The Jewish Community of Bayonne
A city and commune, Pyrenees-Atlantiques department, Aquitaine Region, southwestern France
Bayonne is located close to the Spanish border, where the Nive and Adour Rivers meet, in the northern part of Basque Country.
As of 2006 there were 150 Jewish families living in or around Bayonne, 10 of which were direct descendants of the original Portuguese Jews who first arrived in the city. The community had a synagogue with weekly Shabbat services and a Sunday school. Rabbi Meir Kenafo was the community's rabbi and cantor. Bayonne also had one store selling kosher meat, wine, and products from Israel.
HISTORY
Marranos from Spain and Portugal who arrived during the early 16th century were the first Jews to settle in Bayonne (they would continue to settle in Bayonne until the late 18th century). In 1550 they were granted residence rights as "new Christians," but Bayonne's merchants prevented them from engaging in local trade. Several Marrano families were expelled from Bayonne in 1636, and some found refuge at Nantes.
Beginning in the middle of the 17th century, the Bayonne community organized a congregation, Nefutzot Yehudah ("The Dispersed of Judah"). A cemetery was established in 1660. Nonetheless, the right of the community to practice Judaism openly was not officially recognized until 1723. The rabbis of Bayonne who served the community during this time included Chayyim de Mercado, who served during the second half of the 17th century. He was succeeded by Raphael Meldola (1730--1792) of Leghorn, and the by Abraham David Leon, author of Instrucciones Sagradas y Morales (1765).
At the beginning of the 18th century the community numbered about 700; by the middle of the century the Jewish population had grown significantly, with 3,500 Jews living in Bayonne in 1753. The Bayonne community began to assert its authority over the small communities in Bidache, Peyrehorade, and others.
Bayonne Jewry helped to introduce the chocolate industry to France, and by the mid-18th century Bayonne earned a reputation for having the best chocolate. Jews from Bayonne, particularly Emil Pereire, Isaac Pereire, Alvaro Luiz, Jacome Luiz, and Aaron Colace, were involved in importing, exporting, and smuggling cacao.
The Jews of Bayonne made other significant contributions to the city's economy, to the extent that about 1/3 of the city's municipal tax revenues were from Jewish residents. During the middle of the 18th century Jews were major importers of salt and glue into Bayonne. Bayonne Jews were also among the first to establish trade connections with the French West Indies.
Bayonne's Jews were recognized as French citizens in 1790, along with the rest of the Portuguese, Spanish, and Avignonese Jews in France. During the Napoleonic period the community benefited from the city's increasing prosperity.
The Jewish population was 1,293 in 1844. By 1926 the population had decreased to 45 families, chiefly a result of a weakening economy.
Notable figures from Bayonne include Rene Cassin, the Nobel laureate and president of the Alliance Israelite Universelle.
THE HOLOCAUST
After the Franco-German Armistice of June 1940, Bayonne became a waystation for large numbers of Jewish refugees, particularly from Belgium and Luxembourg. An official police census taken on March 15, 1942 recorded 308 Jewish families. The majority of them were expelled in April 1943; in addition to the expulsion, 193 Jewish properties were confiscated. The synagogue's ark, which was built in the style of Louis XVI, and the Torah scrolls, some of which were originally from Spain, were hidden in the Basque Museum; they would ultimately be restored to the synagogue after the liberation. Bayonne's rabbi, Ernest Ginsburger (1876-1943), guided religious activities for Jews interned in French concentration and labor camps. He was subsequently deported and murdered by the Germans. In April 1943 almost all the Jews in Bayonne and the surrounding district were forcibly evacuated. Few of Bayonne's Jews survived the war.
POSTWAR
After the war the community slowly rebuilt itself. Approximately 120 families were recorded in the city in 1960. Shortly thereafter, with the arrival of immigrants from North Africa, the Jewish community more than doubled; in 1969 nearly 700 Jews lived in Bayonne. A rabbi was appointed to preside over the community's religious services, which were conducted according to the Portuguese traditions of the restored 100 year old synagogue. The old Jewish cemetery, dating back to 1660, was still in use in 1969.
Rene Samuel Cassin (1887-1976) Jurist. Born in Bayonne, France, to a distinguished Jewish family, he studied literature and law in Aix-le-Provence, France, and Paris and was called to the bar in 1909, receiving his doctorate in law in 1914. In World War I he served in the infantry, was severely wounded and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. He began his academic career at the University of Lille (1920), France, and was professor of law at the University of Paris from 1929. From 1924 Cassin was a member of the French delegation at the League of Nations and after World War II he represented France at the United Nations and at Unesco of which he was a founder. During the war he was national commissioner for justice and education in the French government-in-exile. After the WW II he was president of the UN Commission on Human Rights and, together with Eleanor Roosevelt, initiated the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1948). He held many government and international positions including president of the European Court of Human Rights. In 1968 Cassin was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was president of the Alliance Israelite Universelle. In 1987 his remains were transferred to the Pantheon in Paris.
Camille Levi (1860-1933), general of the French Army during WW I, born in Ingwiller, France. He attended the high school in Nancy, then studied at École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr and at École de guerre in Paris. He held a number of commanding positions in the French Army, and after the outbreak of WW I he was successively commander of the 25th Division, 46th Division and Commander of the Dunkerque sector.
Levi published a number of works on history and military strategy, including Dunkerque avant le siège (août 1790 - août 1793):[suivi de] Procès-verbaux du conseil général du district de Bergues en 1793 (1907) and Hondschoote et le siège de Dunkerque. Complété d'après les Annales de Breynaert et d'autres documents nouveaux (1932).
He was named Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur and was awarded the Corona d’Italia and other French, Belgian, and Italian decorations.
Camille Levi died in Bayonne, France.
Saint-Jean-de-Luz
A town in the Basses-Pyrenees department, France.
There is no record of the presence of Jews in Saint-Jean during the middle ages; it was only from the 16th century that a number of crypto-Jews settled there. In 1612 an official submitted a report to the Conseil d'etat, notifying it of the presence of a large colony of crypto-Jews.
In 1619 Catherine de Fernandes, a woman who had recently arrived from Portugal, was accused of having spat at the host when she went to receive communion. In spite of the criminal investigation conducted by the royal prosecutor, the populace seized the accused and burned her at the stake in the town square. At the same time a priest of Portuguese origin was also accused of being a crypto-Jew and of having been chosen as priest by a large number of Portuguese New Christians who, in fact, conducted themselves more like Jews than Christians. All the Portuguese New Christians were expelled from Saint-Jean, apparently fleeing to Biarritz, a coastal town in southwestern France.
Biarritz
City on the Atlantic coast in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department in southwestern France, 35 kilometers from the Spanish border.
21st CENTURY
The synagogue that had been closed since 1995 for security reasons, reopened in the summer of 2012 for services on Friday nights and Sabbath mornings, and on some holidays. There is a Chabad center in neighboring Bayonne that also serves Biarritz.
HISTORY
The Jewish community of Biarritz dates to the beginning of the 17th century. In 1619, following disorders resulting in their expulsion from the town of St. Jean-de-Luz, many crypto-Jews who had originally fled the Inquisition in Portugal settled in the larger town of Bayonne and the neighboring region of Biarritz.
Biarritz was a quiet fishing town until the middle of the 19th century. It became popular as a beach and spa resort with thermal baths, when the Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III, chose to vacation there. The town attracted wealthy members of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie who built deluxe holiday villas for themselves.
Among these were foreign Jews, such as members of the Poliakoff and Brodsky families. Samuel Poliakoff (1837-1888) was a Russian financier, major builder of railroads in Russia, philanthropist, and one of the founders in 1880 of World ORT. His brother Lazar Poliakoff (1843-1914) was a major banker know as the “Rothschild of Moscow”. The Brodsky family were magnates in the Russian sugar trade.
The project for a synagogue was launched in September, 1894, supported by the contributions of the foreign and Parisian vacation visitors.
According to a consistorial census of 1898, Biarritz had approximately 100 regular Jewish inhabitants, and 300 Jewish spa visitors.
The synagogue opened in September, 1904 on property near the Imperial Palace and the Russian Orthodox Church. It was constructed in the Roman-Byzantine style, popular in the synagogues built in the late 19th century. It received the ark, Torah scrolls, and silver candelabrum from the synagogue of the town of Peyrehorade, whose Jewish community had dwindled. The new synagogue was under the supervision of the Jewish consistoire (regional governing body) of Bayonne. Half the services were Ashkenazi, and half according to the practice of the Portuguese Jews.
THE HOLOCAUST
France fell to the Nazis in 1940, and Biarritz was in the German occupation zone. In the census of Jews taken in 1942, 168 families were registered in Biarritz. Most of the Jewish population was rounded up and deported to their death in Nazi concentration and death camps.
POSTWAR
In 1968, the renewed Biarritz Jewish community had 150 members, many of whom originated from North Africa.
Peyrehorade
A town the Landes department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in southwestern France
There are three Jewish cemeteries in the town.
HISTORY
A number of crypto-Jews established themselves in Peyrehorade by 1597, at the latest. Under the name "Portuguese merchants," they formed a community called Beth-El around 1628, when they acquired a plot of land for a cemetery. It was "on the road lying between the river which flows from Vignons, the vineyard of Messaultié and the Vergeras, and the foot of the hill of Aspremont." At first part of the Jewish community of Bayonne, they later refused to submit to its authority, and were therefore threatened with excommunication.
At the time, Catholics, Protestants, and Jews did not live in separate neighborhoods. They mixed together, with each group believing in and living according to its respective religious law. The peaceful relations were in part a result of the religious liberality of the region’s potentate, the Duke of Gramont. He invited crypto-Jewish merchants to settle there, along, it seems, with Huguenot congregations.
However, in 1648, when there were 42 Jewish families (about 200 persons) in the town, a partial expulsion was decreed. A 1684 decree of the council of state banished from the kingdom 93 Jewish families living in Peyrehorade, Bordeaux, Dax, Bayonne, and Bidache. At around 1700, only about 15 families remained in Peyrehorade. In 1749, the king of France, in response to a petition from some of the Jews themselves, compelled 78 of their poorer coreligionists to leave the cities of Bayonne, Bidache, and Peyrehorade within the space of one month.
Nonetheless, the number of Jews in Peyrehorade evidently increased because in 1747 the community, which from then on is openly referred to as Jewish, acquired a second site for a cemetery in the Lembarussant quarter. The existence of a synagogue is confirmed about 1728 (at the latest, 1747). The community, by then well organized, had its own butchery and a ritual bath (mikveh), and supported three societies: the Sedaca, concerned with charitable activities; the Hebera, responsible for burial of the dead; and the Yesiba, dedicated to study.
The Jews of Peyrehorade played an active role in the French Revolution. When the consistories were created, the community was at first attached to Bordeaux and later to Bayonne. During the Reign of Terror, the Societe populaire montagnarde, which included Jewish members, closed the synagogue in Peyrehorade.
An 1809 census in the town recorded 18 Jewish families and in 1826, a third cemetery, on the road to Lapuyade, was acquired; it was also used by the Jews of the surrounding areas. (As of 1970, all three cemeteries were still in existence.)
However, from 1826, Jews began to leave the town. The synagogue was sold in 1898; its furnishings being later removed to the synagogues of Biarritz and Bayonne. In 1904, only two or three Jewish families remained.
WORLD WAR II
A few Jews were still living in Peyrehorade at the outbreak of the war.
Vitoria-Gasteiz
Capital city of the Basque Country and of the province Araba / Alava in northern Spain.
Vitoria was founded in 1181 by King Sancho I of Portugal, the "city builder" (1185-1211), and destroyed by fire in 1202. The town recovered in the days of Alfonso X (1252-84) of Castile, and it appears that the Jews helped to develop it anew. The Jewish quarter was situated in the eastern part of the city, along the battlements. Isaac Ibn Tzadok (Cag de la Maleha) was a tax farmer in 1276. Toward the end of the 13th century the community was one of the moderately important Castile communities. Little is known about the community in the 14th century. In 1439 Don Shem Tov Ibn Nachmias collected dues from the fairs held in the Basque country and taxes from the whole of Castile. From 1482 the anti-Jewish decrees issued by the Cortes of Toledo (1480) were put into effect in Vitoria also. Nevertheless, the crown often intervened on behalf of the Jews there, granting them a charter of protection as late as 1488.
Following the edict of expulsion (May 1492), the community leaders of Vitoria negotiated with the municipal authorities regarding the fate of Jewish communal property.
The Jewish cemetery was given to the town council, which undertook to take care of it and never to build on it. The place was subsequently known as the Judimendi (Jews' mount). The synagogue was also given to the town council and turned into a school. In July 1492 the majority of the Jews of Vitoria left the town for nearby Navarre. In order to speed up their assimilation, in 1493 the conversos who had remained were scattered throughout the town and not allowed to live in a separate quarter.
In 1952, the Jews of Bayonne, descendants of the Jews of Vitoria, reached an agreement with the town releasing it from its duties toward former Jewish property. The remains in the old cemetery were collected and reburied in a common grave, with a monument to commemorate the old community of Vitoria.
Arcachon
A seaside resort town in the department of Gironde in the historical region of Aquitaine, France.
21st Century
Communauté Juive du Bassin d’Arcachon (ACCIBA)
36 avenue Gambetta
33120 Arcachon
France
Website: http://www.synagogue-arcachon.com/index.htm
History
The synagogue of Arcachon, known as Osiris Temple synagogue, was built in 1877 with the support of the philanthropist Daniel Iffla Osiris (1825-1907). After 1891 the synagogue belonged to the Consistoire isrealite of Bordeaux. During the period between the two world wars, the synagogue was under the care of the Barokel family. The arrival of the Jews of Algeria after 1962 brought about a revival of Jewish life in Arcachon. As of 1962, the synagogue functioned during the summer months. Jacques Bensoussan was in charge of the synagogue after 1967 and in 2013 he was named Ministre-Officiant Honoraire. The Association Cultuelle et Culturelle Israélite du Bassin d' Arcachon (ACCIBA) was established in 1990.
In 2004 the building of the synagogue was recognized as a historical monument and in 2011 it underwent an extensive renovation. The synagogue is open all year round. As of 2012 the community maintains a weekly Talmud-Torah for the children and in 2017 it established Espace Culturel Emile & Isaac Pereire association.
In late 2010s there were about 150 Jews living in the Arcachon Basin. The Jewish community of Arcachon is a member of the Consistoire Central de France.
Pau
A city and the capital of the department of Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France
Communauté juive de Pau
8, rue des 3 frères Bernadac
64000 Pau
France
Phone: 05.59.62.37.85
Email: contact@synagogue-pau.fr
Website: https://www.synagogue-pau.fr/
Association Cultuelle Israélite de Pau (A.C.I.P.)
Habad des Pyrénées-Atlantiques
34 Rue du Capitaine Guynemer
Pau, 64000
France
Website: https://www.habadpyrenees.com
The Jewish settlement in Pau dates from the 19th century. The synagogue was built in 1850. In 1905 the Jews of Pau were affiliated with the Jewish community of Bayonne. A number of Jews from England settled in Pau during the first decades of the 20th century. The Jewish population increased during the late 1930s and after the outbreak of WW II, following the arrival in the city of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecutions in Central Europe and later in German occupied France. The synagogue functioned throughout WW II under the supervision of Rabbi Paul Bauer. Under Rabbi Bauer’s leadership the community was reorganized. While previously the local Jews held public prayers only on Yom Kippur, as of September 1940 until 1944 daily prayers - morning and evening – were held at the synagogue of Pau. The Shabbat prayers were attended by almost one hundred people. However, the rabbi had to face many difficulties. Rabbi Bauer managed to create a compromise between the local Jews, most of them of Portuguese ancestry, who wished to continue to pray in accordance with the Sephardi rite. The result of the compromise was a mixed service combining the Askenazi rite with Sephardi pronunciation and melodies. The Jewish community declined after WWII, at the same time as those of Peyrehorade and Bidache.
The current Jewish community - A.C.I.P - was founded in 1959, when the local Jews established a separate community from that of Bayonne. As of late 1950s, Jewish immigrants from North Africa settled in Pau. In early 21st