The Jewish Community of Basel
Basel
Alternate spelling: Basle; French: Bale
A city in northwestern Switzerland
Basel is located on the Rhine River, near the French and German borders
Baleph, a smartphone and tablet application that was launched in 2014, provides travelers with a walking tour detailing Basel's Jewish history. The Jewish Museum of Switzerland, which is located in Basel, also provides visitors with information and exhibitions on the history of the Jewish community in Switzerland. Another museum of Jewish interest is the Kunstmuseum Basel, which includes several works by the artist Marc Chagall.
The Great Synagogue, which was originally built in 1868 and expanded in 1892, is one of five synagogues located in Basel. The Jewish Primary School Leo Adler (JPS), which was founded in 1961, provides Jewish children with a religious and secular education, and also offers extracurricular activities.
The Great Synagogue includes a kosher fine-dining restaurant in the basement. Tourists staying at the Hilton Basel can also request kosher food.
Israel Park, a grove of 40 trees planted by the sixth president of Israel, Chaim Herzog, is located in Basel.
As of 2015 there were approximately 2,000 Jews living in Basel.
HISTORY
Jews first settled in Basel during the 12th century. One hundred years later the Jewish community of Basel was chiefly responsible for funding the construction of the Bridge over the Rhine (1225-1226). During this period the Jews were also permitted to buy and sell land.
Eventually, however, the Jews of Basel became victims of anti-Jewish violence. During the Black Death epidemic they were accused of poisoning the wells. Though the members of the town council attempted to defend the Jewish community, in January 1349 tensions boiled over; 600 Jews, along with the community's rabbi, were burned at the stake and 140 children underwent forced baptisms. These events temporarily put an end to the Jewish community in Basel.
In 1362 a Jew from Colmar (in Alsace) was permitted to settle in Basel; he was soon followed by others. In spite of restrictions imposed on the Jews by the church, the second half of the 14th century was a period of prosperity for the Jewish community of Basel. However, in 1397 the Jews were once again accused of poisoning the local wells. Fearing for their lives, the Jews fled and the community once again ceased to exist. This time it would be a few hundred years until Jews returned to Basel.
From the mid-16th century on the authorities of Basel alternately issued individual residence permits and expulsion edicts. At the end of the 16th century Basel became a center for Hebrew printing. Though the printing houses were owned by Christians, residence permits were granted to Jewish proofreaders. Johannes Froben published the Book of Psalms in 1516. His son Jerome published a copy of the Bible in Hebrew in 1536. Between 1578 and 1580 Ambrosius Froben was permitted to print a censored edition of the Talmud, which had been banned under Pope Julius III in 1553. The works of Johannes Buxtorf, who taught Hebrew at Basel University (1591-1664) were also printed in Basel.
In 1789, when anti-Jewish propaganda was rife in Alsace, many Alsatian Jews fled to Basel and were permitted to stay there temporarily. Following a request from the French government in 1797, the local authorities exempted French Jews entering Basel from paying the special tax that was levied on Jews, and in 1798 the tax was abolished completely.
Under Napoleon several Jews, mainly French citizens from Alsace, settled in Basel. They numbered 128 in 1805 and organized their own community. They were expelled in 1845 when the French government broke off relations with the canton (administrative subdivision). Some returned shortly thereafter, only to be forced to leave again in 1854. The Jews of Switzerland were granted full civil rights in 1866. This also meant that Jews from Alsace could return to settle in Basel. The community grew, and a synagogue was consecrated in 1868.
ZIONISM
The First Zionist Congress was held in Basel in 1897; in total the World Zionist Congress would meet in Basel ten times. In the wake of the first Congress, Theodor Herzl wrote: "Were I to sum up the Basel Congress in a word…it would be this: At Basel I founded the Jewish State."
WORLD WAR II
During World War II Swiss Jews were protected by Switzerland's neutrality. Basel served as a temporary refuge for a number of Jews fleeing the Nazis, most of whom left after the war. Nonetheless, during the war many Jews were unable to escape to Switzerland, as a result of government policies designed to keep them out. Evidence suggests that Swiss banks collaborated with the Nazis, and withheld, laundered, and looted, many victims' and survivors' assets.
POSTWAR
In 1960 Basel was home to 2,291 Jews, making it the second-largest Jewish community in Switzerland. 838 Jewish families lived in the city in 1969. In 1997 there were 2,600 Jews living in Basel, out of a total Swiss Jewish population of 18,000.
NOTABLE FIGURES
Among the notable figures from Basel were Z. Dreyfuss-Brodsky, the representative for Swiss Jewry at the Jewish Agency, and the lawyer Marcus Mordecai Cohn (1890-1953), an active Zionist and rabbinical scholar who later became adviser on Jewish law to the Ministry of Justice in Israel.The chemist Markus Guggenheim and Nobel laureate Tadeus Reichstein were also from Basel.
Rabbi Yacoub Boccara with Zionist Envoys from North Africa nthe 19th Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, 1911
(Photos)from North Africa at the 10th Zionist Congress
in Basel, Switzerland, August 1911
(Beit Hatfutsot photo Archive,
courtesy of Roland Fellous, Sarcelles)
Herzl with delegates from Dagestan, Basel, August 23-28, 1903
(Photos)Matityahu Bogatirov (left) and Shlomo Mordechayev (right).
The 6th Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland,
August 23-28, 1903.
(The Oster Visual Documentation Center, Beit Hatfutsot,
courtesy of Nissim Elishayev, Israel)
The Great Synagogue in Aulerstrasse, Basel, Switzerland, 1930
(Photos)Basel, Switzerland, 1930.
The location of the community's synagogue was changed several times during the 19th century.
The present Synagogue was designed by the Basel architect Hermann Rudolf Gauss and dedicated on August 9 1868.
A further wing was completed in 1892. Its new form, with two domes, is still preserved.
(From the Beit Hatfutsot Photo Exhibition: "The History of the Jewish Community in Basel", 1982)
Delegates from Salonika at the 10th Zionist Congress, Basel, Switzerland, 1911
(Photos)Basel, Switzerland, 1911
Among them Shem-Tov Revakh. Sitting, center, David Wolffsohn, 2nd President of the World Zionist Organization
(The Oster Visual Documentation Center, Beit Hatfutsot, Salonika Collection)
Girls welcoming the delegates of the 19th Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, 1935
(Photos)Three girls welcoming the delegates of the 19th Zionist Congress at the train station in Basel, Switzerland, 1935
Photo: Herbert Sonnenfeld
(The Oster Visual Documentation Center, Beit Hatfutsot, Sonnenfeld collection)
Manes Kartagener
(Personality)Manes Kartagener (1897-1975), scholar and physician, born in Przemysl, Galicia, then part of the Austrian Empire (now Poland), the only son of Rabbi Lazar Kartagener of Przemysl.
Kartagener received a thorough education in both Torah and general subjects. He was taught Bible, Hebrew grammar and Talmud by private tutors under the supervision of his father and, after his home town was the centre of bitter fighting between the Austrian and Russian armies during the First World War, went to Lvov (now Lviv, in Ukraine) to study the natural sciences where he graduated in 1915. He had initially planned to become a rabbi but in 1916 he immigrated to Switzerland and studied medicine. He supported himself and financed his studies by giving private lessons. He qualified as a doctor in 1924, gained postgraduate experience in Basel and Zurich, before being appointed to a position at department of medicine at the University of Zurich. In 1928 he obtained his doctorate for a thesis on the thyroid gland. From 1929 to 1937 he served as chief physician of the polyclinic attached to the university. In 1935 he became a lecturer in the faculty of medicine and in 1950 he was appointed professor. He published a number of works on lung and heart diseases. He later became a professor in the Zurich University Medical School, and is best known for having identified a hereditary medical condition affecting the sinus and causing sinusitis and bronchitis. The condition has been named after him as the Kartagener Syndrome or the Kartagener disease.
Throughout his life Kartagener retained his interest in Judaism although he was not active in communal life. In 1962 he published a linguistic-philosophical essay in German on “The Foundations of the Hebrew Language” in which he discussed the origins of thought as expressed through the Greek and Hebrew languages.
One of Kartagener’s sisters, Minda, was married to Yeshahahu Sonne, a well-known researcher and writer on Jewish studies, who was a professor in the rabbinical seminary in Cincinatti. His other sister, Machla Chaya, a medical doctor, was married to writer Dr. Yitchak Mann.
Robert Guttmann
(Personality)Robert Guttmann (1880-1942) naïve painter and traveler, born in Susice ( Schüttenhofen), Bohemia, Czec Republic (then part of Austria-Hungary). Guttmann moved to Prague in 1895, where he attended the Bergmann Business School. Having a fine baritone voice he wanted to become a cantor. He also excelled himself in sports. For several years he attended a private art school run by the painter Alois Kirnig. At home he spoke German and Hebrew. Eventually he became a Zionist and in 1897, he walked all the way (for fourteen and half weeks) to Basel to attend the First Zionist Congress. Later he would walk to attend several more of the following Zionist Congresses.
During World War II, while in Prague, Guttmann started to paint large paintings with an almost childlike naivete. He thus became the illustrator of the Jewish community of Prague during the Holocaust. In his works he expressed the anguish and humiliation, but also the human dignity tirelessly maintained during those hard times.
Guttmann was deported from Prague on the first transport to Lodz ghetto in October 1041. There he became completely apathetic and silent and he died there of starvation in 1942.
Some of Guttmann's works that were retrieved after the war are now in the collections of the Prague Jewish Museum.
Tadeus Reichstein
(Personality)Tadeus (Tadeusz) Reichstein (1897-1996), chemist, born in Wloclawek, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire). His family moved to Zurich, Switzerland in 1908. In 1934 he was professor of organic chemistry in Zurich and in 1938 Head of the Institute of Pharmacy in Basel.
In 1933 he succeeded in the synthesis of Vitamin C, and in 1934 began the isolation of the hormones of the adrenal cortex.
In 1950, together with E.C. Kendall and P. Hench, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology for the discoveries relation to the hormones of the adrenal cortex.