Judensand Memorial Cemetery
What exactly is a memorial cemetery?
The eternal peace of the ‘Judensand’ has been disturbed several times throughout history. When the Jewish community was expelled from Mainz in 1438, the medieval gravestones were torn up and used in building work within the city. More than 100 of these historic stones were discovered and recovered during construction work in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Mainz rabbis Siegmund Salfeld and Sali Levi collected these artefacts. In 1926, they established the so-called ‘Monument Cemetery’ on an unused section of the medieval cemetery. They arranged the recovered gravestones there in a deliberately haphazard manner rather than – as was originally customary – orienting them eastwards towards Jerusalem. Today, a total of 168 gravestones can be seen here, including those of prominent Jewish scholars from the 11th century. The oldest surviving gravestone in Central Europe dates from the year 1049. It is housed in the State Museum in Mainz.
The collection of gravestones at the Memorial Cemetery is unique. They bear witness, on the one hand, to the significance of Magenza (Mainz) as a centre of Ashkenazi Judaism and, on the other, to the centuries-old roots of the Jewish community in Mainz.
Among the medieval artefacts rediscovered within the city limits is the memorial stone of Gershom ben Jehuda, known by the honourific title ‘Our Teacher Gershom, Light of the Exile’ (Rabbenu Gershom Me’or Hagolah). As one of the most influential rabbinical scholars in the Western world, Gershom ben Jehuda taught at the Talmud school in Mainz around the turn of the millennium. At that time, the Jewish community was experiencing what was probably its greatest economic and intellectual flourishing. Gershom’s decrees on religious law (Takkanot) were so groundbreaking that they were repeatedly reaffirmed in the centuries that followed. His Takkanot had a decisive influence on Ashkenazi Judaism, for example the decrees on the definitive abolition of polygamy and the introduction of the confidentiality of correspondence. He granted women a say in matters of divorce.
Following the plague pogrom of 1349, the legal and economic situation of the Jewish population deteriorated. The cultural and religious centre of Ashkenazi Judaism gradually shifted further eastwards. Rabbi Yaakov haLevi Moelin, known by the acronym MaHaRIL, became the foremost Jewish authority of his time. The traditions of Ashkenazi Judaism have been preserved for posterity in his ‘Book of Customs’ (Sefer Minhagim). He codified the order of worship for the German communities and decreed that the liturgical chants of the Holy Congregation of Magenza were to remain unchanged. Shortly before his death, he travelled to Worms. His gravestone on the ‘Holy Sand’ there is still particularly revered by Jewish visitors today.
Jakob or Jaakov ben Jakar was from Mainz. He studied at the Talmudic academy (yeshiva) in Mainz under the renowned scholar Gershom ben Jehuda. Initially working as a teacher in Mainz, he took over the leadership of the yeshiva in Worms in 1060. Jakob ben Jakar was an authority on matters of Jewish laws and prohibitions (Halacha) far beyond the borders of Mainz. He is revered worldwide as the teacher of Rashi of Troyes, who is regarded as the most famous scholar from the SchUM communities and remains a leading authority in Judaism to this day. Jacob’s gravestone had been walled up within the former city fortifications of Mainz and was rediscovered by chance during demolition work in 1922.
The golden age of Jewish Mainz began with the Kalonymos family, who had emigrated from Lucca. Moses ben Kalonymos, Meshullam’s father, is credited with founding the Magenza community in the mid-10th century. Under the influence of the Kalonymos family, Mainz developed into a centre of Jewish scholarship. Meshullam is known above all for his liturgical poetry. He also wrote texts on the ‘Halakha of trade and commerce’, thereby establishing a school of Talmudic interpretation on the Rhine modelled on the Jewish academies in Babylonia. His memorial stone was discovered in 1859 during the fortification of the banks of the Rhine for the Ludwigsbahn railway, together with around 100 other gravestones. The epitaph honours him with the words ‘Our teacher Meshullam’ (Rabbana Meshullam).
One of the most outstanding figures in the once-thriving Jewish community of Magenza was Rabbi Shimon bar Yitshak. In the old Nuremberg memorial book, he is referred to as ‘Simon the Great’. His poem is sung during the morning prayer on the second day of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year). Simon’s grave on the ‘Judensand’ is believed to have been lost. A spring of healing water is said to have gushed forth at the head of this grave. There is also a legend surrounding Simon the Great that Christians abducted his son Elchanan as a small child from the market in Mainz and took him to a monastery. Later, Elchanan is said to have been elected Pope in Rome, where his father is said to have miraculously recognised him whilst they were playing chess. Elchanan then returned to Mainz, to his father’s congregation.
The Old Jewish Cemetery ‘Judensand’
Jewish burial grounds are among the most important testimonies to Jewish history in Europe. The Old Jewish Cemetery ‘Judensand’, with almost 1,700 historic gravestones, is therefore a significant part of the World Cultural Heritage of the SchUM sites in Speyer, Worms and Mainz.
Alongside the ‘Heiliger Sand’ in Worms, the ‘Judensand’ in Mainz is the largest and oldest surviving Jewish cemetery in Central Europe. It is situated on a former Roman arterial road on the outskirts of the medieval town. Its oldest gravestones date back to the 11th century. It is here that one first encounters the fundamental design features of Ashkenazi graves.
Although the Jewish population was expelled on several occasions, the ‘Judensand’ remained the burial ground for Jews from Mainz and the surrounding area for centuries. It was not until 1880 that it was finally closed, following the opening of the New Jewish Cemetery on Untere Zahlbacher Straße.
In 1803, the French prefect Jeanbon St. André ordered the closure of the Old Jewish Cemetery and directed that the burial grounds of all faiths be relocated to the Zahlbach Valley. During Napoleon’s stay in Mainz in 1805, the Jewish community was granted permission to bury its dead permanently on the ‘Judensand’ once again.
Ashkenazi Judaism (535 ZmL)
Ashkenaz is an ancient Hebrew term for Germany. During the Middle Ages, religious and cultural traditions developed along the Rhine in the SchUM towns, which later spread as far as Eastern Europe through migration. Yiddish forms part of their cultural identity.
The traditions of Ashkenazi Judaism differ from those of the Sephardim (Iberian Peninsula / North Africa) and the Mizrahim (the Near East). Today, Ashkenazim make up around two-thirds of the Jewish community worldwide.
Sephardic Judaism (517 ZmL)
Sepharad is an ancient Hebrew term for Spain. Sephardic Judaism is based on the traditions of the Jewish communities in Spain and Portugal, whose members were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492 and 1495. The Sephardim subsequently settled mainly in the Ottoman Empire and North Africa. Their language is Ladino. Sephardic burial
customs, for example, involve a flat stone slab, whereas among the Ashkenazim an upright stone marks the grave.