Maputo, Moçambique

Note:

The Maputo synagogue traces its congregational records to 1899, when political upheavals connected with the Boer War caused the rabbi Joseph Hertz, then of Johannesburg, to briefly move to the Mozambique capital as a refugee. Rev. Dr. Hertz urged his co-religionists in Lourenço Marques to take steps to organize themselves as a community, including the commencement of pathways for Jewish education and the acquisition of land parcels for a synagogue and a Jewish cemetery. After a period of community development, these urgings flowered in 1926 with the construction of the Lourenço Marques Synagogue, a facility with a congregation of about 30 Jews. Events in Europe led to the Jewish population of Lourenço Marques peaking at approximately 500 in 1942.[1]