I agree with JTA’s privacy policy.
By submitting the foregoing, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use of JTA. org
Germany held a rite on Wednesday to celebrate the first German Jewish sites to be indexed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The sites in the upper Rhine Valley are known as the point of origin of Ashkenazi culture and where the Yiddish language began to expand more than 1000 years ago. They were identified through UNESCO, the United Nations’ education and cultural body, in July 2021, but the coronavirus pandemic delays Germany’s birthday party of the designation.
UNESCO has identified the Speyer Jewish Court, a synagogue and yeshiva complex in the city of Speyer; the synagogue complex in Worms; the ancient Jewish cemetery of Worms, the oldest known Jewish cemetery in situ in Europe; and the old Jewish cemetery in Mainz.
“The network’s exclusive centers and cemeteries have had a lasting effect on Ashkenazi curtain culture and are directly and concretely related to the artistic achievements of early Ashkenazi scholars,” the UNESCO list explains.
President Frank Walter-Steinmeier visited a synagogue in Mainz on Wednesday.
“Before July 27, 2021, there were 49 World Heritage sites in our country, from Roman Trier to the ancient Hanseatic cities of Stralsund and Wismar, from Aachen Cathedral to Wartburg Castle near Eisenach. The list reflected the diversity of culture and nature, yet it had a big gap: there were no Jewish cultural monuments,” Steinmeier said in his speech.
He joined the birthday party through Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO. Azoulay, a French Jew, is the daughter of André Azoulay, a Moroccan-born Jewish banker who is most recently an advisor to King Mohammed VI of Morocco.
Steinmeier noted how the sites attest that Jewish history in Germany, whether clever or bad, extends far beyond the Holocaust. The cities of Speyer, Mainz, and Worms were the sites of large-scale Jewish massacres, the Crusades, and the bubonic plague epidemic. of the fourteenth century, however, they were also home to some of the most important leaders of European Jewry, such as the celebrated Torah commentator known as Rashi.
“For centuries, Jews in Germany were foreigners, like everyone else. They were continually humiliated, excluded, disenfranchised, persecuted, killed, even before the National Socialists and their voluntary executioners almost completely wiped out Jewish life in Germany and Europe,” Steinmeier said. . ” The monuments and tombstones of Speyer, Worms and Mainz testify to the deep roots of the Jews in our country, the flowering of their culture, self-affirmation and emancipation, times of non-violent coexistence with the Christian majority.
I agree with JTA’s privacy policy.
By submitting the foregoing, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use of JTA. org