SITE OVERVIEW
There were many synagogues in the city – their number exceeded the number of churches. In the area of the historical part of Minsk there is a synagogue at 13B Dauman Street, where the so-called Orthodox Christians, Litvaks, followers of the Vilna Gaon – the spiritual center for this territory, hold services.
Image credit: The Together Plan – subject to copyright ©
GENERAL
The entrepreneurs Perelman and Lyubetsky (a baptized Jew) built a distillery in the Storozhovka area on the bank of the Perespa River, at 15 Staro-Vilenskaya Street, in 1907. However, their business venture did not go well, even though 11 Jews who worked at their distillery worked day and night. The distillery workers, on the initiative of a famous Minsk Rabbi Yehoshua Tsimbalist, graduate of the famous yeshiva in Slobodka, (a Jewish town near Kovno, Kaunas), created a small prayer hall in one of the factory buildings. The factory finally started to operate at full capacity in 1911, under the management of a new owner - Urevich (previously Gurevich). In 1912, Urevich installed a 32-horsepower steam engine replacing the old 10- horsepower engine. The owner also rebuilt the entire building a year later and had a workforce of 27 workers, mostly Jews. The distillery did not stop its operation during the whole First World War. Starovilensky alcohol and yeast were considered of a high quality.
After the revolution in 1917, the factory became nationalized and was renamed the Proletarian Yeast Factory. A haberdashery factory and then The Sewing Factory “Komsomolka” were located here in the postwar years. The building was transferred to the Jewish Religious Association ( Litvaks) in 1994 and is today a functioning synagogue. It is host to several different Jewish organisations such as Lech Lecha Youth Community (Masorti Zionist Organisation), Minsk Orthodox Community, the Minsk Ghetto Survivors’ Organisation (GILF) and the Union of Jewish Religious Organisations.
The synagogue serves over two thousand Jews in Minsk
