the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
Click here to join the effort!
Bible Encyclopedias
Kustendil
The 1901 Jewish Encyclopedia
or Bulgarian city in the north of Macedonia, near the Servian city of Nish. Jews must have settled at Kustendil before the beginning of the eighteenth century; a tombstone in the local cemetery bears the date 5509 (= 1749), and from 1680 to 1750 Samuel Haravon was chief rabbi. The rabbinical writer Mordecai Conforte, author of a collection of sermons, "Ḳol Shemu'el" (Salonica, 1787), lived here at the end of the eighteenth century. The following three chief rabbis of Kustendil belong to the nineteenth century: Baruch Halevy (1840); Abraham Meshullam (1850); and Abraham Meborak (1855).
In 1903 there were 250 Jewish families, or about 1,200 persons, in a total population of 13,000 inhabitants. The affairs of the community are administered by a synagogal committee and a school committee. Every family pays a stated sum each year, which, together with the tax on meat, serves to support the synagogue and a boys' school (150 pupils). The institutions include a synagogue, two batte midrashim, and six benevolent societies. The Jews are engaged in commerce, in the grocery trade, and as tinsmiths and shoemakers.
- Anuarul Pentrul Israelitzi, vol. , Bucharest, 1885;
- Hazan, Ha-Ma'alot li-Shelomoh, p. 87.
These files are public domain.
Singer, Isidore, Ph.D, Projector and Managing Editor. Entry for 'Kustendil'. 1901 The Jewish Encyclopedia. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/tje/k/kustendil.html. 1901.
