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. ...
Plus d'infosLatvia’s Jewish Cemeteries
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 ...
Plus d'infosRiga
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 ...
Plus d'infosPanevezys
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 ...
Plus d'infosKlaipeda
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.
Plus d'infosKaunas
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 ...
Plus d'infosVilnius
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 ...
Plus d'infosGrodno
Grodno, seat of a Catholic bishopric, was once a major city within the Polish-Lithuanian Union, as evidenced by Farny, the beautiful Baroque Jesuit church that towers over Sovietskaya Square. Jews began settling here in the fourteenth century: they were permitted to live in the town by Grand Duke Witold in 1389. In the nineteenth century, over 60% of the population was Jewish; at 42% in 1931. ...
Plus d'infosStolac
For nearly two centuries, Stolac was the destination for a pilgrimage to the grave of rabbi Moshe Danon. In 1820, Grand rabbi of Sarajevo Moshe Danon and ten other prominent members of the Jewish community were accused of assassinating a local dervish, a Jewish convert to Islam named Ahmed. The pasha of Sarajevo threatened the death penalty unless they handed over a ransom of 500000 groschen, ...
Plus d'infosMostar
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.
Plus d'infosSarajevo and Surrounding Areas
When the grand vizier Syavush Pasha came to Sarajevo in 1581, the local representatives of the Sublime Porte asked him to separate the Jews from the rest of the population, for “they lit too many fires and made too much noise”. Syavush Pasha ordered the construction of communitarian housing for the Jews, with a courtyard and synagogue. The Velika Avlija (Old Temple Synagogue) ...
Plus d'infosNovi Sad
The Jewish community of Voivodina’s capital was, until World War II, one of the most prosperous in all Yugoslavia. Present since the city was founded in the late seventeenth century and 4000 members strong before its extermination, the community was keen on building structures to rival those of other ethnic groups in this majority-Hungarian Catholic city (it belonged to the ...
Plus d'infosIráklion
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 ...
Plus d'infosCanea
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 ...
Plus d'infosCrete
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 ...
Plus d'infosRhodes
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 ...
Plus d'infosDelos
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 ...
Plus d'infosCorfu
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 ...
Plus d'infosThessaloníki
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 Israel” for over ...
Plus d'infosAthens
A Jewish presence has been proven in Athens during the Hellenistic period, just as in Alexandria. It is certain that Paul of Tarsus came here, as elsewhere in Greece, to preach in Athenian synagogues. One of them, dating from the third century C.E., appears to have been identified at the Agora, at the foot of the Acropolis. However, for several centuries afterward there was no single sign of ...
Plus d'infosIstanbul and Surrounding Areas
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 ...
Plus d'infosRuse
Twenty-five hundred members strong before the war, the Jewish community of Ruse, on the banks of the Danube, was reduced to barely 200 people after mass departures to Israel in the late 1940s. Since the fall of Communism, however, the Shalom organization has attempted to revitalize and return the Ashkenazic Synagogue here to service, the last one built in Bulgaria, in 1927. The Sephardic ...
Plus d'infosBurgas
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.
Plus d'infosPlovdiv
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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