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Selestat Synagogue

Sélestat is an ancient community, which disappeared in the 16th century. It was not reconstituted at the 19th century. The oratory, dating from 1836 and installed at the Poêle des Laboureurs, was replaced by a synagogue, built in 1890. The latter, ransacked by the Nazis, was restored after the war without the original dome. The rabbinate of Sélestat dates from 1866 and replaces that of Muttersholtz.

In the 14th century the community was relatively large, judging by the size of the Jewish quarter. The synagogue was located in an alleyway, which is still visible today, next to the “pharmacie du Soleil” in the “rue des Clefs” (then “Judengasse”) and which connected with the “rue Ste-Barbe” (then “Schmiedgasse”). The name of Rabbi Ahron, to whom people came from Strasbourg to study the sacred texts, and especially that of his son, the famous Rav Schemouel Schlettstadt, who directed the yeshivah (talmudic school) of Strasbourg and is known as a compiler and decision-maker, have been preserved from this century.

The synagogue having been destroyed in 1470 to make way for the former St. Barbe arsenal, the community acquired, through the intermediary of the Magistrate, the former Poële des Laboureurs to establish its new place of worship. This building can still be seen at no. 3 Rue Ste-Barbe (rear part of the Boespflug building). The expression “auf der Judschul” (which previously referred only to the Place Ste-Barbe) was commonly used to designate the future Rue des Juifs, which became Rue Ste-Barbe in 1910.

After several waves of persecutions and expulsions, notably in 1349, during the Black Death, when the Jews of Western Europe were accused of having poisoned the wells, they were definitively expelled from Sélestat around 1650. However, Jewish merchants and showmen were authorized to come and practice their trade at the annual fairs as well as the weekly markets. This situation lasted until the Revolution. In 1622, on the other hand, the Jews of Bergheim, Ribeauvillé, Scherwiller and Dambach founded the present Israelite cemetery in Sélestat. It had to be enlarged several times afterwards. This is where Reisel Sée, whose filial love was immortalized by the moralists of the Revolution, was later buried. In 1890, the architect of the city of Selestat, Alexandre Stamm (1835-1906), designed a new building.

It has a central plan, like many Rhine synagogues, and is in the Romanesque-Byzantine style. It is a beautifully colored building with alternating pink sandstone, light sandstone and brick. The dome on a drum “with oculus” which decorated it was destroyed by the Nazis in 1940 and was not rebuilt. During this restoration, the old ritual bath (Mikveh) from 1836, part of an earlier building, was discovered in the basement.

The Hebrew inscription above the main door means: “This is the door of the Lord. The righteous shall pass through it”.

Image credit:
© Ralph Hammann – Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
I, Olevy, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

The Elie Wiesel Museum

Professor Ellie Wiesel was born and raised in this house until the age of 16, before he and his family, along with the whole Jewish Community of Sighet were deported to Auschwitz between May 16-22, 1944. Today, it is a Memorial to the Jewish Life Cycle of the Pre-Holocaust Sighet Jewish Community. Thousands of visitors are coming from all over the world, including high school students and educators from the Romania and across Europe. The Museum organizes programs and exhibits throughout the year

Marmoutier the Museum

After the fire of the first monastery dating from 589, its reconstruction was undertaken in 724 under the direction of the abbot Maur, who gave it its name “Mauri monasterium”, the monastery of Mauri. The inhabitants are called Maurimonasterians in reference to this name. Located on the Romanesque Road of Alsace, the country of Marmoutier welcomes you in its cultural buildings, the abbey and its archaeological crypt, the SIlbermann organs, the museum of the heritage and the Alsatian Judaism, its craftsmen, its natural and technical heritage. Discovery packages are also available by the day.

Marmoutier is one of the oldest and most important Jewish communities in Alsace: the Jewish presence is attested in writing as early as 1300. At its peak, in 1846, Marmoutier had 497 Jews (out of 1783 inhabitants). As early as 1755, Marmoutier was the seat of a rabbinate (the rabbi was appointed by the abbot of Marmoutier, lord of the Marche de Marmoutier). The rabbinate was abolished in 1910 (the last rabbi, Isaac Lévy, having been appointed in Phalsbourg in 1904). The Museum of Marmoutier reserves an important place to the Jewish community, according to the important role of this community in the history of the town.

The house in which the museum is located, a beautiful half-timbered house built in 1590, was inhabited by Jews from 1680 to 1922. Traces of Judaism can be found in the house: Mezuzot on the door frames, a removable roof on the oriel that housed the Soukka, which has now disappeared, and most of all a Mikvé, a ritual bath, from the 18th century.
It contains an important and beautiful collection of Jewish cult objects, both synagogal (Torah scrolls, curtain of the holy closet) and domestic (accessories for Kiddush, Havdalah, Seder, holidays, circumcision).
In addition, the museum has an important collection of items of Alsatian folk art and traditions.

St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum

The St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum uses the history and lessons of the Holocaust to reject hatred, promote understanding, and inspire change. You can learn about the Holocaust from those who lived it by reading inspirational stories from survivors who immigrated to St. Louis. We hope that our exhibits and programs, plus personal accounts of survivors, deepen understanding of the Holocaust.

Rosheim

At the beginning of the 16th century, in a chaotic Holy Roman Empire due to unending conflicts, wars of religion and peasant revolts, plagued by all kinds of fears, the Jews were targeted with a lot of popular hatred.

It was in this context of violence that, in the small imperial town of Rosheim, in Lower Alsace, a scholar turned pawnbroker, Yossel (1476-1554), rose to defend his persecuted Jewish brothers. He went to meet with great men of his time in order to lift the threat on his co-religionists throughout the Empire. He succeeded in placing the Jews under the direct protection of Charles V. The emperor, listening to their counsel, repeatedly defended them against the terrible decisions of the princes and cities.
Uniquely in the history of the Holy Roman Empire, the German Jews had a representative who was both invested by his brothers and recognized by the princes. Thanks to a safe-conduct from the emperor, the one who was since called “Yossel of Rosheim, commander of the German Jews” was able to travel everywhere, tirelessly defending his brothers in courts and imperial diets, and during public controversies.

The Girona Mikveh

In 2014, the mikveh was identified in the patio of the Museum of Jewish History. The original structure has been preserved even though in later rebuildings it was transformed into a cistern. It was a closed space which could be accessed by a door, leading to a hall, a tiled changing room and the pool. Access was gained by stepping over the threshold, which led to a landing made of stone slabs, and from there people could probably go into the pool through a flight of stairs integrated in the pool, now lost. The water was supplied from a natural source by filtration, and also from the tank situated in the courtyard, which collected rainwater and filled the bath. The function of the mikveh is the spiritual purification through total immersion of the body in the water.

MUHBA El Call Jewish Quarter Museum

The headquarters of the Barcelona History Museum in the Call, inaugurated in March 2015, is located in the middle of the old Jewish quarter, where once stood the house of Jucef Bonhiac, a veil weaver. It is a building of medieval origin where original remains from the 13th and 14th centuries are preserved. The space of the Museum of History of Barcelona
El Call, distributed in three areas, aims to present the history and heritage of the the history and heritage of the Call in a global way. Area I explains the topography of the Call, area II explains the history of the Call and area III shows the cultural legacy of the Call.

Jewish Alsatian Museum

“Artifacts and places recount history better than books.” This sentence welcomes you as you arrive at the Jewish Alsatian Museum, a museum unlike any other. It displays the culture of the Jews of Alsace, evoking day to day life along with their Christian neighbours. As soon as you enter, a Jewish candlestick is lit at the window of a half-timbered house. A narrow-vaulted passage gives access to a “rue des Juifs”. It is along an ascending gallery that one can follow and discover the slow progress “from slavery to freedom” of these Jews, serfs of the Crown until the French Revolution. Elsewhere, a sloping street lined with stores informs the visitor about the social progress of the last century. A turning point, a dark rotunda: the Shoah… The path is lined with mannequins, ceramic models meticulously showing, in three dimensions, scenes of daily life inspired by engravings, costumed dolls, and architectural models. And here, as the rooms go by, these miserable rural people, peddlers or wholesale butchers, living among poor peasants, appear as rich in tradition, in quiet faith, in conviviality, in biblical knowledge, and in hope.

Holocaust Museum

The first exhibit about the Holocaust displayed in Cuba opened December 18 at the Centro Sephardi in Havana. The exhibit, “We Remember – The Holocaust and the Creation of a Living Community,” shines a light on the Cuban Jewish experience of the Holocaust and raises awareness that a small Jewish community makes Cuba its home.

“The opening of this exhibit marks a very important moment for the Cuban Jewish community,” said Mayra Levy, president of the Sephardic Center. “We welcome this exhibit which focuses on the origins of the Cuban Jewish community and the impact of the Holocaust. We also welcome our fellow Cubans and visitors to our island learning more about our community today.”

Sarajevo Haggadah at The National Museum of the Republic

The Sarajevo Haggadah is an illuminated manuscript that contains the illustrated traditional text of the Passover Haggadah which accompanies the Passover Seder. It is one of the oldest Sephardic Haggadahs in the world, originating in Barcelona around 1350. The Haggadah is owned by the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo. Its monetary value is undetermined, but a museum in Spain required that it be insured for $7 million before it could be transported to an exhibition there in 1992.

The Sarajevo Haggadah is handwritten on bleached calfskin and illuminated in copper and gold. It opens with 34 pages of illustrations of key scenes in the Bible from creation through the death of Moses. Its pages are stained with wine, evidence that it was used at many Passover Seders. The Sarajevo Haggadah was submitted by Bosnia and Herzegovina for inclusion in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register and was included in 2017.

Image attribution:
Kleinjp, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons;
Smooth_O, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

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