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In the beautiful synagogue of Ahrida, one of the oldest in Istanbul, the tevah assumes the shape of a caravel symbolizing not only Noah's Ark but also the vessels that in 1492 transported the Jews banished from Spain to the shores of the Ottoman Empire. A royal edict issued in Granada, only recently recaptured from the Arabs, gave the Jews no choice but conversion to Catholicism or exile. ...
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In a medieval miniature, Bulgarian Czarina Sara figures beside her husband, Czar Alexander, a two children, Shishman and Tamara. A Jewish queen, Sara of Turvono was obliged to convert to Christianity, adopting the name Theodora. In the fourteenth century such a union shock no one in Constantinople, though it would have been inconceivable to the leaders of Rome.
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There is little evidence of a Jewish presence on the coats of the Black Sea before the arrival of Roman legions in the early second century C.E. Vestiges, coins, and inscriptions preserved in a museum in Bucharest, however, attest to the existence of Jews in the region throughout the first millennium. Near the end of the thirteenth century, the great voyager Benjamin de Tudela had already ...
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Poland represents the most illustrious and tragic chapter in European Jewish history. For centuries, this country was the most welcoming to Jews fleeing Germany, Spain, and southern Europe; the continent largest Jewish community was born here, enjoying privileges and autonomy granted by the different kings and developing an incredibly rich culture of its own. Ultimately, however, Poland wound ...
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Below the bell tower of Prague's Jewish city hall, there are two clock faces. One displays Roman numerals, and the other Hebrew letters. The hands of the first clock revolve in the normal clockwise direction while those of the second turn counterclockwise, following the customary manner of reading Hebrew right to left. Such clocks are rare, and this is the only one of its kind adorning a ...
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The history of Jews in Slovakia -dating from the sixteenth century under the protection of the Hapsburg- intersects that of their fellow believers in Hungary and the Czech Republic. Jews in these three countries experienced the same vicissitudes of discrimination, expulsions, and, in the seventeenth century, the acquisition of some civil rights. Numerous Jews from neighboring Moravia flocked ...
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At the Jewish Museum of Budapest, a replica of a tombstone dating from the third century bears the image of a menorah. This relic attests to nearly 1700 years of Jewish presence in the Carpathian basin, predating that of the Magyar tribes who broke free from the confines of the Ural Mountains during the ninth century. The modern history of Judaism in Hungary goes all the way back to ...
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Jewish settlers had to wait until the death of Austria's Catholic and very anti-Semitic Archduchess Maria Theresa and the ascension of her her tolerant son, Joseph II, to gain the right to establish communities in northern Croatia, which at the time had been Hapsburg territory for nearly three centuries.
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A Slavic land under Germanic rule for many centuries, Slovenia finally gained independence in 1991. The fate of the Jewish population here depended largely over the years on the good will of its princes. Nonetheless, the Jewish presence in the region goes back to antiquity. Archaeological digs have revealed a tomb engraved with a menorah at the Skocjan site, which likely dates back to the ...
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Portugal became an autonomous kingdom under Henry of Burgundy, a prince of French origin. His son, Alfonso I, was the first king of Portugal (1114-85). The history of its Jewish population differs from that of the Jews on the Iberian Peninsula. Alfonso was aware of the importance of the Jewish communities he had freed from the Muslim yoke and granted them his protection, putting the chief ...
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There are numerous legends surrounding the arrival of the Jews in Spain. They were propagated by Jewish and Christian chroniclers, especially in the sixteenth century. Some say they came in the time of King Solomon, following in the wake of the Phoenician sailors; others that the event was one consequence of their exile from Judaea, as ordered by Nebuchadrezzar.
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Jewish craftsmen and merchants settled in Switzerland's Roman cities between the third and fourth centuries, but the first documents that mention them date only from the thirteenth century. Throughout the following two centuries, Jews were regularly accused of ritualistic crimes on Christian children and poisoning wells.
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At the end of the nineteenth century, an international conference took place sponsored by the Zionist Organisation that was dedicated to the problem of the future national language of the Jewish state. A heated debate was held and the question put to vote: Hebrew won out only by several votes over German to become the national language. As absurd as it might seem, the language of Goethe ...
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The history of the Belgian Jews is similar to that of the Jews of western Europe generally, involving migrations and internal changes as the old communities came under the influence of other traditions.
The Jews came to what is now Belgium in the thirteenth century, settling at Arlon (Aarlen), Brussels, Hasselt, Jodoigne (Geldenaken), Zootleeuw (Leau), Leuven (Louvain), Mechelen (Malines), ...
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Holland has always welcomed political and religious refugees. The first great wave of Jews immigrated to the Netherlands from Spain and Portugal at the end of the sixteenth century. Although nominally present since the twelfth century, the Jews in Holland were able to openly practise their religion for the first time beginning in this later period. The Sephardic Jews were the first to make a ...
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While Ireland is not an obvious destination for those interested in Jewish culture, the island does offer a few surprises. Ireland's Jewish population has never been higher than 8000, and that was in the late 1940s. Today, it is down to under 2000, of which 1500 are in the Republic of Ireland. The last kosher butcher closed shop in May 2001.
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As in the rest of the country, the Scottish capital received virtually no Jews until the 18th century. We find the administrative trace of a request for installation by a certain David Brown in 1691. The first request for the purchase of a tomb by a Jew was that of Herman Lyon, a dentist from Germany who settled in the city in 1788. About 20 families founded a Jewish community in Edinburgh in ...
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Most of Glasgow’s synagogues are in the suburbs, where the majority of the city’s 6,500 Jews now live. The oldest of them, dating from 1879, is in . As in the rest of the country, the first Jews to settle in Glasgow did so mainly between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th. In 1831, there were 47 Jews in Glasgow, most of them from Eastern Europe. From 1833, ...
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The first mention of a Jew in Scotland is in the minutes of a meeting by the Edinburgh Council date 1 September 1665, and it relates to his request to be converted so that he can work in the city. Jewish communities in Scotland date from 1717 in Edinburgh and 1823 in Glasgow.
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Saint John’s Wood, Hampstead, and, above all, Golders Green and Stamford Hill are the heart of London’s Jewish life and have numbers of shops. Amusingly enough, most of the shops selling kosher products are now run by Indians. Opening of the Jewish Museum and the London Museum of Jewish Life The was founded by Cecil Roth, Wilfred Samuel and Alfred Rubens in 1932. It was originally ...
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Of the Jewish presence in the City during the Middle Ages, there remains little more than memories, but it is a pleasure to walk around here. The three streets around the Bank of England -Poultry, Cheapside, and Old Jewry- were home to a community before the expulsion of 1290. Jewry street, near Aldgate Underground station, is where the Jews took refuge during the riots that broke out at the ...
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The Jewish communities of London are highly diverse, in terms both of their rites and origins and of their geographical distribution. The Jewish presence in London is attested from the 11th century. During the reign of William II (1087-1100), who seems to have favoured their arrival, in particular to contribute to the economic development of the region. Among the important works of the time ...
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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.
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The excavations at Ostia, once the great imperial port of ancient Rome, have revealed the remains of an antique synagogue whose columns support capitals adorned with menorot, the traditional seven-arm candelabra of the Jews. Constructed toward the middle of the first century, perhaps even before the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, the synagogue attests to the more than 2000 of Jewish ...
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