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Hachmei Provence

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Hachmei Provence (Hebrew: חכמי פרובנס) refers to the hakhams of Provence, now known as Occitania, France that was a great Torah center in the times of the Tosafists. The phrase means "wise ones of Provence"; hakham "wise one, sage" is a Sephardic and Hachmei Provençal term for a rabbi.

In matters of halakha, as well as in their traditions and custom, the Provençal hekhamim occupy an intermediate position between the Sephardic Judaism of the neighboring Spanish scholars and the Old French (similar to the Nusach Ashkenaz) tradition represented by the Tosafists.

The term "Provence" in Jewish tradition is not limited to today's administrative region of Provence but to the entirety of Occitania. This includes Narbonne (which is sometimes informally, though incorrectly, transliterated as "Narvona" as a result of the back-and-forth transliteration between Hebrew and Old Occitan), Lunel (which is informally transliterated Lunil), and the city of Montpellier, not far (7 km) from the Mediterranean coast. It also included cities which at that time formed part of the Catalonia's political and cultural domain, such as Perpignan. In some ways, the Jewish traditions of Catalonia were closer to those of Provence than to those of the Kingdom of Castile and al-Andalus.

There was a distinctive Provençal liturgy used by the Jews of the Papal enclave of Comtat Venaissin, who remained following the expulsion of the Jews from the rest of France.[1] This liturgy was intermediate in character between the Sephardi rites and the Nusach Ashkenaz, and was in some ways closer to the Italian rite than to either.

After the French Revolution, when Venaissin was annexed by France, the Provençal rite was replaced by the Portuguese Sephardic liturgy, which is used by the Jews of Carpentras today.

A group of the communty has emigrated at the beginning of the 14th century due to the growing anti-Semitism and pogroms in the area. With the permission of the Czech king Wenceslas III, they settled down in Prague, in its Jewish Town, in what is now the Spanish Synagogue district. Over the course of a few generations, the exiles became an important and well established Ashkenazi familiy in Central and Eastern Europe, calling themselves Altschul after their place of settlement in Prague.[2][3][4]

Partial list

Hachmei Narbonne

Lunel

Montpellier

Rest of Provence

Members of the Kalonymus Family

References

  • Y. Maser (2016), Les rabbins du Sud de la France au Moyen Age et leurs écrits. Les Sages de Provincia. Institut R' Yesha'ya Bakish, Hotsaat Bakish, Montpellier, 118 p. ISBN 979-10-90638-06-8
  1. ^ For this liturgy, see Seder ha-Tamid Archived 2011-07-19 at the Wayback Machine, Avignon 1776.
  2. ^ https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/1335-altschul-altschuler-altschueler
  3. ^ https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/altschul
  4. ^ https://dbs.anumuseum.org.il/skn/en/c6/e124970/Family_Name/ALTSZULER
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