The historic building was recently returned to the Jewish community, but could be taken away again if $20,000 cannot be raised by May 10 to renovate the structure. The municipality's authorities gave the deadline.
Speaking out in the article is Yuri Dorn, chair of the Jewish Religious Union of Belarus. Yuri is well-known to many Jewish genealogists who focus on their Belarus families.
"If we lose the building, we'll say goodbye to a huge part of our heritage," said Yuri Dorn, chairman of the Jewish Religious Union of Belarus, an Orthodox umbrella organization.
In 2000, authorities in Volozhin, a town of 5,500 that once was predominantly Jewish but today has only 11 Jews, returned the building to Dorn's group.
Dorn says his organization has tried desperately to find resources to renovate the building, which was returned to the community in a rundown condition. In recent years the building had housed a deli.
Founded in 1803 (the structure was built in 1806), the yeshiva, known as Etz Chaim, was a non-Chasidic spiritual center in Eastern Europe, 55 miles from Minsk.
Despite wars, czarist decrees and revolutions, the school stayed open in the historic building until World War II, when the Nazis occupied Belarus. They killed 800,000 of the country's Jews, including about 3,500 Jews of Volozhin and the surrounding area.
Dorn says that over the past seven years, they raised $22,000 to do some work in the building, which offers a temporary exhibit about the yeshiva. Some 300 foreign Jewish tourists visit each year, he says.
The building is in very bad shape and can be seen from the mayor's window, which may be a reason for the city pressuring the community. If the structure cannot be renovated, Volozhin may sell it as a commercial property.
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