The first steps have been taken in a joint effort by the Brașov Municipality and Jewish community aimed at rescuing the severely dilapidated Orthodox synagogue and restoring it as a cultural venue and tourist attraction.
In an announcement on its web site, the Brașov city web site said that Mayor George Scripcaru met August 21 with representatives of the Brasov Jewish Community “who asked the municipality for help to secure and then restore the building, which is in an advanced state of degradation.”
One of the walls and the roof have already collapsed at the end of last year, and the building needs urgent security to stop its degradation.
According to the announcement, the municipality will issue permits to carry out emergency work, and the Jewish community will finance the first urgent repairs to maintain the building.
After that, it said, “following the model of other buildings in Brașov that have benefited from the same process,” the building would be taken over by the municipality, which would invest in its restoration, transforming it into a tourist attraction that would be owned and managed under an agreement between the Jewish community and the city.
The Orthodox Synagogue was built in 1924, in Moorish style. It has a mikveh, the only one preserved in Brașov, and a pediment decorated in colorful maiolica tiles depicting golden winged griffins (or possibly lions) flanking a seven-branched menorah against a blue background. It was damaged in a major earthquake in 1977 and has suffered further damage since.
“We are currently concerned that together with the City Hall of Brasov [we can] create in the heart of the city a major tourist attraction and to put in order a beautiful building that is unique in Romania because of the Spanish maiolica pediment,” the announcement quoted Tiberiu Roth, former president of the Brașov Jewish Community and president of the Zionist Association in Romania, as saying. He added:
The building will no longer be used as a place of worship, given the number of members of the Jewish community in Brasov and the fact that we already have such a place, but we want it to be a public building, possible to visit by residents and tourists alike.
Dan Florian, acting president of the Jewish Community in Brașov, added:
We would like to collaborate, because we live in a beautiful city and it is normal to have things to be proud of together. We have the old synagogue […] which, unfortunately, is in an advanced state of deterioration.
We want to stop this disaster and make a project together with Brașov City Hall, through which we can highlight this monument and offer Brasov residents and tourists a pleasant place in Brașov.
The small Jewish community in fact uses a large and ornate historic synagogue that was designed for the Neolog community by Budapest-based Lipot Baumhorn, Europe’s most prolific pre-WW2 synagogue architect. It was inaugurated in August 1901. The architectural plans for it were discovered in the community archives in 2014 by researcher Julie Dawson. It underwent restoration in 2001 on the occasion of its centennial.
Dawson also discovered architectural plans and other material relating to the orthodox synagogue.
Read the announcement on the Brasov city web site
For Romanian speakers — watch comments by the mayor and Jewish officials after the August 21 meeting
Read about Julie Dawson’s discovery of architectural plans of the orthodox synagogue
Read about Julie Dawson’s discovery of architecture plans of the Neolog synagogue
Brasov Jewish community web site