Jewish leaders and politicians from Estonia and Israel inaugurated a new synagogue in Tallinn on Wednesday, six decades after the previous house of worship was destroyed in World War II.
President Toomas Hendrik Ilves and Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres cut the red ribbon at the front of the modern synagogue immediately after the Torah scrolls were brought inside the building amid music and dancing.
''You can burn down a building, but you cannot burn down a prayer. And we are a praying people,'' Peres said.
Tallinn's previous synagogue, built in 1883, was destroyed in 1944 in air raids as Nazi troops fled the Red Army's advance. Tartu, a university town southeast of the capital, also had a synagogue, but it too was destroyed during the war.
Some 5,000 Jews lived in Estonia prior to World War II, enjoying cultural autonomy declared by the government in 1926. The Soviet occupation of Estonia in 1940 led to the abrupt end of the Jewish cultural autonomy, and hundreds of Jews were deported, as were thousands of other Estonians.
When the Nazis invaded in 1941, a majority in the Jewish community managed to escape to the Soviet Union, but the roughly 1,000 Jews who remained behind were sent to concentration camps around Estonia.
They were later killed along with thousands of other Jews deported to Estonia from other European countries. Experts believe fewer than a dozen Jews survived the Holocaust in Estonia.
Today, most of Estonia's Jews live in Tallinn.
Speaking of the wartime occupations of Estonia, Ilves said it was a difficult time for both Estonians and Jews. ''Estonia's Jewish community has always done good things for the Estonian nation,'' he said.
Roughly 500 people attended the ceremony, including members of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, the chief rabbi of Israel, Yona Metzger, and members of Estonia's 3,000-strong Jewish community.
Construction of the airy, ultramodern 180-seat synagogue started in 2005. The $2 million price tag was shouldered by US-based Rohr Family Foundation and Estonian donators.
Estonia's chief Rabbi Shmuel Kot, of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, an organization of Hasidic Jews based in New York, expressed hope that the new synagogue would strengthen the local Jewish identity.
''For a long time, it was not possible to practice Jewish life in Estonia,'' he said Tuesday. ''There was no rabbi, no kosher food ... no possibility to learn about Judaism.''
''People will now have the possibility to feel as a Jew,'' he said.
Kot said Jewish rules on synagogue design, including construction materials and decoration, made the new synagogue project demanding. The Estonian architects responsible for the design made a field trip to Israel to get familiarized with the rigid requirements, he said.
In addition to religious services, the synagogue will prepare and distribute kosher foods in a restaurant and
present the history of Jews in Estonia.
Ivar Leimus from the Estonian History Museum welcomed the new synagogue, hoping it would lead a re-emergence of Jewish life. ''We are very happy that one part of the population has again received part of its identity back,'' historian Leimus said.
RSS
