Former Jewish Houses
Station 18
From 1354 onwards, Jewish families began settling in Erfurt once again. The second Jewish community once again grew to become one of the largest in the northern alpine Empire. The first families lived mainly in houses directly behind the town hall; for further immigrants, the council had terraced houses built on the banks of the Gera river. A rent register shows that in some cases several families lived together in a single rented house.
You are now in the last surviving former Jewish house; Isaak the Butcher lived here in 1360. Isaak was one of several butchers who supplied the community with kosher meat. In another Jewish house, the butchers Jakob and Josef are documented.
Further occupations are documented in Erfurt for the period after 1360: for example, community officials, domestic servants, scribes, a bookbinder, a midwife and three men who made shofars from ram’s horns, which are blown on Yom Kippur and the Jewish New Year. Even during the second community, many Jews were involved in money-lending.
