ÉTAMPES

ÉTAMPES (Heb. איטנפש), town in the Seine et Oise department, S. of Paris. At the time of the expulsion of 1182, King Philip Augustus gave the synagogue to the canons of Étampes to be converted into the collegiate church of Sainte-Croix (destroyed during the Revolution). There is still a rue de la Juiverie in Étampes, near the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville. One house in this square is still called the "synagogue," a name also given to the vast cellar (since filled in) under 39 and 41, rue Ste-Croix. Local tradition holds that Jews took refuge in the cellars of the quarter to escape persecutions and expulsions and that they buried their treasures there. Until 1182, R. Nathan b. Meshulam, great-grandfather of joseph b. nathan official , author of Yosef ha-Mekanne, lived in Étampes. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Gross, Gal Jud, 44–45; B. Fleureau, Les antiquitez… d'Etampes (1683), 380f.; M. de Mont-Rond, Essais historiques sur… Etampes (1836), 1, 136ff.; M. Legrand, Etampes pittoresque (1897), passim. (Bernhard Blumenkranz)