The Jewish community in Tyumen, Siberia, dedicated a new synagogue in a ceremony attended by Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar.
Tyumen is a large industrial city and home to a growing Jewish community which has seen significant development in the past 15 years under the leadership of Rabbi Yerachmiel Gorelick.
"The old space became too small to hold the community," Rabbi Gorelick explained, thanking donors for allowing the community to move to a new, spacious facility.
Rabbi Lazar, who flew in from Moscow with a delegation of supporters for a one-day visit, placed the mezuzah at the main entrance to the synagogue, and spoke at the event.
Afterwards, a mezuzah was placed at the entrance to the new mikvah (ritual bath).
Attendees were very moved by the tile placed in the mikvah wall: It had been brought from the historic mikvah in Rostov, which was built by the fifth Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe, Rabbi Sholom Dovber Shcneersohn, known as the "Rashab."
Parallel to this, the community held a cornerstone-laying ceremony for a new Jewish center in the center of the city.
At the moving ceremony, attendees shoveled the snow away and laid the cornerstone for the building - a stone brought especially from the courtyard of "770," the world Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in New York.
The facade of the new building is planned to be similar to that of 770.