Swiss Jews Challenge

[Silent Cal]

Something that crossed my mind after reading the 'Hard-Ass Jews' thread.

With a POD no sooner than the coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor (800) and the Fall of Constantinople (1453), make it so that either:

- One of the cantons (or duchies or provinces or whatever ITTL) of the Swiss Confederation (or an ATL equivalent) has a majority Jewish population, with the Jews fully integrated into Swiss society, but with their own separate cultural and religious identity, and serve in the Swiss armed forces.

- There is a Jewish state within the borders of OTL Switzerland, whose warriors are well known and feared.

- Or that Jews simply form a sizeable minority in Switzerland and serve as mercenaries along with other Swiss men, which would likely get the Papal Swiss Guard butterflied fast.


Discuss.

 

[Valdemar II]

Interesting question let's see. First we need to choice the right place and time. The best place would be the East Valais Canton (let us call it Wallis) before the Walser migration in 12-13 century. It was more or less empty at the time, so a local noble in the late 11 early 12 century offer some Jews a settlement where and they take the offer. Later some Walser migrate there, but the Jews stay in majority even through all political power is kept in Christian hand, later they're invaded by the Swiss Confederacy, and Wallis is made into a republic under Swiss control but the Jews is treated relative fairly. Then the Reformation happen and Vallis succed in staying neutral in the inter-cantonal wars and use it to get associated status, beside that the local population both Jews and Christian serves as Mercenaries in these wars and get a impressive reputation, which ensure that they're often use by the different Italian states as Mercenaries. In the Napoleons Wars Wallis fully integrated into Switzerland, and the Jews receive full citizenship.

Today Wallis have around 80000 inhabitans 75% of the population is Jewish, while most of the rest is Catholics. They speak Schweizeryid a disticts regional dialect of Walser German with a lot of Hebrew loanword and quite a few Italian and French.

 

[Skokie]

Highly doubtful. Jews were considered "Christ killers," let's not forget. They would have to be either "secret Jews" who paid lip service to the church while maintaining Jewish law (very difficult; hello no pork eating, circumcision, the sabbath) or they must form an extremely tiny and isolated community that remains silent until around 1789.

To have Jewish mercenaries in a Christian Europe I think you'd need a POD sometime in the second century, if not earlier.