History of the Jews in Estonia

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The history of Jews in Estonia^[2] starts with reports of the presence of individual Jews in what is now Estonia from as early as the 14th century.

Jews were settled in Estonia in the 19th century, especially following a statute of Russian Tsar Alexander II in 1865 allowed the so-called Jewish "Nicholas soldiers" (often former cantonists) and their descendants, First Guild merchants, artisans, and Jews with higher education to settle outside the Pale of Settlement. These settlers founded the first Jewish congregations in Estonia. The Tallinn congregation, the largest in Estonia, was founded 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 destroyed by fire during World War II. A synagogue was also built in Võru as shown in the records of Estonian Jewish historian Nathan Ganns.^[3]

The Jewish population spread to other Estonian cities where houses of prayer (at Valga, Pärnu and Viljandi) were erected and cemeteries were established. Schools were opened to teach Talmud, and elementary schools were organised in Tallinn in the 1880s. The majority of Jews at that time consisted of small tradesmen and artisans without advanced schooling because the settlement consisted of demobilized Cantonists, who had been drafted into the Russian army at an early age. At the end of the 19th century, however, several Jews entered the University of Tartu and later contributed significantly to enliven Jewish culture and education.^[4] Among the Jewish residents of Võro who graduated from the University of Tartu was Moses Wolf Goldberg. In 1917 the Jewish Drama Club was founded in Tartu.