Greek island of Kos gets a synagogue after 80 years

The Kahal Shalom synagogue will be opened at the end of July, Religion.orf reports based on an article from Griechenland Zeitung.

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The last time Jewish believers had their own synagogue was almost 80 years ago. But because of the growing number of tourists from Israel, the island of Kos decided that its 18th-century synagogue should be restored. It was destroyed in an earthquake in 1933 and rebuilt in 1935, Religion.orf writes.

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Cultural centre

However, the Nazis almost wiped out the Jewish population of Kos, which existed of about 150 people at the time. Therefore, the synagogue was abandoned for a long period of time until 1984, when the municipality decided to buy it and use it as a cultural centre.

However, as the number of Israeli tourists is increasing, the municipality decided to turn the building into a synagogue again and restore it. The only problem was that there were no original documents on what the original house of worship looked like. Therefore, some Italian synagogues from the same period were used as inspiration.