Friday we woke up in Speyer, which was once a center of Ashkenazic life in Germany. Accoding to our Viking materials, there had been recurring pogroms there. However in 1084, Speyer’s Bishop issued an invitation to Jews to settle there. According to our guide, “it was a business development move, since moneylending was forbidden for Christians and the city needed funds for the new cathedral….In return, the Bishop offered rights and protections that until then were unprecedented in Europe.” A strong Jewish community grew there at the time. You can still see the remains of an 1104 synagogue and a mikvah from 1126.
Melissa was interested to learn that the Museum SchPIRA, dedicated to the Jewish history of the area is named in reference to the name Schapiro which comes from variants on the town’s name - Speyer, Szpira, and Spiro (Melissa’s last name).
Quoting from the Viking doc again, “Almost all of Speyer’s Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. But in 1996, a resurgence began when some Jewish families settled here from Eastern Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The cornerstone of their new synagogue was laid in 2008.
