Medias, Romania synagogue — coming slowly back to life

Thanks to a grant for archival preservation, a volunteer clean-up operation, and a series of scheduled cultural and religious events, the synagogue in Medias in Romania is slowly coming back to life.

Built in around 1897, the synagogue can seat about 1,000 — but only a few Jews remain in the town today and for years the building has remained empty and disused, in deteriorating condition. (Back in 2008, Julie Dawson, then a Peace Corps volunteer, came across the archive of the Jewish community — with files and documents scattered across the floor of the women’s balcony in the synagogue, covered in thick dust and spider webs. With the help of a group of Peace Corps volunteers from Romania, she collected dozens of registers, hundreds of letters and other official papers, personal photos and artifacts and dozens, if not hundreds, of siddurim. For years after that, there was nothing much else that could be done for the archives to survive. They had been stored safely in the former Jewish community office building, but that was about it.)

The new grant-funded Archive project, which began in May 2014, will change all that, reports Anda Reuben, project manager for the revitalization effort, who returned from Israel to her native Romania to oversee and build on the initiative.

She writes that it will be a first step in an overall revitalization of the synagogue:

The project is funded through a grant from an anonymous British foundation, received through the Mihai Eminescu Trust. The grant is for a year, from May 2014 until April 2015, and focuses on on preserving the archives and making them available for the local and international audience. The Mihai Eminescu Trust, an organization which is dedicated to saving and restoring the buildings and the culture of Saxon villages in Transylvania, provides administrative and logistical support.

The plan is to renovate the synagogue and to turn it into a cultural center and a museum of the Jews in Medias, to create a public, multifunctional space in the former community office building and the courtyard next to the synagogue. Just imagine tourists and locals enjoying their coffee and home-made Jewish pastries, looking over the charming garden and the newly restored synagogue where a permanent exhibition about Medias Jews tells the story of a thriving community in peaceful, multi-ethnic Medias!

A first such step took place on July 31, 2014, when about 50 local volunteers worked to clear the synagogue courtyard, plant flowers and paint the fence.

Here’s a video from local TV:

A chamber music concert was held in the synagogue August 6, and at the beginning of September, the 4th Medias International Film Festival will have its Yiddish movie section take place in the foyer of the synagogue.

Also, for the first time in many years, the holidays of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, will be marked by a program that will allow the people of Medias to explore Jewish traditions and culture.