The Jews of Alba Iulia: The Princes’ City and the Chief Rabbinate

Alba Iulia — Gyulafehérvár in Hungarian, Karlsburg in German — was the capital of the Principality of Transylvania, and for some two hundred years it was the only place in Transylvania where Jews were allowed to live. Its rabbis were regarded as chief rabbis of all Transylvanian Jewry, and its synagogue, inaugurated in 1840, is considered the first masonry synagogue in Transylvania. The community is tiny today, but the restored synagogue and the old cemetery still stand in the heart of the city.

Gabriel Bethlen’s Charter

According to the YIVO Encyclopedia, Jews are documented in the town by the end of the 16th century, and the Encyclopaedia Judaica cites a Hebrew document of 1591 mentioning a bet din in Alba Iulia. They were Sephardim from the Ottoman Empire. In 1623 Prince Gabriel Bethlen (Bethlen Gábor) granted a liberal charter of residence and trade, drafted at the urging of Abraham Szasza, a Jewish physician from Constantinople; the National Assembly endorsed it in 1627. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, under the Approbatae Constitutiones of 1653 Jewish residence in Transylvania was restricted to Alba Iulia alone, and after anti-Jewish outbreaks Prince Mihály Apafi reaffirmed the privileges in 1673.

The Swedish traveller Conrad Jacob Hiltenbrandt reported a synagogue in the town in 1656. The community was small: 12 families in 1689 and 54 in 1754, according to YIVO. A census of 1735 lists Jews who had come from Poland, Turkey, Moldavia, Wallachia, Hungary, Moravia and Belgrade.

Seat of the Chief Rabbi of Transylvania

In the 18th century, under Habsburg rule, the Ashkenazim gradually gained the upper hand, and the community was placed under the protection of the Roman Catholic bishop of Alba Iulia. The community’s minute book of 1736–1835, kept in several languages, describes a leadership of a president, a committee of five to seven and a court of three to five judges. The town’s rabbi was regarded as chief rabbi of all Transylvanian Jews: from 1754 to 1868 according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, until 1879 according to YIVO. The first known was Rabbi Abraham Isaac Russo (d. 1738), the last Rabbi Abraham Friedman (1845–1879).

The outstanding figure in this line is Rabbi Ezekiel Panet (1783–1845), born in Bielitz in Silesia, who served in Alba Iulia from 1823 until his death. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, he strengthened religious life even in remote communities, and in his time the community moved from the Sephardi to the Ashkenazi rite. His responsa, Mareh Yeḥezkel (printed in 1875), are regarded as the first volume of responsa by a Transylvanian rabbi, and his son Menahem Mendel founded the Dej Hasidic dynasty.

The Mareh Yehezkel Synagogue

The synagogue stands at Strada Tudor Vladimirescu 2, in the centre of the lower town. According to Alba County’s tourism site, in 1827 the community’s request to build a stone synagogue failed for lack of land, and the Roman Catholic bishopric made plots available; according to historians Daniel Dumitran and Tudor Borșan, the land was leased to the community for 99 years. Local sources date the start of construction to 1822. The building was inaugurated in 1840 and named after Rabbi Panet’s book. It is a single hall in a restrained style with Baroque and Neoclassical elements; the Torah ark is on the east wall and the women’s gallery upstairs. A room near the entrance, according to local tradition, once served as the rabbinical court’s lock-up. Three cannonballs from the siege of the city in the revolution of 1848–1849 are still lodged in the façade.

Nearby stood the “New Synagogue”, built for the Sephardi congregation and later used by the whole community. The sources differ on dates: it was completed in 1883 according to Dumitran and Borșan and the county site, and opened in 1886 according to YIVO. The New Synagogue was demolished under communism — in 1983 according to the city’s “Memoria Urbis” site, “around 1980” according to YIVO.

Emancipation, Schism and Reunion

In the second half of the 19th century the community grew: 735 Jews in 1850–1851, 1,221 in 1869 and 1,586 in 1910 — 13.6% of the town’s population. After the Jewish Congress in Pest in 1868–1869 the community joined, according to YIVO and the Encyclopaedia Judaica, the Status Quo Ante stream; Dumitran and Borșan describe it as Orthodox. A separate Orthodox congregation was formed in 1908 according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, in 1928 according to YIVO, and in 1932 the two united. In 1883 the newspaper Siebenbürger Israelit was published here. In the early 20th century most Jews lived in the core of the old town, around the street now called Regiment 24 Dorobanți, where the community’s institutions stood.

1938–1944: Laws, Confiscations and Forced Labour

In 1938 a bomb exploded in the Old Synagogue. No one was hurt, because that morning the service was being held in the neighbouring synagogue, and suspicion fell on the Iron Guard. The sources differ on the date: 23 October according to the city’s guide site, 20 November according to the Agerpres news agency. According to the county site, the building reopened in 1939, paid for by donations.

After the Second Vienna Award (August 1940) Alba Iulia remained in Southern Transylvania, under Romanian rule. Its Jews were not sent to Auschwitz like the Jews of Hungarian-ruled Northern Transylvania, but they suffered under the anti-Jewish legislation of the Antonescu regime. Under Decree-Law 842 of 28 March 1941 Jewish urban property was nationalised: the list authenticated on 24 June 1941 includes 244 properties in the town, 225 of them owned by individuals. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, that year all the community’s property was confiscated and the men were taken for forced labour. An exhibition by the county archives (2014) showed documents on doctors, pharmacists and engineers sent to dig ditches and build bridges, and on a bread ration of 150 grams a day. The authorities concentrated Jews from the surrounding area in the town, and according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica the fighting of 1944 brought a further influx. In August 1942 the Antonescu government approved a plan to deport Romania’s Jews to Poland, to begin with Timiș, Turda and Arad counties, but it was cancelled. In 1947 the town’s Jewish population reached its peak — 2,070.

After the War and Today

Emigration to Israel, above all from the 1960s, shrank the community. YIVO counts 45 Jews in 2003, and the 2011 census recorded 19. The community is led by Lia Borza; in 2021 it had about fifty members, and public services are rare. The synagogue was restored in 2012–2017 with funding from the Romanian government and the Federation, and rededicated in November 2017. An exhibition of ritual and everyday objects is displayed in the women’s gallery. In July 2026 graffiti was sprayed on its façade; the police opened an investigation for promoting antisemitic ideas, and the Orthodox Archdiocese condemned the act.

The Old Cemetery

The Jewish cemetery on Strada Vasile Alecsandri is regarded as the oldest in Transylvania. It appears on a city plan of 1752, and according to local sources the land was bought from the town in 1764; Dumitran and Borșan write that it was in use as early as the 17th century. It has 2,038 graves and 1,960 monuments, mostly Baroque and Neoclassical; until the mid-19th century the inscriptions were in Hebrew only. Rabbi Ezekiel Panet is buried here, and visitors leave notes in the chapel over his grave. In 1999 vandals smashed gravestones. With funding from the US Embassy, 111 monuments in the old section were conserved and restored, and the results were presented in March 2024.

Visiting

• Mareh Yehezkel Synagogue: Strada Tudor Vladimirescu 2 (per the Federation’s list and the county site). No fixed opening hours have been published; visits, including groups, by arrangement with the community.
• Cemetery: arrange access with the community.
• Arrangements: Jewish Community of Alba Iulia, Strada Tudor Vladimirescu 4, tel. +40 258 817 840 per the Federation’s website.
• Nearby: the Alba Iulia citadel; Aiud; Sibiu; Deva.