Remuh Synagogue and Cemetary

Consent to build the synagogue was granted by King Sigismund Augustus (Zygmunt August) himself to the wealthy merchant Isserl ben Josef. It was to be a gift for his son, Moses Isserles, known as Remuh. Remuh held the post of Rabbi of Kraków and rector of the local yeshiva (Talmudic school). Here, he wrote works on religion, philosophy, mysticism, and natural sciences. He was the most eminent codifier of Ashkenazi law (that is of the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe). His ritual codex entitled Mappa (The Tablecloth) is used by Orthodox Jews all over the world even to this day.

The building erected in 1556, most probably wooden, was soon consumed by fire, yet was rebuilt again within two years, this time of solid materials. The Renaissance character of the synagogue was later lost in unsatisfactory renovations, so that today it is hard to find clearly visible features of that style. The eye is attracted by the powerful, stone buttresses supporting the relatively small building.

During the second world war, its devastated interior was turned into a storehouse for impregnated body bags, while firefighting equipment was kept in the so-called babiniec (i.e. the women’s hall). The synagogue was renovated and partially reconstructed in 1958-1968.

The Hebrew inscription on the Szeroka Street gate informs us that we are hereby entering the New Synagogue of Remuh of Blessed Memory. Only a few elements of the original furnishing have been preserved in the men’s hall with its characteristic barrel vaulting. One of them is the stone moneybox by the entrance. The inscription on it says: “gold, silver, copper”, which was to encourage almsgiving. Another original element is the late-Renaissance stone Aaron Hakodesh – (Holy Ark enclosing the Torah Scrolls), framed with double pilasters and crowned with the Tables of the Ten Commandments. The plaque to the right of the altar commemorates the place were Rabbi Remuh used to pray, and which remains unoccupied during services to this day.

Today, the synagogue is Kraków’s only Jewish house of prayer with regular services: on each Friday and Jewish holidays. In 1968 it was visited by the then Metropolitan Bishop of Kraków, Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, and the President of Israel, Chaim Herzog, came here to pray in 1992.

Next to the Remuh Synagogue is the cemetery of the same name which is slightly older than the synagogue, as the first burials took place here in 1551. There are only two older Jewish cemeteries in Poland, situated in Wrocław and Lublin. Initially, the cemetery was accessed through a gate in the wall in ul. Jakuba, which was later blocked. After Kazimierz was merged with Kraków in 1800, the Remuh Cemetery was closed by a decision of the Austrian authorities, very like all of Kraków’s church cemeteries which were situated as a rule next to dense residential development. Not only was it quite a bedraggled place before the second world war, with just a few tens of matzevahs, but the Nazis also turned it into a rubbish dump.

When, finally, the work on organising and stocktaking began in the cemetery in 1956, the researchers were puzzled by the fact that large spaces in the cemetery were empty, and there were no traces of the tombs removed. During excavation works, a sensational discovery was made: there were around 700 tombs ranging from the latter half of the 16th to the earlier half of the 19th century covered with a thick layer of soil. Made of sandstone and Pińczów limestone, and occasionally of the Dębnik marble, they were usually incomplete and damaged, yet covered in romantic bass-relief typical of Jewish decorative art. Today there are 711 graves standing in the cemetery, some of the tomb type, others in the form of freestanding slabs, that is matzevahs. Fragments of those slabs that could not be saved were incorporated into the wall on the ul. Szeroka side, forming the so-called Wall of Tears.

The cemetery is an attraction to Jews from all over the world because of the grave of Rabbi Moses Isserles (d. 1572). Most of them leave little scraps of paper here with requests (so-called kwitłech) hoping for Remuh’s intercession before God. The Rabbi’s grave is the only one in the cemetery not to have been destroyed. For centuries the Jewish community maintained it in good condition. Its rescue from the turmoil of war is attributed to a miraculous intervention: there is a tale of a German who wanted to destroy it being struck by lightning which is often recalled. Preserved on his matzevah is the 16th-century inscription: “from Moses [the prophet] to Moses [Isserles] there was no such Moses”. It is a testimony to the great deference that Remuh enjoyed among Jews.