Estonian Jews

Estonian Jews

The history of the Jews in Estonia starts with individual reports of Jews in what is now Estonia from as early as the 14th century. However, the process of permanent Jewish settlement in Estonia began in the 19th century, especially after they were granted the official right to enter the region by a statute of Russian Tsar Alexander II in 1865. This allowed the so-called Jewish ‘Nicholas soldiers’ (often former cantonists) and their descendants, First Guild merchants, artisans and Jews with higher education to settle in Estonia and other parts of the Russian Empire outside their pale of settlement. The "Nicholas soldiers" and their descendants, and artisans were, basically, the ones who founded the first Jewish congregations in Estonia. The Tallinn congregation, the largest in Estonia, was founded already in 1830. The Tartu congregation was established in 1866 when the first fifty families settled there. Synagogues were built, the largest of which were constructed in Tallinn in 1883 and Tartu in 1901. Both of these were subsequently destroyed by fire in World War II.

The Jewish population spread to other Estonian cities where houses of prayer (at Valga, Pärnu and Viljandi) and cemeteries were erected. As Jews sought to establish their own network of education in Estonia, boys' schools were established for the teaching of the Talmud, and elementary schools were organised in Tallinn in the 1880s. The majority of the Jewish population at that time consisted of small tradesmen and artisans, very few knew science, hence Jewish cultural life lagged. A change to this was brought about at the end of the 19th century when several Jews entered the University of Tartu and later contributed significantly to enliven Jewish culture and education. 1917 even saw the founding of the Jewish Drama Club in Tartu.