page_title: History of the Jews in Brody
section_title: Brody - Jewish Jerusalem of Austrian Empire
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Jews in Brody / Brody - Jewish Jerusalem of Austrian Empire
caption_attribution_description: English: Market square of Brody (city in Lviv region of western UKRAINE) in 1904 (when it was part of Austro-Hungarian empire still). Brody in western Ukraine - eastern Galicia. Polski: Brody, Rynek, 1904 r. (Królestwo Galicji i Lodomerii). Українська: Площа міста Броди. 1904 рік.
context_page_description: The Jewish community of Brody was one of the oldest and most well-known Jewish communities in the western part of Ukraine. The Jewish community of Brody perished in the Holocaust in 1942–1943 and is no more today. During the 19th century, Brody was the second largest city in East Galicia, with the highest proportion of the Jewish population among Eastern European cities.
  "A city, where wisdom and wealth, Torah and understanding, commerce and faith are united."
  Nachman Krochmal in a letter to Isaac Erter
context_section_description: The city name Brody derives from Ukrainian word "brid" which means "ford" (German Furt) changing in plural into "brody" i.e. "fords". Crossing a swampy ford on the way to the city one marvels with a question how could something referred to as "Jerusalem" in such a flat and boggy pine forested "mosquito area". What could attract the Jews here in the "fords"? The answer is indisputable – commerce and trade. Kratter, the contemporary of Joseph II, notes in his Briefe über den jetztigen Zustand Galiziens that Brody is the first and almost the only commercial city, where big enterprises are concentraned in the Jewish hands, except a few German trade and banking houses.
  Brody's Jerusalemic association is not a sheer modern invention. The tradition ascribes this analogy to the emperor Joseph II, who visited Brody in 1774 and presumably said that Now, it is clear why I am designated to be Jerusalem king (one of the titles of Austrian emperors). Joseph's stay in Brody resulted in significant consequences. In 1778 he issues the decree that makes Brody a free town. This event quickly reflected on city development and life, marking a new era that lasted for 100 favourable years in all the respects. Yet in 1774 Joseph II freed Brody citizens from all the taxes under the condition of reconstruction of old houses and erecting of new ones. The market square was surrounded by new stone houses with basements for storage.
  Many Jewish historians as Simon Dubnow (in The History of Hasidism), Raphael Mahler (in Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment) all frequently direct themselves and touch upon Brody, willingly or unwillingly, as Brody was in a fact a Jewish hub, one of the most important "bricks" in the Galician and Austrian Jewish history. And any historian undertaking a serious study of Jewish past in Galicia, should draw his attention to one of the primary Jewish historical clusters in the area, namely Brody.
caption: Market square of Brody (Rynek in Polish) in 1904
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