What are the ShUM cities?

You may have heard the term ShUM before, but what does it actually mean?

The word ShUM (in Hebrew: שו"ם) is a Hebrew abbreviation for Shpayer, Wormeyza, Maintz.

These are the traditional Jewish names of the cities known in English as Speyer, Worms, and Mainz, all located in Western parts of Germany.

These three cities played a crucial role in the history of Ashkenazi Jews. In fact, their role is so important, it is not possible to put everything in just one article, therefore there will more articles about them in the future.

All of the three cities are on the shores of the river Rhine, and more specifically in the province of Rhineland-Pfalz.

They are all located along the ancient border between the Roman Empire and the polities of the various Germanic tribes who inhabited the region in Antiquity. The region on the Roman side of this border was the exact region where the Romans deported the ancestors of the Ashkenazi Jews after expelling them from the Land of Israel.

Map of the Jewish Quarter of Worms from 1760.

This is where earliest forms of Ashkenazic culture developed, uncluding the Germanic dialects which later evolved into the language of Yiddish.

Worms was also the place where Rashi received his education and there are a large number of stories from this period which we will discuss in the near future, each in separate article as proper for such topics.