Estonian Synagogue - 05.16.2007

NCSJ Attends Estonia Shul Dedication

		Sep. 3	JTA	Estonian capital gets new mikvah
		May 16	JTA	A shul opens in Estonia capital
		May 16	BBC	Estonia opens first new synagogue
		May 15	AP	Estonia's Jews set to inaugurate new Tallinn synagogue
		May 10	Reuters	Synagogue set to open for first time since Holocaust
		May 10	EJP	Estonia to open first synagogue since WWII

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JTA: Global Jewish News - 05.16.2007

Leaving the Soviet era behind, a shul opens in Estonia capital

By Matt Siegel

TALLINN, Estonia (JTA) — Amid a crowd of media, dignitaries and hundreds of local Jews, Tallinn opened its first shul since its original synagogue was destroyed in 1944 during a bombing raid against the fleeing Germans.

The May 16 opening here closed a chapter of Estonian history that began with World War II and finished with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. 

"As you know, during the Soviet regime it was not possible to simply open synagogues," Foreign Minister Urmas Paet told JTA. "And in this sense it makes a very clear difference between how things are now in an Estonian democratic republic and how things were in the Soviet regime. So it's of course another sign of what it means to be an independent Estonian republic." The Tallinn synagogue, built in 1883, was not rebuilt following the country's occupation and subsequent absorption into the USSR in the wake of World War II. 

Following Estonia's ascension into the European Union on May 1, 2004, Tallinn became one of the few European capitals without a synagogue. For Estonia, the only European country declared officially "Juden frei," literally "free of Jews," by the Nazis, the occasion was tinged with the solemnity of the past and hope for the future.

Estonian Chief Rabbi Shmuel Kot, beaming from the newly inaugurated bimah, declared triumphantly, "The last 70 years were a dream. This is morning. Good morning, Estonia."

Among the dignitaries on hand were Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves and Prime Minister Andrus Ansip, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Israel's Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, who hung the mezuzah. 

Also in attendance were representatives from many major worldwide Jewish organizations, including the executive committee of the Washington-based Jewish National Conference on Soviet Jewry. Committee members had high-level discussions with the Russian and Ukrainian governments. 

"For us, being here illustrates the progress that's being made and helps to reinforce our mission," NCSJ Executive Director Mark Levin told JTA. "Usually we're representatives in advocacy, but today we're representatives in celebration."

Much of the funding for the synagogue, which cost approximately $2 million, was provided by two wealthy Chabad donors: the Rohr family of New York and Alexander Bronstein, a Russian oligarch of Estonian extraction who dedicated the shul to his mother.

Alexander Machkevich, the Kazakh oligarch who serves as chair of the Eurasian Jewish Congress, contributed an ornate silver menorah.

The day began solemnly with a memorial service amid the swaying birch trees surrounding the peaceful site of the Klooga concentration camp, where some 2,000 French and Czech Jews were murdered in advance of the Red Army's liberation of the tiny Baltic nation.

"They have said that the power of memory is always strong," said a somber Peres after laying a wreath on a recently constructed Holocaust memorial. "Maybe. But the power of memory is stronger than the power of understanding. We can't understand it, but we remember."

The 1,000 Estonian Jews who were unable to flee into Russia were murdered during the first days of the German occupation, shot in the vast wooded expanses surrounding the ancient capital city. 

The Beit Bella shul, as it will be known, is the brainchild of Kot, an emissary of the Chabad Lubavitch Orthodox group that dominates Jewish life in the vast majority of former Soviet republics. It contains Estonia's only kosher restaurant, as well as a mikvah.

Estonia has 3,500 Jews, the smallest population of any Baltic state, but Kot bristles at the suggestion that the size of his congregation belies the construction of the 180-seat synagogue, which Peres described as "not very large but full of taste."

"The new shul has only 180 places and now I'm very sorry about that," Kot said, "because I'm afraid in two years it won't be enough."

Hundreds of people gathered on the synagogue campus on a sunny day before overflowing onto the narrow street beyond its gates. When a group of local and visiting rabbis danced out the newly minted Torah scroll among the crowd, the mood was ecstatic. 

Referring to a recent incident in nearby Ukraine in which the local government seized a Torah from the Jewish community, one guest remarked: "Perhaps if they could see what's going on out there they'd understand why we were so upset."

In a sign of just how far Estonia has moved toward the West from its former masters in Moscow, with whom the country is currently engaged in a major diplomatic row over the removal of a wartime monument to Soviet soldiers, the morning ceremony was conducted entirely in English while the afternoon event closed with the playing of the Estonian and Israeli national anthems.

Peres compared Estonia and Israel.

"We are small countries that must be great," he said. "We have to be as great as our dangers. We have to be as developed as our opportunities."

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BBC - 05.16.2007

Estonia opens first new synagogue 

By Patrick Jackson 

Estonia's first synagogue since the Holocaust has opened in the capital, Tallinn, to serve the Baltic state's current community of about 2,500 Jews. 

The Nazis had described Estonia as being "free of Jews" by the time they held the Wannsee Conference of January 1942 to plot the Final Solution. 

Few who escaped the Nazis returned after the war and those who did faced religious curbs under Soviet rule. 

Estonia's top rabbi said his community could once again "feel like Jews". 

"For a long time... there was no rabbi, no kosher food... no possibility to learn about Judaism," Chief Rabbi Shmuel Kot told The Associated Press. 

The new, privately funded synagogue in central Tallinn, described by news agencies as an ultramodern, airy structure, can seat 180 people in its main worship area. 

Estonia's Holocaust 

Previous synagogues in Tallinn and the second city, Tartu, were destroyed during the war which saw a Jewish community of about 4,500 displaced or destroyed. 

About 3,500 were able to escape to the USSR before the Germans arrived but of the 1,000 who remained, all but seven were murdered by Nazis or Estonian collaborators, Dr Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem told the BBC News website. 

Some of those who escaped later helped defeat the Nazis as soldiers in the Soviet Army and the controversial relocation of a Soviet war memorial from a Tallinn square earlier this year had been a "sensitive issue" for the community, Rabbi Kot told Reuters. 

While welcoming the synagogue's opening, Dr Zuroff told the BBC News website that Estonia was not doing enough to track down Estonian Holocaust collaborators who escaped abroad after the war - a suggestion a police spokesman has denied. 

Under Nazi rule, Dr Zuroff says, Estonian security police units played a part in the Holocaust in Belarus and Poland, as well as helping murder Jews in their own country. 

An unknown number of Jews from other parts of Europe were also worked to death in 20 labour camps set up by the Nazis on Estonian soil and guarded, in part, by Estonian police. 

New investigations 

Since gaining independence from the USSR in 1991, Estonia has convicted 11 people of Soviet-era crimes, particularly the mass deportation of 1949, but has not prosecuted any suspected Nazi-era war criminals. 

The Soviet KGB extensively investigated Estonian Nazi war criminals itself and convicted at least 18 in the 1960s, Superintendent Martin Arpo of the Estonian security police board told the BBC News website. 

In 2001, the police investigated an Estonian expatriate who was a police official under the Nazis, and was identified as a Holocaust suspect by the Wiesenthal Centre. The case, apparently rejected by the KGB itself in the 1960s for lack of evidence, was dropped by the Estonians for the same reason. 

Two other Nazi-era cases are still under investigation, Supt Arpo added, saying he could not give names for legal reasons. 

Dr Zuroff says that questions like Holocaust restitution, education and commemoration in the new Estonia can be decided in the future. 

However, the prosecution of surviving Nazi war criminals, he believes, has to be decided now "because once the criminals die, that's the end of the issue". 

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Associated Press - 05.15.2007

Estonia's Jews set to inaugurate new Tallinn synagogue 

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) Following a six-decade wait, Estonia's 3,000-strong Jewish community will inaugurate its new and only synagogue Wednesday in Tallinn in the presence of top Israeli dignitaries.

Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres is scheduled to attend the ceremonies along with Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip, who made a personal donation to the project.

Estonian Chief Rabbi Shmuel Kot 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. "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.

Construction of the airy, ultramodern 180-seat synagogue started in 2005 in downtown Tallinn. The US$2 million (€1.5 million) price tag was shouldered by U.S.-based Rohr Family Foundation and Estonian donators.

Kot said Jewish rules on synagogue design, including construction materials and decoration, made the project demanding. The Estonian architects responsible for the design made a field trip to Israel to get familiarized with the rigid requirements, he 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 reside in Tallinn.

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. 

Kot agreed. "I believe that this new Jewish synagogue will bring people more and more closer to God, and closer to Jewish life and Jewish background."

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Reuters - 05.10.2007

Synagogue set to open in Estonia for first time since Holocaust

TALLINN (Reuters) - The first synagogue in Estonia since its small Jewish community was wiped out in the Holocaust is scheduled to open its doors next week and its rabbi says the building is the best answer to "fascism, communism and Nazism". 

The opening of the synagogue comes amid ethnic tension in the Baltic state over the removal of a World War Two Red Army statue, which angered local Russian-speakers. Ethnic Estonians see the monument as a reminder of 50 years of Soviet occupation. 

Chief Rabbi Shmuel Kot was wary of speaking about the tensions over the statue, which two weeks ago sparked riots by mainly Russian-speakers, a large minority of 300,000 in the country of 1.3 million.

But he said on Thursday it had been a sensitive issue for Jews living in Estonia as many were Russian-speaking war veterans.

Kot, of the Chabad Lubavitch Orthodox Jewish movement, is now looking forward to May 16, when the synagogue, a light and airy glass-facaded building, will officially open its doors. 

"I am the first rabbi after the Holocaust. The last rabbi was killed by the Nazis," he told Reuters.

He proudly showed the new synagogue, built at a cost of about $2 million with money from the U.S.-based Rohr family foundation and Estonian Jews and non-Jews.

It can fit 180 people in the main worship area.

Estonia, with its small population, was the only country in Europe to be declared "free of Jews" by the Nazis. 

Before the war about 5,000 Jews lived in Estonia, mostly in Tallinn. Many fled to the Soviet Union and those that remained were murdered by Nazi forces, including the last rabbi. 

The last synagogue, built in 1883, was destroyed in the war during the Soviet bombing of Tallinn. 

The Jewish population of Estonia is now about 3,000.

"Just like people need an apartment to live in, they also need an apartment for their soul. My wish is that every single Jewish person in the country will feel this is their home," added Kot, 30, who came to Estonia seven years ago. 

Last-minute finishing touches were being put on the building, including the addition of an arch at the back of the main area of worship for the sacred scrolls of the Torah.

Until now Estonian Jews have used a makeshift prayer room in a building next to the new synagogue. 

Officials from the Estonian and Israeli government will attend the opening of the new building.

Kot saw the synagogue as a sign of survival and tolerance and was positive not only for Jews but for the whole of Estonia. 

"This is the right answer to fascism, communism and Nazism," he said.

"The communists tried wanted to kill Jewish life and the Nazis wanted to kill Jewish bodies."

Officials from the Estonian and Israeli government will attend the opening of the new building.

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European Jewish Press - 05.10.2007

Estonia to open first synagogue since WWII

TALLINN (EJP) - Estonia is to open its first synagogue in the capital 63 years after the last one was destroyed during WWII, Jewish leaders said on Friday. 

"Tallinn was the last European Union capital without a synagogue, which is required for a fully functioning Jewish community," Shmuel Kot, chief Rabbi of Estonia, said. 

He added:"Thanks to kind contributors in Estonia and abroad, the building that has been missing for the past 63 years has now been completed." 

The 200-seat synagogue will be opened in the capital Tallinn on May 16. 

It is located next to the Estonian Jewish Community center and school. 

In addition to hosting religious services and Jewish holiday celebrations, the synagogue will oversee the preparation and distribution of kosher food, as well as hosting a Mikvah, or ritual bath, and a Jewish museum. 

"A synagogue is an integral part of Jewish life. It is good not only for Jews, but for all residents of our multi-ethnic Estonia," Chief Rabbi Kot has said. 

Destroyed in WWII

Tallinn’s last functioning synagogue was built in 1882 but was destroyed in 1944 in a Soviet air raid as Nazis were feeing the country. 

Estonia’s Jewish community currently numbers around 3,000 people, down from 4,400 prior to WWII. 

When the Nazis invaded Estonia in 1941, hundreds of Jews were sent to concentration camps. 

The Soviet occupation of Estonia in 1940 led to the abrupt end of the Jewish cultural autonomy and hundreds of Jews were deported. 

Most of Estonian Jews today live in Tallinn but also in the towns of Kohtla-Jarve, Narva and Tartu.

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