Obj. ID: 24156
Jewish Architecture Synagogue in Syzran, Russia
A prayer house in Syzran was mentioned in 1910 and the existing brick-style building of the synagogue could well be constructed around this date (10 Kirova St.; 81 Beizer, Our Legacy, 170. . The synagogue functioned until 1930 and later on the building was adjusted for offices. After WWII the building was extended upwards and divided into two floors. A clumsy attempt was made to adjust the new portion of the street façade to the original building. In 1998, the former synagogue was returned to the revived Jewish community.81 The original layout of the interior is not clear. It seems that the main entrance was situated in the southern façade (currently bricked up) and the entrance for women in the same façade led to a staircase in the eastern protrusion. Windows in the upper floor of the western, southern, and eastern façades and three columns in the interior seem original. Thus the only possible place for a Torah ark was at the western or northern walls. Currently the building serves a small and lovely community of local, mostly aged Jews. They are trying to reconstruct the building so that it will better serve the needs of the community, mostly as a meeting space. In the gathering hall, there is no Torah ark, but an open closet with a Torah scroll and several other symbolic objects. The scroll with beautiful staves is not local and its origin is unknown. A dilapidated wooden house next to the synagogue (8 Kirova St.) was used by a rabbi or by a Jewish school before the 1917 revolution. Currently, the community received ownership of the building and is planning to demolish it in favor of a new community center. A house where an illegal minyan gathered in 1950–1953 is situated a hundred meters from the synagogue, at 18 Kirova St.
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sub-set tree:
Levin, Vladimir and Anna Berezin, Jewish Material Culture along the Volga
Preliminary. Expedition Report (The Center for Jewish Art, 2021), https://cja.huji.ac.il/home/pics/projects/CJA_Report_on_the_Volga_expedition_2021.pdf (accessed June 6, 2023)
Levin, Vladimir and Anna Berezin, “Jewish Prayer in the Heart of Russia: Synagogues along the Volga,” Ars Judaica 18 (2022): 111–44, https://doi.org/10.3828/arsjudaica.2022.18.6.
Beizer, Michael, Our Legacy: The CIS Synagogues, Past and Present (Moscow-Jerusalem: Gesharim - Mosty Kultury, 2002), p. 170