TOUL

TOUL, city in the department Meurthe-et-Moselle in N.E. France. The earliest reference to the existence of Jews there is The Life of St. Mansuy, written in 974, in which the author mentions a Jewish physician in Toul. The tosafists eliezer of toul , who died before 1234, and his brother Abraham, disciple of Isaac the Elder of Dampierre, lived in the town. From the Middle Ages until the French Revolution there is no evidence of Jews living there legally, although some Jews were in the region during various periods, and in 1711 a few even settled in the town temporarily. In 1791 an important community was formed and in 1808 one of its members was a delegate to the Napoleonic sanhedrin . The synagogue was built in 1819, and for a time after 1850, Toul was the seat of a rabbinate. In 1905 there were not more than 40–50 Jews in the community. In 1970 there were 15 Jews residing in the city. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Gross, Gal Jud, 211–2; B. Blumenkranz, Juifs et Chrétiens … (1960), 54ff. (Gilbert Cahen)