R. O. G. Urch. Latvia: Country and People. London, Allen & Unwin. 1938.
“The History of the Jews in Latvia dates back to 1571. Although the vast majority of the Jewish community was killed in the Holocaust, there is a small Jewish community in Latvia today.
The nucleus of Latvian Jewry was formed by the Jews of Livonia (Livland) and Courland, the two principalities on the coast of the Baltic Sea which were incorporated within the Russian Empire during the eighteenth century…In the middle of the nineteenth century; there were about 9,000 Jews in the province of Livonia.
In 1933 there were 98 Jewish elementary schools with approximately 12,000 pupils and 742 teachers, 18 secondary schools with approximately 2,000 pupils and 286 teachers, and four vocational schools with 300 pupils and 37 teachers. Pupils attended religious or secular schools according to their parents’ wishes. There were also government pedagogic institutes for teachers in Hebrew and Yiddish, courses for kindergarten teachers, popular universities, a popular Jewish music academy, and evening schools for working youth, a Yiddish theater, and cultural clubs. There was a Jewish press reflecting a variety of trends…
Before World War I there were about 190,000 Jews in the territories of Latvia (7.4% of the total population). During the war years, many of them were expelled to the interior of Russia, while others escaped from the war zone. In 1920 the Jews of Latvia numbered 79,644 (5% of the population)…in 1935, 93,479 (4.8% of the total)…”
University of Latvia site, http://www.lu.lv/studiju–centri/jsc/pilsetas/zemgale/kurzeme_zemgale.html (accessed July 6, 2009)