Mainz is the capital and largest city of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, and with around 223,000 inhabitants, it is Germany's 35th-largest city. It lies in the Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region—Germany's second-largest metropolitan region after Rhine-Ruhr—which also encompasses the cities of Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden, Darmstadt, Offenbach am Main, and Hanau.
Rhineland-Palatinate is a western state of Germany. It covers 19,846 km2 (7,663 sq mi) and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the sixteen states. Mainz is the capital and largest city. Other cities are Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Koblenz, Trier, Kaiserslautern, Worms, and Neuwied. It is bordered by North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland, Baden-Württemberg and Hesse and by France, Luxembourg and Belgium.
Worms is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, situated on the Upper Rhine about 60 km (40 mi) south-southwest of Frankfurt am Main. It had about 84,646 inhabitants as of 2022.
A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It has a place for prayer where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, choir performances, and children's plays. They also have rooms for study, social halls, administrative and charitable offices, classrooms for religious and Hebrew studies, and many places to sit and congregate. They often display commemorative, historic, or modern artwork alongside items of Jewish historical significance or history about the synagogue itself.
Speyer, historically known in English as Spires, is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany with approximately 50,000 inhabitants. Located on the left bank of the river Rhine, Speyer lies 25 km south of Ludwigshafen and Mannheim, and 21 km south-west of Heidelberg. Founded by the Romans, it is one of Germany's oldest cities. Speyer Cathedral, a number of other churches, and the Altpörtel dominate the Speyer landscape. In the cathedral, beneath the high altar, are the tombs of eight Holy Roman Emperors and German kings.
Mainz Cathedral or St. Martin's Cathedral is located near the historical center and pedestrianized market square of the city of Mainz, Germany. This 1000-year-old Roman Catholic cathedral is the site of the episcopal see of the Bishop of Mainz.
The New Synagogue on Oranienburger Straße in Berlin is a mid-19th century synagogue built as the main place of worship for the city's Jewish community, succeeding the Old Synagogue which the community outgrew. Because of its Moorish style and resemblance to the Alhambra, the New Synagogue is an important architectural monument in Germany.
The Fasanenstrasse Synagogue was a former liberal Jewish congregation and synagogue, that was located at 79–80 Fasanenstrasse off Kurfürstendamm, in the affluent neighbourhood of Charlottenburg, in Berlin, Germany. Completed on 26 August 1912, the synagogue was located close to the Berlin Stadtbahn and Zoo Station.
Bad Sobernheim is a town in the Bad Kreuznach district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the like-named Verbandsgemeinde, and is also its seat. It is a state-recognized spa town, and is well known for two fossil discovery sites and for the naturopath Emanuel Felke. Bad Sobernheim is also a winegrowing town.
St Peter's Cathedral is a Roman Catholic church and former cathedral in Worms, southern Germany.
Speyer Cathedral, officially the Imperial Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption and St Stephen, in Latin: Domus sanctae Mariae Spirae in Speyer, Germany, is the seat of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Speyer and is suffragan to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Bamberg. The cathedral, which is dedicated to St. Mary, patron saint of Speyer and St. Stephen is generally known as the Kaiserdom zu Speyer. Pope Pius XI raised Speyer Cathedral to the rank of a minor basilica of the Roman Catholic Church in 1925.
The Frankfurter Judengasse was the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt and one of the earliest ghettos in Germany. It existed from 1462 until 1811 and was home to Germany's largest Jewish community in early modern times.
The New Synagogue was a former Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue, located in Breslau, Germany. It was one of the largest synagogues in the German Empire and a centre of Reform Judaism in Breslau. Designed by Edwin Oppler in the Romanesque Revival style and completed in 1872, the synagogue was destroyed during the Kristallnacht pogrom which swept across Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938.
The Jewish courtyard in Speyer, is an historic and archeological site located in the inner city of Speyer, Germany. Built in stages between 1104 and the 14th century, the courtyard contains some of the oldest and best-preserved Jewish community buildings. Along with the other ShUM-cities of Worms and Mainz, Speyer was the hometown of one of the most important Jewish communities in Middle Ages in northern Europe. Because of its historical importance and its testimony to the European Jewish cultural tradition, the Jewish courtyard was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2021.
The Jewish Cemetery in Worms or Heiliger Sand, in Worms, Germany, is usually called the oldest surviving Jewish cemetery in Europe, although the Jewish burials in the Jewish sections of the Roman catacombs predate it by a millennium. The Jewish community of Worms was established by the early eleventh century, and the oldest tombstone still legible dates from 1058/59. The cemetery was closed in 1911, when a new cemetery was inaugurated. Some family burials continued until the late 1930s. The older part still contains about 1,300 tombstones, while the newer part contains more than 1,200. The cemetery is protected and cared for by the city of Worms, the Jewish community of Mainz-Worms, and the Landesdenkmalamt of Rhineland-Palatinate. The Salomon L. Steinheim-Institute for German-Jewish History at the University of Duisburg-Essen has been documenting and researching the site since 2005. Because of its cultural importance and preservation, the Jewish Cemetery was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2021.
The Old Synagogue is a former Jewish congregation and synagogue, located in Erfurt, Thuringia, Germany.
The history of the Jews in Speyer reaches back over 1,000 years. In the Middle Ages, the city of Speyer, Germany, was home to one of the most significant Jewish communities in the Holy Roman Empire. Its significance is attested to by the frequency of the Ashkenazi Jewish surname Shapiro/Shapira and its variants Szpira/Spiro/Speyer. After many ups and downs throughout history, the community was totally wiped out in 1940 during the Holocaust. With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 Jews again settled in Speyer and a first assembly took place in 1996.
The New Synagogue is a Jewish congregation, community center, and synagogue, located on Synagogenplatz, Mainz in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, in Germany. The Modernist-styled building was erected in 2010, on the site of the former main synagogue, destroyed in 1938, on the Hindenburgstraße of Mainz Neustadt.
The Wittlich Synagogue is a former Jewish congregation and synagogue, located on Himmeroder Straße 44, in Wittlich, in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Designed by Johannes Vieknen in the Art Nouveau style and completed in 1910, the synagogue was the main place of worship for the city's Ashkenazi Jewish community until 1938.
The Jewish Community of Worms was one of the oldest documented Jewish communities in the German-speaking region. Until its destruction by the Nazis, the Jewish community in Worms had continuously existed since the Middle Ages, with only relatively short interruptions. Due to this long tradition, it always held a prominent position in the memory culture of Ashkenazic Judaism.
