Calendar

After a five year break for restoration and revamping, the Museum of the History and Culture of Jews in Romania is reopening, also with the dedication of new art gallery.

The museum was founded in 1978, at the initiative of then Romanian Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen in the former Holy Union synagogue, built in 1836 as a place of worship for the local tailors’ craft union.

A commemoration of Theodor Schreier, the architect of the synagogue in St. Pölten, will include the unveiling of a commemorative plaque to the architect and his wife — both Holocaust victims who died in the Terezin ghetto/camp north of Prague — and a memorial symphonic concert featuring the music of Brahms, Bloch, Dvorak, Janacek, and Schulhoff.

The synagogue is now the home of the Institut für jüdische Geschichte Österreichs — Institute for Austrian Jewish History.

A guided tour of the 17th century Jewish cemetery, which was largely destroyed in early 1960s and then in the 1980s when the Czech TV tower was built there. A large part of the cemetery was dug up, tombstones were knocked down and broken and the rest of the cemetery was filled in a turned into a park.

Though only a small part of the cemetery still exists, it covers a broad range of styles, from Baroque, Empire and Romantic to the common forms of the latter half of the 19th century.  In 1999, the Jewish Museum in Prague took over the administration of the preserved part, which is a protected historical monument. Following essential structural repairs and basic restoration work, the cemetery was opened to the public in September 2001. The restoration of the tombstones continued and 164 tombstones and 4 tombs had been restored by the end of 2013.

The tiny rural synagogue in the village of Police u Jemnice, near the border with Austria, will be formally reopened after a two-year restoration carried out by the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic.

The synagogue will house a small exhibition on local Jewish life, and there also will be the launch of the brochure “Rural Synagogues in the Czech Lands,” by Jaroslaw Klenovsky.

For details about the restoration — and photos — CLICK HERE 

There will be a live virtual tour of Jewish Timisoara, hosted and broadcast live on the Travel to Live.co.il Facebook page

The guides will include Getta Neumann, author of a Jewish guidebook to Timisoara.
We will broadcast the event live on our Facebook page.

As part of the European Heritage Days, there will be a guided tour of the  exhibit Baroque Synagogues in the Czech Lands. The exhibition is complemented by panels mapping the history of Prostějov synagogues and Jewish prayer houses and the Prostějov Jewish community in general. During the guided tour, you will learn more about some of the exhibited objects. For example, part of the rosette stained glass window, which was saved from the destroyed Olomouc synagogue.

The exhibition is organized in cooperation with the Museum and Gallery in Prostějov, the Jewish Museum in Prague, the Statutory City of Prostějov, the Respect and Tolerance Association, the Comenius Museum in Přerov and the Hanácký Jeruzalém Association. The guided tour will be the curator of the exhibition Filip Gregor from the Prostějov Museum.

The official reopening ceremony of the Great synagogue in Plzen, Czech Republic, following  a three-year restoration of the synagogue interior and nearby Rabbi’s house. A permanent exhibition on Jewish monuments in the Pilsen region will be opened, in the women’s gallery. It is based on the photographs of Radovan Kodera.

A procession  will bring a Torah scroll  from the Old to the Great Synagogue and ceremoniously place it in the ark.

Following will be a ceremonial program with speeches by the Culture Minister, the head of the tiny local Jewish community, and others. A concert will feature compositions inspired by Jewish prayers, adapted for the occasion. 

Reception and curators’ tour at the newly opening Jewish Museum in the Kaliningrad Synagogue.

The exhibition “Through Koenigsberg with Jewish Eyes” will be presented to the public. The members of the Jewish Congregation have been able to visit the new museum since mid-September.