520 Diasporas & Communities(31)
Sephardic, Ashkenazi, Mizrahi… Which branch do you come from? Each community, linked to its places and its texts.
A community is a people in miniature: families gathered in one place, with their institutions, their customs and their own destiny. The Great Books of communities recount these wholes across the diasporas — their founding, their golden age, their trials and their legacy. From Toledo to Salonica, from Baghdad to Livorno, each community has woven a singular thread of collective memory.
Les Juifs de Béja (Tunisie) · Afrique du Nord
Béja, in the agricultural region of northern Tunisia, sheltered a Jewish community active in the grain trade and peddling serving the hinterland. Of local Sephardic tradition, its members were organized around their synagogues and communal institutions. Under the French Protectorate, they integrated partially into modern economic life and benefited from access to education. After independence, the community emptied in the mid-twentieth century, its members emigrating primarily to France and Israel.
Les Juifs de Béjaïa (Bougie) · Afrique du Nord
Community of the Kabylie maritime port, flourishing in the Middle Ages under the Hammadides and then the Hafsides.
Les Juifs de Belgrade · Balkans
Belgrade, under Ottoman domination, was home to a Sephardic community established after the Iberian expulsion, speaking Judeo-Spanish and organized around its lower-city neighborhood (Dorćol). In the nineteenth century, after Serbian autonomy and then independence, Ashkenazim from Central Europe joined them, and the Jews gradually obtained civic equality. The community, mercantile and artisanal, had both Sephardic and Ashkenazi synagogues as well as communal institutions. After the German occupation of April 1941, the Jews of Belgrade were among the first in Europe subjected to systematic massacres, perpetrated by the Wehrmacht and the SS with the assistance of local collaborators, and virtually all were exterminated between 1941 and 1942. A small community reconstituted itself after the war.
Les Juifs de Beregszász (Berehove) · Europe centrale
Subcarpathian Ruthenian community with strong Hasidic presence, prosperous before the Shoah.
Les Juifs de Berlin · Europe centrale
Largest Jewish community in Germany, center of the Haskalah and Wissenschaft des Judentums, annihilated under Nazism.
Les Juifs de Beyrouth · Proche-Orient
Community concentrated in the Wadi Abou Jamil neighborhood, which became the main Jewish center in Lebanon during the 20th century.
Les Juifs de Béziers · Europe occidentale
Medieval Languedoc Jewish community, active until the expulsions from the kingdom of France in the 14th century.
Les Juifs de Białystok · Europe orientale
Białystok, a textile industrial center in eastern Poland, was home to a large and dynamic Jewish community that constituted a large share of the urban population. An important center of the Jewish labor movement, notably the Bund, it also developed Zionist currents, Yiddish and Hebrew schools, and a dense associative life, its members working in weaving, crafts, and commerce. The city was the birthplace of Dr. Ludwik Zamenhof, creator of Esperanto. Under Nazi occupation, the community was almost entirely annihilated: the ghetto, site of an armed uprising in August 1943, was liquidated and its inhabitants deported to Treblinka and other camps.
Les Juifs de Biskra · Afrique du Nord
Community of the Ziban oasis, at the gates of the Algerian Sahara.
Les Juifs de Bistrița (Beszterce) · Europe centrale
Northern Transylvanian community, active in commerce and Orthodox religious life.
Les Juifs de Bizerte · Afrique du Nord
Community of the northern Tunisian port, mixing indigenous Twansa and Grana of Livornese origin.
Les Juifs de Blida · Afrique du Nord
Established in Blida, on the Mitidja plain, Jews formed a community of merchants, craftsmen, and small manufacturers integrated into the economic life of this Algerian city. The Crémieux Decree of 1870 conferred French citizenship upon them, promoting their schooling and participation in modern urban life. Under Vichy, they suffered the temporary abrogation of this status and antisemitic measures. Like all Algerian Jewry, the community of Blida left the country at independence in 1962, primarily for France.
Les Juifs de Bogotá (Colombie) · Amérique du Sud
The Jewish community of Colombia, concentrated in Bogotá as well as Barranquilla, Cali and Medellín, was formed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through the immigration of Sephardim from the Levant and North Africa and Ashkenazim from Eastern and Central Europe, some fleeing the persecutions of the 1930s. Established in trade, import-export and industry, its members integrated into the country's economic life. The community organized itself into distinct congregations reflecting its origins and built active communal and educational institutions. Remaining small in size, it continues to be a structured, predominantly urban community.
Les Juifs de Bologne · Europe occidentale
Community of the Papal States, prosperous in the Renaissance then expelled in 1569 during the papacy's anti-Jewish policies.
Les Juifs de Bombay—Bene Israël · Asie du Sud
The Bene Israel, distinct from the Baghdadi community established in Bombay in the nineteenth century, constitute one of the oldest components of Indian Judaism and claim a very ancient presence on the Konkan coast, south of Bombay. Long a village-dwelling community engaged notably in oil-pressing, they preserved certain Jewish observances while integrating into the local environment, and drew closer to normative Judaism through contact with the Jews of Cochin and then the Baghdadis, adopting Sephardic customs. During the British colonial era, many migrated to Bombay, where they distinguished themselves in the administration, the army and the professions, and built synagogues and institutions. After 1948, the great majority emigrated to Israel, leaving only a residual community.
Les Juifs de Bone (Annaba) · Afrique du Nord
Bône (today Annaba), in eastern Algeria, was home to an ancient Jewish community that played a notable commercial role under the Ottoman regency and then under French rule. The Crémieux Decree of 1870 granted French citizenship to the great majority of the Jews of Algeria, accelerating their Frenchification, their schooling, and their entry into commerce and the liberal professions. Under the Vichy regime, this citizenship was stripped from them and antisemitic measures were applied before being repealed. Like all the Jews of Algeria, those of Bône left the country en masse at the time of independence in 1962, settling mainly in France.
Les Juifs de Bonn · Europe occidentale
Medieval Rhenish community present along the Middle Rhine, with a Moorish-style synagogue in the 19th century.
Les Juifs de Bordeaux · Europe occidentale
Bordeaux was one of the first Sephardic communities tolerated in France, formed from the sixteenth century onward by 'New Christians' of Iberian origin, Marranos who gradually and openly returned to Judaism. Merchants and traders, its members played an important role in Atlantic and colonial commerce, and the community obtained letters patent recognizing its status. At the time of the French Revolution, the Sephardic Jews of the Southwest were among the first to be granted full citizenship, before the Ashkenazim of the East. Bordeaux subsequently maintained an established community, integrated into the life of the city.
Les Juifs de Boston · Amérique du Nord
Community developed by East European immigration around the West End and later Brookline and Newton.
Les Juifs de Bratislava (Pressbourg) · Europe centrale
Pressburg (Bratislava), long the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary under the Habsburgs, was one of the great centers of Ashkenazic Talmudic scholarship, marked by the yeshivah led in the early nineteenth century by Moses Sofer, known as the Hatam Sofer, a major figure in the defense of Orthodoxy against reforms. The community, anchored in an ancient Jewish quarter, was a stronghold of Central European Orthodoxy and retained considerable religious weight. In the twentieth century, after the creation of Czechoslovakia, it participated in modern communal life. Under the collaborationist Slovak State, from 1942 onward, Jews were deported to the Nazi extermination camps; the community was decimated, and only a minority survived.
Les Juifs de Breslau (Wrocław) · Europe centrale
Major center of Silesia, seat of the reformist rabbinical seminary of Frankel and of Wissenschaft des Judentums.
Les Juifs de Breslov (Bratslav) · Europe orientale
City in Podolia that gave its name to the Breslov Hasidism founded by Rabbi Nahman.
Les Juifs de Brest-Litovsk (Brisk) · Europe orientale
Brest (Brisk in Yiddish), a border city between Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus, was one of the oldest and most prestigious centers of Talmudic scholarship in Eastern Europe. It is associated with the Soloveitchik rabbinical dynasty and the "Brisk method," an analytical approach to the Talmud that lastingly shaped Ashkenazi rabbinical study. Its Jews, long a majority in the city, were merchants, artisans, and scholars, and the community possessed numerous synagogues and institutions of study. Under German occupation, the ghetto was established and then liquidated, and virtually the entire Jewish population was massacred in 1941–1942.
Les Juifs de Brno (Brünn) · Europe centrale
Brno (Brünn), the metropolis of Moravia, welcomed after the lifting of residence restrictions in the nineteenth century a largely German-speaking Ashkenazic community, integrated into the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie of this great textile city. The community established modern institutions, synagogues, and schools, and participated in the economic and cultural life of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and then of Czechoslovakia. Under German occupation, from 1939 onward, its members were persecuted and then deported, many passing through the Theresienstadt ghetto before being murdered in the extermination camps. After 1945, only a reduced community was reconstituted.
Les Juifs de Brody · Europe orientale
Important commercial and religious center of Galicia, cradle of the Haskalah and crossroads between Empires.
Les Juifs de Bruxelles · Europe occidentale
Brussels first attracted merchants of Iberian origin in the early modern period, then, especially from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ashkenazi immigrants from eastern Europe fleeing poverty and persecution. The community, active in commerce, crafts, and trades, established synagogues and institutions, and Belgium recognized the Israelite faith among the officially organized religions. During the Second World War, a significant proportion of Belgium's Jews was deported from the Malines assembly camp, but many were also saved by networks of resistance and rescue. After the war, the community reconstituted itself, with Brussels and Antwerp remaining its two major centers.
Les Juifs de Bucarest · Europe orientale
Bucharest, the capital of Romania, was home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the Balkans, composed of an older Sephardic nucleus and a substantial Ashkenazi population that arrived mainly in the nineteenth century. Very active in commerce, crafts, the press, and cultural life, it had numerous synagogues, schools, and institutions, and was the scene of struggles for emancipation, long denied. During the Second World War, under the Antonescu regime, Jews suffered persecution, spoliation, and a pogrom in Bucharest, even though the interior of the country was not subjected to systematic deportation. Under the communist regime, a large part of the community emigrated to Israel, sometimes through agreements negotiated between the State of Israel and the Romanian government.
Les Juifs de Buenos Aires · Amérique du Sud
Largest Jewish community in Latin America, formed by Ashkenazi and Sephardic immigrants around the Once neighborhood.
Les Juifs de Burgas · Balkans
Sephardic community of the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, formed by modern port development.
Les Juifs de Bursa · Anatolie
Bursa, a former Ottoman capital, had a Jewish presence dating back to the Byzantine era, reinforced at the end of the fifteenth century by the arrival of Sephardic refugees expelled from the Iberian Peninsula. Jews were active there in commerce and crafts, particularly in silk and textiles for which the city was a renowned center. The community, organized around its synagogues, existed within the tolerant framework offered by the Ottoman Empire to Jews. In the twentieth century, it declined through emigration, its members moving primarily to Istanbul and Israel.
Les Juifs de Çanakkale (Dardanelles) · Proche-Orient
Ottoman Sephardic community of the Dardanelles Strait, trading port on the Aegean Sea.
Les Juifs de Caracas (Venezuela) · Amérique du Sud
The Jewish presence in Venezuela dates back to the settlement of Sephardim from Curaçao in Coro, but it was Caracas that became in the twentieth century the principal center of a community that was both Sephardic and Ashkenazi, prosperous and well organized. Active in commerce, industry and the liberal professions, the community built synagogues, schools, clubs and social and Zionist institutions, forming one of the most structured communities in South America. The political and economic instability of the country in the early twenty-first century led to the departure of a large portion of its members to the United States, Israel, Panama and other countries, greatly reducing its numbers.
Les Juifs de Carei (Nagykároly) · Europe centrale
Hasidic community in northern Transylvania, linked to the Satmar current and local rabbinate.
Les Juifs de Casablanca (Dar el-Beïda) · Afrique du Nord
Community of the great Atlantic Moroccan port, which became the most numerous in the country during the 20th century through rural and urban exodus.
Les Juifs de Casale Monferrato · Europe occidentale
Piedmontese community of Montferrat known for its richly decorated baroque synagogue.
Les Juifs de Cassel (Kassel) · Europe centrale
Hessian community, seat of the Israelite consistory of the ephemeral Kingdom of Westphalia under Jérôme Bonaparte.
Les Juifs de Chalcis (Khalkída) · Grèce
Chalcis (Chalkida), in Euboea, is home to one of the oldest Romaniote communities in Greece, its Jewish presence dating back to Antiquity and mentioned in ancient sources. The community, of Romaniote tradition, maintained its own religious life and a synagogue, and always remained modest in size. During the German occupation of Greece in the Second World War, its members were targeted by the deportations; some managed to hide with the help of the Greek population and Resistance. A Jewish presence was maintained there after the war, and a synagogue as well as a cemetery still attest to its antiquity.
Les Juifs de Charleston (Caroline du Sud) · Amérique du Nord
Charleston, in South Carolina, was one of the earliest and most important Jewish communities in North America, founded by Sephardim in the colonial era and later joined by Ashkenazim. Thanks to a tolerant colonial charter, the Jews there enjoyed early religious freedom and integrated into the commerce and life of the city. Charleston was a cradle of Reform Judaism in America, a reform movement having emerged there in the first half of the nineteenth century within the congregation Beth Elohim. Long one of the largest Jewish communities in the country, it remains a major historical center of American Judaism.
Les Juifs de Chełm · Europe centrale
Old community of eastern Poland, famous in Jewish folklore for its « sages of Chełm ».
Les Juifs de Chicago · Amérique du Nord
Community formed by German and then East European immigrants, concentrated around Maxwell Street and later northern neighborhoods.
Les Juifs de Chios · Méditerranée / Égée
The island of Chios, in the Aegean Sea, had an ancient Jewish presence, attested in the Byzantine period and then under Genoese and Ottoman rule. The community, of Romaniote tradition and later influenced by the Sephardic influx, lived by trade on this island renowned for its productions, notably mastic. It always remained small in size. Over the centuries and through political upheavals, it was gradually dispersed or assimilated, leaving only a residual presence in the modern and contemporary eras.
Les Juifs de Chișinău (Kichinev) · Europe orientale
Capital of Bessarabia; the Easter pogrom of 1903 sparked international emotion and marked modern Jewish history.
Les Juifs de Cincinnati · Amérique du Nord
Cincinnati, the great Ohio city on the river of the same name, became in the nineteenth century a major center of American Judaism, particularly of the Reform movement, driven by a significant immigration of German-speaking Jews. The city hosted the founding of Hebrew Union College in 1875, the first enduring rabbinical seminary in the United States and a great center of Reform Jewish training, closely linked to the work of Isaac Mayer Wise. The Jewish community, prosperous and integrated, contributed greatly to the economic, cultural, and religious life of the city. Cincinnati thus played a structuring role in shaping modern American Judaism.
Les Juifs de Cleveland · Amérique du Nord
Cleveland, a major industrial center in Ohio, first attracted German-speaking Jews in the mid-nineteenth century, then substantial waves of Ashkenazi immigrants from Eastern Europe from the end of the century onward. Established in commerce, industry and the professions, its members formed a large and active community. The community developed a dense network of religious, educational, social and philanthropic institutions, covering the different currents of Judaism. As in other industrial cities of the Northeast, its population moved in the twentieth century from immigrant neighborhoods to the suburbs. Cleveland remains an important Jewish community in the Midwest.
Les Juifs de Cluj (Kolozsvár) · Europe orientale
Cluj, the principal city of Transylvania, was home from the eighteenth century onward to an Ashkenazi Jewish community that grew rapidly following emancipation granted by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Deeply divided among Orthodox, Neolog (Reform), and status quo currents, it developed synagogues, schools, and a Jewish press in Hungarian and German, with members active in commerce, the liberal professions, and industry. After the annexation of northern Transylvania by Hungary in 1940, its Jews were confined to a ghetto and then deported to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944, where the vast majority perished. Survivors briefly reconstituted a community after the war before most emigrated to Israel and the West under the Romanian communist regime.
Les Juifs de Coblence (Koblenz) · Europe occidentale
Medieval Rhenish community at the confluence of the Rhine and Moselle, attested since the 11th century.
Les Juifs de Cobourg (Coburg) · Europe centrale
Franconian community of Bavarian Landjudentum, marked by medieval expulsions and modern renewal.
Les Juifs de Cologne (Köln) · Europe occidentale
Oldest attested Jewish community north of the Alps, documented presence as early as 321 under the Roman Empire.
Les Juifs de Copenhague · Europe du Nord
The Jewish community of Copenhagen was founded in the seventeenth century by Sephardim, later joined by Ashkenazim, and benefited from increasing tolerance in Enlightenment Denmark, until full emancipation in the early nineteenth century. Well integrated into Danish society, its members were present in commerce, finance, the liberal professions, and cultural life, and the city had a grand synagogue and communal institutions. In October 1943, faced with the German occupier's deportation plan, almost all Danish Jews were saved through a maritime evacuation to Sweden, organized with the assistance of the population. After the war, the community reconstituted itself and remains active.
Les Juifs de Cordoue · Europe occidentale
Flourishing Andalusian community under the Umayyad caliphate, homeland of Maimonides, declined after Almohad persecutions.
Les Juifs de Coro (Venezuela) · Amérique du Sud
Coro, a town in northwestern Venezuela, welcomed in the early nineteenth century Sephardic Jews from Curaçao, who formed the first official Jewish community in the country. Active merchants in Caribbean trade, they integrated into the life of the city while periodically enduring the hostility of part of the population, which at times provoked their departure. The community left a lasting heritage, notably the Jewish cemetery of Coro, one of the oldest still preserved in South America. The Jewish presence there subsequently declined, as Caracas became the center of Venezuelan Judaism.
Les Juifs de Costa Rica · Amérique centrale
The Jewish community of Costa Rica formed mainly in the first half of the twentieth century, from Ashkenazi immigrants from Eastern Europe, notably from Poland, fleeing poverty, persecution and the rise of Nazism. Concentrated in San José, these immigrants often began as peddlers before making a place for themselves in commerce and industry. The community built a structured institutional life, including a synagogue, school and communal organizations, and was characterized by strong internal cohesion. Remaining modest in size, it continues today to be an organized and active community.
Les Juifs de Daugavpils (Dvinsk) · Europe orientale
Major community of eastern Latvia, seat of Rabbi Meir Simcha and the Dvinsk yeshiva.
Les Juifs de Debdou · Afrique du Nord
Debdou, in the eastern Moroccan Oriental region, sheltered a singular Jewish community, largely founded by families of Iberian origin who settled there following the persecutions of the late Middle Ages. Relatively isolated, it long preserved Sephardic traditions and a pronounced family cohesion, its members being craftsmen and merchants. Organized around its synagogues and scholars, it maintained its own religious life. During the twentieth century, the community dispersed to the major Moroccan cities and to Israel.
Les Juifs de Debrecen · Europe centrale
Important community in northeastern Hungary, marked by the Neologue current and expansion in the 19th century.
Les Juifs de Dej (Dés) · Europe centrale
Hasidic community in Transylvania, seat of a dynasty and important regional center.
Les Juifs de Delhi · Asie du Sud
The Jewish presence in Delhi is recent and always remained limited, formed mainly by Bene Israel and Baghdadis from Bombay and Calcutta, to whom expatriates and diplomats were added in the twentieth century. Unlike the ancient communities of the western coast or Cochin, Delhi never housed a large, historically rooted Jewish community. Communal life there remained modest and largely informal. The Jewish presence in the Indian capital remains marginal today.
Les Juifs de Demnate · Afrique du Nord
Community of the foothills of the High Atlas, one of the oldest rural mellahs in the Marrakech region.
Les Juifs de Didymotique (Dimotika) · Balkans
Romaniote then Sephardic community of Greek Thrace, endowed with a remarkable wooden synagogue.
Les Juifs de Diyarbakir · Proche-Orient / Anatolie
Diyarbakır, in southeastern Anatolia, sheltered an ancient Jewish community, partly Judeo-Aramaic-speaking, neighboring the Kurdish, Armenian, and Syriac populations of the region. Its members were merchants and craftsmen, organized around their synagogues and religious traditions. During the twentieth century, in a context of regional upheaval and emigration, the community declined sharply. Its members moved largely to Istanbul and then to Israel.
Les Juifs de Dnipro (Iekaterinoslav) · Europe orientale
Major industrial center; the father of the Rabbi of Lubavitch served as rabbi there before the Revolution.
Les Juifs de Drama (Macédoine) · Balkans
Drama, in Greek Eastern Macedonia, was home to a small Sephardic community of Judeo-Spanish speech, whose members worked mainly in the tobacco and cotton trade that was the source of the region's wealth. Organized around its synagogue, it formed part of the network of Sephardic communities of northern Greece. Under Bulgarian occupation during the Second World War, the community was deported in 1943 and exterminated in the Nazi camps, leaving practically no survivors.
Les Juifs de Dresde · Europe centrale
Community of the Saxon capital, with a synagogue designed by Gottfried Semper, destroyed under Nazism.
Les Juifs de Dublin · Europe occidentale
The Jewish community of Dublin, long modest in size, developed mainly in the late nineteenth century with the arrival of Ashkenazi immigrants from Eastern Europe, who settled particularly around the Portobello neighborhood, sometimes nicknamed "Little Jerusalem." Its members were merchants, peddlers, and artisans, and they established synagogues and communal institutions. James Joyce immortalized this presence through the character of Leopold Bloom in his novel Ulysses. The community, always small, has declined in the second half of the twentieth century while retaining active institutions.
Les Juifs de Dubrovnik (Raguse) · Balkans
The maritime Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) tolerated Jews as intermediaries in trade between Christendom and the Ottoman Empire, while subjecting them to restrictions and confining them to a ghetto established in the sixteenth century. The community, of Sephardic tradition, included merchants and physicians, and some of its members played a role in the commercial exchanges and diplomacy of the city. The synagogue of Dubrovnik, fitted out as early as the sixteenth century in the ghetto street, is one of the oldest preserved in Europe and bears witness to this centuries-long presence. The community always remained small and declined in the modern and contemporary eras.
Les Juifs de Düsseldorf · Europe occidentale
Medieval Rhenish community, becoming important in the 19th century in the Rhenish industrial basin.
Les Juifs de Féodosia (Kaffa) · Crimée
Kaffa (Feodosia), a former Genoese trading post on the Crimean coast, sheltered one of the oldest Jewish presences on the peninsula, attested for a long time and composed of several groups: Greek-speaking Romaniotes, Turkic-speaking Krymchaks of rabbinical rite, and Karaites. A commercial crossroads of the Black Sea under Genoese and then Ottoman domination, the city offered Jews a role in trade. The community later experienced integration into the Russian Empire. During the German occupation of Crimea in 1941–1942, the Jews of the city, in particular the Krymchaks, were massacred by the Einsatzgruppen, and the community was almost entirely annihilated.
Les Juifs de Figuig · Afrique du Nord
Figuig, a great oasis on the border between Morocco and Algeria, was home to an ancient Jewish community whose members, often Berber-speaking, were merchants and craftsmen established at this important caravan crossroads. Organized around their synagogues, they participated in trade between the Sahara and the cities of the north. During the twentieth century, and particularly from mid-century onward, the community emptied through emigration to the major Moroccan cities and then to Israel.
Les Juifs de Florence · Europe occidentale
Tuscan community protected by the Medici, endowed with a ghetto in 1571 and then a great synagogue after emancipation.
Les Juifs de Florina · Grèce
Small Sephardic community of western Greek Macedonia, annihilated during the Shoah.
Les Juifs de Fürth · Europe centrale
Major center of talmudic studies in Franconia, called « the Franconian Jerusalem » for its yeshivot.
Les Juifs de Gabès · Afrique du Nord
Established in the coastal oasis of Gabès, in southern Tunisia, Jews formed an ancient community of small merchants and craftsmen, neighbors of the Berber and Arab populations. Of local Sephardic rite, they were organized around their synagogues and religious institutions and preserved distinct traditions particular to the Judaism of southern Tunisia. Under the French Protectorate, they partly opened themselves to modern education. After Tunisian independence, the community gradually emptied, its members emigrating primarily to France and Israel.
Les Juifs de Gafsa · Afrique du Nord
Gafsa, a city in west-central Tunisia that was both a caravan crossroads and a mining center, was home to an ancient Jewish community of merchants and artisans. Of local Sephardic rite, its members spoke Judeo-Tunisian Arabic and were organized around their synagogues. Under the French Protectorate, they partially opened themselves to French education and language. During the twentieth century, and especially after independence, the community largely emigrated to France and Israel.
Les Juifs de Galanta · Europe centrale
Hasidic hamlet in southern Slovakia, seat of a renowned dynasty and yeshiva.
Les Juifs de Gallipoli (Gelibolu) · Anatolie / Thrace
Gallipoli (Gelibolu), a port on the Dardanelles, welcomed after the Iberian expulsion a Sephardic community connected to the commercial circuits of the Aegean Sea and the Straits region. Its members spoke Judeo-Spanish and were organized around their synagogues, participating in the maritime trade of the Ottoman Empire. A community of modest size, it was gradually absorbed by the attraction of the great Ottoman Jewish centers, such as Istanbul and Salonika, to which its members migrated.
Les Juifs de Gaziantep (Aïntab) · Proche-Orient
Jewish community of southeastern Anatolia, of Mizrahi tradition close to the Syrian world of Aleppo.
Les Juifs de Gênes · Europe occidentale
The Jewish presence in Genoa, attested since the early Middle Ages, was intermittent, with the Ligurian Republic alternating between commercial tolerance and expulsion measures. Around the turn of the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, the city served notably as a transit port for Jews expelled from Spain after 1492, many of whom were kept in precarious conditions before continuing their journey. Sephardic merchants and Italian Jews (Italkim) were permitted to reside there for periods, especially from the sixteenth century onward, when the Republic sought to attract Levantine trade. The community always remained modest, subject to residency restrictions, before achieving a more stable existence after nineteenth-century emancipation. During the German occupation of 1943–1945, some Genoese Jews were deported.
Les Juifs de Gérone · Europe occidentale
Medieval Catalan community, center of Spanish Kabbalah around Nahmanide, annihilated by the violence of 1391.
Les Juifs de Glasgow · Europe occidentale
Glasgow was home to the principal Jewish community of Scotland, formed mainly by Ashkenazi immigrants from Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its members were active in commerce, crafts, peddling, and later the liberal professions, and were concentrated for a time in the Gorbals neighborhood before moving to other parts of the city. The community established synagogues, schools, and social and religious institutions. It constituted one of the most significant Jewish concentrations in the United Kingdom before declining demographically in the second half of the twentieth century.
Les Juifs de Góra Kalwaria (Ger) · Europe centrale
Town near Warsaw, seat of the great Hasidic dynasty of Ger (Gur), among the largest.
Les Juifs de Goulimine · Afrique du Nord
Goulimine (Guelmim), at the gateway to the Sahara in southern Morocco, was home to a Jewish community of merchants and caravaneers participating in trans-Saharan trade. Often Berber-speaking, its members served as intermediaries in the trade of desert and oasis products. Organized around its synagogue and traditions, the community maintained ties with other Jewish communities of southern Morocco. During the twentieth century, its members emigrated to Agadir, Casablanca, and Israel.
Les Juifs de Grodno (Hrodna) · Europe orientale
Grodno (Hrodna), in the Polish-Belarusian border region, was an ancient Jewish commercial and intellectual crossroads, where the community enjoyed privileges dating back to the era of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Merchants, artisans, and scholars maintained synagogues and houses of study there, and the city was part of the Lithuanian (litvak) tradition of learning. In the modern era, it saw a diverse Jewish political life, from labor movements to Zionist currents. Under German occupation, the community was confined to ghettos and then liquidated in 1942–1943, its members deported to Treblinka and Auschwitz.
Les Juifs de Guatemala · Amérique centrale
The Jewish community of Guatemala took shape in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from immigrants of diverse origins, among them merchants from Central and Eastern Europe as well as Sephardim. Established mainly in Guatemala City, its members concentrated in commerce, import-export, industry, and the liberal professions. The community established religious and communal institutions corresponding to its various components. Remaining small, it nonetheless constitutes an organized community with a lasting presence in Central America.
Les Juifs de Hadiatch · Europe orientale
Place of the tomb of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, founder of Habad Hasidism.
Les Juifs de Halberstadt · Europe centrale
Important center of orthodoxy and rabbinic studies in Saxony-Anhalt, with a large baroque synagogue.
Les Juifs de Hanovre (Hannover) · Europe centrale
Lower Saxon community with a great synagogue designed by architect Edwin Oppler.
Les Juifs de Harare (Salisbury) · Afrique subsaharienne
Community formed by Ashkenazi and Sephardic immigrants in the capital of former Southern Rhodesia, which became Zimbabwe.
Les Juifs de Helsinki · Europe du Nord
The Jewish community of Helsinki traces part of its origin to former Jewish soldiers of the Imperial Russian army (the cantonists) permitted to remain in Finland, then a grand duchy under Russian rule. Remaining one of the smallest Jewish communities in Europe, it organized itself around a synagogue and communal institutions, its members often being merchants and later members of the liberal professions. During the Second World War, despite Finland's co-belligerency with Germany against the Soviet Union, the country refused to hand over its Jewish citizens, and the community survived. It remains active in Helsinki.
Les Juifs de Homiel (Gomel) · Europe orientale
Significant Belarusian community, marked by the 1903 pogrom and the Jewish self-defense that organized there.
Les Juifs de Hong Kong · Asie orientale
Under British colonial rule, Hong Kong attracted Jewish merchants as early as the mid-nineteenth century, notably Baghdadis from Bombay and the Indian Ocean merchant diaspora, several of whose prominent families played a leading role in the region's commerce and finance. The community established a synagogue and institutions, and several of its members left their mark on the colony's economic and civic life. Over time, its composition broadened to include Ashkenazim and expatriates of various origins. Hong Kong today retains an organized community, combining permanent residents and expatriates.
Les Juifs de Iași (Jassy) · Europe orientale
Iași (Jassy), former capital of Moldavia, was one of the great centers of Jewish life in Romania, rich in synagogues, houses of study, and cultural institutions. The city is associated with the beginnings of professional Yiddish theater, founded by Abraham Goldfaden in the nineteenth century, and hosted an intense Jewish religious and political life. In 1941, Iași was the scene of an extremely violent pogrom, one of the deadliest of the Shoah in Romania, which claimed very many victims. After the Second World War, the deeply stricken community almost entirely left the city, mostly for Israel.
Les Juifs de Jakarta (Batavia) · Asie du Sud-Est
Under the Dutch East India Company, a few Jewish merchants, including Sephardim, were present in Batavia (Jakarta) from the colonial era, within the commercial networks of the Dutch East Indies. The Jewish community of the archipelago always remained very small and dispersed, also including Baghdadis and immigrants of other origins settled in the port cities. Never numerous nor strongly institutionalized, it declined after Indonesian independence. The Jewish presence in Jakarta is today almost nonexistent.
Les Juifs de Johannesburg · Afrique australe
The discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand at the end of the nineteenth century gave birth to Johannesburg and drew large numbers of Jewish immigrants there, the majority of them Litvaks from Lithuania, who lastingly shaped the character of the South African Jewish community. Established in commerce, the mining industry, finance, and the professions, they built a prosperous and strongly organized community, endowed with synagogues, schools, Zionist organizations, and charitable institutions. Predominantly Orthodox in affiliation, the community of Johannesburg was the heart of Jewish life in South Africa. After the end of apartheid in 1994, a significant proportion emigrated, notably to Israel, Australia, the United Kingdom, and North America, reducing its numbers.
Les Juifs de Jytomyr · Europe orientale
Major center of Volhynia, seat of a renowned Hebrew printing house and a state rabbinical seminary in the nineteenth century.
Les Juifs de Kaboul (Afghanistan) · Asie centrale
Kabul was home to the principal Jewish community of Afghanistan, heir to an ancient Jewish presence in the region and strengthened in the nineteenth century, notably by Jews from Bukhara and Persia fleeing persecution. Its members were primarily active in trade, particularly in carpets, textiles, wool and precious stones, and lived gathered around their synagogues. Subject to increasing restrictions in the twentieth century, the community emptied through waves of emigration, principally to Israel, between the 1940s and 1970s. Only a handful of individuals remained until the end of the twentieth century.
Les Juifs de Kairouan · Afrique du Nord
Great Talmudic center of medieval Ifriqiya (10th–11th centuries), seat of academies in correspondence with the geonim of Babylonia.
Les Juifs de Kalisz · Europe centrale
Oldest documented Jewish community in Poland, whose Statute of Kalisz (1264) guarantees rights.
Les Juifs de Kandahar · Asie centrale
Kandahar, a major crossroads city in southern Afghanistan, was home to a Jewish merchant community integrated into the exchange networks linking India, Iran and Central Asia. Of Eastern tradition, close to the Jews of Bukhara and Persia, it lived by trade and crafts. Subject to the same constraints as Afghan Judaism as a whole, it emptied over the course of the twentieth century. Its members emigrated almost entirely, notably to Israel and India.
Les Juifs de Karachi · Asie du Sud
Under British administration of India, Karachi saw the establishment in the nineteenth century of a Jewish community composed mainly of Bene Israel from the western coast of India and Baghdadi merchants. Its members served in the administration, crafts, and commerce, and the city had a synagogue and communal life. The partition of 1947 and the creation of Pakistan, a majority-Muslim country, along with tensions arising from the Israeli-Arab conflict, led to the almost total emigration of the community to India and Israel. Only a negligible presence remains today.
Les Juifs de Kastoria · Grèce / Macédoine
Kastoria, in Greek Macedonia, was home to an old Romaniote community, whose presence is long attested in this city renowned for its fur industry. The Jews of Kastoria were distinguished precisely in the manufacture and trade of furs, an activity that gave them a distinctive economic identity. Sephardic contributions were added to the Romaniote component over time. During the German occupation, in 1944, virtually the entire community was arrested and then deported to the Nazi extermination camps, and there were almost no survivors.
Les Juifs de Kaunas (Kovno) · Europe orientale
Kaunas (Kovno), provisional capital of independent Lithuania between the wars, was home to a large and well-organized Jewish community, endowed with schools, newspapers, and several great yeshivot, notably in the suburb of Slobodka, a renowned center of the Moussar ethical movement. Jews there were merchants, craftsmen, and members of the liberal professions, and the city was a hub of Lithuanian Jewish cultural and political life. During the German occupation, beginning in 1941, mass massacres took place at the Ninth Fort, followed by the establishment of a ghetto. Liquidated in 1944, this ghetto saw the great majority of its inhabitants perish.
Les Juifs de Kavala · Balkans
Kavala, a port in eastern Greek Macedonia, sheltered a Sephardic community active in the tobacco trade that brought prosperity to the city. Judeo-Spanish-speaking, its members were organized around their synagogues and institutions. During the Second World War, the region came under Bulgarian occupation, and in 1943 the community was deported along with those of other territories occupied by Bulgaria, and almost entirely exterminated in the Nazi camps.
Les Juifs de Kėdainiai (Keidan) · Europe orientale
Ancient Lithuanian community, one of the most tolerated in the Grand Duchy, with preserved synagogues.
Les Juifs de Kermanshah · Proche-Orient
Ancient Jewish community of western Iran, on commercial routes to Mesopotamia.
Les Juifs de Kharkiv · Europe orientale
Kharkiv, a major industrial and university center in eastern Ukraine, attracted a large Jewish community from the nineteenth century onward, particularly after the easing of residence restrictions. Its members distinguished themselves in commerce, industry, medicine, teaching, and the liberal professions, and the city had a notable Jewish cultural life, both religious and—during the Soviet era—secularized. The Shoah, with the massacres perpetrated during the German occupation, and the Soviet anti-religious policy considerably reduced the community. A Jewish presence nonetheless persisted after the war and was renewed at the end of the twentieth century.
Les Juifs de Khénifra · Afrique du Nord
Khénifra, in the heart of the Moroccan Middle Atlas, sheltered a Jewish community whose members, often Berber-speaking, were craftsmen — notably goldsmiths — and merchants in close contact with the Berber populations of the region. Organized around its synagogues, the community preserved traditions specific to the Judaism of the mountain regions. In the mid-twentieth century, its members emigrated to Casablanca and then to Israel.
Les Juifs de Kherson · Europe orientale
City in New Russia where Jewish agricultural colonies were established in the early nineteenth century.
Les Juifs de Khust (Huszt) · Europe centrale
Orthodox community in Subcarpathian Ruthenia, marked by the influence of rabbi Moshe Schick.
Les Juifs de Kielce · Europe orientale
Kielce, in central Poland, was home to an Ashkenazi Jewish community that developed mainly in the nineteenth century, its members being merchants, craftsmen, and small industrialists. The city had synagogues, schools, and communal institutions, and knew a diverse Jewish political life before the Second World War. Under Nazi occupation, almost the entire community was confined to a ghetto, then deported and exterminated, notably at Treblinka. Kielce is tragically renowned for the pogrom of July 1946, perpetrated against survivors who had returned to the city, which claimed several dozen victims and hastened the departure of many Jews from Poland.
Les Juifs de Kiev · Europe orientale
Although Jewish residence was long restricted under the Russian Empire, Kyiv eventually came to host a large Jewish community, principally Ashkenazi, in the nineteenth century as the city became a major commercial and industrial center. Its Jews were present in trade, sugar, banking, crafts, and the liberal professions, and the city was the scene of pogroms as well as the notorious Beilis trial in the early twentieth century. Under the Soviet regime, religious communal life was repressed while a secularized Jewish culture developed. During the German occupation, the Babi Yar massacre of September 1941 exterminated tens of thousands of the city's Jews within a matter of days.
Les Juifs de Kilkis (Kukush) · Grèce
Small Sephardic community of Greek Macedonia, in the northern border region.
Les Juifs de Kinshasa (Léopoldville) · Afrique subsaharienne
Community largely composed of Rhodian Sephardim settled in the Belgian Congo.
Les Juifs de Kirkouk · Proche-Orient
Kirkuk, in northern Iraq, sheltered an ancient Jewish community inscribed in the long history of Mesopotamian Judaism. Its members, speaking Arabic and, in part, Neo-Aramaic dialects, were merchants and craftsmen organized around their synagogues. The region experienced strong development in the twentieth century linked to oil extraction. After the creation of the State of Israel and the exodus of Iraq's Jews in the early 1950s, the community of Kirkuk emigrated almost entirely, to Israel and the diaspora originating from Iraqi Judaism.
Les Juifs de Kock (Kotsk) · Europe centrale
Small town in Poland associated with Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotsk, major figure of Hasidism.
Les Juifs de Kolhapur · Asie du Sud
Kolhapur, in southern Maharashtra, was home to a small Bene Israel community integrated into local society as artisans, employees, and merchants. Like other Bene Israel communities in the region, it maintained an organized religious life and kept ties with neighboring communities, notably Bombay and Poona. The community always remained small. During the second half of the twentieth century, its members emigrated almost entirely to Israel.
Les Juifs de Komotini (Gümülcine) · Balkans
Sephardic community of western Thracian Greece, deported in 1943 under Bulgarian occupation.
Les Juifs de Königsberg · Europe centrale
East Prussian community, center of Haskalah on the eastern border of Germany.
Les Juifs de Košice (Kassa) · Europe centrale
Eastern Slovak community developed in the 19th century, among the most important in the region before the Shoah.
Les Juifs de Kremenetz · Europe orientale
Ancient community of Volhynia renowned for its rabbinic erudition and study institutions.
Les Juifs de Ksar el-Kébir (Alcazarquivir) · Afrique du Nord
Community of northwestern Morocco, with a strong Sephardic component of haketia language.
Les Juifs de la Dominique · Caraïbes
The Jewish presence in Dominica is connected to the merchant networks of the Caribbean, with Sephardic traders having frequented the island as part of Atlantic colonial commerce. This presence remained tenuous, however, and did not give rise to a permanent and organized community. The island never had enduring Jewish institutions. Jewish settlement there remained marginal.
Les Juifs de la Guadeloupe · Caraïbes
Sephardic families, some of whom came from Dutch Brazil after the Portuguese reconquest, settled in Guadeloupe in the seventeenth century and participated in the sugar economy and colonial trade. The Jewish presence there was, however, undermined by the restrictive legislation of the French monarchy, notably the Code Noir, which ordered the expulsion of Jews from the colonies. The community declined sharply and left only an intermittent presence. In the contemporary era, a Jewish life has been able to reappear, sustained notably by Jews coming from metropolitan France and North Africa.
Les Juifs de La Haye · Europe occidentale
Dutch Sephardic and Ashkenazi community established in the city of residence of the States General.
Les Juifs de la Martinique · Caraïbes
As in Guadeloupe, Sephardic refugees from Dutch Brazil settled in Martinique in the seventeenth century and took part in the sugar economy and colonial trade. The Jewish presence there was hindered by the restrictive legislation of France, in particular the Code Noir, which provided for the expulsion of Jews from the French colonies. The community then declined sharply. In the contemporary era, a Jewish life has reappeared on the island, notably due to the settlement of Jews from metropolitan France and North Africa.
Les Juifs de La Nouvelle-Orléans · Amérique du Nord
A great commercial port at the mouth of the Mississippi, New Orleans harbored, from the colonial era and especially during the nineteenth century, a Jewish community composed first of Sephardim and then of Ashkenazim, closely tied to commerce, notably the cotton trade. Its members integrated into Creole society and the economic life of the city, and some attained notable public positions. The community established congregations and institutions and contributed to the civic life of the city. It constituted one of the principal centers of Judaism in the American South.
Les Juifs de Larache (El-Araich) · Afrique du Nord
Spanish-speaking Sephardic community of the northern Atlantic Moroccan port, in the Iberian sphere of influence.
Les Juifs de Larissa (Thessalie) · Grèce
Larissa, in Thessaly, was one of the oldest centers of Romaniote Judaism in Greece, with Jewish presence attested from very ancient times. The community, composed of long-established Romaniote families to which Sephardim were added under Ottoman rule, maintained a vibrant religious and cultural life. Its members were active in trade and crafts. During the German occupation of Greece in the Second World War, the community was targeted by the deportations that destroyed Greek Judaism, and a large portion of its members was murdered; a few survivors nonetheless allowed a Jewish presence to persist after the war.
Les Juifs de Leeds · Europe occidentale
Leeds, in Yorkshire, saw the rise of a major Ashkenazi community following Jewish immigration from eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century. Its members concentrated notably in the ready-made clothing industry, which made the city's reputation, as well as in commerce and crafts. The community established a dense network of synagogues, schools, and communal institutions. It gave rise to several figures of British public and cultural life, before declining demographically in the second half of the twentieth century.
Les Juifs de Leipzig · Europe centrale
Community linked to the great commercial fair of Saxony, prosperous in the 19th century with a strong presence of Ostjuden.
Les Juifs de Lhassa (Tibet) · Asie orientale
There was never an established Jewish community in Lhasa: the Jewish presence in Tibet was limited to a few itinerant merchants, primarily Baghdadis coming from Calcutta, who traveled there in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for the trade in wool and other goods within the Himalayan commerce network. It was an episodic and individual commercial presence, not an organized communal life. No lasting Jewish institution was ever founded there.
Les Juifs de Lida · Europe orientale
Ancient community in western Belarus, seat of a yeshiva founded by Rabbi Isaac Jacob Reines.
Les Juifs de Liepāja (Libau) · Europe du Nord
Baltic port in Latvia, Jewish community marked by emigration to America and the Shoah.
Les Juifs de Lima (Pérou) · Amérique du Sud
The first Jews present in Peru were conversos who arrived at the time of the Spanish conquest; under the viceroyalty, the tribunal of the Inquisition in Lima prosecuted those suspected of Judaizing. The modern community took shape mainly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, through the arrival of Ashkenazim from eastern and central Europe and Sephardim from the Near East and North Africa. Established largely in commerce and industry, its members organized in Lima several distinct congregations according to their origins, endowed with synagogues, schools, and communal institutions. Remaining modest in size, the community is well structured and concentrated in the capital.
Les Juifs de Lodz · Europe orientale
Łódź became, in the nineteenth century, thanks to the rise of the textile industry, one of the largest Jewish communities in Poland and Europe. Its Jews were at once workers, craftsmen, traders, and major textile industrialists, and the city hosted a vibrant political, trade union, Yiddish-speaking, and Zionist life, with press, theater, and schools. Under German occupation, the Łódź ghetto (Litzmannstadt), established as early as 1940 and administered by the Judenrat of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, was one of the largest and one of the last to be liquidated in 1944. The vast majority of its inhabitants were deported and murdered at Chełmno and Auschwitz, annihilating this once immense community.
Les Juifs de Londres · Europe occidentale
Community present until the expulsion from England in 1290, refounded after the 'readmission' authorized by Cromwell in 1656.
Les Juifs de Los Angeles · Amérique du Nord
Community established in the mid-19th century, which became one of the largest Jewish centers in the United States around Fairfax.
Les Juifs de Loutsk · Europe orientale
Ancient community of Volhynia, with a fortified synagogue of the seventeenth century among the most remarkable.
Les Juifs de Lublin · Europe orientale
Lublin, in eastern Poland, was one of the great centers of Ashkenazi Talmudic learning from the late Middle Ages onward, earning the name "the Jerusalem of the Kingdom of Poland." Home to a renowned yeshivah and the meeting place of the Council of Four Lands (Va'ad Arba Aratzot), the city gathered Hebrew printers, rabbinical decisors, and, in the modern era, major Hasidic centers and the Hokhmei Lublin founded in the twentieth century. Its Jews were merchants, artisans, and scholars, and the community remained one of the most vibrant in Poland until the Second World War. Under Nazi occupation, the ghetto was liquidated and virtually the entire population exterminated, notably as part of Aktion Reinhard and at the nearby camp of Majdanek.
Les Juifs de Lunel · Europe occidentale
Jewish intellectual center of medieval Languedoc, home of the Tibbonide family who translated Judeo-Arabic works into Hebrew.
Les Juifs de Lviv-Lwów (Lemberg) — communauté karaïte · Europe orientale
Distinct from the large rabbinical Jewish community of Lwów (Lemberg), a Karaite community established itself in the region and practiced a Judaism based on Scripture alone, rejecting the rabbinical oral tradition. The Karaites of eastern Europe, present in Galicia, Volhynia, and Crimea, spoke Turkic languages (Karaim) and maintained their own liturgy and customs. Over the centuries, they were often regarded legally as a group separate from rabbinical Jews, a status that influenced their fate under various regimes. The small Karaite community of the Lwów region disappeared during the twentieth century, through emigration, assimilation, and the upheavals of the period.
Les Juifs de Lyon · Europe occidentale
Lyon had a Jewish presence as early as Roman antiquity and then, after long medieval interruptions, saw a community revive in the modern era and especially in the nineteenth century, with the arrival of Alsatian immigrants and then those from Eastern Europe. Its members were active in commerce, silk, industry, and the liberal professions, and the city acquired a grand synagogue and consistorial institutions. During the Second World War, Lyon was both a major center of the Resistance, including Jewish resistance, and the seat of the Gestapo directed by Klaus Barbie, responsible for persecutions and deportations. After the war, the community reconstituted itself and grew considerably with the arrival of Jews from North Africa.
Les Juifs de Madère · Europe / Atlantique
Madeira, the Portuguese Atlantic island, attracted from the time of its colonization New Christians — descendants of converted Jews — in the context of the rise of the sugar economy. Subject to inquisitorial surveillance, some maintained crypto-Jewish practices in secret for several generations. The Jewish presence there remained discreet and eventually faded through assimilation. In the nineteenth century, a few Jews, notably of North African and British origin, settled on the island, leaving traces such as a cemetery.
Les Juifs de Madras (Chennai) · Asie du Sud
Community of Sephardic and Baghdadi merchants on the Coromandel Coast, with an ancient Jewish cemetery.
Les Juifs de Mahdia · Afrique du Nord
Community of the Sahel Tunisian port, former Fatimid capital, with Jewish presence attested since the Middle Ages.
Les Juifs de Manchester · Europe occidentale
The Jewish community of Manchester developed mainly from the nineteenth century onward, with the massive arrival of Ashkenazi immigrants from eastern Europe, and numbered among the most important in Britain outside London. Active in the textile industry and commerce, it established a dense network of synagogues, schools, and social, religious, and charitable institutions. Manchester was also an important center of the British Zionist movement, associated notably with Chaim Weizmann, who taught chemistry there. The community remains today one of the most vibrant in the United Kingdom, with a notable Orthodox presence.
Les Juifs de Manille (Philippines) · Asie du Sud-Est
The Jewish community of Manila, in the Philippines, formed during the late Spanish colonial era and especially under American administration, bringing together merchants of diverse origins, both Sephardic and Ashkenazi, as well as foreign residents. In the 1930s–1940s, the Philippines received a notable number of Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi Reich, which temporarily enlarged the community. Manila had a synagogue and an organized communal life during this period. After the war, most of these refugees and residents departed for the United States, Israel or elsewhere, and the community shrank to a residual presence, composed mainly of expatriates.
Les Juifs de Manisa (Magnésie) · Proche-Orient
Ottoman Sephardic community of Aegean Anatolia, in the hinterland of Smyrna.
Les Juifs de Marijampolė · Europe orientale
Lithuanian community in the Suvalki region, active center of Jewish life until 1941.
Les Juifs de Marseille · Europe occidentale
An ancient Mediterranean port, Marseille knew a Jewish presence from Roman and then medieval times, and became in the twentieth century a major point of arrival for Jews from North Africa. A place of transit and emigration, the city was also during the Second World War a center where rescue and departure networks were organized, before the community suffered roundups and deportations under the occupation. After the independence of the Maghreb countries, the influx of Jews from Tunisia, Morocco, and especially Algeria profoundly transformed the community, which became predominantly North African Sephardic. Marseille today houses one of the largest Jewish communities in France.
Les Juifs de Mascara · Afrique du Nord
Community of the hinterland of Oran, in Algeria, organized around its Jewish quarter.
Les Juifs de Mascate et d'Oman · Péninsule arabique
A modest Jewish community formed in Muscat, under the Sultanate of Oman, from merchants of Iraqi and Persian origin attracted by the maritime trade of the Indian Ocean in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Its members participated in exchanges between the Gulf, the East African coast, and India, at a time when Oman constituted a regional commercial power. Always small, the community did not endure as an organized entity and ceased to exist in that form during the nineteenth century.
Les Juifs de Mazagan (El Jadida) · Afrique du Nord
Established in Mazagan (today El Jadida), a former Portuguese stronghold on the Moroccan Atlantic coast, Jews formed a community of merchants and intermediaries between the interior of the country and the coastline. Organized around their synagogues, its members benefited under the Protectorate from the education of the Alliance israélite universelle. The community participated in the economic life of a developing port city. In the mid-twentieth century, it dispersed largely to Casablanca and Israel.
Les Juifs de Médéa · Afrique du Nord
Médéa, on the Algerian high plateaus, was home to a small, ancient Jewish community integrated into the local commercial and artisanal fabric. The Crémieux Decree of 1870 granted its members French citizenship, which encouraged their Frenchification and schooling. Under the Vichy regime, they were temporarily deprived of that status and subjected to discriminatory measures. Together with all the Jews of Algeria, the community left the country at the time of independence in 1962, settling mainly in France.
Les Juifs de Medzhybizh · Europe orientale
Cradle of Hasidism: the Baal Shem Tov, founder of the movement, lived there and is buried there.
Les Juifs de Melbourne · Océanie
Melbourne is home to the largest Jewish community in Australia, whose origins go back to the beginnings of British colonization but which came into its own with the immigration of Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe and then, after the Second World War, with the reception of a large number of survivors of the Shoah and their families. This history profoundly marked the community, which is characterized by strong institutions, a religious life ranging from Orthodoxy to liberalism, and a dense network of Jewish schools. Active in commerce, industry and the professions, the community is also a notable center of Shoah Memory and Yiddish culture in Australia. It remains today vibrant and well organized.
Les Juifs de Metz · Europe occidentale
Great Ashkenazi community of Lorraine, with a reputed yeshiva, one of the Jewish communities tolerated under the Old Regime.
Les Juifs de Milan · Europe occidentale
Milan, the great economic center of northern Italy, saw a Jewish community develop primarily from the nineteenth century onward, following emancipation, joined in the twentieth century by refugees from Central and Eastern Europe. Composed of Italkim (Italian Jews) and immigrants of various origins, including later Jews from the Sephardic and Oriental worlds, it became one of the principal communities in Italy. Under Fascism, the racial laws of 1938 struck its members, and the German occupation led to deportations to the extermination camps. After the war, the community reconstituted itself and remains one of the most important in the country.
Les Juifs de Minsk · Europe orientale
Minsk was home to one of the largest Jewish communities in Belarus, deeply rooted in Yiddish culture and very active in the labor movement as well as in Jewish political parties, from the Bund to Zionism. Under the Soviet regime, the city was a center of Jewish culture in the Yiddish language, with schools, a theater, and institutions. During the German occupation, the Minsk ghetto, established in 1941, was one of the largest on Soviet territory and saw organized resistance. The great majority of its inhabitants were exterminated between 1941 and 1943, and the community reconstituted itself only weakly after the war.
Les Juifs de Mir · Europe orientale
Small Belarusian town famous for the Mir yeshiva, one of the most influential in the Lithuanian world.
Les Juifs de Miskolc · Europe centrale
Great community in northeastern Hungary, important Orthodox and commercial center before the Shoah.
Les Juifs de Modène · Europe occidentale
Emilian community protected by the dukes of Este after their withdrawal from Ferrara, endowed with a ghetto in 1638.
Les Juifs de Mogador (Essaouira) · Afrique du Nord
Essaouira (Mogador) was founded in the eighteenth century by Sultan Mohammed III, who established there Jewish merchants, the Tujjar al-Sultan, as the kingdom's commercial agents open to the Atlantic. These prosperous traders maintained commercial links with Europe, the Sahara, and beyond, and the city became a great center of Moroccan Judaism, endowed with numerous synagogues, schools including those of the Alliance israélite universelle, and an active rabbinical life. The community, long one of the most significant in the country proportionally, mingled indigenous families with descendants of Iberian exiles. During the twentieth century, it gradually emptied toward Casablanca, France, and Israel.
Les Juifs de Moguilev · Europe orientale
Ancient community on the Dnieper, one of the most populous in eastern Belarus before the Shoah.
Les Juifs de Monastir (Tunisie) · Afrique du Nord
Community of the Tunisian Sahel, near Sousse and Mahdia.
Les Juifs de Montevideo · Amérique du Sud
Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, received in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries waves of Jewish immigration, both Ashkenazi from Eastern Europe and Sephardic from the Mediterranean basin and the Near East, attracted by the country's secular and liberal tradition. The community organized itself into several societies and congregations reflecting the diversity of its origins, and developed active educational, cultural and Zionist institutions. Active in trade, crafts and the professions, it integrated into a society renowned for its openness. The second half of the twentieth century saw a certain demographic decline through emigration, notably to Israel, but the community remains structured.
Les Juifs de Montréal · Amérique du Nord
Montreal long hosted the largest Jewish community in Canada, formed mainly by the massive immigration of Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe beginning in the late nineteenth century, to whom were later added survivors of the Shoah and, in the second half of the twentieth century, French-speaking Jews from North Africa. Concentrated notably around Boulevard Saint-Laurent, the community was a great center of North American Yiddish culture, with its press, theater, schools, and institutions, as well as an active Zionist and labor movement. Active in garment-making, commerce, and the professions, it developed a dense communal, educational, and social network. The dual Anglophone and Francophone character—the latter reinforced by Sephardic immigration—makes it a singular community in Canada.
Les Juifs de Moscou · Europe orientale
Community marked by the expulsion of 1891 and then by a revival; Choral Synagogue inaugurated in 1906.
Les Juifs de Mossoul (Arel) · Proche-Orient
The Jews of Mosul, in northern Iraq, constituted one of the oldest communities of Mesopotamia, whose presence is inscribed in the long Jewish history of the region. Some of them spoke Neo-Aramaic dialects (Suret), while also practicing Arabic, and the community preserved liturgical traditions specific to Iraqi Judaism. Merchants, craftsmen, and scholars, its members were organized around their synagogues and institutions. After the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and the mass departures of Iraq's Jews in the early 1950s, the community of Mosul emigrated almost entirely, primarily to Israel.
Les Juifs de Mostaganem · Afrique du Nord
Community of the Oran coast, in western Algeria, with ancient roots strengthened during the French period.
Les Juifs de Mostar · Balkans
Sephardic community of Herzegovina, secondary Jewish center of Ottoman and then Austro-Hungarian Bosnia.
Les Juifs de Munich (München) · Europe centrale
Community of the Bavarian capital, important in the nineteenth century, destroyed under national socialism.
Les Juifs de Munkács (Mukačevo) · Europe centrale
Major Hasidic center in Subcarpathian Ruthenia, seat of the Munkács dynasty and bastion of orthodoxy.
Les Juifs de Mykolaïv (Nikolaïev) · Europe orientale
Black Sea port, center of Habad Hasidic activity and birthplace of the Rabbi of Lubavitch.
Les Juifs de Nabeul · Afrique du Nord
Nabeul, a city in Cap Bon renowned for its pottery, was home to a Jewish community of merchants and craftsmen integrated into the local economy. Of Tunisian Sephardic tradition, its members had their own synagogues and communal institutions and benefited under the French Protectorate from access to modern education. Like all Tunisian Jewry, the community endured the trials of the Second World War. After independence in 1956, it dispersed, its members emigrating primarily to France and Israel.
Les Juifs de Nairobi (Kenya) · Afrique orientale
The Jewish community of Nairobi formed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in the context of British colonization and the construction of the railway connecting the coast to Uganda, attracting merchants and settlers of various origins. Remaining modest, it organized itself around a synagogue and communal institutions serving the Jews of Kenya. The territory was at one point discussed, in the early twentieth century, in connection with a Jewish settlement project debated by the Zionist movement, which was never realized. The community persisted during the colonial period then declined in the second half of the twentieth century, while continuing to exist on a reduced scale.
Les Juifs de Nancy · Europe occidentale
Jewish community of Lorraine established in the 18th century, seat of a consistory after the Revolutionary emancipation.
Les Juifs de Narbonne · Europe occidentale
Ancient Languedoc community renowned for its talmudic academy and the lineage of the Kalonymides according to medieval tradition.
Les Juifs de Nemyriv · Europe orientale
Site of a major massacre in 1648 commemorated in the liturgy; Hasidic center in subsequent centuries.
Les Juifs de Nevis · Caraïbes
The small island of Nevis, in the eastern Caribbean under British rule, welcomed in the seventeenth century a Sephardic community connected to the sugar economy and the Atlantic commercial networks. Jewish merchants played a role in colonial trade there. The vestiges of an old synagogue and a Jewish cemetery still attest to this presence. The community subsequently declined and disappeared as the island's economic importance diminished.
Les Juifs de New York · Amérique du Nord
First Jewish community of North America (1654, Nieuw Amsterdam), which became the world's largest Jewish center after East European immigration.
Les Juifs de Newport (Rhode Island) · Amérique du Nord
Newport, in the colony of Rhode Island renowned for its religious tolerance, was one of the first centers of organized Jewish life in North America, welcoming Sephardim from the colonial era onward. Jewish merchants participated in Atlantic maritime trade there. The Touro Synagogue, consecrated in 1763, is the oldest synagogue still standing in the United States, and the community is also associated with the famous letter from George Washington affirming religious freedom with regard to Jews. The community subsequently declined with the city's economic retreat after the War of Independence, before Jewish life reappeared there at a later time.
Les Juifs de Nice · Europe occidentale
Community of the County of Nice, long attached to the House of Savoy before French annexation in 1860.
Les Juifs de Nicosie (Chypre) · Proche-Orient
Jewish community of the island of Cyprus, attested since Antiquity and linked to modern Zionist migrations.
Les Juifs de Nikolsburg (Mikulov) · Europe centrale
Historic capital of the Jews of Moravia and seat of the Great Rabbinate of Moravia for several centuries.
Les Juifs de Niš · Balkans
Sephardic community of southern Serbia, deported and exterminated during the German occupation.
Les Juifs de Nitra (Nyitra) · Europe centrale
Ancient community of western Slovakia, famous for its yeshiva led by rabbis Ungar and Weissmandl.
Les Juifs de Novi Sad · Balkans
Ashkenazi and Sephardic community of Voivodina, struck by the Hungarian raid of January 1942.
Les Juifs de Nuremberg (Nürnberg) · Europe centrale
Medieval Franconian community, struck by the pogrom of 1349 linked to the Black Plague.
Les Juifs de Oslo (Christiania) · Europe du Nord
The Jewish community of Oslo (formerly Christiania) took shape after the lifting, in the nineteenth century, of restrictions that had long prohibited Jews from settling in Norway. Always small, it brought together mainly Ashkenazi immigrants from central and eastern Europe, present in commerce and crafts, and established a synagogue and communal institutions. During the German occupation, a significant portion of Norwegian Jews was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, while another part managed to flee to neutral Sweden. After the war, the community reconstituted itself, remaining modest in size.
Les Juifs de Padoue · Europe occidentale
Venetian community whose university welcomed Jewish medical students, home to scholars such as Moses Hayyim Luzzatto.
Les Juifs de Panama · Amérique centrale
A commercial crossroads of the isthmus linking the two oceans, Panama attracted from the colonial era, and especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Sephardic Jews from Curaçao and the Caribbean, as well as Sephardim from the Mediterranean basin and Ashkenazim. The construction of the canal and the growth of import-export trade favored the settlement and prosperity of several families. The community organized itself into distinct congregations according to origin, endowed with synagogues, schools and communal institutions. Remaining active and well structured, the Panamanian Jewish community counts among the most solidly established in Central America, and some Jews there have held prominent public office.
Les Juifs de Panevėžys (Ponevezh) · Europe orientale
Lithuanian community whose Ponevezh yeshiva was refounded in Bnei Brak after the Shoah.
Les Juifs de Pápa · Europe centrale
Transdanubian Hungarian community, center of Talmudic studies and Hebrew printing.
Les Juifs de Paris · Europe occidentale
Community of the French capital, present since the Roman period, expelled in 1394 and reborn after the emancipation of 1791.
Les Juifs de Patras · Grèce
Patras, a port in the Peloponnese, was home to an ancient Jewish presence, attested since Antiquity, which persisted through a small Romaniote community in the Middle Ages. Under Ottoman rule, Sephardim came to join them, enriching the religious and commercial life of the community. Active in trade, it always remained modest in size. During the Second World War and the occupation of Greece, the community of Patras suffered the persecutions and deportations that decimated Greek Judaism; a few descendants remain in Greece.
Les Juifs de Pékin · Asie orientale
Distinct from the ancient Jewish community of Kaifeng, a modern Jewish presence took shape in Beijing from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries onward, composed mainly of expatriates, diplomats, and foreign merchants. This presence remained limited and dependent on the political climate. After the Communist victory of 1949, the foreign community dispersed and virtually ceased to exist as an organized entity. An expatriate Jewish presence has reappeared in Beijing in recent decades with the country's economic opening.
Les Juifs de Perth · Océanie
Community of Western Australia, founded in the nineteenth century and strengthened by twentieth-century immigration.
Les Juifs de Pest-Budapest · Europe centrale
Budapest, born from the union of Buda, Óbuda, and Pest, became in the nineteenth century one of the greatest centers of Jewish life in Central Europe, driven by an emancipation granted within the framework of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The community saw intense development of the Neolog (Hungarian Reform) and Orthodox currents, and was a center of Jewish press, literature, and scholarship. The great synagogue on Dohány Street, completed in the mid-nineteenth century, is one of the largest in the world. From May 1944, following the German occupation of Hungary, provincial Jews were deported en masse to Auschwitz, and the Jews of Budapest were confined to a ghetto and subjected to the violence of the Arrow Cross; a significant proportion nonetheless survived, partly thanks to the actions of diplomats from neutral countries. Budapest remains today one of the principal Jewish communities in Europe.
Les Juifs de Philadelphie · Amérique du Nord
Early colonial community, seat of the Mikveh Israel congregation and major center of nascent American Judaism.
Les Juifs de Philippopolis (Plovdiv) · Balkans
Plovdiv (Philippopolis), in Bulgaria, was home to one of the most important Jewish communities in the country, whose presence dates back to antiquity and was reinforced by the arrival of Sephardim following the Iberian expulsion of 1492. Judeo-Spanish in language, its members were merchants and craftsmen, organized around their synagogues and institutions. During the Second World War, the deportation of Jews from Bulgaria's pre-war borders was prevented thanks to protests from public opinion, parliamentarians, and the Church, so that the community survived. After 1948, the great majority emigrated to Israel.