The Ancient Synagogues

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Overview
The ancient famous synagogues of Brisk, 1569-1840

See also The Great Synagogue of Brest by Dr. Iryna Łaŭroŭskaja of Brest.

Credits
Compilation by Hannah Kadmon with the assistance of Oleg Medvedevsky.

Sources
Earliest Sources:
• 1854 - Hirsch Edelman (1805 -1858) Gdulat Shaul
• Bershadsky --History (1883)
• 1886 – Arie Leib Feinstein (1821-1903) Ir Tehila
• 1908 – Pauline Wengeroff (1833-1916) Memoiren einer Grossmutter, Bilder aus der Kulturgeschichte der Juden Russlands im 19 Jahrhundert (Memoirs of a Grandmother: Scenes from the Cultural History of the Jews of Russia in the Nineteenth Century), printed in Berlin.
• 1908 -- Taenzer's "the history of Brest Litovsk" – printed in 1908 in Berlin – in German http://city-walk.brest-belarus.org/text/ge/00.htm =

Newer sources, all of which depend on the above
• Pinkas HaKehillot Polin

The earliest first-hand source we have concerning synagogues in this period is letters written by Rabbi Yaakov Meir Padua (a descendant of Shaul Wahl) before his death in 1853 and quoted in Gdulat Shaul published by Hirsch Edelman in 1854. add comment and a copy of his disclaimer: We acknowledge that there are many myths about Shaul Wahl; Rabbi Padua explicitly states he avoids all myth/legend, and so we stick to his accounts and avoid any other material in Gdulat Shaul, some of which may well be mythical.

History of the synagogues in Brisk until 1886

We removed the following text from the Year1411 page. (It is general information which is unsupported and perhaps a bit misleading. )Use it only as a reminder of topics this introduction may cover. The Polish publication Biala Podlaska – Brzesc nieodkryty wschod (PDF, in Polish, here) on page 41, tells us why the Jews came to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and confirms Zonnenberg:

The Jews appeared on the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at the turn of 14th-15th centuries. Seeking refuge from religious persecutions and pogroms in Western Europe, they came to the religiously tolerant GDL to settle in towns and townlets. By a special decree the Grand Duke Witold allowed the Jews of Brest to build synagogues in the town. In the 16th-17th centuries the Brest Jewish community was very powerful and the Brest synagogue was one of the most famous in Europe.

Notes:

Page Last Updated: 13-Sep-2016