The history of the Orthodox Jewish Community of Schaerbeek started during the period between the two world wars, when a number of Jewish families from Germany and Eastern Europe moved to the municipality (now a borough on the eastern edge of downtown Brussels). These Orthodox Jews set up a prayer room in a house in [...]
There has been an active Jewish Community in Saint-Gilles/Sint-Gillis since the 1930s. However, this community did not expand until after World War II, with the return of some Holocaust survivors to the area and, above all, the influx of a relatively large number of members of the city’s Jewish community to this municipality (now a [...]
The creation of a Jewish community in Anderlecht in the last decade of the 19th century arose from the massive influx of Jews who left their places of residence in the Russian Empire and other Central and Eastern European countries, fleeing the wave of pogroms that engulfed the Jewish communities in those regions and the [...]
An organized and officially recognized Jewish community existed in Brussels as of the early 19th century. Hartog Sommerhausen, a leading Dutch Jew and follower of the great German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, moved to Brussels in 1817. As the “brains” of the Jewish community, he immediately took things in hand and founded the Jewish Primary [...]
The Sephardi Community of Antwerp, which consists for the most part of Jews of Portuguese or Turkish origin, has had its own synagogue in the city since 1896. Given the differences between its traditions and rites and those of the Ashkenazi community and its considerable strength (several hundred members), it applied for official recognition in [...]
The Jewish community of Antwerp was very similar to those in the country’s other towns, that is, strongly attached to the traditional values of Judaism while being clearly ensconced in modernity, for the greater part of the 19th century. A very large number of Orthodox Jewish communities were scattered across Europe until World War II. While [...]
At the moment of our country’s independence there was already a well-ensconced Jewish community in Antwerp and the need for a synagogue was already felt most urgently. A first synagogue was thus inaugurated at No. 83 Paardenmarkt on September 21, 1832. This was followed by a second one in Pieter Potstraat in 1844, as the [...]
