Région
Visitors walking on the street named after Norway's national poet Henrik Wergeland (1808-45) will be reminded that it was Wergeland who was behind the law that allowed Jews to immigrate to this country. Most of Norway's Jews live in Oslo (950 people), with about 100 living in Trondheim. The Norwegian community can pride itself on having given Israel a minister: the great rabbi Michael Melchior, who
Plus d'infosRégion
Jews have lived in Göteborg since 1782. The Conservative (masorti) rite synagogue is located at the same address as the community center. There is also an Orthodox minyan in Göteborg. Before settling in the city of Gothenburg in 1792, Jews were welcomed along with other minorities to the nearby island of Marstrand. Although the first synagogue was built in 1808, the presence of a rabbi did ...
Plus d'infosRégion
The large university city of Uppsala does not have a Jewish community but it does have a Jewish studies department.
Plus d'infosRégion
Sweden's Jewish community is the most important one in Scandinavia, as much in terms of the number of practicing faithful (18000-20000) as culturally. In February 2000, the Swedish capital hosted the International Conference of the Shoah, dedicated to drawing attention to the process of Jewish stolen goods and to the teaching of the genocide.
Plus d'infosRégion
, a fortress island opposite Helsinki, was the site of the first Jewish place of worship. According to legal developments, a decree from 1869 and the letter from the Senate from 1876, demobilised soldiers were allowed to work in the civilian sector. The city of Helsinki decided to donate a plot of land to the Jewish community in 1900 in order to build a synagogue. It is located on Malminkatu ...
Plus d'infosRégion
The first Jews who settled in Finland were of Russian origin and were soldiers of the czar's army, called cantonists. With its independence in 1917, the country promptly granted civil rights to the Jews. In 1939, when Finland became an ally of the Third Reich against the Soviet Union, Finnish Jews found themselves in the uneasy position of serving in an army allied with the Nazis: a prayer ...
Plus d'infosRégion
Scandinavia has not always been divided along its current national borders. When King Christian IV (1588-1648) opened Denmark to the Jews, the country included not only southern Sweden and several cities in northern Germany (Schleswig-Holstein), where the majority of Danish Jews lived, but also a part of the Virgin Islands in the Antilles, where Danish Jews had a central role. In contrast, ...
Plus d'infosRégion
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'infosRégion
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'infosRégion
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'infosRégion
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'infosRégion
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'infosRégion
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'infosRégion
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'infosRégion
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'infosRégion
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'infosRégion
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'infosRégion
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'infosRégion
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'infosRégion
The first city across the Polish border, Brest is located on the right bank of the Bug River. Its name evokes the famous Brest-Litovsk Treaty of April 1918, whereby Trotsky’s Red Army put an end to the war with Germany by ceding to the latter large amounts of Russian territory (the treaty was annulled in November of that same year by the Soviet government). On 22 June 1941, in Brest, ...
Plus d'infosRégion
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'infosRégion
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'infosRégion
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'infosRégion
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'infosRégion
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'infosRégion
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'infosRégion
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 ...
Plus d'infosRégion
3,2,1… go! Set off on a marathon walk through time, 2500 years to be precise, to discover the monuments of Athens and its Jewish cultural heritage. Starting with the Panathenaic Stadium. An ancient stadium dating back to 330 BC, it was renovated in 1896 to host the first Olympic Games of the modern era, with 28,400 spectators cheering the athletes. Then, cross over. Either to the right, ...
Plus d'infosRégion
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'infosRégion
The first Jews probably settled in Timisoara in the 17th century. Gravestones were found in the city dating from that era. At the end of the conflict between the Austrians and the Turks, a Jewish Community life quickly developed. Both Sephardic and Ashkenazic. Places of worship were created but also cultural establishments as well as schools. Facing regular waves of anti-Semitism, the results ...
Plus d'infos