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An ancient Roman city, Mainz is known for its university, museums and places of worship, its monuments including the Castle of the Electors, its popular festivals… But Mainz is above all known as the birthplace of Johannes Gutenberg (1400-1468), the man who revolutionised printing. Mainz celebrates Gutenberg’s presence and influence in many different ways, including a museum ...
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Like the opera house in the business district, Frankfurt is above all a city of encounters and fruitful exchanges in all fields and between different populations since the Middle Ages, but also a witness to and actor in great violence, as was the case during the Holocaust. From Goethe to the prestigious university that bears his name, from the Main River, which flows alongside museums and ...
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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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Ghent is a city known, like Liège, for its student life but also as an important cultural centre, its port, and its ancient textile activity. The Jewish presence in Ghent seems to date back to the 8th century, according to some sources. The Jews were expelled from the city in 1125 but were allowed to settle again in the following century. In the following century, they were allowed to settle ...
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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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York’s Jewish community was the victim of the bloodiest outbreaks of anti-semitism in the twelfth century. In those days the Jews were well-established alongside the merchant classes, to whom they provided financial services. However, following the death of Henry II, the protector of the Jews, and the coronation of Richard I, “the Lionheart”, anti-Jewish riots struck. The ...
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In recent years, Leeds, one of the main economic centres in England after London and a place with a rich cultural life, has attracted many families, also thanks to a pleasant lifestyle that is relatively safer than in many cities. A new lease of life embodied by the very active MAZCC community centre. The centre brings different generations together around social and educational services and ...
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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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A seaside resort, Antibes is best known for its jazz festival. The Jewish community of Antibes-Juan-les-Pins was created in the 1960s, following the arrival of Jews from North Africa. The was built in 1990 and also houses a cultural centre. In November 2024, around a hundred people gathered at the Rabiac cemetery in Antibes to bury Denise Holstein, a Holocaust survivor who died at the age of ...
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An important village in the Middle Ages -it has a studium papale– Trets had a Jewish community that lived in the present-day rue Paul Bert, known in those days as the carriera judaica or judea. The Jewish quarter in Trets is not unlike that in Gerona, Catalonia. Sadly, there has been no restoration so far. The medieval facade on rue Paul Bert could be a vestige of the synagogue. ...
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The census ordered in 1341 by Robert, count of Provence, gave the Jewish population of Aix at the times as 1205, representing the 203 families grouped together in the Jewish quarter. In her book Provincia Judaica: Dictionary of historical geography of the Jews in medieval Provence, Danièle Iancu-Agou recalls a text quoted by JS Pitton from Archbishop Peter IV that authorizes the Jews to build ...
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