The Jews of Tulcea: A Synagogue at the Gateway to the Delta

Tulcea, the river port at the gateway to the Danube Delta, was an Ottoman town until 1878, and Jews were living here already under Ottoman rule. By the end of the 19th century about 1,900 Jews lived in the town, roughly a tenth of its inhabitants; today only a handful remain, and the synagogue on Strada Babadag, restored in 2014, is according to the community the only working synagogue in Dobruja.

An Ottoman town on the Danube

Dobruja, the strip of land between the Danube and the Black Sea, was for centuries a thinly populated Ottoman province, home to Turks, Tatars, Bulgarians, Lipovan Russians, Germans, Greeks, Armenians and Romanians. According to the local historian Carol Feldman, whose book on the Jews of Tulcea was published by Hasefer in 2004, Jews began to settle in the town in the late 18th or early 19th century. The French physician Camille Allard, who described the population of Dobruja in 1856, found Jews only in Tulcea — a community of “Polish Jews”. According to Feldman, the town’s first synagogue was built in 1843.

After the war of 1877–1878 and the Treaty of Berlin, Northern Dobruja, and Tulcea with it, passed to Romania. The community then grew quickly, mainly through Jews arriving from southern Bessarabia, Odessa and Galicia. In 1883 there were about 250 Jewish families in the town; in 1894, 1,870 Jews, and in 1899, 1,903 — about ten per cent of the inhabitants. They worked mostly in trade and crafts.

Citizenship deferred

The law of 9 March 1880 organising Dobruja granted Romanian citizenship to all former Ottoman subjects in the province — but, according to Feldman, Jews were not recognised as citizens until the Constitution of 1923. From the late 19th century Jews not born in Tulcea were barred from settling there, and in 1896 several were expelled. In 1912, 90 Jews were denied the vote and 221 were struck off the electoral rolls, a measure later revised; in 1915 several Jewish shops were wrecked on the pretext that their owners were socialists. The same source attributes the decline in numbers to these restrictions and to the expulsion of those not born in the town: 1,773 Jews in 1907, 1,553 in 1913 and only 802 in 1930, about four per cent of the population.

The Jewish quarter on Babadag Hill

The Jewish quarter spread across the south of the town on Babadag Hill (Dealul Babadagului), along Babadag, Cuza-Vodă, Orientului and General Anghelescu streets — today Strada Toamnei. According to a description published in Adevărul in 2014, it held more than a hundred Jewish-owned properties, homes and shops, and the community maintained three synagogues, a Talmud Torah, a mikveh, an old-age home and the Zionist clubs Maccabi and Lumina. Most of the quarter was demolished to make way for the apartment blocks that now line Strada Babadag and the surrounding streets. Only one synagogue survived, together with a few houses scattered among the blocks.

The synagogue on Strada Babadag

The surviving synagogue, known as the Templul Coral — the Choral Temple — stands at Strada Babadag 71–73. Sources differ on its date: the list of synagogues of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania gives 1893, while according to Feldman the temple was already in use in 1888. The building, described in the local press as unique in Romania, is marked by its symmetrical façade and two sturdy towers; inside are a large Torah ark, and chandeliers and a floor mosaic that, according to the same description, date from the time of construction.

The synagogue was renovated with funds from the Romanian Government and rededicated on Friday, 22 August 2014, at a ceremony at which marble plaques honouring the donors were unveiled. The service was led by Chief Rabbi Rafael Shaffer and chief cantor Iosif Adler, and the next day the town hosted a symposium on the Jews of Northern Dobruja. The Federation’s list marks it as a working synagogue, but according to the community’s president, interviewed in 2023, the community has neither a rabbi nor a prayer leader, and services are held only on the main holidays. The building also hosts visits, book launches and concerts.

1940–1944: under the Legionary and Antonescu regimes

Tulcea remained under Romanian rule throughout the war. According to local research, as soon as the Iron Guard came to power in September 1940 Jewish traders lost their licences, and some were forced to hand over their shops. The Legionaries demanded a “donation” of one million lei from the community; when it could not pay, they posted guards at Jewish shops and marked them “Jewish shop”. Jewish civil servants, teachers and professionals were dismissed, and Jewish pupils were expelled from state schools.

In June 1941 men aged 18 to 50 were sent to forced labour, and hostages were taken from among the community’s elders. Late in 1941 about 700 Jews from Babadag, Sulina, Isaccea, Mahmudia, Chilia Veche, Măcin and Carcaliu were concentrated in Tulcea, and the local community had to support them. On 11 May 1942 ten young Jews were sent to a forced-labour detachment in Transnistria, near Balta, to fell forests and build roads; other sources speak of about 120. Confiscations continued after the fall of the Legionaries — at least 141 houses, two flour mills, a sawmill, eight enterprises and 3,616 hectares of land — and in 1943 the town hall cut the Jews’ bread ration to 150 grams a day, half that of other citizens. Unlike the Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina, the Jews of Tulcea were not deported en masse to Transnistria.

After the war, and the cemetery

During the communist period most of Tulcea’s Jews left, most of them for Israel. The 2011 census recorded only six Jews in the town; according to the town hall’s website, as quoted in 2014, the community had 28 members, 15 of them from mixed marriages, and in 2023 the community’s president, Solomon Faimblat, said that about 15 Jews lived in the town, eight of them registered with the community.

According to a 2001 survey for the JewishGen Cemetery Discovery Project, Tulcea’s Jewish cemeteries lie side by side on Strada Eternității. The larger one was founded in the 19th century and has more than 5,000 visible stones, the great majority toppled or broken; it has a tahara house, and the inscriptions are in Hebrew, Yiddish, German, Hungarian and Romanian. The small adjacent cemetery was closed to burials in 1930. Both belong to the community, are walled and locked, and can be visited by arrangement.

Visiting

• Synagogue: Strada Babadag 71–73, per the Federation’s list. No opening hours published.
• Cemeteries: Strada Eternității, according to JewishGen; locked, visits by arrangement with the community.
• Arrangements: Jewish Community of Tulcea, Strada Unirii 2 (Bl. B2, sc. A, ap. 3), tel. +40 240 512 545, per the Federation’s website.
• Nearby: Galați and Brăila, the great communities of the lower Danube, and Constanța on the Black Sea coast.