Mandel lies in the Naheland (the region either side of the River Nahe), south of the Hunsrück, some 5 km west of Bad Kreuznach amidst vineyards, meadows and woodland.

[3] Clockwise from the north, Mandel's neighbours are the municipalities of Sankt Katharinen, Roxheim, Rüdesheim an der Nahe, Weinsheim, Sponheim and Braunweiler, all of which likewise lie within the Bad Kreuznach district.

A church, which may well have been consecrated to Saint Maximin himself, had its first documentary mention in 1140 in a document from Pope Innocent II.

In 1196, independently from the abbey's holdings, Imperial ministerialis Werner von Bolanden was enfeoffed by the Empire with the jurisdiction, the right to appoint clergy and the tithes.

Subsequently, split off from the jurisdiction, the right to appoint clergy and the tithes passed to the heirs of the Bolandens, the Counts of Sponheim-Dannenfels and the Princes of Nassau-Saarbrücken.

This family had arisen from a liaison between Count Johann II of Sponheim-Kreuznach and the daughter of one of his Burgmannen, one not legitimized by wedlock.

They were in the service of various territorial lords over time, as knights, clergy or officials, even Obermarschall in the Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen, and even under the Counts of Sponheim themselves.

From 1815, Mandel was part of the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Prussian Bürgermeisterei ("Mayoralty") of Mandel-Hüffelsheim was named after it and one other village.

Mandel remained Prussian right through Imperial, Weimar and Nazi times, only becoming part of the then newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate after the Second World War.

An advertisement for homemade kosher wine for Passover in the magazine Der Israelit on 17 March 1884 referred to the community's "strictly religious religion teacher" whose name was Mr. Eppstein.

One member of Mandel's Jewish community fell in the First World War, Leo Michel (b.

On Kristallnacht (9–10 November 1938), the synagogue's interior was utterly destroyed by Brownshirt thugs (their commander is believed to have been from Roxheim), and perhaps worse, several Jewish homes were also invaded and demolished (the Families Marx, Michel and Salomon).

According to the Gedenkbuch – Opfer der Verfolgung der Juden unter der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland 1933-1945 ("Memorial Book – Victims of the Persecution of the Jews under National Socialist Tyranny") and Yad Vashem, of all Jews who either were born in Mandel or lived there for a long time, 17 died in the time of the Third Reich (birthdates in brackets): As at 31 October 2013, there are 896 full-time residents in Mandel, and of those, 500 are Evangelical (55.804%), 242 are Catholic (27.009%), 10 (1.116%) belong to other religious groups and 144 (16.071%) either have no religion or will not reveal their religious affiliation.

The municipality's arms might in English heraldic language be described thus: Chequy azure and Or a quarter of the second in which a raven standing on two almonds, all proper.

At the wine festival in Mandel, the village was decked out with the municipal flag, giving rise to the question of what the coat of arms meant.

On Kristallnacht (9–10 November 1938), the synagogue's interior was heavily damaged by Brownshirt thugs, leaving little more than a shell of a building.

It lies on a hill north of the village in the cadastral area known as "Auf dem Judenkirchhof", field 5.

Running on the line to Saarbrücken and by way of Gau Algesheim and the West Rhine Railway to Mainz are Regional-Express and Regionalbahn trains.