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Oslo
It was not until the law passed in 1814, prohibiting the entry of Jews into Norway, was revoked in 1851, that Jews could officially settle in Oslo. A small Jewish community was organised and ...
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Norway
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 ...
Location
Göteborg
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. ...
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Uppsala
The large university city of Uppsala does not have a Jewish community, but it does have a Jewish studies department.
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Sweden
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 ...
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Helsinki
, 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 ...
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Finland
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 ...
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Rovno (Rivne)
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 ...
Location
Brody
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 ...
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Saint 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 ...
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Moscow
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 ...
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Russia
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 ...
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Tallinn
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, ...
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Latvia’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 ...
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Riga
Around 9,000 Jews live in Riga. Riga is also home to the only Jewish hospital in the former Soviet Union. The Latvian Society for Jewish Culture is the principal organization of the Jewish ...
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Panevezys
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. ...
Location
Klaipeda
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 ...
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Kaunas
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 ...
Location
Vilnius
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 ...
Location
Brest (Brest-Litovsk)
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 ...
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Iráklion
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 is delimited by ...
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Canea
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 ...
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Crete
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 ...
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Rhodes
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 ...
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Delos
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 ...
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Corfu
In the late 12th 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 ...
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Thessaloníki
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 ...
Location
Athens
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 ...
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Istanbul 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 ...
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Timisoara
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 ...