Obj. ID: 24101
Jewish Architecture Wooden synagogue in Kostroma, Russia
A prayer house in Kostroma was officially permitted in 190352 and a wooden building for the synagogue was built in 1907.53 The synagogue (16a Sennoi Lane) consisted of a lofty prayer hall, a two-story western part with a women’s section in the upper floor, and a narrow entrance part with a staircase for women. Entrances for men and women were situated next to each other and accessed through a cast-iron porch. This arrangement of entrances, as well as the placement of the women’s staircase inside the building distinguishes this synagogue from hundreds of similar wooden buildings in the Pale of Settlement. The synagogue was closed by the Soviet authorities in 1930. In the 1930s and 1940s, an illegal minyan gathered in the apartment of the shohet Yerahmiel Kugel, who hosted Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneersohn during his short Kostroma exile. In the 1960s, the minyan was still gathering in a private apartment.
The synagogue was returned to the revived community in 1995–1998. It was renovated in 2000–2001 and again in 2020. Currently, the windows of the prayer hall are less ornate than the windows of the synagogue's western part, but it seems the upper fragments of curved wooden decorations of the prayer hall was lost during the Soviet era. Moreover, an additional door was cut into the northern wall of the prayer hall and a brick attachment was added to the southern side of the building. In the interior, the walls of the prayer hall are divided by semicircular columns, and a new Torah ark stands at the eastern wall. The synagogue serves a small community, which belongs to the Chabaddominated Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia (FEOR). A small museum is in the process of installation right now. The synagogue also comprises a mikveh built in the western part of the structure with the basin for rainwater outside of it.
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sub-set tree:
Beizer, Michael. Our Legacy: The CIS Synagogues, Past and Present (Moscow-Jerusalem: Gesharim - Mosty Kultury, 2002), pp. 153-8 with ills, 169.
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.
Rossiiskaia evreiskaia entsiklopediia, Vol. 5 (Moscow, 2004), p. 170-171 with ill..
Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia, 16 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1908-1913), vol. 9, p. 789;