Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Historic Welsh synagogue gets over $600,000 to reopen as cultural center

The infusion goes toward making the first museum about the history of Jews in Wales a reality

(JTA) — The Welsh and British governments are giving a Jewish heritage organization over $600,000 to open a Jewish cultural center at a historic former Welsh synagogue.

The Foundation for Jewish Heritage, a British group that researches, advocates and restores Jewish heritage sites across Europe, announced Tuesday that it will receive the funds from the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF), which is administered by the British government, and the Welsh government’s Transforming Towns program to begin a development phase. 

The Foundation bought the Merthyr Tydfil synagogue building in 2019 with the plans of creating the first museum devoted to the history of Jews in Wales.

The synagogue was opened in 1877, when an influx of Central and Eastern European Jewish immigrants to South Wales necessitated a second synagogue in the area. 

However, as the local industrial economy declined into the latter part of the 20th century, so did the local Jewish population. With no one to fill it, the synagogue was officially sold in 1983. It had various purposes over the years, but was classified as so deteriorated in 2006 that it has been out of use ever since. 

Dame Helen Hyde, chair of the Foundation for Jewish Heritage, said that the new center will “tell the remarkable story of the Welsh Jewish community while also tackling important issues within our society of today.”

The 2011 national census, the last official estimate of the Jewish population of Wales, reported 2,064 people. Today the number is believed to be in the hundreds. The closest active synagogue to Merthyr Tydfil is in Cardiff.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.