The seaside resort town of Ostend lived up to its name of “Queen of Beaches” most worthily in the 19th and first half of the 20th century, drawing large numbers of vacationers. These included Jews from across the Channel as well as a considerable number of members of Belgium’s Jewish community. Starting in the 1950s, [...]
The history of the Jewish community of Ostend is more or less tantamount to that of the Jewish community of West Flanders. Ostend (Oostende/Ostende) was effectively the only place in this province where Jews organized their own genuine, recognized community prior to the end of the 20th century, with the exception of the recent developments [...]
The sporadic presence of Jews has been reported in Ghent since the Middle Ages. However, not much is known on the subject, other than the fact that the Jews were expelled from the town, and indeed from all of Flanders, in 1125. Jews were apparently admitted again in the 13th century but driven out once [...]
There was no organized Jewish community in Liège before the early 19th century. France’s annexation of the episcopal principality then ensured the Jews’ presence and civil and political equality. The number of Jewish families living in Liège is thus put at eight in 1808 and 220 in 1890. Most of them originally came from Dutch [...]
The Jewish Community of Charleroi took shape after the 1918 armistice. It resulted mainly from the influx of Jews who fled the inhospitable lands of Eastern Europe and were hired as miners in the “Black Country’s” coal mines. After official recognition by the Royal Decree of May 14, 1928, the community surged to stand at [...]
The Gallo-Roman town of Arlon has a very old Jewish community, for traces of Jews were found in Arlon as early as the 12th century. However, this small community has other claims to glory. It effectively has the first synagogue built in the Kingdom of Belgium (pursuant to a Royal Decree of December 16, 1863) [...]
A relatively large number of Jewish families moved to Waterloo following the sociological changes that swept through the Jewish community in the aftermath of World War II. As a result, the need for an organized, recognized Jewish community, including a synagogue, in this suburb of Brussels became noticeable towards the late 1980s. Initiatives to fulfill [...]
To date, this community is the last one to have entered the Consistory’s fold. It was effectively recognized by Royal Decree on May 10, 2007. This recognition followed the creation of the non-profit association Sepharad 2000, composed of a Jewish community that came mainly from North Africa and had previously founded the Chaaré Tzion (Shaare [...]
One of the sociological phenomena specific to Brussels’s Jewish community in the decades after World War II is the gradual exodus from the old Jewish neighborhoods that were located near the capital’s railroad stations. This centrifugal movement, which was spurred by developments in the general political climate but also by developments in the economic sector, [...]
Several Jewish families of Sephardic descent had already formed a community in Brussels well before World War I and prior to all official recognition. However, this community experienced its first wave of growth in the interwar period, during the Great Depression of 1930, to be exact, due to the massive influx of Sephardic Jews from [...]