The Mosaic Parish in Karlskrona

The Mosaic Parish in Karlskrona, " _sv. Mosaiska församlingen i Karlskrona", were founded in 1785 by the Jewish merchant and factory owner Fabian Philip. He had arrived in Karlskrona in 1779 or 1780 via Stockholm from his native town of Bützow in Germany. Jews were not allowed to settle in Sweden until 1779 and 1782 the Commercial College of the Swedish Government stated that Jews were only allowed to settle in the three major cities of Stockholm, the capital, Gothenburg, the principal naval trade city, and Norrköping, the principal industrial city. But Fabian Philip were situated in Karlskrona, the principal naval base, and the second largest city of Sweden. He had made an offer to the Head of the Swedish navy and the Archipelago fleet, Supreme Admiral Henric af Trolle, that Fabian Philip could build a factory in Karlskrona and produce sails for the Navy, cheaper than what the navy at that time bought the sails from Gothenburg. Trolle liked the idea and proposed it for the king Gustav III, who gave his permission for the Jew Fabian Philip to stay in Karlskrona even though the law did not approve it. Henric af Trolle died in 1784 and the merchants in Karlskrona tried to get rid of Fabian Philip by writing to the king, but the successor of Trolle, Supreme Admiral Carl August Ehrensvärd, were of the same opinion as his late predecessor. From 1785 thanks to that Fabian Philip had fulfilled his agreement with the Navy and founded and built the sail factory in Karlskrona, more exactly in Lyckeby 10 kilometers north of the city, there were a public exception for Fabian Philip and his family to stay in Karlskrona from Comercial Colleges statement of where Jews were allowed to stay in Sweden.The Mosaic Parish of Karlskrona was the fourth Jewish parish in Sweden after three first approved settlement cities. The first name of the parish was the Jewish parish, but when the Jews living in Sweden were made Swedish citizens of the Mosaic faith, they were not considered as Jews by the Government any more, all the Jewish parishes in Sweden were renamed Mosaic Parishes. 1951 when it was made allowed in Sweden by law to be unorganised according to faith, most Mosaic Parishes in Sweden was by own will renamed Jewish Parishes, but not the parish in Karlskrona, which kept the old name of the Mosaic Parish in Karlskrona.In the year of 1994 it was decided that the Mosaic Parish in Karlskrona should not be closed but placed in a mode of resting, though the members had become old and it was hard gather a Minyan. But when the day comes and there are Jews enough to gather a Minyan and there's a will of obtaining a Parish, the Mosaic Parish of Karlskrona can be brought back from its state of resting.