Synagogue of the Ashkenazi Jews in Baku

About

The Synagogue of the Ashkenazi Jews in Baku stands at 171 Dilara Aliyeva Street in the capital of Azerbaijan and serves as the principal place of worship for the city's Ashkenazi community while also welcoming the local Georgian Jewish community. The two groups have long shared the building, each maintaining its own liturgical practice.

The present synagogue was inaugurated on the ninth of March 2003, opening in a new building purpose-built for the needs of both communities. The decision to construct the new sanctuary had been taken in 2002, after decades during which the Jewish communities of Baku had worshipped in earlier, more constrained quarters that had served them since the years following the Second World War.

The earlier building, fitted out in 1946 from a former civil defence depot on the corner of Korganov and Pervomayskaya streets, had been adapted to hold two prayer halls, a larger one for the Ashkenazi rite and a smaller one for the Georgian Jewish congregation. Its repairs had been funded entirely by voluntary donations from the Jewish community of Azerbaijan.

Under the leadership of Chief Rabbi Shneor Segal, who also heads the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States, the synagogue today continues the worship of the Sabbath, the holidays of the Jewish year and the festivals of Pesach, Sukkot, Hanukkah and Purim.

History

A semi-basement former civil defence depot at the corner of what are now Rasul Rza and Dilara Aliyeva streets was given over to Baku's Jewish community in 1946 and refitted, through the community's own voluntary donations, into two prayer halls, a larger one for the Ashkenazi congregation and a smaller one for the Georgian Jewish community with whom they have long shared the building. In 2002 the two congregations resolved to build a proper new synagogue on the site, and the present sanctuary was dedicated on 9 March 2003. Rabbi Shneor Segal, a Chabad emissary who has led Baku's Ashkenazi community for more than fifteen years, serves today as its chief rabbi.

Significance

A Star of David carved into the synagogue's pale stone facade marks it plainly as a house of Jewish prayer in a Muslim-majority land, and the building's continued life as a shared sanctuary for two distinct communities, Ashkenazi and Georgian Jewish, reflects the layered history of Jewish settlement across the Caucasus. Baku's Jewish community, among the oldest continuous Jewish presences in the Muslim world, gathers here for the Sabbath and for the festivals of the Jewish year.

Architecture

Purpose-built early twenty-first-century synagogue in pale ashlar stone with a crenellated parapet and a carved Star of David on the principal facade