Rostov synagogue planning permanent exhibit

The Jewish community in Rostov on Don, Russia, is planning to install a permanent exhibit on local Jewish history in the town’s synagogue.

According to the community web site, it “will present attributes of Jewish life and old books illustrating the lifestyle and traditions of the Jews of Rostov, our community and synagogue.”

To help create this, the community is appealing for donations of objects and other material that can be included in the exhibit —  “anything that is associated with the cycle of the Jewish life – old tefillin or tallit, or kidush cup, or Havdalah candle, an old prayer book, etc.”

The synagogue, the only functioning synagogue in the city, was built in 1872. It has simple facades with tall arched windows and small cupolas at the corners of the roof. Damaged in anti-Jewish riots in 1905, it was renovated and restructured in 1913-14 under the direction of the St. Petersburg artist-architect  Jacob Germanovich Gevirts, who specialized designing synagogues. It was nationalized in 1935 and used for a decade as a factory. It was returned to Jewish ownership in the early 1990s, after which it was refurbished, restored and rededicated in 2005.

 For more information, email —  [email protected]  

Or see the web site http://www.evreirostov.ru/