The petition of the Jewish community of Birzula, Ukraine

Item

Title

The petition of the Jewish community of Birzula, Ukraine

Description

The image contains the cover page of a petition by the Jewish community of Birzula, a town located in the northern part of Odessa oblast of Ukraine. On the 20th of June 1923 the Jewish community of Birzula sent a petition to the central authorities, which requested an intervention by Moscow and Kharkiv (the capital of Soviet Ukraine) in support of their congregation whose synagogue had been seized by local authorities and turned into a club-theatre. The petition describes the recent experience of building a common religious space by a community that had been steadily growing in numbers. The authors of the petition present the synagogue not only as a piece of religious heritage but also as part of Jewish national patrimony and a physical and material evidence of who they are. The final decision of the central authorities was to divest the Jewish community of its synagogue, which was subsequently used as an venue for gatherings of local workers.
The petition is contained in a file compiled by the provincial authorities in Odessa in order to facilitate the examination of the status of the synagogue by the central authorities. The file 5-1-2190 is from the Central State Archives of Ukraine.

Subject

Communism and Christianity--Europe, Eastern

Material culture--Religious aspects

Judaism

Creator

Dumitru Lisnic

Source

Central State Archives of Ukraine, 5-1-2190

Publisher

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme No . 677355

Date

1923

Contributor

Dumitru Lisnic

Rights

Central State Archives of Ukraine

Format

jpg

Language

RU

Type

image

Identifier

Central State Archives of Ukraine, 5-1-2190

Coverage

Ukraine

Bibliographic Citation

Dumitru Lisnic, ”The petition of the Jewish community of Birzula, Ukraine”
http://hiddengalleries.eu/digitalarchive/admin/item/add

Date Created

2021

Media

The petition