Beit Hamidrash
Beit Hamidrash
The Beith Hamidrash (Study Room) served as a place of both education and prayer. Jewish men and boys met here to study and discuss the Torah and other religious texts.
The building has two entrances, one on one side and one on the opposite side. One entrance was for men and the other for women, as it was common in Jewish buildings to separate men's and women's areas.
The men's entrance leads through a corridor to the main prayer room. This room was used not only for prayer, but also for discussion and study. On the east wall, among the six neo-Gothic windows, there is one bricked up - this is where the Torah Ark (Hebrew: Aron ha-kodeš) once stood. The space also contains other architectural elements typical of synagogues.
A preserved section of the original wall shows how large the room was before it was expanded. Small openings can be seen under the windows, which were used to store prayer books.
No photographs of the interior of the building survived, so the architects tried to recreate its appearance based on the surviving elements. Some of the murals were preserved, while others were repainted according to the original pattern. Part of the original concrete floor was also preserved and served as a model for finishing the rest of the floor.
The second corridor leads to the staircase to the women's gallery. On the walls, behind glass, are drawings that were discovered during the reconstruction. They were painted in 1942, when the Jewish residents were gathered here before being deported to concentration camps. The drawings contain names of people, street names, but also pictures of soldiers or police officers who guarded them.
The wooden staircase leading to the gallery is original, but the railing was not preserved, so the architects designed a new one based on the model from the Bikur Cholim synagogue. The ceiling of the gallery is decorated with beautifully restored paintings, and part of the original wooden floor remains intact.
Today, the Beith Hamidrash building is completely renovated thanks to financial support Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic and co-financing Committee for the Protection of Jewish Heritage in BardejovThe renovation began in late 2022 and was completed in 2024. The building will serve as Museum of Jewish Heritage and will become part of a museum and educational center in the Jewish suburb of Bardejov.
- The largest and most famous of the pre-World War II synagogues in Bardejov is the Old Synagogue.
Beit Hamidrash
After renovation in 2024, it will be part of a cultural and educational center in the Jewish suburb.






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