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 Pinsk · Europe orientale
Pinsk, a city in Polesia now in Belarus, was an important center of Yiddish-speaking Jewish life, where Jews formed for a long time a major part of the population. A center for the trade in timber and agricultural products transported via waterways, the community housed synagogues, houses of study, Hassidic movements, and, in the modern era, an active Zionist and socialist life. Several figures of Zionism and Israeli public life originated there. Under German occupation, the community was confined to a ghetto and massacred by the Einsatzgruppen in 1941–1942.
Les Juifs de Pise · Europe occidentale
Tuscan community benefiting, with Livorno, from the Medici 'Livornine' charters that attracted Sephardic and Marrano merchants.
Les Juifs de Pitigliano · Europe occidentale
Small Tuscan community nicknamed the 'Little Jerusalem', tolerated by the Orsini counts and then the Medici.
Les Juifs de Pleven (Plevna) · Balkans
Sephardic community of northern Bulgaria, whose synagogue hosted young painter Jules Pascin.
Les Juifs de Płock · Europe centrale
One of the oldest Jewish communities in Mazovia, attested since the Middle Ages on the Vistula.
Les Juifs de Poltava · Europe orientale
Community in eastern Ukraine, center of Zionism and Habad Hasidic activity before the Revolution.
Les Juifs de Port-au-Prince (Haïti) · Caraïbes
The Jewish presence on the island of Hispaniola dates back to the colonial period, with Sephardic families connected to Caribbean commercial networks. A more visible community formed in Port-au-Prince in the twentieth century, sustained notably by immigrants from the Levant and Europe, and in the 1930s–1940s by refugees fleeing Nazism, Haiti having issued documents to some of them. Always very small, this community of merchants remained poorly structured institutionally. The political and economic instability of the country in the twentieth century led to its erosion, and today only a symbolic presence remains.
Les Juifs de Poznań (Posen) · Europe centrale
Major community of Greater Poland, influential rabbinic center and renowned seat of talmudic studies.
Les Juifs de Prešov (Eperjes) · Europe centrale
Eastern Slovak community, regional center of Orthodox and Neologue Judaism.
Les Juifs de Préveza · Grèce
Preveza, a port on the Ambracian Gulf in Epirus, sheltered a small Jewish community, including a Sephardic component, active in maritime and local trade. Under Venetian and then Ottoman rule, the city was a point of exchange where Jews played a commercial role. The community always remained small in size. During the occupation of Greece in the Second World War, it was struck by the persecutions and deportations that annihilated Greek Jewry, and it was almost entirely destroyed.
Les Juifs de Pristina · Balkans
Sephardic community of Ottoman Kosovo, connected to the Judeo-Spanish sphere of central Balkans.
Les Juifs de Przemyśl · Europe centrale
Ancient community of Galicia, important crossroads of Jewish life between Sephardic and Ashkenazi tradition.
Les Juifs de Pune (Poona) · Asie du Sud
Poona (Pune), in Maharashtra, was home to one of the principal concentrations of Bene Israel outside Bombay. The presence of garrisons and institutions during the British colonial period attracted many Bene Israel, who served notably in the army and administration and established themselves in various professions. The community had synagogues and a religious life organized according to the customs adopted by the Bene Israel. During the second half of the twentieth century, the majority of its members emigrated to Israel, greatly reducing the local community.
Les Juifs de Rabat · Afrique du Nord
Rabat, the administrative capital of Morocco, was home to a Jewish community combining Toshavim (indigenous residents) and Megorashim (descendants of those expelled from Spain), who lastingly shaped the religious and cultural life of the city and its neighbor Salé. As merchants, artisans, and scholars, some Jews served as commercial and diplomatic intermediaries for the Makhzen and foreign traders. The community had synagogues, yeshivot, and charitable institutions, and the mellah of Rabat formed the heart of Jewish life. Under the Protectorate, many settled in the new city and gained access to modern schooling, notably through the schools of the Alliance israélite universelle. After independence in 1956, the community emptied in waves toward Casablanca, France, and Israel.
Les Juifs de Ratisbonne (Regensburg) · Europe centrale
One of the oldest communities of the Empire, attested as early as the tenth century, expelled in 1519.
Les Juifs de Riga · Europe du Nord
Riga, capital of Latvia, was home to an influential Jewish community, blending Germanized Jews oriented toward German culture and Litvaks from the Lithuanian tradition. Its members were active in commerce, industry, the liberal professions, and intellectual life, and the city had synagogues, schools, and a diverse Jewish political life, from Zionism to the labor movement. During the German occupation, the community was confined to a ghetto, and a large number of its members were massacred in 1941 in the Rumbula forest. The few survivors emigrated after the war, notably to Israel.
Les Juifs de Rio de Janeiro · Amérique du Sud
Community formed by European and North African immigration, long established in the Praça Onze neighborhood.
Les Juifs de Rotterdam · Europe occidentale
Dutch port community bringing together Portuguese Sephardim and Ashkenazim from the 17th century onward.
Les Juifs de Ruse (Roustchouk) · Balkans
Sephardic community of the Bulgarian Danube, commercial crossroads where writer Elias Canetti was born.
Les Juifs de Rzeszów (Reisha) · Europe orientale
Rzeszów (Reisha in Yiddish), in Galicia, was home to an active Jewish community from the early modern period, present in commerce, crafts, and the peddling trade of the hinterland. The city was also a center of Ashkenazi religious life, with synagogues, houses of study, and a Hasidic presence. Emancipated under the Austro-Hungarian administration, its Jews participated in the economic and cultural life of the region. Under German occupation, the community was confined to a ghetto and then almost entirely exterminated between 1942 and 1944, notably at Bełżec.
Les Juifs de Safi (Asfi) · Afrique du Nord
Community of the Atlantic Moroccan port, active during the Portuguese period and later under the Saadians and Alaouites.
Les Juifs de Saigon–Hô Chi Minh-Ville · Asie du Sud-Est
Under French colonial rule in Indochina, Saigon was home to a small Jewish community composed of European expatriates, civil servants, and merchants, among them Jews from North Africa and the Near East as well as Baghdadis. The community had an organized life during the colonial period and continued to exist under the Republic of South Vietnam, with a synagogue. The fall of the South Vietnamese regime in 1975 led to the departure of its members, who dispersed to France, Israel, the United States, and other countries. The Jewish presence there then disappeared as an organized community.
Les Juifs de Saint-Eustache (Statia) · Caraïbes
The small Dutch island of Sint Eustatius (Statia) was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a flourishing Caribbean commercial crossroads, nicknamed the 'Golden Rock,' which attracted Sephardic merchants. They founded a congregation there and built a synagogue, whose ruins (Honen Dalim) still bear witness to this presence. The island's prosperity rested on re-export trade, in which Jewish merchants participated actively. With the commercial decline of Sint Eustatius, following in particular the upheavals of the late eighteenth century, the community dwindled and then disappeared in the nineteenth century.
Les Juifs de Saint-Pétersbourg · Europe orientale
Imperial capital where an authorized Jewish elite built a community and the Great Choral Synagogue.
Les Juifs de Saint-Thomas (Îles Vierges américaines) · Caraïbes
Saint-Thomas, a Danish free port in the Caribbean, was home to one of the most active Sephardic communities in the Caribbean during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, at the heart of transatlantic commercial networks. Jewish merchants prospered there in trade and participated in the life of the city of Charlotte Amalie. The synagogue of Charlotte Amalie, still in use, is among the oldest in the Americas and bears witness to this presence. Saint-Thomas also gave birth or refuge to figures of Caribbean Judaism. The community declined as the island's commercial importance waned, while leaving a legacy that remains visible.
Les Juifs de Salé (Maroc) · Afrique du Nord
Salé, an Atlantic port neighboring Rabat on the other bank of the Bou Regreg, was home to an ancient Jewish community composed of artisans, merchants and commercial intermediaries. Renowned for its corsair history in the early modern period, the city offered Jews a role as agents in trade and the ransoming of captives. The community lived according to the Moroccan rite and maintained close ties with neighboring rabbinical centers. In the twentieth century, like Moroccan Judaism as a whole, it gradually emptied through emigration to Casablanca, France and Israel, especially after independence in 1956.
Les Juifs de San Francisco (Californie) · Amérique du Nord
The California Gold Rush attracted to San Francisco, from the mid-nineteenth century onward, numerous Jewish merchants, mostly of German-speaking origin, who quickly made it one of the principal Jewish communities on the West Coast of the United States. Rather than seeking gold, many established themselves as traders, suppliers and founders of commercial houses, and several Jewish families played a prominent role in the city's economic development. The community distinguished itself by an open Jewish life and a strong implantation of Reform Judaism, with large congregations. Active in philanthropy, culture and public affairs, it remains today an important and liberal community of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Les Juifs de Santiago du Chili · Amérique du Sud
Chilean community from Ashkenazi and Sephardic immigration of the early 20th century.
Les Juifs de São Paulo · Amérique du Sud
Large Brazilian community from East European and Levantine immigration, historically concentrated in the Bom Retiro neighborhood.
Les Juifs de Savannah (Géorgie) · Amérique du Nord
Shortly after the founding of the Georgia colony in 1733, a group of Jews, mostly Sephardim who had arrived from London, landed in Savannah, making it one of the oldest centers of American Judaism. The community formed around the congregation Mickve Israel, one of the first organized Jewish congregations in North America. Its members took part in the commerce and life of the colony and then the state. Over time, Ashkenazim joined the Sephardim, and the congregation evolved toward Reform Judaism. Savannah remains a notable historical center of Southern Judaism.
Les Juifs de Sébastopol · Crimée
Sevastopol, a port city and naval base in Crimea founded in the late eighteenth century, saw the establishment of a Jewish community, predominantly Ashkenaze, after the city was opened to civilian residence during the nineteenth century. Its members, merchants and craftsmen, participated in the life of a major military port of the Russian Empire. The community had religious life and institutions. During the German occupation of Crimea in 1941–1942, the Jews of Sevastopol were massacred by Nazi forces, and the community was almost entirely destroyed.
Les Juifs de Serres (Macédoine grecque) · Balkans
Serrès (Serres), in Greek Macedonia, was home to a Sephardic community descended from the Iberian exiles received in the Ottoman Empire. Its members, Judeo-Spanish in language, were active in commerce, notably in tobacco and the region's agricultural products. The community had synagogues and communal institutions. During the Second World War, the region came under Bulgarian occupation, and in 1943 the community was deported and almost entirely exterminated in the Nazi camps.
Les Juifs de Sétif · Afrique du Nord
Community of the Constantinois highlands, in eastern Algeria, formed during the colonial period.
Les Juifs de Settat · Afrique du Nord
Settat, in the Chaouia region of Morocco, was home to a small Jewish community composed mainly of merchants and peddlers serving the agricultural hinterland. Organized around their synagogue and institutions, its members maintained ties with the larger neighboring communities. During the twentieth century, the community gradually emptied toward Casablanca, France, and Israel.
Les Juifs de Sfax · Afrique du Nord
Sfax, a major port in southern Tunisia, was home to a Jewish community of local Sephardic tradition, active in trade, crafts, and commerce centered on olive oil, almonds, and the region's agricultural products. Under the French Protectorate, its members benefited from the education provided by the Alliance israélite universelle and opened themselves to French culture. During the Second World War, the city experienced, like the rest of Tunisia, German occupation and the imposition of forced labor measures on Jews. After independence, the community dispersed primarily to France and Israel in the mid-twentieth century.
Les Juifs de Šiauliai (Shavl) · Europe orientale
Šiauliai (Shavl), in Lithuania, was home to a dynamic Jewish community closely linked to the leather and textile industries, several firms of which were founded and run by Jews. Merchants, artisans, tanners, and workers animated an active Ashkenazi communal life, with synagogues, schools, and associations. During the German occupation in 1941, a large part of the community was massacred, and the survivors were confined to a ghetto. The ghetto was liquidated in 1944 and its inhabitants deported, leaving only a handful of survivors.
Les Juifs de Sidi Bel Abbès · Afrique du Nord
Community of Oran, in Algeria, established during the colonial period around the garrison city.
Les Juifs de Sidon (Saïda) · Proche-Orient
Ancient Jewish community of the Lebanese port, equipped with a synagogue in the old Jewish quarter.
Les Juifs de Sighet (Sighetu Marmației) · Europe centrale
Hasidic community in Maramureș, seat of the Sighet dynasty and birthplace of Elie Wiesel.
Les Juifs de Skopje · Balkans
Skopje (Üsküb under the Ottomans) was home to a Sephardic community established after 1492, heir to the great Judeo-Spanish centers of the Balkans and speaking Ladino. Merchants, craftsmen, and peddlers, its members lived grouped in a Jewish quarter and maintained a religious and cultural life of Sephardic tradition. The community experienced, in the early twentieth century, the upheavals of the Balkan wars and integration into the Yugoslav kingdom. In March 1943, under the occupation of Macedonia by Bulgaria, Germany's ally, almost all of Skopje's Jews were gathered and then deported to the Treblinka extermination camp, where they were murdered; there were almost no survivors.
Les Juifs de Slonim · Europe orientale
Birthplace of the Hasidic dynasty of Slonim, a Belarusian community with a rich rabbinical heritage.
Les Juifs de Słuck · Europe orientale
Belarusian community with a misnagdim heritage, seat of a yeshiva and eminent Lithuanian rabbis.
Les Juifs de Sofia · Balkans
Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, housed the largest Jewish community in the country, predominantly Sephardic and Judeo-Spanish-speaking, heir to the Iberian exiles welcomed into the Ottoman Empire. Merchants, craftsmen, and members of urban professions, its members had synagogues — including the great synagogue of Sofia — and communal institutions. During the Second World War, despite antisemitic legislation and deportations carried out from occupied territories, the deportation of Jews from Bulgaria's pre-war borders was prevented, and the community survived. After 1948, nearly all of Bulgarian Jewry emigrated to Israel.
Les Juifs de Souk Ahras · Afrique du Nord
Community of eastern Constantinois, in Algeria, near the Tunisian border.
Les Juifs de Sousse · Afrique du Nord
Long present in Sousse, the coastal city corresponding to ancient Hadrumetum, the Jews formed a community of merchants and craftsmen integrated into the regional economic life. Of local Sephardic tradition, they had synagogues and communal institutions, and benefited under the French Protectorate from the schooling of the Alliance israélite universelle. Like all the Jews of Tunisia, they experienced the German occupation during the Second World War. After independence in 1956, the community gradually left the city, its members emigrating primarily to France and Israel.
Les Juifs de Split (Spalato) · Balkans
Split (Spalato), under Venetian dominion, welcomed a Sephardic community whose merchants animated Adriatic trade, particularly after the development of a commercial entrepôt linking the city to the Ottoman hinterland. The Jews were confined to a ghetto there but participated actively in the port city's maritime growth. The community subsequently passed under Austrian administration, which gradually brought emancipation. During the Second World War, Dalmatia occupied by Italy offered relative respite to the Jews, but after the Italian capitulation of 1943 and the arrival of German forces, part of the community was deported while others joined the partisans or sought safer areas. A Jewish presence survived after the war.
Les Juifs de Stanisławów (Ivano-Frankivsk) · Europe orientale
Stanisławów (today Ivano-Frankivsk), in eastern Galicia, was home to a significant Jewish community integrated into the commercial and artisanal life of a city of mixed Polish, Ukrainian, and Jewish populations. The Jews there had synagogues, schools, and institutions, and the community encompassed various currents of Ashkenazi Judaism, from Hasidism to Zionism. Under German occupation, beginning in 1941, it was struck by mass massacres, including a large killing at the cemetery, and then confined to a ghetto. The ghetto was liquidated in 1943, and virtually the entire Jewish population was exterminated.
Les Juifs de Stockholm · Europe du Nord
Permitted to settle in Sweden from the late eighteenth century, the Jews of Stockholm formed a bourgeois Ashkenazi community, progressively emancipated and well integrated into Swedish society. Its members were active in commerce, finance, industry, the arts, and sciences, and the city established a grand synagogue and communal institutions. Sweden having remained neutral during the Second World War, the community escaped the Shoah and welcomed Jewish refugees, including almost all the Danish Jews saved in 1943. It remains today one of the leading Jewish communities in Scandinavia.
Les Juifs de Strasbourg · Europe occidentale
Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace, was long a heart of the Ashkenazic Jewish life of the region, marked by a rich rabbinical tradition and a surrounding rural Judaism. Alternately French and German according to the conflicts, the community played an important role in the modernization of French Judaism, notably within the consistorial organization established under Napoleon. Its members were present in commerce, crafts, education, and the liberal professions. During the Second World War, the community was evacuated and struck by persecution, before reconstituting itself after the war and remaining one of the most important in France.
Les Juifs de Subotica · Balkans
Predominantly Neologue community of Voivodina, endowed with a large Art Nouveau synagogue.
Les Juifs de Sulaymaniyah · Proche-Orient
Kurdish-speaking Jewish community of Iraqi Kurdistan, almost entirely emigrated to Israel after 1950.
Les Juifs de Surabaya · Asie du Sud-Est
Community of Baghdadi and Ashkenazi merchants in the principal port of eastern Java.
Les Juifs de Sydney · Océanie
The Jewish community of Sydney is one of the oldest in Australia, its origins going back to the first convoys of the British penal colony, among which Jews figured, as well as to the free immigrants who came afterward. During the nineteenth century, it built institutions and synagogues and participated in the economic and civic life of the colony of New South Wales. Strengthened later by immigration from Eastern Europe, by survivors of the Shoah and by Jews from South Africa and other countries, it presents a diverse composition. Active and well established, it constitutes, along with Melbourne, one of the two great centers of Australian Judaism.
Les Juifs de Szeged · Europe centrale
Neologue community in southern Hungary, with a large Art Nouveau synagogue designed by Lipót Baumhorn.
Les Juifs de Tabriz · Proche-Orient
Ancient Jewish community in Iranian Azerbaijan, speaking a local Judeo-Persian dialect.
Les Juifs de Tachkent · Asie centrale
Tashkent, a major administrative and industrial center of Russian and then Soviet Central Asia, was home to a Jewish community composed of Bukharan Jews (Bukharim), of Judeo-Tajik speech and ancient Eastern tradition, and of Ashkenazim who came with the Russian administration. During the Second World War, the city received a large number of Jewish refugees evacuated from western regions threatened by the German advance. The community maintained a religious and cultural life, despite the constraints of the Soviet regime on practice. After the fall of the USSR and the independence of Uzbekistan, the vast majority emigrated, notably to Israel and the United States.
Les Juifs de Tallinn (Reval) · Europe du Nord
Tallinn (Reval), in Estonia, was home to a small Ashkenazi Jewish community, formed mainly in the nineteenth century and well integrated into the bourgeois and cultural life of the city. Independent Estonia granted its Jewish minority a remarkable degree of cultural autonomy in the interwar period. During the German occupation in 1941, the community was almost entirely exterminated, and Estonia was presented at the Wannsee Conference as "free of Jews." The Jewish presence reconstituted itself only weakly after the war.
Les Juifs de Tanger · Afrique du Nord
Community of the Strait, with a strong Spanish-speaking Sephardic component (haketia), cosmopolitan at the time of the city's international status.
Les Juifs de Tarnów · Europe orientale
Tarnów, in Galicia, was the seat of a large Jewish community in which Jews constituted a significant share of the population and were active in commerce, crafts, and industry. A crossroads of Ashkenazi Jewish currents, the city brought together both Hasidic circles and Mitnagdim, as well as, in the modern era, supporters of the Jewish Enlightenment, Zionism, and the labor movement. Synagogues, schools, and communal institutions testified to an intense Jewish life. Under German occupation, the community was confined to a ghetto and then almost entirely exterminated between 1942 and 1944, at Bełżec, Auschwitz, and through on-site executions.
Les Juifs de Taza · Afrique du Nord
Community of the corridor between Fès and eastern Morocco, organized around its mellah.
Les Juifs de Tbilissi — communauté perse-géorgienne · Caucase
In addition to the long-established Georgian Jews and the more recent Ashkenazi community, Persian Jewish merchants settled in Tbilisi, playing the role of intermediaries in trade between Iran, the Caucasus and Russia. Stemming from Iranian Judaism, they were distinguished by their origins and customs from the other Jewish components of the city. Over time, this small community drew closer to and partly merged into the broader Georgian Jewish ensemble. Like the other Jews of Georgia, its descendants emigrated in large part in the twentieth century, notably to Israel.
Les Juifs de Tbilissi (communauté ashkénaze) · Caucase
Distinct from the ancient community of Georgian Jews (Gruzinim), an Ashkenazi community established itself in Tbilisi under the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century, composed of officials, military men, merchants and members of the liberal professions who came from the Russian provinces. Russian-speaking and of Ashkenazi tradition, it was distinguished by its language and customs from the long-established Georgian Jews. Under the Soviet regime, it shared in the life of the city while enduring the constraints weighing on religious practice. After the fall of the USSR and the independence of Georgia, the majority of its members emigrated, above all to Israel and Russia.
Les Juifs de Tcherkassy · Europe orientale
Jewish center of central Ukraine, seat of a Hasidic dynasty stemming from the Chernobyl lineage.
Les Juifs de Tchernobyl · Europe orientale
Ukrainian town birthplace of an important Hasidic dynasty founded by Rabbi Menahem Nahum.
Les Juifs de Tébessa · Afrique du Nord
Tébessa, in the far east of Algeria, was home to a Jewish community that was close, in culture and ties, to the neighboring Tunisian communities. Its members were peddlers, merchants, and artisans serving the city and its hinterland. The Crémieux Decree of 1870 granted them French citizenship in principle, accelerating their integration, which was nonetheless suspended under the Vichy regime. When they departed during the twentieth century, its members settled in France or neighboring Tunisia.
Les Juifs de Téhéran · Proche-Orient
Primary Jewish community of Iran in the modern era, which became the center of Persian Jewish life in the twentieth century.
Les Juifs de Tekirdağ (Rodosto) · Balkans
Ottoman Sephardic community on the Thracian coast of the Sea of Marmara, active commercial port.
Les Juifs de Telšiai (Telz) · Europe orientale
Lithuanian city renowned for the Telz yeshiva, a major center of misnagdim Talmudic study.
Les Juifs de Tianjin · Asie orientale
Community of Russian and Ashkenazi refugees settled in the treaty port of northern China.
Les Juifs de Timișoara (Temesvar) · Europe orientale
Timișoara, a multicultural city in the Banat, welcomed a developed Jewish community under Habsburg rule, blending older Sephardim with German-speaking and Hungarian Ashkenazim. Emancipated in the nineteenth century, its members distinguished themselves in commerce, industry, medicine, and the cultural life of a city where Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, and Serbs coexisted. As a large part of interior Romania was not subjected to systematic deportation, the community survived the Shoah in part, despite the persecutions, forced labor, and antisemitic legislation of the Antonescu regime. After the war, the majority emigrated to Israel and the West, leaving only a residual community.
Les Juifs de Tirana · Balkans
Tirana, the capital of Albania, was home to a small Jewish community as well as, in the years before and during the Second World War, Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution in other European countries. In keeping with the general attitude of the country, and notably in the name of the traditional code of honor of Besa, the local population offered refuge and protection to Jews during the occupation. This solidarity contributed to the survival of virtually all the Jews present in Albania. After the war and under the communist regime, Jewish life remained discreet, and most Jews subsequently emigrated, above all to Israel.
Les Juifs de Tire · Proche-Orient
Ottoman Sephardic community of the Smyrna hinterland, in Aegean Anatolia.
Les Juifs de Tiznit · Afrique du Nord
Tiznit, in the Souss region of southern Morocco, was home to a Jewish community renowned for its goldsmith and jeweler craftsmen, who produced the famous silver jewelry of the Amazigh tradition. Often Berber-speaking, its members were integrated into the economic exchanges with the surrounding Berber populations and organized around their synagogues. From 1948 onward, and even more so during the 1950s and 1960s, almost the entire community emigrated, primarily to Israel.
Les Juifs de Tokyo · Asie orientale
The Jewish presence in Tokyo, and more broadly in Japan, began with the country's opening in the Meiji era and the settlement of foreign merchants and residents. A more visible community took shape in the twentieth century, fed notably by refugees fleeing pogroms, the Russian Revolution, and then Nazism, some of whom transited through Japan. Tokyo developed an organized communal life, with a synagogue and institutions serving a population composed mainly of expatriates. The community remains modest in size but durably established, with an active religious and cultural life.
Les Juifs de Tolède · Europe occidentale
Major Castilian community of medieval Spain, endowed with famous synagogues, dispersed by the pogroms of 1391 and the expulsion of 1492.
Les Juifs de Toronto · Amérique du Nord
The Jewish community of Toronto developed strongly from the late nineteenth century onward with the arrival of Ashkenazi immigrants from Eastern Europe, first settled in immigrant neighborhoods and the garment industry. Over the course of the twentieth century, it experienced considerable growth and social mobility, and eventually surpassed Montreal to become the largest Jewish community in Canada. It built a rich network of synagogues, schools, social and cultural institutions covering all currents of Judaism. Strengthened by successive waves of immigration, including survivors of the Shoah and Jews from many countries, it constitutes today a large and highly diverse community.
Les Juifs de Toulouse · Europe occidentale
Medieval Jewish community of Languedoc, subject to the ritual of the episcopal "slap," then reconstituted in the contemporary period.
Les Juifs de Trèves (Trier) · Europe occidentale
Ancient Rhenish community, among the oldest in Germany, birthplace of Karl Marx.
Les Juifs de Trieste · Europe centrale
The community of Trieste developed after the city was established as a free port by the Habsburgs in the early eighteenth century, attracting Sephardic, Ashkenazi, and Levantine merchants. The Edicts of Toleration of Joseph II at the end of the eighteenth century fostered early emancipation and deep integration into the merchant and financial bourgeoisie of the Adriatic, notably in insurance and maritime shipping. The community, prosperous and cultured, was a notable center of intellectual and literary life in the Austro-Hungarian city. A large, monumental synagogue was built there at the beginning of the twentieth century. Under German occupation after 1943, Trieste was the site of the only Nazi extermination camp on Italian soil (the Risiera di San Sabba) and part of the community was deported.
Les Juifs de Trikala · Grèce
Trikala, in Thessaly, was an ancient center of Romaniote Judaism in Greece, with a long-attested Jewish presence. The community, composed of Romaniote families to whom Sephardim were added under Ottoman rule, lived from commerce and crafts and maintained its synagogue and traditions. During the German occupation of Greece in the Second World War, its members were targeted by deportations to the extermination camps; a portion nonetheless managed to hide with the help of the local population and the Resistance, so that a Jewish presence survived in Trikala after the war.
Les Juifs de Trinidad-et-Tobago · Caraïbes
The Jewish presence in Trinidad dates back to the Sephardic merchant networks of the Caribbean during the colonial era, but it was primarily in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that a more visible community took shape, reinforced by immigrants from Europe and, in the 1930s–1940s, by refugees fleeing Nazism. With many of its members established in commerce, they formed a small community. A communal life, with a place of worship, was organized notably in Port of Spain. The community has remained small throughout its history.
Les Juifs de Trnava (Nagyszombat) · Europe centrale
Ancient medieval community of western Slovakia, expelled then reconstituted in the modern period.
Les Juifs de Troyes (Rachi) · Europe occidentale
11th-century Champagne community, homeland of Rashi, major center of Ashkenazi biblical and Talmudic exegesis.
Les Juifs de Tultchyn · Europe orientale
Community in Podolia annihilated during the Khmelnytsky massacres in 1648, emblematic place of Jewish chronicles.
Les Juifs de Tunis (Tunisois) · Afrique du Nord
Established in Tunis since antiquity, the Jews of the Tunisian capital formed an ancient and stratified urban community, distinguishing the Twansa (Toshavim, indigenous Jews of the Tunisian rite) from the Grana (Livornese in origin, come from Italy). Long concentrated in the hara, they were craftsmen, merchants, goldsmiths, and — under the French Protectorate — increasingly present in modern commerce and the liberal professions, many adopting the French language and culture. The community had synagogues, schools including those of the Alliance israélite universelle, and active rabbinical institutions. After Tunisian independence in 1956, and even more so after the tensions of the 1960s, the great majority emigrated to France, Israel, and North America.
Les Juifs de Turin · Europe occidentale
Turin, capital of Piedmont, was home to an ancient Italian Jewish community (Italkim), long confined to the ghetto under the Ancien Régime. The Jews of the Kingdom of Sardinia were emancipated in 1848 by the Statuto Albertino, and those of Turin participated actively in the Risorgimento and the construction of unified Italy, some attaining prominent positions in the army, the administration, and public life. The city acquired a grand synagogue, the Mole originally conceived as testimony to its ambition. Under Fascism, the racial laws and then the German occupation struck the community, which reconstituted itself after the war and remains active.
Les Juifs de Varna · Balkans
Varna, a Bulgarian Black Sea port, was home to a largely Sephardic Jewish community active in maritime commerce and regional trade. Judeo-Spanish in speech, its members were organized around their synagogues and institutions. Like all the Jews within Bulgaria's former borders, the community escaped deportation during the Second World War. After the independence of the State of Israel, the great majority of its members emigrated, principally to Israel.
Les Juifs de Varsovie · Europe orientale
Largest Jewish community in Europe before 1939, major cultural and religious center, annihilated in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Les Juifs de Veria (Berée) · Grèce
Romaniote then Sephardic community of Greek Macedonia, whose synagogue remains in the Barbouta quarter.
Les Juifs de Vérone · Europe occidentale
Venetian community endowed with a ghetto in 1599, one of the oldest in northern Italy.
Les Juifs de Vinnytsia · Europe orientale
Important Jewish center in Podolia, severely struck by the Shoah during the massacres of 1941-1942.
Les Juifs de Vitebsk · Europe orientale
Vitebsk, in Belarus, was the heart of a rich Yiddish-speaking community in which Jews constituted a significant proportion of the urban population. Merchants, craftsmen, and workers, they animated synagogues, houses of study, and communal institutions, and the city became, in the early twentieth century, a notable artistic center, birthplace of the painter Marc Chagall and seat of an avant-garde art school. Under the Soviet regime, religious life was suppressed while a secularized Jewish culture persisted. During the German occupation, the community was confined to a ghetto and almost entirely exterminated in 1941.
Les Juifs de Volos · Grèce
Volos, a port in Thessaly, was home to a Jewish community comprising an ancient Romaniote component as well as Sephardim, active in trade, notably maritime trade. The community had synagogues and institutions and participated in the life of the city. During the occupation of Greece in the Second World War, a portion of the Jews of Volos escaped deportation thanks to warnings and the assistance of the Greek population and Resistance, as well as local civil and religious authorities, many managing to hide in surrounding villages. Despite losses, a notable portion of the community survived, and a Jewish presence was maintained there after the war.
Les Juifs de Volozhin · Europe orientale
Seat of the famous Volozhin yeshiva, founded in 1803, model for Lithuanian Talmudic academies.
Les Juifs de Wellington · Océanie
Community of the New Zealand capital, founded in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Les Juifs de Xanthi · Balkans
Xanthi, in western Greek Thrace, sheltered a Sephardic community whose members worked primarily in the tobacco trade, the region's major activity. Judeo-Spanish-speaking, they were organized around their synagogue and communal institutions. During the Second World War, the region came under Bulgarian occupation, and the community was deported in 1943 and annihilated in the Nazi camps.
Les Juifs de Zagreb (Agram) · Europe centrale
Zagreb (Agram in German) was home to the principal Jewish community of Croatia, composed mainly of German- and Hungarian-speaking Ashkenazim who settled from the early nineteenth century onward as residence restrictions were lifted. Highly integrated into the urban bourgeoisie, the community was active in commerce, industry, medicine, and the liberal professions, and established modern institutions as well as a grand synagogue. Communal life combined Neolog (Reform) and Orthodox currents, in keeping with the Austro-Hungarian sphere. After the establishment in 1941 of the Independent State of Croatia under the Ustaše movement, allied with Nazi Germany, the community was subjected to persecutory laws and then deportation, and the great majority of its members were killed in Ustaše and Nazi camps. A reduced community reconstituted itself after 1945.
Les Juifs de Zante (Zakynthos) · Grèce / Méditerranée
Zante (Zakynthos), an Ionian island long under Venetian and then British rule, was home to a Jewish community comprising Romaniotes and Italkim (Italian Jews), reflecting its ties to the Venetian world. Its members were active in trade and crafts. The history of this community remains renowned for its fate during the Second World War: according to the transmitted tradition, the Orthodox bishop and the mayor of the island refused to hand over the list of Jews to the occupiers and organized their protection, so that the entire community survived the Shoah. After the war, most of the Jews left the island, notably for Israel and Athens.
Les Juifs des Acores (Portugal) · Europe / Atlantique
In the Azores, a Portuguese Atlantic archipelago, New Christians (cristãos-novos), descendants of Jews forcibly converted in Portugal, settled from the early modern period onward. Subject to Inquisition surveillance, some quietly preserved crypto-Jewish practices on several islands. In the nineteenth century, after the abolition of the Inquisition, Jews coming notably from North Africa settled on the islands, founding communities and cemeteries, particularly in Ponta Delgada and Angra. These communities remained small and eventually ceased to exist through emigration and assimilation, leaving heritage vestiges behind.
Les Juifs des îles Caïmans · Caraïbes
The Jewish presence in the Cayman Islands is connected to the Sephardic merchant networks of the Caribbean, with families of Jamaican and Curaçaoan origin having frequented the archipelago as part of regional trade during the colonial era. This presence remained marginal and did not give rise to an organized and durably established community. Jewish life may have reappeared in the contemporary era with the territory's rise as a financial center. The historical rootedness there nonetheless remained tenuous.
Les Juifs du Caire (rabbanites) · Afrique du Nord
Rabbanite community of Fostat and then Cairo, known through the Genizah of the Ben Ezra synagogue, distinct from local Karaites.
Les Juifs du Cap (Cape Town) · Afrique australe
Cape Town harbored the oldest Jewish community in South Africa, with a Jewish presence attested from the very beginnings of European settlement at the Cape of Good Hope, and an organized congregation taking shape in the first half of the nineteenth century. The community was subsequently considerably reinforced by Litvak immigration from the late nineteenth century onward. Active in commerce and the professions, it established synagogues, schools, and communal institutions and played a prominent role in the life of the city. Like all South African Jewry, it experienced significant emigration after 1994, while remaining a rooted and structured community.
Les Juifs du Kef (Le Kef) · Afrique du Nord
Community of the city of northwestern Tunisia, mixing Twansa and contributions of Algerian origin.
Les Juifs du Paraguay · Amérique du Sud
The Jewish community of Paraguay, concentrated in Asunción, took shape in the twentieth century from immigrants coming from Eastern Europe as well as Sephardim, in a country with a more modest Jewish immigration than its neighbors. Paraguay also served, in the 1930s and 1940s, as a country of transit or refuge for Jews fleeing persecution in Europe. The immigrants settled mainly in commerce and developed a communal life with synagogues and organizations. Always small, the community experienced a decline through emigration to Argentina, Israel, and other countries in the second half of the twentieth century.
Les Juifs du Tafilalet (Rissani-Erfoud) · Afrique du Nord
The Tafilalet, a vast oasis region in southeastern Morocco, was one of the oldest centers of Jewish presence in the Maghreb, situated on the routes of trans-Saharan caravan trade. Its Jews, Arabic- and Berber-speaking, played a role as commercial intermediaries and moneylenders, and the region was renowned for its religious traditions and venerated saints. The communities, dispersed among villages and small towns such as Rissani and Erfoud, preserved their own customs and liturgies. After 1948, and over the following decades, the Jewish population of the Tafilalet emigrated in large part to Israel.
Litvaks (Juifs lituaniens) · Lituanie, Biélorussie, Lettonie
Ashkenazim of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, rationalists and Talmudists (Vilna Gaon), opposed to Hasidism.
Maaravim de Jérusalem (Edah HaMaaravit) · Jérusalem (Vieux Yichouv)
Maghrebi community of Jerusalem founded in 1860 by David ben Shimon.
Malabari · Inde (Kerala)
"Black" subgroup of the Cochin Jews, the oldest, who mostly departed for Israel.
Marranes / Anussim · Péninsule Ibérique
Jews forcibly converted to Christianity practicing Judaism in secret.
Mizrahim · Moyen-Orient
Middle East (Iraq, Iran, Syria, Kurdistan). Heirs of the Babylonian communities, Talmudic and Gaonic traditions.
Nouveaux-chrétiens (Cristãos-novos) · Espagne, Portugal
Jews converted to Catholicism, holding a distinct social status under the Inquisition.
Paradesi · Inde (Kerala, Cochin)
« White » Jews of Cochin, descendants of Sephardim, synagogue from 1568.
Romaniotes · Empire byzantin / Grèce
Greek-speaking Jews of the Byzantine Empire, present even before the post-1492 Sephardic dispersion. Minhag Romania.
Samaritains (Shomronim) · Terre d'Israël (Naplouse, Holon)
Israelite community of Mount Gerizim, ~800 members in Kiryat Luza and Holon.
Séfarades · Péninsule Ibérique → diaspora
From the Iberian Peninsula before and after the expulsions of 1492–1497. Dispersed toward the Ottoman Empire, the Netherlands, Italy, the Americas. Language: Ladino / Judeo-Spanish.
Séfarades ottomans (judéo-espagnols) · Empire ottoman, Méditerranée orientale
Iberian exiles of the Ladino-Judezmo tongue, a distinct cultural world within the Ottoman Empire.
Subbotniks (judaïsants russes) · Russie
Russian "Sabbath-observing" peasants who adopted Judaic practices from the eighteenth century, some of whom fully converted. Many were deported to the Caucasus then emigrated to Israel.
Toshavim / Megorashim · Maghreb
In the Maghreb, the duality between native Jews (toshavim) and those expelled from Spain (megorashim) shapes centuries of communal life.
Yekkes (Juifs allemands) · Allemagne, Europe centrale
Jews of German origin with the West European minhag; emigrated to the Yishuv from 1933.
Yéménites · Yémen
Community of Yemen, isolated and preserved for over two millennia. Liturgy and pronunciation close to biblical Hebrew.