This news is slightly off the strictly European geographic area but falls within the broader context.
The Center for Jewish Art at Hebrew University has published a 45-page report on the Center’s recent expedition to document Jewish built heritage in Siberia. The team included Prof. Aliza Cohen-Mushlin, Dr. Vladimir Levin, Dr. Katrin Kessler, Dr. Anna Berezin, and Arch. Zoya Arshavsky.
You can download the PDF of the full report HERE.
The Center’s team made a three-week expedition to Siberia in August 2015. They covered 6,000 km and visited 16 sites in Siberia and the Russian Far East: Tomsk, Mariinsk, Achinsk, Krasnoyarsk, Kansk, Nizhneudinsk, Irkutsk, Babushkin (former Mysovsk), Kabansk, Ulan-Ude (former Verkhneudinsk), Barguzin, Petrovsk Zabaikalskii (former Petrovskii Zavod), Chita, Khabarovsk, Birobidzhan, and Vladivostok.
The publication more or less coincided with news that the synagogue in Vladivostok (which is described in the report) was reopened with a gala ceremony on December 18 after several years of renovation work. The synagogue was built in 1916-1917 and was restituted to Jewish ownership little more than a decade ago. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev visited the synagogue shortly after the opening. The restoration was funded by the Kogan family and the Vladivostok city administration.
According to the Center for Jewish Art report:
In 1932, the Soviet authorities closed the synagogue and converted the building into a club house for a confectionary factory. In the 1990s it became a confectionary shop. The Jewish community managed to receive the building back in 2004, and in 2013 started the reconstruction.
It said “the only preserved detail of the original synagogue is a marble plaque with the Tablets of the Law on the street façade” — but ‘original windows decorated with the Stars of David were found during the reconstruction work,.”
On their expedition, the Center for Jewish Art team documented 16 synagogues and four collections of ritual objects and also surveyed of 11 Jewish cemeteries and a number of Jewish houses.
The report includes written description as well as numerous photographs, architectural drawings and other material.
See a report on the expedition on Birobidzhan TV:
According to the report, Russian authorities prohibited Jews from settling in Siberia in 1837, but by the end of the 19th century, the Jewish population of Siberia reached almost 35,000 people and Jews constituted a significant portion of the population in many towns.
Synagogues (mostly wooden) and cemeteries existed in the majority of Siberian towns. In the beginning of the 20th century, many communities were already so affluent that they could afford to erect spacious stone synagogues. The construction of a synagogue in the Russian Empire was not only a matter of funding, like everywhere else, but also demanded permission from the authorities, which was not easily achieved.
After the establishment of Soviet rule, it states, “many Jews emigrated abroad to escape Communist rule. On the other, new Jews arrived from the former Pale of Settlement.” There was a further influx of Jews in the 1940s — both exiled “bourgeois Jews” and refugees. Still:
After a decade of antireligious propaganda in the 1920s, the majority of synagogues, mosques and churches were shut down in the early 1930s. Their buildings were then used for other purposes. However, the fate of churches and synagogues differed in many cases. While churches were mostly destroyed, former synagogues housed various branches of the Soviet administration. Thus, in some towns a stone synagogue remained the highest and largest building, dominating single-story wooden houses (Fig. 2). During the Soviet period many old Jewish cemeteries were demolished (as were Christian and Muslim ones), but Jewish sections were allocated in the new municipal cemeteries.
Download the Center for Jewish Art Report
See photo documentation of the reopening of the Vladivostok synagogue
1 comment on “News from the Russian far east: synagogue reopening and Jewish heritage survey”
very interesting and at the same time quite a sobering report.Many of the buildings referred to will certainly be damaged beyond repair but it is quite amazing what has been surveyed and all credit must go to the CJA group