The history of the Jews in Maastricht, Netherlands, traces back to the Middle Ages. A synagogue with a mikvah existed in the city before 1295. However, severe pogroms persuaded Jews to leave Limburgen masse. Hardly any Jews lived in Limburg between the years 1350 and 1650.
Jews were not free again to settle in the city of Maastricht until 1796, two years after French forces had occupied the city. Only Jews with considerable wealth had been allowed to live within the city borders before 1796.
The Jewish community grew considerably during the 19th century. A new synagogue opened in 1809; a Jewish school opened in 1833. Construction began in 1839 on an even larger temple, which opened in 1840.
The Jewish community suffered a decline in membership at the end of the 19th century, as Jews started to move to larger cities in the western part of the Netherlands, notably Amsterdam. Nevertheless, Maastricht retained a significant Jewish community, which went through a period of growth in the 1930s, when a large number of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and other Eastern European countries settled within the city.
A Zionist youth organization sprouted after the Nazis took over the Netherlands in 1940. Local police and fellow citizens protected the Jewish community for some time. However, they could not prevent the deportation of large parts of the community between June 1942 and April 1943. Most of the deportees were eventually killed in Auschwitz and Sobibor. Some Jews managed to hide, especially in the countryside; others fled across the border into Belgium.
The Jewish community had severely declined by the end of World War II. Jewish life reappeared after the liberation of Maastricht in 1944, and the synagogue of Maastricht, which had been ransacked and used as a storage depot during the war, was reopened in 1952. However, declining numbers of Jews in the city eventually led to the forced merger of the Jewish communities of Maastricht, Heerlen, Roermond and Venlo in 1986 to ensure the community's survival. Rabbi Ya'akov Shapiro was inaugurated in 2001 to serve the community, which is now the only existing Jewish community in the province of Limburg.
Number of Jews in Maastricht and surroundings:
1782 - 2
1794 - 22
1809 - 207
1840 - 375
1869 - 429
1899 - 405
1930 - 247
1951 - 115
1998 - 61 (includes all members affiliated to the Jewish community of Limburg)
Limburg, also known as Dutch Limburg, is the southernmost of the twelve provinces of the Netherlands. It is bordered by Gelderland to the north and by North Brabant to its west. Its long eastern boundary forms the international border with the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. To the west is the international border with the similarly named Belgian province of Limburg, part of which is delineated by the river Meuse. To the South, Limburg is bordered by the Belgian province of Liège. The Vaalserberg is on the extreme southeastern point, marking the tripoint of the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium.
Maastricht is a city and a municipality in the southeastern Netherlands. It is the capital and largest city of the province of Limburg. Maastricht is located on both sides of the Meuse, at the point where the Jeker joins it. Mount Saint Peter (Sint-Pietersberg) is largely situated within the city's municipal borders. Maastricht is adjacent to the border with Belgium and is part of the Meuse-Rhine Euroregion, an international metropolis with a population of about 3.9 million, which includes the nearby German and Belgian cities of Aachen, Liège, and Hasselt.
Vaals is a town in the extreme southeastern part of the Dutch province of Limburg, itself in the southeast of the Netherlands.
Goor is a city in the Dutch province of Overijssel. It is located about 20 kilometres (12 mi) west of Enschede. Goor received city rights in 1263.
The history of religion in the Netherlands has been characterized by considerable diversity of religious thought and practice. From 1600 until the second half of the 20th century, the north and west had embraced the Protestant Reformation and were Calvinist. The southeast was predominately Catholic. Associated with immigration from Arab world of the 20th century, Muslims and other minority religions were concentrated in ethnic neighborhoods in the cities.
Chuts is the name applied to Jews who immigrated to London from the Netherlands in the mid-Victorian era (1850s–1860s). They typically came from the cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and brought to London their trades: most notably those of cigar-, cap-, and slipper-making, and as small-time ship chandlers.
The history of the Jews in the Netherlands largely dates to the late 16th century and 17th century, when Sephardic Jews from Portugal and Spain began to settle in Amsterdam and a few other Dutch cities, because the Netherlands was an unusual center of religious tolerance. Since Portuguese Jews had not lived under rabbinic authority for decades, the first generation of those embracing their ancestral religion had to be formally instructed in Jewish belief and practice. This contrasts with Ashkenazi Jews from central Europe, who, although persecuted, lived in organized communities. Seventeenth-century Amsterdam was referred to as the "Dutch Jerusalem" for its importance as a center of Jewish life. In the mid 17th century, Ashkenazi Jews from central and eastern Europe migrated. Both groups migrated for reasons of religious liberty, to escape persecution, now able to live openly as Jews in separate organized, autonomous Jewish communities under rabbinic authority. They were also drawn by the economic opportunities in the Netherlands, a major hub in world trade.
The community of Sephardic Jews in the Netherlands, particularly in Amsterdam, was of major importance in the seventeenth century. The Portuguese Jews in the Netherlands did not refer to themselves as "Sephardim", but rather as "Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation." The Portuguese-speaking community grew from conversos, Jews forced to convert to Catholicism in Spain and Portugal, who rejudaized under rabbinical authority, to create an openly self-identified Portuguese Jewish community. As a result of the expulsions from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1496, as well as the religious persecution by the Inquisition that followed, many Spanish and Portuguese Jews left the Iberian peninsula at the end of the 15th century and throughout the 16th century, in search of religious freedom. Some migrated to the newly independent Dutch provinces which allowed Jews to become residents. Many Jews who left for the Dutch provinces were crypto-Jews. Others had been sincere New Christians, who, despite their conversion, were targeted by Old Christians as suspect. Some of these sought to return to the religion of their ancestors. Ashkenazi Jews began migrating to the Netherlands in the mid-seventeenth century, but Portuguese Jews viewed them with ambivalence.
Eindhoven is a municipality and a city located in the province of North Brabant in the south of the Netherlands, originally at the confluence of the Dommel and Gender brooks. The Gender has been dammed off in the post-war years, but the Dommel still runs through it.
The history of the Jews in Tilburg, Netherlands, did not start until 1767, when a Jewish citizen of the town Oisterwijk was given permission to settle in Tilburg, despite objections from the city council. Several Jewish families also succeeded in settling in Tilburg soon afterwards in 1791.
The Nederlands-Israëlitisch Kerkgenootschap (NIK) is the umbrella organisation for most Ashkenazi Jewish communities in the Netherlands, and is Orthodox in nature, while to be described as traditional in outlook. The expression Orthodox, is for the Dutch situation at least, of a later date than the existence of the congregations that make up the NIK and the NIK itself. The Rabbi of the NIK is Rabbi Dr. Raphael Evers. In total, the NIK has some 20 rabbis actively working in 18 congregations throughout the country, serving some 5,000 Jews.
The Nederlands Verbond voor Progressief Jodendom is the umbrella organisation for Progressive Jews in the Netherlands, and is affiliated to the World Union for Progressive Judaism. It was founded in 1931.
The Portuguese Synagogue, also known as the Esnoga, or Snoge, is a late 17th-century Sephardic synagogue in Amsterdam, completed in 1675. Esnoga is the word for synagogue in Judaeo-Spanish, the traditional Judaeo-Spanish language of Sephardi Jews.
The History of the Jews in Amsterdam focuses on the historical center of the Dutch Jewish community, comprising both Portuguese Jews originally from both Spain and Portugal and Ashkenazi Jews, originally from central Europe. The two separate groups have had a continuing presence since the seventeenth century. Amsterdam has been called a Jerusalem of the West and the "Dutch Jerusalem". The Holocaust in the Netherlands devastated the Jewish community, with the Nazis murdering some 75% of the approximately 80,000 Jews at time present in Amsterdam, but the community has managed to rebuild a vibrant and living Jewish life for its approximately 15,000 present members.
In the early modern era, European Jews were confined to ghettos and placed under strict regulations as well as restrictions in many European cities. The character of ghettos fluctuated over the centuries. In some cases, they comprised a Jewish quarter, the area of a city traditionally inhabited by Jews. In many instances, ghettos were places of terrible poverty and during periods of population growth, ghettos had narrow streets and small, crowded houses. Residents had their own justice system. Around the ghetto stood walls that, during pogroms, were closed from inside to protect the community, but from the outside during Christmas, Pesach, and Easter Week to prevent the Jews from leaving at those times.
The Jodenbuurt is a neighbourhood of Amsterdam, Netherlands. For centuries before World War II, it was the center of the Dutch Jews of Amsterdam — hence, its name. It is best known as the birthplace of Baruch Spinoza, the home of Rembrandt, and the Jewish ghetto of Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
The four active synagogues of Gibraltar are colloquially known as the Great Synagogue, the Little Synagogue, the Flemish Synagogue, and the Abudarham Synagogue. The first synagogue established after the 1717 expulsion of Jews from Gibraltar, the Great Synagogue, was built on what is now known as Engineer Lane, and remains Gibraltar's principal synagogue. The Little Synagogue, founded in 1759 in Irish Town, was the result of the desire of Moroccan Jews for a less formal service. The lavish Flemish Synagogue was built at the turn of the nineteenth century on Line Wall Road, due to the request of some congregants for a return to more formal, Dutch customs. The last synagogue to be established in what is now the British overseas territory of Gibraltar, the Abudarham Synagogue, was founded in 1820 on Parliament Lane by recent Moroccan immigrants.
The history of the Jews in Suriname starts in 1639, as the English government allowed Spanish and Portuguese Jews from the Netherlands, Portugal and Italy to settle the region, coming to the old capital Torarica.
The following is a timeline of the history of the municipality of Maastricht, Netherlands.
The Jewish cemetery in Hoorn can refer to the original Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of the Dutch city of Hoorn, or to a separate section of today's public cemetery. That Jewish section was opened in 1968, after the old Jewish cemetery was cleared for road construction.
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