"Jerusalem of the West" was a term historically used by Jews to describe a non-Jewish diaspora city with a sizeable Jewish community that enjoyed freedom of religion and social prominence. The Jewish community in Amsterdam was often described this way.
Usage Amsterdam
In Europe, Amsterdam was commonly associated with the term and was called Jeruzalem van het Westen in Dutch.Ridley Haim Herschell. The Voice of Israel, 1845. pg. 27. Portuguese and Spanish Jews from Iberia first settled there in the late 16th and early 17th centuryAntonie Wessels. Muslims in the West: can they be integrated, Peeters Publishers, 2006. pg. 9. . and in 1672, there were an estimated 7,500 Jews living in the city.D. van Galen Last, Rolf Wolfswinkel. Anne Frank and after, Amsterdam University Press, 1996. pg. 17. . Protestant Holland had a reputation of tolerance which was rare in Europe at the time. It was "the first city in Europe where Jews were free from persecution and where they enjoyed religious liberty, ample economic opportunities and social equality."Beth Hatefutsoth: the first years, Beth Hatefutsoth, the Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, 1983. pg. 53. The epithet signalled that the Jews felt comfortable in the city.D. van Galen Last, Rolf Wolfswinkel. Anne Frank and after, Amsterdam University Press, 1996. pg. 12. . Prior to the Holocaust, there were about 80,000 Jews living in Amsterdam.Jewish identity in football clubs "In modern Jewish historiography, the phrase 'Dutch Jerusalem' symbolizes Jewish steadfastness in the face of persecution and Jewish dynamism in the fertile environment of a liberal bourgeois society."Swetschinski, Daniel M. Reluctant Cosmopolitans: The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam. London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization 2000,2
Tlemcen In Northern Africa, Tlemcen in Algeria was called "Jerusalem of the West". In the 15th-century, the town was considered a major Jewish spiritual centre.John Hunwick. Jews of a Saharan oasis: elimination of the Tamantit community, Markus Wiener Publishers, 2006. Back Cover. . André Chouraqui believed that there was a genuine geographical correspondence between the town and Jerusalem. He wrote: "We were living our dream in the midst of the beautiful countryside of the Maghreb. Tlemcen...resembles the city of David in altitude, climate, fauna and flora, to such an extent that we called in the Jerusalem of the Maghreb."Susan Slyomovics. The walled Arab city in literature, architecture history: the living Medina in the Maghrib "Geographies of Jewish Tlemcen." Routledge, 2001. pg. 81. .
Other Prior to World War II—Vilnius, Lithuania was known as the Jerusalem of the North. Other towns given the appellation include ToledoJoshua D. Zimmerman (2004). Poles, Jews, and the politics of nationality. Univ of Wisconsin Press. p. 16. . and Antwerp.Jonathan Irvine Israel, R. Salverda. Dutch Jewry: its history and secular culture (1500-2000), BRILL 2002. pg. 291. . Many other towns in northern Africa were also called symbolically after Jerusalem: Ghardaia, M'zab (Second Jerusalem), Djerba, Tunisia (Ante-chamber of Jerusalem, Jerusalem of Africa), Ifrane, Morocco (Little Jerusalem).Marie-Noëlle Bourguet, Lucette Valensi, Nathan Wachtel. Between memory and history, Volume 2, Taylor & Francis, 1990. pg. 81. .
According to YIVO's archivist Leyzer Ran:
See also Nowa Jerozolima (Warsaw), a small village established in 1774 for Jewish settlers in Mazovia, Poland. Mokum, Yiddish word meaning "safe haven", given to a number of towns in Holland and Germany. Wenzhou, called "Jerusalem of the East" due to its Christian population.
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