The typical atmosphere of the restaurant “Au Koïfhus” is one of the recognized addresses of Colmar.
The whole team offers a varied menu of traditional cuisine and its table suggestions based on seasonal products. summer, you will enjoy a beautiful terrace with a breathtaking view of historical monuments and the comfort of a pedestrian zone.
For your corporate meals or family, an individual room can be made available to you ‘à 35 personnes
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Rachel Kaplan
Shalom ! I created European Jewish Heritage Tours in 1998 because I strongly believed that Europe was making amends for its terrible past, by investing in the rebuilding of Jewish communities across the Continent, and inaugurating new museums and Jewish centers in key European capitals.
As the European Editor of INSIDE Magazine, the quarterly published by The Jewish Exponent of Philadelphia, I had the chance to personally visit and write about many of these destinations and in so doing, found a fascinating Jewish legacy everywhere I went. I also discovered others through researching my four books: Little-known Museums In and Around Paris, London, Berlin and Rome.
The aim of European Jewish Heritage Tours today is to propose private customized tours for groups and individuals that offer an overview that both reveals the European Jewish past, and invites a discovery of Jewish life today. As the “Chosen People” we have the privilege and responsibility of knowing and honoring our heritage wherever it may be.
Christmas Market in Jerusalem
Celebrating Christmas in the holy city is a unique experience. The Old City’s Christian and Armenian quarters become decorated while the city’s churches celebrate the holiday by holding Christmas services.
The Church of the Nativity will be holding numerous Christmas services.
For more information about Christmas events in Israel, read Christmas in Bethlehem, Christmas in Nazareth, and Christmas in Tel Aviv-Jaffa.
For more information about Christmas in Israel, read our blog: Christmas in Israel: Decking the Halls of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Jaffa, and Nazareth.
Hopla Guide
Hi there! We are Laura et Georges, the team behind Hopla Guide.
We run this project together, and in our spare time, we run our life together. We are an international couple, she’s Argentinian, he’s French, but both “Made in Alsace”.
Travellers, food lovers, culture addicts, wanderers… our lives brought us in many places, from Europe to Latin America.
Every trip, we seek for authentic experiences. We want to discover it all, but freely, spontaneously.
During our trips, we found ourselves with two options: either we had to follow a guided group, losing our independence, or wander around with the feeling of missing out on important places.
What to see ? In what order ? And what souvenirs to buy and bring back home ?
Is there no other way?
What if we could visit a city on our own, with freedom and flexibility, and be sure we are going to see everything, learn about the local culture, and have fun at the same time?
What if we could be guided explorers?
One day, we decided to put our abilities together and innovate. Laura has a master’s degree in tourism specialized in management, marketing and eco-sustainability. Georges has a master’s degree in history of art from Paris-Sorbonne university. We both have professional experience in tourism companies.
That is how Hopla Guide started. We built a solution, reimagined guided tours, and created a complete experience, both physical and digital.
Cultural information had to be accessible to the explorer at any time, so we chose to build a mobile app, allowing interactivity and flexibility.
But we wanted to go further and create something that doesn’t stay on your phone but materialises in the real world. So we selected exciting items that enhance the visit and bring the tour on another level of interaction, using other senses : touch, taste and smell.
We believe in slow tourism, in a respectful and deeper way of discovering. We empower little groups to live a true cultural exploration, not just a quick run in the city to take some pictures and go away without learning anything. Our explorers are meant to get an honest grasp of the local identity.
We invite you to take part in our story and give a chance to another kind of cultural experience.
Jewish Colmar
Part of Germany until 1681, Colmar has a Jewish community that dates back to the mid-13th century. The medieval community, which owned a synagogue, mikvah, and a cemetery, settled between the present Rue Chauffour and Rue Berthe-Molly (then names Rue des Juifs).
We can arrange for you to visit the Colmar Synagogue, originally built in 1840. This neo-Romanesque synagogue was destroyed by the Nazis during World War II and then restored by the local community after the war. You may also tour the Musée Bartholdi, which contains a fine collection of Jewish rituals objects and synagogue furnishings. The museum is located in the house of Auguste Bartholdi, the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty. Another museum to see this year is the newly renovated Unterlinden, listed as one of the notable destinations for 2016.
Colmar Synagogue Tour
The synagogue is situated in the town center, minutes away from the pedestrian zone and near many hotels. Guided tours are available by appointment, every day except for shabbat and festivals.
To book please phone either : The synagogue office +33 3 89 41 38 29 (if answering machine please leave a message); or the tourist office, place Unterlinden in Colmar or by phone +33 3 89 20 68 92.
For security reasons you will be asked to show your passports, identity card or driving license, and your bags may be checked.
Judaism in Colmar
In the streets of Colmar, discover the symbols, statues and inscriptions that tell the story of the city´s Jewish community.
At the Bartholdi museum, you will visit a room entirely dedicated to its history, presenting items from Jewish family ritual. You will also be able to get inside the Colmar synagogue, which is quite exceptional, as a synagogue is not usually open to the public.
Wintzenheim Jewish Cemetery
When entering the cemetery, this “Bäjs Aulem”, this “House of Eternity”, the contrast is great between the oldest sandstone tombs of the Vosges, whose sagging stone leans like an orant bent in prayer, and the order of the most recent burials, to whom the the rigidity of the marble or granite slabs confers a certain bourgeois respectability. A monument also commemorates members of the community and neighboring villages who perished in the resistance or in deportation during the Second World War. Opposite the entrance, a large rectangular square. A tiny plaque placed on the ground recalls that four hundred graves were torn from this cemetery, carried away by Nazi barbarism.
The traces of at least three generations have thus been erased. The graves, like the Jews at the same time, went to an unknown destination. This void, redoubled by the near absence of Jews, in a place once inhabited by a community bustling , does not fail to question us. It is all the more significant that the Jews have participated for nearly five centuries in the history of the city.
Until the end of the 18th century, the Jews of Wintzenheim had to bury their dead in the cemetery of Jungholtz, about thirty kilometers away. They had to pay a tax in each village and in each borough crossed.
It was not until 1795 that they were authorized to open a cemetery along the road to Turckheim. When it was created, the cemetery occupied an area of 26 ares. A 16-acre plot, acquired in 1826, allowed it to be enlarged in order to bury the Jews of Turckheim, Ingersheim, Wettolsheim and Munster as well. The oldest tomb that remains today dates from 2 Germinal of the year II (1797).
The oldest tombs, from around 1797 to 1860, are characterized by a relative uniformity, in accordance with the imperative of simplicity and equality which must unite the Jews in death. They respond to a restraint that refuses the ostentation of social disparities: each tomb is made up of a vertical sandstone slab. Most do not wear decorative patterns. Some are surmounted by a ball, a pine cone, a stylized flower, or even a decorated pediment. From the second half of the 19th century, there is gradually more variety in the decor: hands of the Cohanim, ewer of Lévy, weeping willow and winged hourglass. Religious, and above all social, distinction imposes its mark.
Cemetery of Selestat
In 1622, when no Jewish family lived in Sélestat, the Jews of the communities or Wintzenheim, Ribeauvillé and Bergheim no longer had any necropolis near Colmar, the city councilors refusing the extension. Also these Jews bought land around Sélestat, in the canton known as Burner, which later took the name of Paradiesweg to establish a rest area. The cemetery (named the “Paradies”), with an area of nearly 4 hectares and comprising around 4000 graves, was created around 1622.
The oldest part has been listed as an historic monument since May 10, 1995. Located to the north of the city, it was opened by the Jewish communities of Bergheim, Ribeauvillé, and Dambach-la-Ville, then enlarged several times over the centuries, in 1699, 1719, 1733 respectively. the limits: one of them bears the inscription “Bel Ain”, which means house of eternity.
In the last century, a fence wall pierced with two doors was installed; on the central portal, we can see two broken poppy branches: the poppy symbolizing sleep, and the broken branches death.
The oldest identified stele is that of Rabbi Moïse de Dambach, dating from 1666. Many Jewish personalities of the 17th century rest in this cemetery, in particular the niece of Karl Marx, Rose Blum, as well as Raisel See, heroine of the French Revolution. native of Bergheim, as well as Moïse Meier, president and general representative of the Jews of the province.
There is also the tomb of Léopold Weiller, father of Lazare Weiller, who was one of the founders of television, and of the first automobile cab company (the ancestor of taxis). He was a senator for Bas-Rhin.
This cemetery makes it possible to observe over a continuous series of changes in Jewish funerary art in the 18th century mainly, through the decorative treatment of the stelae which evolves from a fairly stripped Renaissance style to a more baroque art around the middle of the century. (Dictionary of Historical Monuments Alsace – sept. 1995)
During the Nazi Occupation, the cemetery passed into the hands of the authorities. It is the mayor, who, in 1979, ceded for the symbolic franc, the cemetery to the Jewish community.
Photo credit: Oie blanche, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Synagogue of Colmar
Colmar is one of the oldest communities in Alsace and a synagogue is mentioned as early as in the 13th century, destroyed by fire in 1279. During the massacre of the Jews, burned alive in 1349, the city confiscated the synagogue. The Jewish community and its synagogue began again around 1380 but vanished in 1512, when Colmar expelled the Jews. Again, the synagogue was confiscated by the city.
During the revolution, some Jews were able to return to Colmar. In 1823, the consistory based in Wintzenheim, the largest community in the Upper Rhine, was transferred to Colmar.
After praying in various oratories, the community built a monumental synagogue, in a neo-Romanesque style, which was inaugurated on September 15th 1843. It was renovated in 1885 and 1913, with the addition of an extra gallery for women, and the replacement of the central wooden platform by a sandstone platform. During World War II, the Germans used the synagogue as an auction house for furniture stolen from expelled Jews, and then turned it into an arsenal. The ransacked building was restored after the Liberation and inaugurated in 1961. The synagogue has been registered as a historical monument since July 1984.
