History of the Jews in Switzerland
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 17,500 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Lengnau (historically) | |
| Languages | |
| Swiss German, Standard German, Swiss French, Swiss Italian, Hebrew, Yiddish | |
| Religion | |
| Judaism |
History of the Jews in Switzerland reaches back at least a thousand years. Jews and Judaism have been present in the territory of what is now Switzerland since before the emergence of the medieval Old Swiss Confederacy in the 15th century.
Switzerland has Europe's tenth-largest Jewish community, with about 17,500 Jews, roughly 0.2% of the population. About one-third of the Jewish community lives in the Zürich metropolitan area. As of 2009, there were 38 synagogues in the country. The first World Zionist Congress of 1897 was held in Basel, and took place in the city for a number of ten times, i.e. more than in any other city in the world. Whereas the communities of Basel and Zürich are traditionally shaped by large Ashkenazi communities, Geneva also hosts an important Sephardic community. Its main synagogue, the Synagogue Hekhal Haness, is considered to be the most important Sephardic synagogue in the whole of Europe.
A ring with a Menorah depiction found in Augusta Raurica (Kaiseraugst, Switzerland) in 2001 attests to Hebrew presence in Germania Superior. The Encyclopaedia Judaica mentioned a first documentation in 1214. In the Middle Ages, as in many places in Europe, they frequently suffered persecution, for example in 1294 in Bern, when many Jews of the city were executed and the survivors expelled under the pretext of the murder of a Christian boy. Another pogrom occurred among other cities in Zürich in 1249; at the location of the former synagogue at Froschaugasse 4 in the former Neumarkt quarter, a plaque was mounted.
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