Lemberg לבוב
The capital of Galicia: the Turei Zahav, the Shoel u-Meshiv and the Golden Rose synagogue.
Jews lived in Lemberg from the fourteenth century, and for four hundred years the city was one of the chief rabbinical centres of Poland and then of Austria: here served Rabbi David ha-Levi, author of the Turei Zahav on the Shulchan Aruch, and here in the nineteenth century Rabbi Yosef Shaul Nathanson answered letters from all Europe.
The Golden Rose synagogue of 1582—among the oldest in Eastern Europe—stood until 1941. Beside rabbinical learning the Haskalah lived here too: the Lemberg community argued with itself more loudly than most.
Before the war more than a hundred thousand Jews lived in Lemberg—a third of the city. The Germans destroyed the community in 1941-1943; a small part survived.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- The responsa of the Lemberg rabbis—Turei Zahav, Shoel u-Meshiv — the city as a rabbinical centre
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — the community from the fourteenth century, the synagogue of 1582, its destruction in 1941-1943
Basis: documents and evidence.