Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Jewish Strasbourg

As Strasbourg has a large Jewish community, we decided to attend Friday night services at the "Synagogue de la Paix," the main synagogue inaugurated in 1958 to replace the Synagogue de Quai Kleber, inaugurated in 1898 and burnt and razed by the Nazis in 1940. We attended a Bar Mitzvah in the Sephardic congregation; although I was in the gallery above and couldn't see much, I enjoyed the different melodies being chanted.

We saw these Jewish stars in the pavement of a church near our hotel but never figured out why they were there.

In the Middle Ages, the Jewish community was centered in the Rue des Juifs, which we walked down on Saturday afternoon. A stone plaque indicates where the synagogue and mikvah were located.

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