ALZEY

ALZEY (Heb.אלזא, אלזיי, אלזיא), town near worms , Germany. Jews living in Alzey are first mentioned in 1260, and again in 1348 during the black death massacres. They were expelled from the town with the other Jews of the Palatinate in 1391. Although there were Jews living in Alzey in the 16th century, an organized community was not established until about 1700. Notable in Alzey was the Belmont family: Jessel (d. 1738. served as the first parnas, and Elijah Simeon built the synagogue in 1791. A new synagogue was consecrated in 1854. There were nine Jewish households in Alzey in 1772 and 30 in 1807. In 1880, 331 Jews were living there (approximately 6% of the total population); in 1926, 240; in 1933, 197; and by kristallnacht (Nov. 1938), when the synagogue was burned down, there were fewer than 100 as a result of emigration. The last 41 were deported to the extermination camps of Eastern Europe in 1942–43. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: L. Loewenstein, Geschichte der Juden in der Kurpfalz (1895). ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: O. Boecher, in: Alzeyer Geschichtsblaetter, 5 (1968), 131–46; idem, in: 1750 Jahre Alzey (1973), 196–206; D. Hoffmann, in: Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 43 (1992), 79–92.