History of Satu Mare

Jewish community

The presence of Jews in Transylvania is first mentioned in the late 16th century. In the 17th century, prince Gabriel Bethlen permitted Sephardi Jews from Turkey to settle in the Transylvanian capital Alba Iulia in 1623. In the early 18th century, Jews were allowed to settle in Satu Mare. Some of them became involved in large-scale agriculture, becoming landlords or lessees or were active in trade and industry, or distilled brandy and leased taverns on crown estates. In 1715, when Satu Mare became a royal town, they were expelled, beginning to resettle in the 1820s. In 1841 several Jews obtained the permission to settle permanently in Satu Mare, the first Jewish community was formally established in 1849, and in 1857, a synagogue was built. After a great number of traditional Ashkenazic Jews had settled in the town, the Jewish community split in 1898, when a supporter of the Hasidic movement was elected chief rabbi, into an Orthodox and a so-called Status Quo community, led by a Zionist rabbi, which erected a synagogue in 1904.

In the 1920s, there were several Zionist organizations in Satu Mare, and the yeshiva, one of the largest in the region, was attended by 400 students. In 1930, the city had five large synagogues and about 20 small ones. In 1928, a conflict within the Orthodox community broke out over the election of a new rabbi, lasting six years, ending in 1934 with the appointment of the Hasidic rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, a traditionalist and anti-Zionist, who later founded the Satmarer Hasidic movement in Brooklyn, New York. Another Hasidic rabbi, Aharon Roth, the founder of the Shomrei Emunim and Toldot Aharon communities in Jerusalem, was also active in Satu Mare.After Satu Mare was reannexed to Hungary in 1940, the civil rights and economic activities of the