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October 1, 2004/Tishri 6 5765, Vol. 57, No. 5
Sarajevo synagogue reopens
RUTH ELLEN GRUBER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Nine years after the Dayton Agreement put an end to the brutal war in Bosnia, scars from the devastating, nearly four-year siege still mar Sarajevo's graceful urban land-scape.
But there is ample evidence of reconstruction as the city and its people struggle to rebuild and recover. And Sarajevo is still the only major city in Europe where you can find a synagogue, a mosque, and Catholic and Orthodox churches virtually on the same street.
This year at the High Holidays, Sarajevo's 700-member Jewish community marked a milestone in the reconstruction process.
On Erev Rosh Hashana, the 16th-century Old Syna-gogue, turned into a Jewish museum after World War II, was reconsecrated as a house of worship.
A mezuzah was nailed to the door of the austere stone building, from whose windows the slim minarets of neigh-boring mosques in Sarajevo's Old Town are clearly visible.
Services were held and the traditional melodies of the Sephardic Jewish liturgy were sung there for the first time in more than 60 years.
"To be honest, all my life I've lived in Sarajevo, and this was the first occasion to have a service in the Seph-ardic synagogue," said Jakob Finci, the head of the Bosnian Jewish Community.
Originally built in 1581, the Old Synagogue was one of 15 that functioned in the city before the Holocaust, when Sarajevo was a major Balkan center of Sephardic culture and the city's 12,000 Jews made up nearly 20 percent of the local population.
Eighty-five percent of Sarajevo's Jews were killed in the Holocaust. In 1965, during ceremonies marking 400 years of Jewish presence in Bosnia, the Old Syngogue, though still owned by the remnant Jewish community, was converted into a city-run Jewish museum.
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