GREAT SYNAGOGUE OF EDIRNE

In the 15th-16th centuries Edirne was a pivotal location for Sephardis and later for Ashkenazis fleeing Western Europe. In the 19th century Edirne was also a landing spot for Jews leaving the then newly-founded Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. In 1906 there were some 24,000 Jews in town, twice as many as in 1873. The community was so large that it spread out to several rather than a single neighbourhood. Each of them had its own synagogue. 

Jewish life in Edirne suffered a serious setback in 1905 when a fire gutted hundreds of townhouses as well as all 13 synagogues. Then the Jews decided to construct a new, modern grand synagogue. It took them just four years to accomplish it. It was designed by a French architect, France Depré, modelled on the Sephardi Leopoldstädter Temple in Vienna, and could accommodate up to 900 men and 300 women. 

The Balkan Wars and the First World War changed Jewish life in Edirne forever. Edirne was the site of significant battles and a port-of-call for large numbers of refugees fleeing Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria. Jews started to leave, initially for Thessaloniki in Greece, or Istanbul – or France, Britain and the United States. A pogrom in 1934 decimated the community. In 1940, just 2,000 Jews lived in town. 

At the end of the 1990s there were only two Jewish families in Edirne. The grand synagogue, a masterpiece of architecture and construction by any measure, was abandoned and started to run to seed. For much of the 1990s and 2000s it was reduced to a ghostly ruin. 

Things changed significantly when the Turkish Foundations Institution spent $2.5 million to renovate the synagogue of Edirne, in 2015. The synagogue now stands in full splendour, a fantastic example of how goodwill, cooperation and appropriate funding can resurrect cultural heritage. In 2016 the first Jewish wedding since 1976 took place in it.