History of the Jews in Germany#Cultural and religious centre of European Jewry

As Schum or SCHUM (Hebrew שו"ם ) are referred to in Jewish sources, the three Rhine cities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz, which had significant, cooperating with each other Jewish communities in the Middle Ages. The word Schum is an acronym of the first letters of their medieval, going back to the Latin Hebrew names: Shin (Sch) for SchPIRA, Vav (U) for Warmaisa and membrane (M) for Magenza.

History

The Kehillot the cities formed a committee - Hebrew: Va'ad Schum - which they took together to the rule and took decisions that were binding on the Jewish community. Va'ad Schum could, for example, express a control spell to proceed with economic sanctions against false tax data of the members of the community or deny them the ability testimony.

The Schum Cities also represented a common policy in the interpretation of religious laws, as Takkanot Schum ( תקנות שו"ם ) are known. With these decrees and the Talmud schools that enjoyed high reputation among the Jews throughout Europe, the beginning of the 13th century acquired the Schum - cities a leading role in Ashkenazi Judaism.

Because of their central importance to the Jewish communities in central Europe they are regarded as the birthplace of the Ashkenazi religious culture. Among the outstanding scholarly personalities are about Gershom ben Judah or Rashi.

Symbol for the three communities is the garlic bulb, schum ( שום ) in Biblical Hebrew.

After four centuries ended the big time by Schum 1350, as these communities were wiped out as a result of the Great Plague and massacres. In the subsequent period which arose again small communities, but never gained as significant as they had before.

On the initiative of the city of Worms, the three cities will be included together with their Jewish monuments as SCHUM cities in the list of UNESCO World Heritage. Rhineland -Palatinate has therefore inclusion in the German list of suggestions submitted in summer 2012 at the Conference of Ministers of Education.