The history of the Jews in Hamburg in Germany is recorded from at least 1590 on. Since the 1880s, Jews of Hamburg have lived primarily in the neighbourhoods of , earlier in the New Town, where the Sephardic Community "Neveh Shalom" ()location of Sephardic Community "Newe Salom" was established in 1652. Since 1612 there have been toleration agreements with the senate of the prevailingly Lutheran city-state. Also Reformed Dutch merchants and Anglican Britons made similar agreements before. In these agreements the Jews were not permitted to live in the Inner-City, though were also not required to live in ghettos.
From 1600 onwards, also German Jews settled in Hamburg, but in 1649 these Ashkenazim were driven out of the city-state. From then on, only Sephardim were permitted to live in Hamburg. Ashkenazi Jews returned to Hamburg in 1656.
Around 1925, about 20,000 Jews lived in Hamburg, of whom about 400 were Sephardim. After the Nazis had come to power, most synagogues were destroyed in 1938 and 1939 and soon the associated communities also were dissolved. In 1945, a Jewish community was founded by survivors of the Shoah. And finally in 1960 the new Synagogue on "Hohe Weide" street was built. In the 1970s about 1,000 immigrant Jewish Iranians joined the congregation.
Origins The Jewish Community in Hamburg, began with the establishment of Sephardim from Spain, as they were expelled from their home country in 1492, they came through stopovers in Portugal, Amsterdam and Antwerp arriving around 1577. Before the destruction of the Jewish community by the Nazis, the Grindel, Harvestehude and Eimsbüttel were centres of Jewish life in Hamburg. There were several synagogues, the most famous were the "" (1895), the "Bornplatzsynagoge" (1906) and the new Temple on Oberstrasse (1931).
Sephardic Jews
Notable Sephardim in Hamburg include Duarte Nunes da Costa (alias Jacob Curiel) (1587-1665), Agent of the Spanish and later, Agent of the Portuguese Crown in Hamburg, and ennobled by Joao IV of Portugal on 14 June 1641. Son of the eminent physician Abraham Curiel.
Ashkenazim
In 1710 an imperial commission, which visited the town for the purpose of making peace between the senate and the aldermen, fixed the position of Hamburg's Ashkenazim and Sephardim by certain regulations (Reglement der Judenschaft in Hamburg sowohl portugiesischer als hochdeutscher Nation, lit. Regulation of the Jewry of Portuguese as well as of High German Nation in Hamburg), promulgated in the name of Emperor Joseph I. This edict became the fundamental law for the treatment of Jews in Hamburg during the ensuing century.
Jewish community in Altona Different regulations applied to Sephardim and Ashkenazim in Altona which — unlike its easterly adjacent imperially free city-state and republic of Hamburg — formed part of a non-constitutional monarchy, the county of Holstein-Pinneberg.
In 1584 granted individual staying permits (Partikulargeleit, i.e. particular escort) for Altona and the neighbouring village of Ottensen to four families who are the first Ashkenazi Schutzjuden recorded for Altona.Günter Marwendel, "Die aschkenasischen Juden im Hamburger Raum (bis 1780)", in: Die Geschichte der Juden in Hamburg: 2 vols., Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 1991, vol. 2: 'Die Juden in Hamburg 1590 bis 1990', pp. 41–60, here footnote 28 on p. 58. . The Senate of Hamburg, the city-state's government, granted no such permissions to Ashkenazim, nevertheless, by 1610 some Ashkenazim had managed to factually live in Hamburg, however, not in households of their own, but in those of their employers, usually established Sephardim of Hamburg. However, as a member of someone else's household founding an own family was forbidden and one's stay depended on the employment. In 1611 two other families were permitted to settle in Altona, with their writs of permission mentioning four Ashkenazi families already living there.Günter Marwendel, "Die aschkenasischen Juden im Hamburger Raum (bis 1780)", in: Die Geschichte der Juden in Hamburg: 2 vols., Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 1991, vol. 2: 'Die Juden in Hamburg 1590 bis 1990', pp. 41–60, here p. 44. .
In 1612 Altona's Ashkenazim managed to negotiate with the comital government staying permissions for them as a community (Generalgeleit, i.e. general escort, a general privilege), not as individuals, and thus the community arranged the reception of more Ashkenazim increasing their number to 30 families in 1622. The Ashkenazim established under the general privilege a fully fledged qehillah, the Hochdeutsche Israeliten-Gemeinde zu Altona (i.e. High German Israelite community/congregation at AltonaThe then mostly Low German-speaking inhabitants of Hamburg and Altona, as well as Dutch-speaking Amsterdamers, mostly conceived Ashkenazim, then usually speaking Yiddish, a High German-derived language, as native speakers of High German, and the Ashkenazim thus chose to distinguish themselves from the Sephardim as High German Jews (Hochdeutsche Israeliten, or in ).), with elected council, agreeing religious taxes to finance teaching, miqve, cemetery and synagogue.Günter Marwendel, "Die aschkenasischen Juden im Hamburger Raum (bis 1780)", in: Die Geschichte der Juden in Hamburg: 2 vols., Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 1991, vol. 2: 'Die Juden in Hamburg 1590 bis 1990', pp. 41–60, here p. 45. .
In the adjacent Lutheran city-state of Hamburg Sephardim enjoyed a certain protection within the framework of her contracts with communities of foreign merchants of non-Lutheran faith such as Calvinist Reformed Dutchmen, Anglican Englishmen, or Catholic French with the Senate of Hamburg.Günter Böhm, "Die Sephardim in Hamburg", in: Die Geschichte der Juden in Hamburg: 2 vols., Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 1991, vol. 2: 'Die Juden in Hamburg 1590 bis 1990', pp. 21–40, here p. 21. . In this context Hamburg had received the Sephardim in 1590 as the natio lusitana (as supposed Catholic Portuguese), with both parties tacitly overlooking their Jewishness in the beginning. So as their residence, only few Sephardim chose Altona.
The senate and other republican bodies (Hamburg's aldermen, Lutheran elders [Oberalte], commercial deputation etc.), ruled the city-state in a system of checks and balances. In 1603 some aldermen complained to the senate that the Portuguese were actually Sephardim, with the senate ignoring that, and after a repeated complaint in 1604 the senate pretended in its response, it had no indication for that assumption.Günter Böhm, "Die Sephardim in Hamburg", in: Die Geschichte der Juden in Hamburg: 2 vols., Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 1991, vol. 2: 'Die Juden in Hamburg 1590 bis 1990', pp. 21–40, here p. 22. . However, with the ongoing anti-Judaic debate in the republic's legislative and ruling bodies, the senate denied Hamburg's Sephardim to buy land for a cemetery within the city-state territory.
So in 1611 Hamburg's Sephardim acquired land from Count Ernest for their cemetery just 1,300 metres beyond Hamburg's state border on Altona's today's Königstraße, which was used until 1871 when it ran out of space. In 1612 Count Ernest sold an adjacent plot to Altona's Ashkenazim for their cemetery. After the senate had obtained the expert opinion of Viadrina's faculty of Lutheran theology on 29 August 1611 that tolerating Portuguese Jews was "paternal and Christian" as is the continuation of this practice,Günter Böhm, "Die Sephardim in Hamburg", in: Die Geschichte der Juden in Hamburg: 2 vols., Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 1991, vol. 2: 'Die Juden in Hamburg 1590 bis 1990', pp. 21–40, here p. 23. . the senate rejected the criticism by aldermen. On 19 February 1612 the senate concluded the Designatio Articulorum, darauf sich E. E. Rath mit der portugiesischen Nation verglichen und dieselben in Schutz und Schirm genommen with the Sephardim as a recognised and protected corporation of persons.Hans Reils, "Beiträge zur ältesten Geschichte der Juden in Hamburg", in: Zeitschrift des Vereins für Hamburgische Geschichte, vol. 2 (1847), pp. 357–424, here p. 375. (online) However, of the Ashkenazim indeed living in Hamburg, where they only received legal recognition in 1710, many tried to secure legal protection of the Danish crown in case of any attempt to expel them from Hamburg.
So besides the legally recognised Hochdeutsche Israeliten-Gemeinde zu Altona there lived many Ashkenaszim in Altona who made no use of its premises and services because they were members of Hamburg's Ashkenazi congregation. As Hamburg's Sephardim called the city's Ashkenazim in Portuguese as Tudescos (Germans), the latter styled their congregation as Deutsch-Israelitische Gemeinde zu Hamburg (lit. German Israelite Community at Hamburg; est. 1661/1662). In Altona the conditions of residence were favorable, in Hamburg the conditions for business. These were the reasons for the genesis of a branch community of Hamburg's Ashkenazi congregation in Altona.Hermann Pathe, Judenschutzsteuern in Altona: Die Abgaben der Juden als Einwohner und als Mitglieder der jüdischen Gemeinde in Altona (1641-1842), Hamburg: electr. University Dissertation, 2007, p. 91 A similar development took place in Hamburg's eastern neighbour, the Danish-Holsteinian city of Wandsbek where Ashkenazim from Hamburg used to live, or at least used to be legal residents there, whereas their religious affiliation was with the Deutsch-Israelitische Gemeinde zu Hamburg. In the 17th and early 18th century the Deutsch-Israelitische Gemeinde zu Hamburg had more members officially residing and occasionally factually living in Altona or Wandsbek than in Hamburg proper.
Thanks to immigration from the central eastern Europe, Altona's Ashkenzi congregation became a center of research and scholarship in Jewish teaching (e.g. Jonathan Eybeschütz, Jacob Emden), attracting hundreds of students. The officially recognised Beth Din had a reputation as one of the most distinguished in the whole Jewish world.Hermann Pathe, Judenschutzsteuern in Altona: Die Abgaben der Juden als Einwohner und als Mitglieder der jüdischen Gemeinde in Altona (1641-1842), Hamburg: electr. University Dissertation, 2007, pp. 243–244 No wonder that the three Ashkenazi congregations, anyway intertwined by members of Hamburg's Deutsch-Israelitische Gemeinde spending their working hours and many a night intown, although officially residing and occasionally actually living in Altona and Wandsbek, established a close coöperation in 1671. Their overwhelming umbrella was styled Dreigemeinde AH"U (; i.e. tri-community AH"U, derived from the Hebrew acronym of the initials of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek) led by Altona's Hochdeutsche Israeliten-Gemeinde, the most renowned and legally best protected of the three. However, the tri-community was no merger, then legally impossible across state borders. The Altona rabbinate was recognised as the chief rabbinate for the tri-community umbrella and all of Holstein.