Remuh Synagogue

About

The Remuh Synagogue stands at 40 Szeroka Street in the heart of Kazimierz, the historic Jewish quarter of Krakow in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship. Kazimierz was for centuries one of the most important centres of Jewish life in central Europe, and the Remuh shrine takes its place among the small cluster of surviving synagogues that line the streets around the square.

The congregation is Orthodox in its rite, continuing the tradition of Ashkenazi Jewish prayer that took root in Kazimierz from the late Middle Ages onward. The synagogue's name preserves the memory of Rabbi Moshe Isserles, known by the acronym Remuh, the great sixteenth-century halakhic authority and author of HaMappah whose teaching shaped Ashkenazi practice for generations and whose burial place lies in the adjoining Remuh Cemetery.

Though small in scale, the Remuh Synagogue has been one of the longest-active places of Jewish prayer in Kazimierz. It survived the upheavals of the twentieth century and continues today to serve the Jewish community of Krakow as a centre of worship, study, and remembrance, set amid the streets and stones of one of the oldest Jewish quarters in Europe.

Significance

Bound to the memory of Rabbi Moshe Isserles, whose adjacent grave has long drawn Jewish pilgrims from around the world, the Remuh Synagogue holds a particular place in the wider Ashkenazi tradition. Its survival within Kazimierz is itself a testimony to the resilience of Jewish religious life in Poland.