Israeli ambassador visits Aargau ‘Jewish towns’

Israeli Ambassador Ifat Reshef visits the Endingen Synagogue on Tuesday with Max Bloch (right), president of the Endingen-Lengnau Synagogue and Cemetery Preservation Association, and Jules Bloch, president of the Endingen Israeli Religious Community © Keystone / Michael Buholzer

The Israeli ambassador to Switzerland, Ifat Reshef, has visited Jewish institutions at a commemorative event in Endingen and Lengnau, northern Switzerland.

Reshef said it was important to her to be in touch with the Jewish communities in Switzerland. Endingen and Lengnau in canton Aargau have a unique historical significance as the cradle of Swiss Jewry, she said on Tuesday.

She said she was happy to “learn something about the history of my people as well as about Swiss history”. The visit had been planned for some time.

A cantor sang at a memorial service for the victims of the Middle East conflict in the Endingen synagogue. Many innocent people had died in recent weeks, said Jules Bloch, president of the Endingen Jewish Community, and they wanted to remember the dead in Israel and in Gaza.

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Other stops included the Jewish cemetery, the synagogue in Lengnau and the Israelite old people’s home Margoa in Lengnau. The programme also included a tour of the property on the village square in Lengnau, where the meeting centre of the “Doppeltür” (double door) association is to be built by 2025.

‘Double door’

The concept is called “double door” because before the Jews in Endingen and Lengnau were treated equally, they had to live closely together, mostly in the same houses. These houses had separate entrances.

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The association wants to enable visitors to experience the everyday life of Christians and Jews in the 18th and 19th centuries in a double-door house.

“Ignorance is a problem,” said Doppeltür board member Roy Oppenheim about the ignorance of many people. School classes are an important target group, he said, but the house will be open to all generations.

After their expulsion from the federal towns, Swiss Jews were only allowed to settle in Endingen and Lengnau from 1776. After achieving equality and freedom of settlement in Aargau in 1874, many Jewish families migrated to the cities. Today, only a few Jews still live in Endingen and Lengnau.

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