Chabad-Lubavitch Synagogue

The Chabad-Lubavitch Synagogue is the active house of prayer of Kazan’s Jewish community, located on Profsoyuznaya Street in the historic centre of the city. The building, its façade adorned with a large menorah, serves as the spiritual, cultural, and educational centre for the Jews of Tatarstan and combines the functions of a house of worship, a museum, and a community space.

The Jewish religious community in Kazan took shape in the 1830s, formed chiefly of artisans and retired cantonist soldiers who remained living in the governorate beyond the Pale of Settlement. By 1865 the number of former cantonists and their descendants had exceeded three hundred. For a long time the community rented premises on Bolshaya Prolomnaya Street, and in 1903 it acquired its own building plot. The house of prayer was erected with donations from community members and funds from the communal administration; after inspection by a commission of the Kazan provincial government on 12 February 1915, the synagogue was solemnly opened on 12 March of that same year, and construction together with the purchase of the plot cost 85,000 roubles.

The original prayer hall occupied the building’s single volume. In 1940, when the building was already serving secular institutions, architect Rashad Murtazin rebuilt the interior: the space was divided into levels, a new entrance was installed, the round window openings were replaced with rectangular ones, and a bas-relief depicting Lenin appeared on the façade. The building acquired its present appearance after a restoration in the early 2010s, when, using historical drawings and materials provided by the Ministry of Culture of Tatarstan, the lost elements were recreated and a menorah, visible from afar, was installed above the entrance.

In May 1929 the synagogue was closed, along with other religious buildings in the city, and the premises were occupied successively by a Jewish club, a Young Pioneers’ house, a people’s theatre, and a house for education workers. Believers succeeded in having the building returned to the community only in 1996–1997, after which a long process of restoration began. The work was funded by money allocated by the republic’s leadership and by donations from congregants, and the grand reopening of the revived synagogue took place on 3 September 2015, attended by representatives of the authorities and of Jewish communities from other cities.

Today the building houses a prayer hall, a museum of the history of Kazan’s Jewish community, the youth centre “Afifon”, a Sunday school with a library, Hebrew courses, and a kosher food shop. The synagogue holds Sabbath and holiday services and educational and charitable programmes, and welcomes guests from various religious communities of Tatarstan as part of interfaith dialogue.

Over the century of its existence, the Kazan synagogue has travelled the path from a modest house of prayer to a multifunctional community centre, surviving closure, decades of secular use, and a complete revival. It remains the city’s only functioning synagogue building and an important part of the religious landscape of present-day Kazan.