The Joodsche Almanak / Almanach Juif issued in 1934 by J. Fuss and J. Salpeter

In 1934 an almanac in Yiddish, titled “Joodsche Almanak” / “Almanach Juif”, was published by J. Fuss and J. Salpeter. Edition “Progrés” was issued in Antwerp at Lange Kievitstraat 66.

In the publishers’ introduction which was originally written in Yiddish, they explained the intention of the Almanac.  For your convenience I have translated it into English (not word-for-word):

In our young Jewish community we felt already for a long time the need for a handbook which will help the Jew in Belgium to get oriented in the new setting and to get to know more about what Belgium has to offer regarding Jewish life which is developing continuously.

Now with the closure of the Belgian borders for new immigrants, and with the bigger diversity of Jewish immigrants that want to stay in Belgium forever, we considered this as the best moment to publish the Jewish Almanac.

In the Journalistic part of this Almanac, we did our best offer to bring down essays and articles from the most personalities in the country. We have to note that the statements and opinions on the subject are all solely the authors’ responsibility.

The general statistics information was taken from the most recent and trustworthy sources. To our regret, we did not succeed to present more exact numbers about Jewish Belgium. The reason for that is that the matter in which we are concentrating on is still a new matter.

Our current edition is just a modest test. A test which we did without looking at all serious difficulties we came across. We are aware that this current edition is not void of several mistakes.

Hopefully, we will succeed in correcting and improving without the mistakes in our second yearbook.

The Publishers

Apart from articles about Jewry in Belgium, there were also listings and advertisements of organizations and companies in Jewish Belgium.

Also, an announcement on page 36 was added with the message that advertisements could already be ordered for the next edition of 1934, which would be published in December 1933. According to Brachfeld, no second yearbook was published which was due to the economic crisis (page 311 in BRACHFELD S.,  ´Het grote Brabosh memorboek – twee eeuwen Joodse aanwezigheid in Vlaanderen / Antwerpen ´, Instituut voor het Onderzoek van het Belgisch Jodendom, 2012, 799p.).

Most texts were written in Yiddish with two texts in French and two texts in Dutch. The page numbering for the Yiddish part started from the right side of the book and stopped before the French/Dutch part, where a different page numbering, which started from the left side of the book, took over.

The Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library in Antwerp has a copy in its collection: https://anet.be/record/opacehc/c:lvd:777449/N

Click here to download a copy which I have scanned a couple of years ago at the library (113MB).

Below follows the table of contents: