Bucharest is currently home to the majority of Romanian Jews. The pride of the local community is the Templu Coral Synagogue, where most of the city’s religious activity takes place.
The Templu Coral Synagogue has about two thousand seats, and prayers are held daily. On Jewish holidays, the place is filled with locals and Jewish tourists. Over the 130 years since it was founded, this synagogue has been visited by many figures, including Moshe Montefiore, Menachem Ussishkin, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, and Rabbi Israel Lau.
Not far away is the Great Synagogue, decorated in the Moorish style. The place serves as a museum of Romanian Jewry, and it is recommended to visit it and view exhibits reflecting the story of the community.
In the north of the capital, in the Amzei Square area, is the Yeshua Tova Synagogue. It is active on Shabbat and sometimes also during the week and is run by Rabbi Deutsch, a diligent Chabadnik who worked to bring Jews closer to tradition. The synagogue operates a kosher restaurant, and today it is the only one in Romania whose supervision of kosher is beyond doubt. In the past, many kosher restaurants operated in Romania, but over time they moved to serve mainly Jews whose economic situation was difficult (in some cases, the restaurant staff is larger than the number of people who come to eat).
Today, the Brasov community numbers only about 300 people. The city’s magnificent synagogue, the second largest in Romania, has been renovated and painted entirely in white. In the past, it served as a house of prayer for the neologism movement (women and men together), but in the earthquake that occurred in 1977, the Orthodox synagogue was destroyed, and all its residents moved to this synagogue. The synagogue is adjacent to a kosher restaurant that serves those who have difficulty taking care of themselves and tourists who want a kosher meal.
Also in Transylvania, it is worth noting the The Cluj Napoca community that gave rise to the Sanhedrin, which continues to exist today in Netanya. A marble plaque has been placed on the city’s large and renovated synagogue, with an inscription in Hebrew, Hungarian and Romanian, commemorating the Jews who were exterminated by the Nazis in World War II with the help of local fascist elements. Cluj Napoca also has a kosher restaurant serving a small group of elderly Jews, some of whom come to dine and some who receive their food delivered to their homes. A similar situation is found in two other large cities: Arad and Timişoara. Close to the Hungarian border is the city of Oradea, which has an active community and a kosher restaurant where Jewish tourists who visit Felix, the nearby resort, come to dine.
Synagogue in Piatra Neamţ, the oldest in Romania and one of the oldest in all of Europe, a museum and pilgrimage site for Jewish tourists. There is An ancient wooden carved ark and many sacred objects.
The city of Iaşi, the capital of the Moldovan region, is currently home to a community of about 300 people, and it too has seen better days. A must-see site in this city is the Jewish cemetery, where a plaque stands in memory of the Jews murdered in the pogrom carried out by Romanian fascists in June 1941. The city also has a synagogue and a kosher restaurant that faithfully serves the members of the community.
As can be seen in these cities and many other localities, Jewish life continued to flourish after the Holocaust in many places in Romania. One can only rejoice that many of this Jewish community, 400,000 people, have found their place in Israel, and they are one of the largest and most important communities in Israel.
