From cradle to grave, the milestones of Jewish life are marked by rituals based on both religious commandments and local customs. These customs have evolved over time depending on the societies in which they developed.
As an introduction to the permanent collection, this room proposes fundamental references for an understanding of Judaism’s sources and permanence.
Jewish communities have been established in the Midi region since antiquity, and from the eleventh century onwards, they spread throughout France. Medieval Jewry was an open quarter where Jews and Christians coexisted. But Jews were regularly the victims of massacres, spoliations and expulsions.
The expulsions from England (1290), France (1394) and the Iberian Peninsula (1492 and 1498) imposed major changes on the demographic distribution of Jews in Europe.
The Festival of Lights, also known as the “Feast of Dedication,” is called Hanukkah (literally “inauguration” in Hebrew).
Towards the end of the 16th century, the migratory flux of Spanish and Portuguese Jews and New Christians, until then mainly around the Mediterranean rim, shifted towards western and northern Europe.
The Bible recommends that Hebrews go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year.
The wooden synagogues built in Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania in the second half of the 16th century and in the 17th century constitute a remarkable phenomenon in traditional synagogue architecture, both in the unity of their style and the intense artistic creativity lavished on their decoration.
The year begins with a cycle of solemnities called the “Days of Awe” (Yamim Norayim), a period of judgement and repentance.
Throughout the Middle Ages, there were close ties between the Jews in the Maghreb and in Spain.
On the eve of the Revolution, there were some forty thousand Jews in France, divided into two groups: the Germans (Ashkenazim) (28,000) in Alsace and Lorraine, and the Portuguese (Sephardim) in Bordeaux and Pont-Saint-Esprit (5,000), and those living in the Comtat Venaissin (2,500).
Late in 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), a young army officer at the Ministry of War, was arrested and sentenced for life for high treason for having allegedly communicated military secrets to the Germans.
Although the first Jewish periodical was published in Judeo-Spanish in Amsterdam in 1675, the Jewish press did not begin to flourish until the 19th century.
In 1919, Issachar Ber Ryback (1897-1935) and Boris Aronson (1898-1980) published “Paths of Jewish Painting,” an article assessing Jewish artistic activity, in the Kultur-Lige’s review Oyfgang.
