Explore Jewish Worms

By Jenn Director Knudsen

Worms, Germany, is a small, moderately quaint town of about 86,000 people that my husband, David, and I walked in less than a sun-dappled day. The clear, crisp October day we spent there also was a sobering one, from a Jewish perspective.

This medieval city is home to one of only three Imperial Cathedrals along the Rhine River. Adorning one of its façades are two stone statues. One, “Church,” depicts a woman with nicely coiffed long hair, head held high, cupping a chalice in her left hand and peering directly at another stone image.

That second image also is of a woman. Known as “Synagogue,” her eyes are blindfolded, her head is downturned and her shoulders slouch.

Her posture and forced blindness are symbolic of her rejection of the Church and all it represents. (These opposing statues show up on other churches throughout Europe; we saw another in Strasbourg, France, decorated with these two chiseled enemies.)

Bookending the famous Worms Cathedral on one side of town is the narrow, cobblestoned former Jewish ghetto and, on the other, the Judenfriedof, the spacious 900-year-old Jewish cemetery, the oldest preserved Jewish burial place in all of Europe.

Clearly, Jewish Worms once thrived.

Not only was it once home to an estimated 1,100 Jews, but Rabbi Shlomo ben Yizchak, or Rashi, made it his home for five years (from 1060 to 1065), a time during which he recorded such important commentary on Torah and Talmud that his writings are considered among the most piercing and paramount today.

A creatively rendered metal statue of Rashi, mounted on a pedestal, stands perhaps 6 feet off the ground, between Worms’ only synagogue, the Alte (or Old) Synagogue, built of brick in 1034, and a dank, Roman-style mikvah (mikwe, auf Deutsche).

Docent Margret Brensing, who spoke quite good English, told us that each year about 30,000 tourists
visit the synagogue, its adjacent museum, The Rashi House, and the cemetery across town, a roughly 20-minute walk away.

The dog-eared guest book in the synagogue attests—in myriad languages—to Jewish Worms’ international interest.

To the tourist, Jewish Worms seems nearly untouched since 900, the year it came to life, according to a French-language informational pamphlet.

Surrounding the Jewish quarter—Judengasse—is a section of the huge brick edifice with little windows that at one time entirely enclosed Worms’ Jewish ghetto.

Shooting up from the very shadowed, uneven alleyways within the rampart are multi-story homes. On the day of our visit, these homes’ windows were tightly shuttered, adding to the neighborhood’s rather desolate feel.

The synagogue is in the center of the Judengasse; without its signage, however, it could be mistaken simply for a squat, A-frame house.

We entered the spare, yet warmly lit building through a side door and each placed an available kipah on our heads (we knew what to do but, just in case, a sign indicates that one should don a head covering here).

Brensing, the docent, explained Worms’ synagogue’s tumultuous past: Portions of it were destroyed in 1096 during the Crusades and then reconstructed, in vain, in 1175. For, in 1349, the town’s Jews were blamed for the Plague, and their synagogue again suffered.

Twice in the 1600s the synagogue became a target of gentiles’ rancor. And, by 1942, the synagogue—and the ghetto—was completely destroyed.

By the end of World War II, not one Jew remained in Worms.

“In 1945, after 1,000 years of Jewish history on the Rhine, there was no Jew left in Worms,” intones the male narrator in accented English of a poor-quality, 12-minute video available for viewing in the museum.

The narration continues, “The ‘Holy Community of Worms’ had ceased its existence.”

But, later, a physical rejuvenation and then a human one—albeit in different form—occurred.

Between 1957 and 1961, this shul—the oldest in all of Germany—was rebuilt, largely with money from the German government.

“As a sign to Israel,” Brensing said, “[that] things had changed in Germany.”

Today the synagogue has separate men’s and women’s sections, a modest, curtained Aron Ha’Kodesh, a stately menorah and, at the back, bookshelves filled with siddurim—in Hebrew, German and Russian.

Brensing, who also serves as the synagogue’s Shabbos Goy and tour guide for Christian Worms, said she only knows one Jew in Worms of German heritage. And any Jew in town is officially part of the hundreds-strong Jewish community of Mainz, a town 27 miles north of here.

Often, not enough Jews gather to make a minyan. But this may change; recently, nearly 150 Russian Jews have made Worms their new home.

“But, of course, by far not all of them are religious,” Brensing added.

However, they must have an interest. On our way to the centuries-old Jewish cemetery, we passed a bent, elderly couple who asked us—in broken, Russian-accented German—directions to the burial grounds.

The Jewish cemetery in Prague dating to the 1400s is more well-known, but Worms’ deserves perhaps more recognition.

Resembling a mouth full of crooked, decayed teeth, the cemetery is expansive, filled with trees and, in some sections, completely overrun with canted tombstones whose inscriptions have, with time and weather, been erased.

Stones, notes on paper and even melted candle wax speak to the people who’ve visited certain gravesites.

And there is a clear delineation —occurring in the 1800s—where the Hebrew inscriptions end and those in German begin. The most recent tombstone there lists its inhabitant’s death in the 1940s.

After strolling through the Judenfriedhof, David and I returned to the synagogue and its adjacent Rashi House, which formerly housed the Jewish community’s dance and wedding hall.

With some of its original 14th-century walls still standing, Rashi House’s “permanent exhibition is dedicated to the history of the Jewish community of Worms,” reads an English-language pamphlet, positioned right next to a clear collection box. (I was moved to make a small donation in euros, though plenty of dollar bills had been stuffed in, too.)

Relics include a Haggadah from 1738, a Torah scroll from the 1800s and a Kiddush cup from the 1600s, made by a silversmith in Worms.

The synagogue, museum and Jewish cemetery all are open nearly every day of the week; the former two close during the day only for its docents’ lunch breaks.

So it seems that in a small town once virulently opposed to its Jewish residents, it’s again OK to be Jewish. In the 1990s, vandals damaged some of the tombstones in the cemetery, Brensing said, but that incident was an anomaly.

“Usually everything is quiet [here],” she said. “Usually these things don’t happen.”

And yet, there are security cameras about, but discreetly placed, Brensing said a bit conspiratorially.

“You need not look around; you probably don’t find them.”