Sephardic Jews in Romania
Sephardic Jews may have first arrived in the principality of Wallachia from the Ottoman Empire in the 16th Century.
In 1730 the prince of Wallachia, on the advice of Daniel de Fonseca and Celebi Mentz Bali, allowed Jewish communities to be organised. However, a Sephardic synagogue was not built until 1819. The original Cahal Grande synagogue was rebuilt in 1890. It was destroyed in a pogrom in 1941, and finally demolished in 1955.
It is reported that in 1934, there were Sephardic communities in Bucharest (the largest), Craiova, Ploiești, Turnu Severin, Timișoara, Corabia, Calafat, Brăila, Galați, Tulcea, Constanța and Giurgiu. According to the historian Iuliu Barasch there was a Sephardic community in Focșani, and according to Moses Gaster there was also one in Alba Iulia .
Romania had a mixed community of Sephardim and Ashkenazim, with the Sephardim coming from the Ottoman Empire. There were two Sephardic synagogues in Bucharest.
Moses Gaster, Haham of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of London, was a Romanian Jew, reportedly Sephardic.
Some sources on Sephardic Romania:
- Tales and Traces of Sephardic Bucharest
- The Sephardic Jews in Rumania: The Rise and Decline of the Sephardic Jewish Community in Bucharest (Hebrew). Geller, Jacob. 1983, 124 pp.
- http://betweenwanderings.com/2017/06/bucharests-lost-sephardic-world-a-letter-from-1904/
- http://www.sephardicstudies.org/romania.html
- http://www.inshr-ew.ro/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Craiova-revazut-ND.pdf
- https://www.info-sud-est.ro/templul-sefard-din-constanta-despre-memorie-uitare-si-locuri-pustii/
- https://www.academia.edu/9141313/Bucuresti_panorama_sefarda_Bucharest_a_sephardic_outlook
- https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evreii_sefarzi_din_Rom%C3%A2nia
Romanian Jewish History Museum
Sephardic Jewish Genealogy in Romania
Nobody seems to have studied the genealogy of the Romanian Sephardim. If you have any suggested sources, please let me know.
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