Ukraine Port’s 19th-Century Synagogue Restored

Pesach Lifshitz, who has lived in Black Sea port Kherson, Ukraine, his whole life, can’t help but see the renovations of his hometown synagogue as historic.

“This is a new page of history for our community and for the whole city,” Lifshitz, who directs the local Jewish burial society, says of the just-completed project led by Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Yosef Wolff and the local Jewish Community Center. “After all the work, we have a new building.”

Built in 1895, the ornately-designed synagogue was seized by Communist authorities in 1930 and was heavily damaged during World War II. The city turned it into a rehab center in the 1960s, but in 1991, returned control of the structure to the local Jewish community.

Since his arrival in 1993, Wolff – whose brother, Rabbi Avraham Wolff, serves as the chief rabbi of Odessa – has been on a mission to rebuild Kherson’s once thriving Jewish community. He first set up shop in a small room inside what used to be the synagogue; but over the years, as more and more locals decided to get back in touch with their traditions, the expansion of his center necessitated ever bigger spaces.

“As the needs of the congregation grew,” says Wolff, “we slowly broke down the walls of the rooms, until it was one big room.”

The community found itself using all of the historic building, but the building was in dire need of repair. Wolff turned to the Ohr Avner Foundation and private donors to help restore the interior while keeping the original façade.

After eight years of renovations, Yosef and Chaya Wolff continue to see the rolls of the synagogue’s membership increase.

“Every day, more and more people are coming,” says the rabbi.

Lifshitz says that the synagogue can’t help but draw people in.

“One can come into our place and get food for the soul,” says the 40-year-old. “One can sit and pray, or not even open a prayer book and rest and think.”

Article Continued (Chabad.org)