In the Soviet period a religious
building could be handed over to a religious association
only “for free use” for exclusively religious
purposes (this was and remains the status of the synagogues
in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kiev, that have been operating
since that time). In contrast, the significance of the new
legislation of the CIS states is that the Jewish community
can now receive a synagogue “for ownership,”
which means that the community can do with it whatever it
wants, e.g. establish a center for social aid or a Sunday
school, open a shop or a hotel, rent out the premises or
part of it to another public organization or to a commercial
firm, renovate it (in agreement with the local authorities),
or even sell it.
Of
course, far from all the synagogues were returned as property
to Jewish communities. While, for example, in Simferopol,
Zhitomir, or Odessa, Jewish communities obtained returned
buildings as their property, more often local authorities
preferred to hand over the building but maintain control
over it. Often, on the eve of transfer, a former synagogue
was included in a list of architectural, historical, and
cultural sites protected by law - in order to justify the
rejection of a request to have the building returned to
the Jewish community “for ownership.” Sometimes
buildings were categorized as “for use” without
legal grounds for doing so. In such cases a broad field
of activity emerged for JDC lawyers, who tried to make sure
that synagogues were returned “as property”
rather than “for use,” that the community received
not only the building but also the land it was located on
(according to existing regulations involving land, the latter
could only be handed over for use), and that documents regarding
the correct use of synagogues were correctly and completely
drawn up. In the event that a synagogue had already been
given over “for use,” its status could be changed
so that the building could become the community’s
property. This was the case, for example, in Penza, where
the synagogue building that had been transferred for use
was two years later given the status of Jewish communal
property. In Samara the synagogue on Chapayev St., that
was returned in 1992, became community property in 1996.
In Donetsk it took eight years for a synagogue that had
been given over for use to become community property.
Efforts
to implement the right to ownership were very significant
since buildings that were returned were usually located
in the very center of contemporary cities, where buildings,
not to mention land, were very expensive. Furthermore, both
the JDC and other sponsors were more eager to invest in
repairing communal property than in premises that were rented
or even given over for temporary use. This was the case
since no one could be certain that the municipality would
not break the contract after the repairs were implemented.
Another consequence of the community’s obtaining the
building as property was that part of it could be rented
out and thus cover the expenses of renovation and of maintenance,
i.e. heat, electricity, security, etc. For example, the
community of the city of Perm, which received the building
of a former synagogue as property in May 1993, rented out
the first floor to a commercial bank. The latter paid for
the utilities and security of the whole building while the
community used the second floor. It sometimes happened that
parts of synagogues that were given over for use could also
be rented out. Thus, a repaired part of the Nizhnii Novgorod
synagogue building was rented to a business.
Many religious communities
began to rent out parts of their buildings to other Jewish
organizations, especially the Jewish Agency for Israel.
The JDC, which supports a widespread network of social assistance
institutions, called hasadim (from the Hebrew hesed meaning
loving kindness), has often encouraged the location of hasadim
in returned synagogues by providing additional aid for the
renovation of synagogue buildings.