2 Ancient Russian Synagogues Are Rededicated
Two ancient synagogues that Soviet authorities confiscated in Russia were rededicated as Jewish houses of worship.
The first rededication happened last week in the Black Sea city of Krasnodar at a ceremony led by Rabbi Berel Lazar, a chief rabbi of Russia, and Rabbi Avraam Ilyaguyev, who is in charge of religious services for Mountain Jews at the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia.
A second rededication occurred earlier this week in Voronezh in southern Russia, at a 110-year-old synagogue that was nationalized and turned into a textile factory before serving once more as a Jewish house of worship. The renovation cost $2.5 million, which came mostly from the Russian Jewish billionaire German Khan.
In Krasnodar, the local Jewish community began renovating the synagogue seven years ago, but bureaucratic and budget problems meant that “the place remained as it had been when Russian authorities returned it – an empty shell with nothing but bare concrete inside,” Boruch Gorin, a senior aide to Lazar and editor of the Russian Jewish L’chaim newspaper, told JTA Tuesday.
The building, whose reconstruction cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars that were raised locally, now has a prayer hall for 500 as well as a daycare center and Sunday school.
The rededication of the Voronezh synagogue, which was returned to the community 26 years ago, drew hundreds of guests including the chief rabbi of Moscow, Pinchas Goldschmidt, and Yuri Kanner, the president of the Russian Jewish Congress.
“The vision of the Valley of Dry Bones is being realized before our eyes in these ancient communities,” said Goldschmidt, who is also the president of the European Center of Europe. “The demand for Jewish education and Torah classes is only increasing.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
