Switzerland / French-Speaking Switzerland
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The Jewish presence in Lausanne is attested continuously from 1848 onwards, when several families met in a rented room. In 1895, the community had 41 members. In 1909, there were 110 members. It should be noted that the vast majority of Jews did not participate in community life. In 1909, there were 989 people of the Jewish faith in Lausanne. Kosher meat was imported from Evian because of the ...
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Before Jews were able to settle in Geneva, the neighboring city of Carouge (at the time part of the Kingdom of Sardinia) opened its doors to them around 1779. The sole remaining Jewish vestige is the old cemetery, which was restored in 1996. A great spirit of religious tolerance allowed this arrival at the time, while in Geneva the Jews had been expelled since 1490. The acceptance of ...
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Switzerland’s French-speaking population is located in the west, in a region that covers almost a quarter of the country’s surface area. With its charming little towns along the lakes and mountains, home to skiers and festival-goers like the famous Montreux event. The sculptures of Fribourg on its churches, squares linking the streets or bridges linking the mountains. And of ...
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The city of banking and watchmaking… but not only. Geneva is a much more complex city, home to a great university and eminent thinkers for centuries, and it even published one of the first two comic strips in history. It seems that the Jewish presence in Geneva dates from the 13th century, mainly around the in the old town. The Jews were expelled from the city in 1490 and forbidden to ...
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The history of the Jews in Speyer reaches back over 1,000 years. In the Middle Ages, the city of Speyer (formerly Spira), Germany, was home to one of the most significant Jewish communities in the Holy Roman Empire. Its significance is attested to by the frequency of the Ashkenazi Jewish surname Shapiro/Shapira and its variants Szpira/Spiro/Speyer. The community was totally wiped out in 1940 ...
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In Worms, directly administered by Emperor Henry IV, the Jewish community obtained the right to trade by public edict of the emperor as early as 1074. The synagogue of Worms was founded in 1034. Not only the location of worship but also a center for study, the synagogue made Worms the spiritual and cultural center of Judaism during the Middle Ages. Famous rabbis A native of Troyes, the ...
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At the height of the Middle Ages, the Jewish community in Mainz rivaled the communities of Worms and Speyer. Few traces of this community remain. Among several stone tombs preserved in the Jewish cemetery is that of Rabbi Gershom ben Yehuda (c. 960-1028), called Meor ha-Golah (Light of the Exile). A has replaced the old one. It was built in 2010 and is part of the Jewish Community center ...
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The independent city of Frankfurt has welcomed Jews since 1150. However, from 1460 until their emancipation at the end of the seventeenth century, the Jews were confined to Judengasse (alley of the Jews), a ghetto that became quickly overcrowded. In 1720, moneylender Meyer Amschel Rothschild, his wife, Gütele, and their eighteen children moved into one of the houses in the area. Meyer’s ...
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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 the bottom of the staircase, a stone tablet dedicated to the builder of this bath displays the date of its origin in 1260. An octogonal opening in the dome above is the sole source of light and gives ...
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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 frontier such as Colonia Agrippina (Cologne), the Diaspora Jews found favorable conditions in which to exercice their industrial and commercial talents. Development of Rhenish judaism Later, in the Middle ...
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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 just before Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. One can well imagine that the ghosts of history will wander in Berlin for a long time to come, a city that, like Vienna, was a major economic, ...
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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 date back to the Middle Ages. Documents from the 11th century attest to a local religious conflict between a bishop and a Jewish doctor. The case of a priest healed by a Jewish doctor is mentioned in ...
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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 development and is particularly appreciated as a historical centre of comics, with the Marcinellois printer Jean Dupuis creating the magazine Spirou in 1938. The Jewish presence in the city is relatively ...
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Ostend is a seaside town that has been very popular with British holidaymakers for centuries, as James Joyce, for example, testified. But also for the Belgian working class. The Ostend painter James Ensor depicts the characters and landscapes of the city in his work. It was also the birthplace of the Belgian singer Arno. The synagogue of the handsome coastal town of Ostend becomes busy in the ...
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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 make a living from the diamond industry. More than half of the world production of diamonds passed through these few streets near Centraal Station. The diamond centers, which can be visited, also ...
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The monumental Ashkenazic Synagogue in The Hague was sold to the municipality, which put it at the disposal of a congregation of Turkish Muslims. It has since become the Al Aqsa Mosque. The Ashkenazic community in The Hague then acquired a former Protestant church in the Bezuidenhout quarter and transformed it into a . Because the maintenance costs were too expensive, however, the ...
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The Jewish presence in Belfast appears to date back to the mid-19th century, with the arrival of German Jewish merchants. The first synagogue in Belfast was built in 1871 on Great Victoria Street. A second synagogue was built in 1904 on Annesley Street. Daniel Joseph Jaffe, the founder of the community, was honoured with a fountain named after him. His son, Otto Jaffe, was Mayor of Belfast. ...
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Limerick’s small Jewish community (170 people) disappeared in 1904 after the only pogrom in Irish history- a pogrom with zero victims. The small of Kilmurray at Newcastle, County Limerick, has been restored and its six tombstones are preserved.
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The Jewish presence in Cork appears to date back to the 18th century. However, the community was formed mainly at the end of the 19th century, notably with the arrival of Lithuanian Jews. At the beginning of the following century, the community numbered almost 500. Following the decline of this community, the synagogue closed its doors in 2016. A new congregation has recently been ...
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The Merseyside city of Liverpool can proudly claim to have been home to northern England’s largest Jewish community in the nineteenth century. Today, the community centers around Wavertree, the location of the city’s Jewish cultural center at Childwall Road. The beautiful Princes Road Synagogue Liverpool boasts one of Britain’s finest . Consecrated on 3 September 1874, the ...
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With 30,000 Jews, Manchester has the highest Jewish population in Great Britain after London. The Jewish presence in Manchester seems to date from the late 18th century, with many of them coming from Liverpool. Its first synagogue was built at this time, under the leadership of the brothers Lemon and Jacob Nathan. It moved to Garden Street in 1794, then to Ainsworth Court in 1806, to ...
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Oxford’s oldest synagogue was transformed into a tavern, then incorporated into one of the university’s oldest colleges, Christchurch. There is, however, a new synagogue. It was built in 1974, on the site of an older one from 1880, of which only a wall remains.
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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 in Spain, these “new Christians” continued to practice their old religion in secret when they came to France. Bordeaux’s Jewish community began to emerge from the shadows only in ...
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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 perdido. España tierra de consolacion” (We have lost Zion, but we have also lost Spain, land of consolation”). was built in 1837, but its Holy Ark, kept from the earlier place of worship, ...
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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 region, Louis XI offered special privileges to foreigners wishing to settle there. This largesse attracted Portuguese and Spanish Jews oppressed by the Inquisition and religious intolerance in their home ...
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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, aged thirty; Matrona, twenty; and Dulciorella, nine. Absolute proof of the Jewishness of the inscription is given by a seven-branch candelabrum and a short text in Hebrew: “Peace on ...
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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 histories and experiences. You’ll find prehistoric remains in its caves, and monuments from the Roman era such as the Pont du Gard and the Nîmes Arena. While Jewish presence in the region has ...
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The Jewish presence has been attested in Béziers since Roman times, but the golden age of the Jews of Béziers is undoubtedly the classical Middle Ages, when the city was nicknamed the “Little Jerusalem”, both because of the importance of its community and because of the sight that one had from the plain of Orb, resembling Jerusalem. Its rabbinical school was renowned, and Benjamin ...
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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 law imposed on the Jews crossing Pézenas or coming to sell there, a right of “leude” (a grant, or a toll). Jewish families disappeared from the city in 1394, during the expulsion of the ...
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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 activities cited in a Hebrew source, Latin documents relate the presence of Jews in trade between Agde, Narbonne and Montpellier. They had a monopoly on silks and fabrics. Representatives of the Mosaic ...
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