Jews of Bavaria, A Land Of Germany

 Nadene Goldfoot                                        

Bavaria, the blue most southern area of Germany

Bavarians are an ethnographic group of Germans of the Bavaria region, a state within Germany. The group's dialect or speech is known as the Bavarian language, native to Altbayern ("Old Bavaria"), roughly the territory of the Electorate of Bavaria in the 17th century.

Like the neighboring Austrians, Bavarians are traditionally Catholic.  and the center-right Christian Social Union in Bavaria (successor of the Bavarian People's Party of 1919–1933) has traditionally been the strongest party. 

The history of Bavaria stretches from its earliest settlement and its formation as a stem duchy in the 6th century (500s) through its inclusion in the Holy Roman Empire to its status as an independent kingdom and finally as a large Bundesland (state) of the Federal Republic of Germany.

It is now thought that the tribal ethnicity was established by the process of ethnogenesis, whereby an ethnic identity is formed because political and social pressures make a coherent identity necessary.

 Romans subdued Celts just before the commencement of the Christian era,   The Bavarians, mostly Celts,  soon came under the dominion of the Franks, probably without a serious struggle.                              

The Franks regarded this border area as a buffer zone against peoples to the east, such as the Avars and the Slavs, and as a source of manpower for the army. The later Roman Empire depended upon barbarians, mostly recently settled inside the Empire, plus mercenaries hired from beyond, for its defence for a number of reasons. 

Firstly the Roman aristocracy had acquired almost all of the prime agricultural land of the empire, forcing out the independent small farmers who have always formed the backbone of the infantry. Through the use of slave labour they made independent agriculture uneconomical. 

Secondly they passed laws forcing the children to work at the same jobs as their parents. So only the children of soldiers could become soldiers. 

Thirdly it was then, as now, cheaper to hire soldiers from barbarian cultures than employ Romans who would demand their rights as citizens. Fourthly the employment of barbarian mercenaries was a subsidy to the leaders of the tribe they came from to keep the peace. Those leaders were paid, not the soldiers themselves, who only got what their leaders chose to trickle down. They also granted those leaders titles which reinforced their authority within the tribe and kept them in power. The Bavarians, in fact all Germans, were conditioned to become soldiers.  

Jews of Bavaria, there since the 10th century,  faced a history of being expelled from the land constantly.  BAVARIA became Land in S. Germany, including Franconia. Jews are first mentioned there in the *Passau toll regulations of 906. Their settlement was apparently connected with the trade routes to Hungary, southern Russia and northeastern Germany. A Jewish resident of *Regensburg is mentioned at the end of the tenth century. The communities which had been established in *Bamberg and Regensburg were attacked during the First Crusade in 1096,  and the German Crusade massacres of Jews in European towns were also going on in this year.  Also, those Jews in *Aschaffenburg , *Wuerzburg , and *Nuremberg during the Second Crusade in 1146–47 had been attacked. Other communities existed in the 13^th century at Landshut, Passau, *Munich , and *Fuerth . 

Interesting that the Jews of Austria were not expelled until 1421.  

The Jews in Bavaria mainly engaged in trade and moneylending. In 1276 they were expelled from Upper Bavaria and 180 Jews were burned at the stake in Munich following a *blood libel in 1285. 

The communities in Franconia, a part of Bavaria,  were attacked during the *Rindfleisch persecutions in 1298. The *Armleder massacres, charges of desecrating the *Host at *Deggendorf , Straubing, and Landshut, and the persecutions following the *Black Death (1348–49), brought catastrophe to the whole of Bavarian Jewry. Many communities were entirely destroyed, among them *Ansbach , Aschaffenburg, *Augsburg , Bamberg, *Ulm , Munich, Nuremberg, Passau, Regensburg, *Rothenburg , and Wuerzburg. Those who had fled were permitted to return after a time under King Wenceslaus.

In 1442 the Jews were again expelled from Upper Bavaria. Shortly afterward, in 1450, the Jews in Lower Bavaria were flung into prison until they paid the duke a ransom of 32,000 crowns and were then driven from the duchy. As a result of agitation by the Franciscan John of *Capistrano , they were expelled from Franconia. In 1478 they were expelled from Passau, in 1499 from Nuremberg, and in 1519 from Regensburg. The few remaining thereafter in the duchy of Bavaria were expelled in 1551 and not allowed back into Bavaria until the 18th century.  

Subsequently, Jewish settlement in Bavaria ceased until toward the end of the 17^th century, when a small community was founded in *Sulzbach by refugees from *Vienna . 

During the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) several Jews from Austria serving as purveyors to the army or as moneylenders settled in Bavaria. In this period a flourishing community grew up in Fuerth, whose economic activities helped to bring prosperity to the city. 

After the war the Jews of Austrian origin were expelled from Bavaria, but some were able to acquire the right to reside in Munich as monopoly holders, *Court Jews , mintmasters, and physicians. Several Court Jews belonging to the Frankel and *Model families.

In the first half of the 19th century (1800s) unfavorable conditions prevailed for Jews in Bavaria which led to a particularly large Jewish emigration to the USA.   

Kurt Eisner was born in Berlin on 14 May 1867, to Emanuel Eisner and Hedwig Levenstein, both Jewish

A number of Jews were active after World War I in the revolutionary government of Bavaria which was headed by a Jew, Kurt *Eisner , who was prime minister before his assassination in 1919. Kurt Eisner 14 May 1867 – 21 February 1919) was a German politician, revolutionary, journalist, and theatre critic. As a socialist journalist, he organized the socialist revolution that overthrew the Wittelsbach monarchy in Bavaria in November 1918, which led to his being described as "the symbol of the Bavarian revolution"  Eisner subsequently proclaimed the People's State of Bavaria with Munich as its capital,  but was assassinated by far-right German nationalist, Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley in Munich on 21 February 1919.  Munich, the capital of Bavaria, was "an island of anarchic bohemianism and political radicalism in an otherwise predominantly Roman Catholic rural sea of small towns and timber houses scattered across the foothills of the Alps," according to Michael Burleigh,

Gustav Landauer (7 April 1870 – 2 May 1919) Landauer in 1892

was one of the leading theorists on anarchism in Germany at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. He was an advocate of social anarchism and an avowed pacifist 

Another Jew, Gustav *Landauer , who became minister of popular instruction, was also assassinated that year. 

In the reaction which followed World War I there was a new wave of antisemitism, and in 1923 most of the East European Jews resident in Bavaria were expelled. This was the time when the National Socialist Movement made its appearance in the region, and antisemitic agitation increased. Jewish ritual slaughter (koshrut) was prohibited in Bavaria in 1931, a first step in anti-Semitic acts to those remaining.  

 In 1990, 5,000 Jews were living in Bavaria.  New conditions in the world drew them back.  

The oldest vestiges of a Jewish presence in Germany are found in the Rhineland.  Cities like Speyer and Mainz had larger populations.  

Resource:

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/bavaria-germany

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bavaria#:~:text=The%20history%20of%20Bavaria%20stretches,the%20Federal%20Republic%20of%20Germany.

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://jguideeurope.org/en/region/germany/the-rhineland-and-bavaria/

Jews That Came to Oregon

 Nadene Goldfoot

We have 3 types of Jews;  the Mizrachim, Sephardim and Ashkenazim.  The Mizrachim found new shelter in and around Israel at the fall of the 2nd Temple in 70 CE in Jerusalem, and the Sephardim are Jews that made their way to Spain, and after 1492 to Portugal, and the Ashkenazim were taken from Rome  to Germany.  A few made their way to Oregon in the 1800s.  

 

 This is Beth Elohim Synagogue built by the Sephardic Jews in Charleston, South Carolina, dedicated in 1794.  This year marked that more Jews lived here than any other city in the country.  This drawing was by Solomon Carvalho, Courtesy from AJHS. It is built in the Sephardic style.  

After America was discovered, the Sephardim started immigrating there  after the Mayflower had sailed in 1620.  These Jews came from 1654 to 1820.  They had a Spanish-Portuguese background and settled in 6 cities along the Eastern seaboard:  New York, Newport, Philadelphia, Richmond, Charleston and Savannah.

The Sephardim"were proud and aristocratic people, carrying the memory of the Golden Age in Iberia (Spain) to the more primitive American colonies.  Their occupations had been merchants, shippers, purveyors, and artisans.  The American Revolution of 1776 had about 2,500 Jews living in America.  By 1820 there were 5,000.  In 1720 more Ashkenazim from Central and Eastern European areas were living in America than the Sephardim.  The Sephardim were the dominate culture which lasted into the next century.  Jews supported the Revolution.  In fact, the Jews of New York and Newport resettled their families into Connecticut and Philadelphia because they were not willing to live under British rule.  George Washington had made it clear that all men were equal before the law.  This was a first in Western history that the age-old religious barriers had been so fully renounced. 

                                            

Latecomers of Sephardim came to Portland from Turkey and established the Ahavath Achim Synagogue.  They came from the Island of Rhodes and Mainland Turkey in the early 1900s.  They welcome Jews of all background.  My Ashkenazi cousin married a Sephardi-Turkish person and attend here.  It's happening in Israel, too, that Jews intermarry other Jews.  Here, they still maintain Ladino-Sephardic customs of the Ottoman Empire days.  

                                                                            

 The peddler at a farm in about 1850.  German Jewish immigrants began life in America as peddlers, which my grandfather did when he came to Portland in about 1905 and lived in South Portland, the Jewish area near the synagogues.  He died in 1912, father of 3 with one still on the way in his horse and wagon accident.  He had no I.D. on him or his wagon.  Unconscious, he was taken to St. Vincent's Hospital, in a different location than today.  He died, having never woken up.  

The German Period came along  from 1820 to about 1880.  The Jewish population increased sharply from about 5,000 in 1820 to more than a quarter of a million by 1880, a result of Jewish immigration from Central Europe with many from the Pale of Settlement, land held by Catherine II of Russia. The pecking order was the established Sephardim looking down on the poor German peddlers.    

Jews replaced the "Yankee" peddlers who found work in New England.  A Jewish organization got my grandfather's horse and wagon for him.  He could have dreamed of having a store of his own, for in Lithuania it was impossible for Jews to ge a license to open a sedentary business.  

Herman Ehrenberg may have been the first Jew to enter Oregon.  He had been in Texas fighting for independence and arrived in Astoria in 1844.  

The earliest known for sure was Jacob Goldsmith and Lewis May who came to Portland in 1849 and had a general merchandise store on Front Avenue.  May was born in Worms, Germany, a very famous Jewish center, and emigrated to America in 1840.  First he settled in Shreveport, Louisiana.  Most German Jews had come from Bavaria.

Goldsmith came from Bavaria, Germany, and came to Portland from San Francisco.  They helped form the city's 1st Masonic Lodge in 1850, and remained for 2 years.  Goldsmith returned to San Francisco and May to New York where he was interested in railroads and banking.                                    

Temple Beth Israel, Portland, Oregon -- a grand example of Byzantine architecture. This beautiful synagogue is home to a Reform Jewish congregation.

In 1851, Simon and Jacob Blumauer arrived in Portland from Bavaria. They had a retail store on Front Avenue, and Simon became a prominent figure where he was president of Temple Beth Israel for 26 years.  

In 1852, 5  members of the Haas family arrived from Germany, brothers Samuel, Kalman and Charles and their cousins Abe and Jacob, began a grocery store in Portland.  

In 1853 came the 1st Jewish woman, Mrs. Weinshank, who opened a boarding house for Jewish bachelors.  

Usually the Jewish men spread out during the 1850s to service farm communities with their peddling.  In 1852, JB and Maier Hirsch, brothers,  came from the state of Wurttemberg in Germany and by 1854 moved to Salem and had a general merchandise store.  Their brothers Solomon, Edward and Leopold Hirsch arrived during the 1850s to help them.  After retailing for many years in Salem, The Dalles and Silverton, Solomon became a partner in Fleischner, Mayer & Co. in Portland, a wholesale house and the largest Jewish business in the Northwest.  

                                              

Gold mining was going on in California and Downieville was one of many gold mining towns that mushroomed then  Jews often worked in such towns on their way to Oregon.  Aaron Meier, founder of Meier & Frank, arrived in this town in 1855 to help his brothers in their general merchandise store.  By 1940 it looked much different. 

                                                

Born in 1831, by the time he was 26, Aaron Meier rented a 35 X 50 foot space and began selling dry goods at 137 Front Street in Portland in 1857. His father died in 1864 and Aaron Meier went back to Germany to collect his inheritance and he got married as well. When he returned, he set up shop in larger quarters (a 25 X 100 foot space) at 136 Front St.

                                                         

                   Take the bus and go to Meier & Frank downtown.

        Their window display was worth walking around to see-a bit of heaven, especially at seasonal holidays.  

Resource:

The Jews of Oregon 1850-1950 by Steven Lowenstein

http://www.pdxhistory.com/html/meier_-_frank.html                                                 

Jews Who Came Early On to Portland and Helped to Build the City

Nadene Goldfoot                                                

Portland was incorporated on February 8, 1851, and its destiny lay in the hands of 5 large property owners:  Lownsdale, Coffin, Chapman, Couch and Stark of which none were Jews.  A local judge described Portland as "a small and beautiful village."  The Weekly Oregonian newspaper boasted of its "most homelike aspect."  William S. Ladd, not Jewish,  arrived and would have seen a 1/2 mile-long tract "literally hewed out of the forest."  There were some 120 one-story, roughly constructed, box-like buildings many painted white, that straggled from the river-front inland about 500 feet amid several older log structures.  (The 2010 census  showed 583,776 residents in the city).  I live on Stark Street and there is a Chapman Elementary School.  

Jews came to Portland who had gone to California first in the 1850's.  They came from Bavaria (Germany).  Philip Wasserman and other Bavarian Jews opened small general merchandise store early in the 1850s along Front Street.  This was the street facing the Willamette River.  

Bavaria , officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a landlocked state of Germany, occupying its southeastern corner. With an area of 70,550.19 square kilometres Bavaria is the largest German state by land area comprising roughly a fifth of the total land area of Germany.  Munich is its capital.  In 1850 it was the Kingdom of Bavaria and this lasted until WWI.  War had been brewing in Bavaria in 1850.  "

Aerial view of the Walhalla memorial of Ludwig I

In the aftermath of the failure of the Frankfurt Assembly, Prussia and Austria continued to debate over which monarchy had the inherent right to rule Germany. A dispute between Austria and the Prince of Hesse-Kassel was used by Austria and its allies (including Bavaria) to promote the isolation of Prussia in German political affairs. This diplomatic insult almost led to war when Austria, Bavaria, and other allies moved troops through Bavaria towards Hesse-Kassel in 1850. However, Prussia backed down to Austria, and accepted of dual leadership.

The economically depressed Bavaria had the worst situation in the area where in 1813 an edict on the "Status of Jews" was promulgated.  It curtailed the size of Jewish families allowing only the oldest son to marry;  limited the number of Jewish families in Bavarian towns and the occupations they could pursue;  and even prescribed Jewish family names, which were often derived from occupation (hence-Goldschmidt and Silverman)an update

A druggist, Louis Blumauer(b: February 1, 1856-d: May 4, 1906), son of Simon Blumauer, managed in 1853 to build Portland's 2nd brick building, following  William S. Ladd's example---brick was seen as a visible symbol of stability and success.  Ladd has become a big name in Portland by buying farmland and building homes on it called Ladd's Addition;  the neighborhood where my parents bought a modest home and I was brought up in it.  Now it has historic status. 

In 1876  Blumauer completed a course in the New York College of Pharmacy.   In business on his own account, he opened a retail drug store on First street, between Morrison and Yamhill, in 1877. There he successfully conducted his interests for several years and in 1884 organized the Blumauer-Frank Wholesale Drug Company, in association with Emil Frank. He married Dr. Frances Murray.  

 Louis Blumauer was known as one of the most practical and thorough-going business men in the northwest. All of his commercial transactions were characterized by a high sense of business integrity and enterprise and at all times he held to the most advanced commercial standards. He developed a trade of large proportions as a wholesale drug dealer, his ramifying trade connections covering a wide territory. He continued until the time of his death as president of the Blumauer-Frank Drug Company, the business becoming one of the extensive and profitable mercantile enterprises of the city.

  (In the aftermath of the failure of the Frankfurt Assembly, Prussia and Austria continued to debate over which monarchy had the inherent right to rule Germany. A dispute between Austria and the Prince of Hesse-Kassel was used by Austria and its allies (including Bavaria) to promote the isolation of Prussia in German political affairs. This diplomatic insult almost led to war when Austria, Bavaria, and other allies moved troops through Bavaria towards Hesse-Kassel in 1850. However, Prussia backed down to Austria, and accepted of dual leadership.)

The June 15, 1870 in Portland, Oregon census showed that Simon Blumauer, 48 was born in Bavaria, and so was his wife, was a retired merchant, and wife was Malia 38.  Son Louis 15 was an apothecary apprentice, and Helen was 10.  

The June 2, 1880 in Portland, Oregon  census showed that Simon Blumauer, 58 was a retired merchant, and wife was Mary, 48.  Their children were Lewis 24, Druggist; Solomon 18 salesman in stove store;  Phillip 16, Drug clerk;  and Moses 12, attending school.  They had a servant, Rosa M, 18.  Lewis married Dr. Frances  Murray or Gilbert or Carpenter.  

Jews such as Wasserman and Blumauer had worked in California mountain towns and San Francisco mercantile houses  before going north to Oregon, often stopping along the way , like Reed, to work in country stores.  

Philip Wasserman b: 1830 married Sophia Oberdorfer,born 1851 on February 5, 1868 in Portland. They were listed on the June 10, 1870 census in Portland with Philip born in 1828 and was 42, born in Bavaria and an importer of tobacco with Sophia 21, born in Bavaria and Sampson age 1 born in Oregon.  Alice was just born in June 1870.  They had 3 other people living with them.  

 They were on the June 3, 1880 census and had listed with them their children, all born 2 years apart-the length most women in those days kept nursing, keeping children spaced this way. Philip was 50 and a wholesale tobacco merchant; This time Philip and Sophia. 29, were born in Germany; Samuel was 12, born in Oregon where the others were also born; Alice 10, Milton 8, James 6, and Getta 4. Their home included 2 borders and 2 servants and Sophia's brother, August Oberdorfer, a wholesale merchant.   Edna was listed separately born January 5, 1882 and had married a Chipman fellow.   

Edna Wasserman 20 married Rupert J. Chipman 29, born in Nova Scotia, Canada and belonging to the Church of England, both from Portland on March 3, 1902.  They went to Los Angeles to get married as Edna had a sister, Getta, living there, and also a Louis Goldsmith and Getta were the witnesses of the Justice of peace marriage.  Their son, Philip Chipman, was born in 1903. He died at the age of 39, a soldier and officer candidate in December 20, 1942-while in Wilmington, New Hanover, North Carolina, in an automobile accident.  His head and chest had been injured. He had never married.   

Social life centered around families and religion, and Jewish activity came to life by 1858, after the Methodists, Congegationalists, Episcopalians, Catholics, Presbyterians and Baptists.  

A 12 member Stock and Exchange Board was set up and belonging were: Failing, McCraken, Ladd, Ainsworth, Henry Green, SB Parrish, Reed, Lewis, Thompson, Dr. JH Chapman, AM Starr and Goldsmith.  Two years later, all but Starr and Goldsmith would be Arlington Club founders.  Starr had left Portland and Bernard Goldsmith b: 1828 was barred because he was a Jew." 

 Goldsmith was Portland's 8th wealthiest resident in 1870 and commanded wide public respect, though he had been turned down by the snippy Arlington Club. He was voted in a mayor of Portland from 1869 to 1871.  He was from an affluent family, and had made money from a decade of California and Southern Oregon merchandising before arriving in Portland in 1861 at age 33.  As a jeweler and assayer, he had to be interested in the gold currency market, which he played with consummate skill in 1865 and 1866 before founding a dry-goods firm with several of his 7 brothers.  It soon became a major supplier of frontier troops.  He made investments in Wasco County cattle and Willamette Valley wheat production which also drew him into transportation and grain trade.   

Others in Portland followed Goldsmith's lead in wheat and then they and their bankers discovered the importance of it, too.  They planned to ship it directly to Liverpool and not depend on California.  California was also in the wheat export business which cut into Portland's by 40%.  

Wasserman was the next mayor and by 1873 he vetoed the council ordinance prohibiting Chinese laborers from being employed on city contracts, arguing that such acts conflicted with federal law and treaties.  He could have agreed with the majority of the city council and sustained their discriminatory ordinance.  That he did not demonstrates some willingness to protect the  civil rights of an unpopular people in a spirit of social stewardship.  In fact,  the views of mayors Failing, 'Goldsmith and Wasserman, merchants in the upper stratum,  generally defended the employment of  low-wage Chinese labor. Their attitudes were better than other cities of the West Coast.  

Goldsmith and Wasserman's major contributions were in raising funds and getting land for municipal parks.  

Jewish fellowship became centered in the B'nai B'rith Oregon Lodge 65, founded in 1866.  A 2nd one was founded in 1879.  Just a the Masons accepted men of most religious faiths---including Jews---so the B'nai B'rith accepted Jews of all synagogues."   There are 3 branches of Jews:  Orthodox, Conservative and Reform.  

The gentile fraternal lodges like the Arlington Club in most communities contained a select mercantile and professional subgroup which helped formalize a local elite; but, because the Bavarian-German Jews were almost entirely within that subgroup, the B'nai B'rith, at least in its early stage, did not serve a socially selective function within the ethnic enclave.  Instead, it integrated young men rather than formalizing social boundaries.   

In 1874, wives of young B'nai B'rith members organized the Hebrew Ladies Benevolent Society to administer relief to the poor, the needy, the sick, and to prepare the dead for interment.  At first they were under the direction of en, and the society's leadership passed to the women with Mrs. Bernard Goldsmith's presidency in 1884.    She later drew strong praise from Deady a an excellent woman, an admirable woman.  She was a woman of a great deal more than ordinary ability.  

Portland's Concordia Club was founded in 1879 in which Bernard Goldsmith had something to do with this.  The Jewish elite was thought to be emerging.  It's membership was comprised of younger clerks and owners of small businesses.  Until the 1880s, the older, wealthier Jewish merchants met gentile merchants as equals in Masonic lodges, partisan politics and business partnerships.  As a Jewish counterpart to the Arlington Club and an outgrowth of Congregation Beth Israel, the Reform Temple (Synagogue), Concordia attracted younger prominent merchants like Ben Selling, Emil Frank, Edward Ehrman and others with south German family ties.  

Resource:

Merchants, Money, & Power, The Portland Establishment 1943-1913  'Family Search

The Jews Of Oregon 1850-1950 by Steven Lowenstein, updated 11/17/20 

http://www.onlinebiographies.info/or/blumauer-l.htm

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2677-bavaria

The Precarious Life of Rabbi Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller Ancestor of Many Today

Nadene Goldfoot                              

Gershon Shaul Yom Tov Lipman Heller, "Tosfot Yom Tov"(1579-1654)

Austria in those days was where German Jews fled to from persecutions in Germany.  By 1244, Duke Frederick the Quarrelsome gave the Jews a new charter serving as a model for other countries.  From the 13th to 15th century, serious persecutions kept happening culminating in 1420 with a ritual murder accusation against the Jews.  That caused Jews in Austria to be either burned, expelled or forcibly baptized, with even more restrictions coming.  The scene is now set for the birth of Rabbi Yom Tov and his bout with Austria.

Rabbi Yom Tov was a Talmudist.  That means he had a lot to say about our books, the 2 Talmuds, the Babylonian one written in Babylonia, the more popular one and the Palestinian one, written in the Homeland.  Both these compilations were made up of the records of academic discussions and of judicial administration of Jewish Law.  Generations of scholars and jurists, experts in our law were kept on record of what they had decided from many academies and from more than one country over many centuries.  These were completed around 200 CE.  I note that RASHI, who was Rabbi Solomon Yitzhaki ben Isaac (1040-1105) was one of the most respected commentators and his name appears in our prayer books many times.  These people were most likely Cohens in the synagogues, serving in that capacity as well.  Today, this line appears in our Y DNA as a J1 haplogroup or variation of the J.  

Rabbi Yom Tov  was born in Bavaria which is now a state within Germany that borders Liechtenstein, Austria and the Czech Republic.  Munich is this state's capital.  When he was 18 years old, he was appointed dayyan at Prague.  A dayyan is a judge in a rabbinical court.  Not all rabbis were qualified to serve as dayyanim.  The ordinary rabbi can decide only on matters of religious nature.  However, the dayyan is also qualified to judge money matters and problems of civil law brought before a Jewish court.  It is amazing to us today that an 18 year old would be deemed to such a position.  

In those days  Prague was a well known city,  built in 1402, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire of 1867 and  was called Czechoslovakia from October 1918 till recently, calling it Czech Republic by 1993.  Prague is still  the capital.    
                                                   

When he was 50 years old in 1629, he was fined heavily on a charge of libeling the state and Christianity, and was forbidden to act as rabbi in Prague. "Rabbi Heller was accused of insulting Christianity and imprisoned in Vienna." This was the state's decision, not the Jewish people he served.  Charges were usually false against Jews, and done for reason of garnishing money from them.  
                                                      

About the Chmielnicki massacres

He thus served  in various communities, being in Cracow, (Krakow today a southern Polish city near the border of the Czech Republic, is known for its well-preserved medieval core and Jewish quarter)., during the Chmielnicki massacres of 1648-49 in Ukraine for which he composed penitential psalms and commemorative prayers.  This is a city with the nickname of "a hundred spires", spires being the tops of the Catholic churches.  Their pedestrian Charles Bridge is lined with statues of Catholic saints.  It had its Jewish quarter as well.  The atmosphere of this city was heavy with Catholicism.  A man named Chmielnicki " told people that the Polish had sold them as slaves "into the hands of the accursed Jews."  The Cossacks, a military class of Ukranian-southern Russians,  were so angry when they heard this that they massacred tens of thousands of Jews during 1648-49 in a war that would later be known as among the worst of that time period.                                           
                                                         

"Because of their role in the government and economy as tax collectors and customs agents, non-Jewish members of the lower class were not happy with the Jews. For a century this anger and hate boiled over until it spilled over the edge with the Chmielnicki Massacres by Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian Cossacks. Events like the slaughter of 2000 Jews on June 24th, 1648, the killing of 10,000 Jews on July 22nd, 1648, and the massacre of 12,000 Jews on November 2nd, 1648 were big examples of the anti-semitism running wild throughout Ukraine." It must be remembered that discrimination against Jews amounted to not letting them into any way of self support except by lending money  and such things deplorable to them such as being tax collectors and customs agents.  I don't think that many a Jew was left in the Ukraine after this blood-letting.  

Rabbi Yom Tov was lucky to have been in Poland at the time.  He went on to write many other works on religious subjects and secular compositions on such subjects as mathematics and natural science.  His fame was in writing a commentary on the Mishnah, Tosephot Yom Tov.  (The Additions of Yom Tov).  It was printed in many following editions of the Mishnah, liked for its profundity, simplicity, and logical approach to matters.  The book of Mishnah was the legal codification containing the core of the ORAL LAW.  From early times in Israel there was the tradition of interpretation and analysis of the WRITTEN LAW OF MOSES.  During the 2nd Temple period, the ancient oral tradition was upheld by the Pharisees and supported by the majority of the Jews.  It wasn't recognized by other sects, such as the Sadducees and the Essenes, who had their own traditions regarding the interpretation of the Written Law.  After the destruction of the Temple, the Pharisaic view won national acceptance and the Oral Law was studied in the many academies of rabbis.  
                                                      

He had a start in life that was all about his education.  "After Rabbi Heller was born, he was raised by his grandfather, Rabbi Moses Ha-Levi Heller in Wallerstein, now in Germany. As a teenager Heller was sent to Friedberg, near Wallerstein, where he studied in the yeshiva of Rabbi Jacob Günzburg. From there he moved to Prague, where he became a disciple of the Maharal, head of the yeshiva of Prague".  Life was made up of studying and learning just as young men and women are expected to do today, only on a more serious level back then for Jews, as it was about their religion.  This was the life of many Ashkenazi Jews.  

(Note) the Pharisees were of the 2nd Temple period.  The first temple was destroyed in 586 BCE by Nebuchadnezzar.  Jews returned to Jerusalem in 538 BCE. a period of 48 years of being forced to be away. When they returned, they rebuilt the Temple which was then destroyed in 70 CE by the Romans.   They might have been the descendants of the Hasideans and made up a relatively narrow body of men.  There was a gulf between them and the others ignorant of the Law or not practicing it.  It was the Sadducees who controlled the Temple matters.  They saw things differently.  The Pharisees admitted the principle of evolution to their legal decisions.  The Sadducees were incapable of adaptation to the changing environment.  The Pharicees were more lenient in their decisions.  The Sadducees clung to the letter of the written text.  

Originally compiled by Rabbi Judah Ha-Nasi on the basis of earlier collections, it   was arranged logically, divided into 6 orders dealing with religious laws about agriculture, laws of Sabbath, festivals, laws of marriage and divorce and vows, damages, civil and criminal legislation, holy things, koshering, etc.  

The descendants of Rabbi Yom Tov Heller are on a website below.  I note on it that Rabbi Yom Tov should be very proud.  Rabbi  Isser Yehuda Unterman, second Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel, was born on 14 Nissan 5646 / 1886 in Brest-Litovsk (Brisk), where his father, R' Eliyahu, was a melamed / teacher of children. Among R' Isser Yehuda's ancestors were R' Yom Tov Lipman Heller (1579-1654; author of the Mishnah commentary, Tosefot Yom Tov) and Rabbi Shaul Wahl Katznellenbogen (1540_1616). Legend records that this latter personality was elected King of Poland for a day.

Resource:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Republic
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2013/05/ukraines-massacre-of-jews-worse-than.html
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom-Tov_Lipmann_Heller
https://sites.google.com/site/diasporainukraine/home/pre-wwi/chmielnicki-massacres
https://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/svisloch/descendants_of_yom_tov_lippman.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria-Hungary


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How Germany's Early Days Made Money Through Anti-Semitism

Nadene Goldfoot                                              

Mainz, Germany today.  In 1012, the Jews were expelled but soon returned.  They received protection then from the arch-bishop when crusaders came in 1096.  Even so, hundreds were murdered.  

The Holy Roman Empire was made up of much territory.  "The largest territory of the empire after 962 was the Kingdom of Germany, though it included the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Kingdom of Burgundy, the Kingdom of Italy, and numerous other territories. The precise term "Holy Roman Empire" was not used until the 13th century."  So it really had nothing to do with the ancient Romans who burned down the Jewish 2nd Temple and Jerusalem, but consisted of the politics that followed them in the disposition  of Rome and their pagan powers.  

                                                                                   

Kingdom of Germany, Carolingian dynasty, Conradine dynasty, Ottonian dynasty, Arnulf, Louis IV,Conrad I, Henry I, Otto I

Jews were not allowed to own land anyplace.  They were labeled as Christ Killers in the Holy Roman Empire.  Jews were not allowed to follow any profession, and about the only thing they were allowed to do was to loan money.  This was because it was considered a despicable business for the Christians, who were kept from it by their church.  Jews had been traders even when living in their holy land of Judah and many had dealt with trading on the Silk Road, taking them to far corners of the earth.  When Jerusalem fell in 70 CE, Jews were not even allowed to continue trying to live in Jerusalem or its suburbs since it was burnt down by the Romans.  They couldn't come back in and refurbish their own city.  Anyway, most were taken as slaves to Rome.  From there, some lucky ones finally made their way next door to France and then of course, Germany by the 1000's.
                                                                           

Jews of Germany and their forced clothing for identification

RASHI 

Take RASHI.  This is the famous abbreviation for Rabbi Solomon Yitzhaki, son of Isaac who was born in 1040 and died in 1105.  He was a French rabbinical scholar and teacher.  He had studied in the Rhineland (Germany) but also lived in Troyes, France where he had established his own school to teach his philosophy and thoughts on Judaism.  His school received a wide reputation.  The center in the Rhineland that he lived in was in the city of Worms.  Many rabbis came to live there and to study.  The Jewish community was well established by the 11th century (1000s), so they must have arrived there in the 10th century.  Emperor Henry IV was loaned money by them.  In return, he gave them privileges most Jews did not get in 1074 and 1090 by granting them freedom in commercial dealings, security of property, and imperial protection.
                                                                           

1st Crusade: 1096-199 Attacked Jews in northern France and especially in the Rhineland in Mainz, Worms, Speyer, cologne, etc.  and then in Prague, later in Salonica causing messianic ferment.  Jerusalem was captured by them in 1099 and Jews and Karaites were massacred.  1147 was the start of the 2nd Crusade happening in France and the Rhineland started by a Monk, Rudolf.  

Along came the 1st Crusade and life changed forever.  Jews were slaughtered in Europe by the knights who were on their way to Palestine to kill the Muslims who had taken the Holy Land.  When they got there, they slaughtered the Jews, too, since they thought them vile along with the Muslims, and they all looked alike to them.  Then both Muslim and Jew fought together against the Crusaders.  Worms was decimated during this First Crusade.                                                                                  

                                                                     

3rd Crusade was in 1189 to 1192 had wide support in England where Jews were attacked.  , especially in York in 1190.  

In Heilbronn, 200 Jews were slaughtered, among them being Johanan ben Eliakim the rabbi and Rabbi Asher, the president of the community.  The city of Ulm used to have a large Jewish community and own cemetery.  The Jews there had once enjoyed certain privileges granted by the municipal law of 1274 which was in force in Ravensburg, too.
                                                                   

In 1320 was the shepherds' Crusade with widespread attacks on the Jews in southern France and northern Spain.  They reestablished it only to see it destroyed again in 1349 during the Black Death outbreaks where they were blamed for it.  

 By the 14th century, Jews were living in Baldern, Geislingen, Goppingen, Schwabisch Hall, Rohrbach, Hohenburg, Horb, Reutlingen, Rottweil, Stuttgart, Sulm, Tubingen, Vaihingen and Wolfegg.  The counts of Wurttemberg owed money to the Jews of Colmar and Schlettstadt.  Louis IV canceled their indebtedness in 1346.  Henry VII in 1311 did the same thing to his Jewish moneylenders and so did Louis the Bavarian in 1316 in the case of the citizens of Esslingen.  In other words, these people stiffed the bank by having the head man cancel all the debts, leaving the Jews without any compensation.
                                                                           

Jewish Moneylenders as depicted in Spain in 1300s. 

Lets look at what Germany was like in those days.  It was made up of separate kingdoms.  Wurttemberg was one of them located in SW Germany.  Jews had come to live there in 6 cities:.  They came to live in Bopfingen in 1241; Ulm in 1243;  Esslingen  and Oehringen in 1253;  Calw in 1284 and Weil in 1289.  Along came the knight, Rindfleisch, a Bavarian noble,  and his followers in 1298 and Jews were not only persecuted but massacred.  Rindfleisch led his men into a series of exterminatory attacks on the Jews throughout Franconia and the surrounding regions in 1298, after a Ritual Murder accusation at Rottingen.  Jews were always accused of such things in the Christian zeal to take revenge for killing Christ, as they kept saying.  Usually they would say that someone who had been murdered had been a Jew who did it needing blood to make matzos.  Knowing nothing of facts, Jews abhor blood and have kashrut laws as to how to eat meat without the blood as blood is forbidden in Judaism.  Because of Rindfleisch, 146 Jewish communities were annihilated.  In Wurttemberg alone, he had killed Jews in Creglingen, Ellwangen, Forchtenberg, Gartach, Goglingen, Ingelfingen, Kunzelsau, Leonberg, Mockmuhl, Mergentheim, Stetten, sindringen, Sontheim, Waldenburg, weinsberg, Widdern and Weikersheim.
                                                                        

How Jews were depicted

Bavaria was another southern German state.  Jews came to live in there during the same period as Wurttemberg. from at least the 10th century.  Major Jewish communities there were in Nuremberg, Augsburg, Regensburg, Furth, Munich, Pasau and Bamberg.  Jews were excluded from Upper Bavaria in 1276 and also suffered severely in the Rindfleisch massacres of 1298..  In the city of Armleder they suffered from persecution from 1336 to 1338 and were almost exterminated at the time of the Black Death in 1348 to 1349.  They were excluded altogether from 1551 to the 18th century.  In the early 19th century under most unfavorable conditions, many Jews left to go to the United States.  After all the horror of the Holocaust from 1939 to 1945, Jews returned and in 1990, 5,600 Jews were living in Bavaria.
                                                             

King Edward I who expelled Jews from England in 1290-1655 for 365 years.  

These kingdoms did not always get along with each other.  On the night of April 19, 1316, the Bavarian party of Ulm brought in their Bavarian troops into the city of Ulm.  Ulm today is a city in the federal German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the River Danube. The city, whose population is estimated at almost 120,000 (2015), forms an urban district of its own and is the administrative seat of the Alb-Donau district. Ulm, founded around 850, is rich in history and traditions as a former Free Imperial City.  Free for who?  .Rumor was that a Jew helped them to sneak in.  The Austrian party, the majority, appeared  and drove out the Bavarians.  To remember the event of the Jewish treachery, the church instituted a mass, but this horrible exercise  ended  finally  6 years later.
                                                                       

     

Then the Bavarians gained possession of Ulm.  New persecutions of Jews broke out with the Jews now being charged with being the enemies of the Christians and with stealing and desecrating the host.  The host is the bread and wine used in their mass which is part of their Eucharist, and the bread represents Christ's body.  The knights almost annihilated the community of Esslingen in 1334.  Two years later, more knights persecuted the Jews in Hohenburg, Landenbach, Mergentheim, Weikersheim and Widdern.  The end of 1348 was even worse when the plague and the German ganaticism caused destruction on the Jewish communities of Baldern, bopfingen, ellwangen, Esslingen, Goppingen, Geislingen, Schwabisch Hall, Heilbronn, Hohebach, Horb, Krailsheim, Mengen, Mergentheim, Nagold, Oehringen, Ravensburg, Reutlingen, Rottweil, Stuttgart, Sulgen, Sulm, Ulm Vaihingen, Waldenburg, Weilderstadt, and Widdern.

This is how the kingdoms prospered on the lives of Jews.  The Jews of Ulm, for example, had to pay for protection with large sums to the municipal council, to the citizens, and to the counts of Helfenstein.  The money taken from the Jews became a bone of contention among the German cities, the emperor and the counts.  They all wanted money from Jews.  These inter-Gentile arguments led to renewed plundering of the Jews.

 The Jews by this time had some friends in high places, however, and some counts and rulers united against the plunderers.  Then the big man himself, the emperor, demanded his share in their plunder in 1374 and he was ignored.
                                                                       

Emperor and King of Bohemia Charles IV/Wenceslaus

 That caused the emperor to make war on these cities, and so he confiscated their possessions and compelled them to pay high taxes.  He was Charles IV (Czech: Karel IV., German: Karl IV., Latin: Carolus IV; 14 May 1316 – 29 November 1378), born Wenceslaus, who was the second King of Bohemia from the House of Luxembourg, and the first King of Bohemia to also become Holy Roman Emperor.  The city of Ulm couldn't raise the exorbitant sums demanded by the emperor, so the Jews came forward to help them out.  One of the Jews that helped was Sacklin, son in law of Moses of Ehlingen, who was a citizen of Ulm.  The emperor declared the Jews to be under the ban in order to exact money from the few wealthy ones still living in the city.  They had to pay large sums to have the edict  revoked.

By 1385, the federation of cities declared void all promissory notes held by the Jews within its jurisdiction.  In some cases the city released the Christian debtors from paying interest on their loans while in other cases it annulled part of the debt.  In 1387 the federation issued a decree that no German or Italian merchant could have money transactions with Jews.  Emperor Wenceslaus then canceled in 1390 all debts owing to the Jews, and demanded that the citizens owning money  pay him instead!

Their excuse in treating Jews so horribly was that they said that Jews, both their body and souls,  were the property of the emperor so he could do with them as he pleased.  He therefore said that the usury of the Jews had become intolerable.  The counts of Wurttemberg felt differently.  They permitted the Jews to live in Stuttgart in 1434; Kirchheim in 1435; Tubingen in 1459; Cannstadt and Goppingen in 1462, but on definitely stated conditions and of course, upon payment of large large taxes for protection.  They couldn't let the cash cow slip through their fingers, could they.  Count Ulrich  (1433-1480) was commissioned by the emperor to protect the Jews, but at the same time to rigorously suppress their usury.  The fines imposed were to be sent to the imperial treasury, another way of milking the Jews out of the money.  So, money flowed into the coffers of the count AND of the emperor.

Again in 1498 Jews were expulsed from the land.  Count Eberhard im Bart (1459-1496) was pronounced an enemy of the Jews.  He forced Jews out from Tubingen in 1477; and again in 1495-3 years after the Spanish edict of 1492, he decreed they were to be expelled from his lands.  He followed it up with his decree of June 14, 1498 and the Jews of Ulm who happened to be wealthy and educated, had to leave by August 6th of 1498.  The Jews could not take any property with them, and the emperor demanded that the people of Ulm had to mention him in their prayers because he had delivered them  from the Jews.

The Jews living in Ravensburg was a bad one, also.  A blood accusation was brought against them caused Emperor Sigismund to burn some Jews at the stake and to expel others in 1438.  Then years later in 1448 they were again admitted in and then expelled again in 1490.  Jews living in Heilbronn by 1414 were expelled by 1469.  7 years later the city council insisted on a general expulsion even though there was an imperial order to protect the Jews.  Jews were expelled from cities scattered among the villages and then often they would return to the urban communities.

Jews therefore were living in Gmund and Reutlingen in 1433;  in Brackenheim  and Nersheim in 1434;  in in Giengen in 1486;  and in Lauterburg, Pflaumloch and Uzmemmingen in 1491.

Between the late 1400s to 1806, no Jews lived in Ulm again.  Individual Jews were permitted to enter Ulm on a temporary basis, and the citizens were warned against having any business transactions with them.

When Wurttemberg (part of the German Federal Republic today)  became a dukedom, the treatment of the Jews was the same.  All money transactions with them were forbidden.  These ordinances were renewed and enforced.
                                                                 

Yoseph ben Gershom Loanz aka JOSEL OF ROSHEIM 1480-1554,
German communal leader and writer.
elected in 1510 by the Alsatian communities as their rep for the German Jewry
before the secular authorities, had to intercede in time of danger.  In 1532 he tried to
stem the dangerous activities of Solomon Molcho.  In 1543 he defended the Jews against the attacks of LUTHER.  

 Not even Josel of Rosheim, a great Jewish advocate for his people,  could travel through the country.  Strict ordinances were issued regarding the Jewish commercial and religious status.  In 1536 Jews traveling through the country were under great stresses and attacks, and no attention was paid to the repeated imperial edicts for their protection.  Josel was able to regulate the convoy charges of traveling Jews, but Duke Christoph, who gave him the agreement, was so much of an enemy to the Jews that in the Reichstag of Augsburg in 1559, he advocated their expulsion from Germany.

Frederick I (1593-1608) faced the most violent opposition against establishing a Jewish mercantile association under the direction of Abraham Calorno and Maggino Gabrieli but failed miserably.  It never came about.

Eberhard Ludwig reigned (1677-1733) who had a good attitude towards Jews.  He permitted them to go to the fairs in 1706 and to trade in horses in 1707.  The Countess of Wurben got free trade for the Jews of Freudenthal in 1728 and for those of Gochsheim in 1729.
                                                                   

Joseph ben Issachar Susskind or Joseph Suss Oppenheimer

         Under Carl Alexander (1733-1737) Joseph Suss Oppenheimer (1698-1738) was appointed a privy factor, and so a financial councilor to the duke, and through his influence, several Jews were permitted to live in Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg.  Oppenheimer tried to consolidate the duchy's finances and free its ruler from dependence on grants from the estates.  His modern financial methods aroused much opposition and when the duke died, he was accused of embezzling state finances.

Oppenheimer's subserviency to the duke caused him the enmity of the people.  When the duke died in 1737, he was in trouble.  He was disgraced and executed in 1738 by hanging in Stuttgart, accused instead of having sexual relations with Christian women, something strictly against the law.    He refused to save his own life by accepting baptism to Christianity.  .   The next year, all Jews were mercilessly expelled but soon permitted to return. Jews had been there since 1521 and then expelled by law and came and resettled again at the end of the 1600s.   However, they were severely restricted in their Judaism as well as in their business.  People were warned against from having any dealings with them concerning money.  Court factors were treated more leniently, and important government contracts were given to them in 1759, 1761, 1764 in spite of objections from the masses.  it took until 1864 that Jews of Wurttemberg received equal rights with gentiles.  In 1933, there were 10,023 Jews living in Wurttemberg and then, the Holocaust starting strongly by 1939.  By 1990 there were only a few hundred Jews there.

Karl Eugen, Ludwig (1793-1795) and Friedricfh (1795-1797) treated Jews considerately.  These rulers were the last of the line of Catholic dukes.  Under the succeeding Protestant regime, a new era dawned for the Jews of Wurttemberg, and all of Germany.

Resource: Jewish Encyclopedia on Wurttemberg by Isidore Singer and Theodor Kroner
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucharist_in_the_Catholic_Church
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire