Mazel tov! After a full reconstruction, the Ashkenazic Great Synagogue in the Black Sea port of Constanţa, long an iconic ruin, was reconsecrated May 29 with a joyous ceremony that included the blowing of shofars, parading with Torah scrolls, and cutting a red ribbon.
The synagogue will be used for religious purposes and also as a cultural venue open to the public.
Representatives of the Jewish community, the Israeli ambassador, the mayor, and other local, state and religious officials, including the Muslim Mufti, attended the ceremony.
“I said with all sincerity that the greatest honor of my life was to be elected president of the Jewish Community of Constanța,” community president Sorin Lucian Ionescu wrote on Facebook. “Consequently, an even greater honor was to carry the Torah today, in the newly inaugurated Great Synagogue of Constanța.”
Designed in the Moorish style by Adolf Linz and built between 1910 and 1914, the synagogue was used as a German military warehouse during WW2. It is the one surviving synagogue in the city — the grand Sephardic synagogue was demolished in the 1980s.
After more than a decade of bureaucratic delays, a contract to start restoration work was signed in June 2023, and work finally began in 2024. It was financed by the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Administration through the National Investment Company, with an estimated cost of approximately €2 million
Watch videos with moments from the inauguration here:
See our post – with video – about the restoration work being completed
We have posted several times about the synagogue. We posted about the first steps aimed at restoration back in 2014 — click HERE
2 comments on “Romania: The Ashkenazic Great Synagogue in the Black Sea port of Constanţa, has been rededicated with a joyous ceremony after a full restoration”
Wonderful news!
חזק ואמץ
!!