ENSISHEIM

ENSISHEIM, town in Haut-Rhin department, Alsace, E. France, about 19 mi. (30 km.) S. of colmar . R. Meir of Rothenburg was held prisoner there from 1286. The first evidence that Jews were living in the town dates from 1291. They were among the victims of the armleder persecutions in 1338. The community had hardly been reconstituted when it suffered from the persecutions accompanying the black death in 1348–49. A few Jews again settled there from 1371. The small community welcomed the Jews expelled from Kaysersberg and mulhouse at the beginning of the 16th century. After an ordinance of 1547, only one Jewish family was allowed to reside in Ensisheim and the surrounding localities, and the synagogue was closed for worship. In 1689, some Jews were again admitted for a short while on payment of a high protection fee. It was not until 1824 that some Jews again settled there. Only a few Jews were still living there in 1936. At an unknown date there was a blood libel in Ensisheim and the Jews there were put on trial. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Germ Jud, 2 (1968), 211ff.; E. Scheid, Histoire des Juifs d'Alsace (1887), 78, 107, 118, 135; F.J. Merklen, Histoire d'Ensisheim, 1 (1840), 185ff, 348; 2 (1840), 286 and passim; Z. Szajkowski, Franco-Judaica (1962), nos. 21, 1429. (Bernhard Blumenkranz)