On the May 8 of this year the Jewish Religious Community of Armenia received an unhappy informative letter from the Yerevan City administration. By this letter the Community was informed that the building, which was bought as a property by MCIREK “TCHIYA” and given to the Jewish Community of Armenia as its owner to use it as a Community Center “Mordechay Navy”, must be put to amortization in favor of the country. This means that the city administration decided to take back the possession of the territory on which Synagogue is situated. This is not the first decision of the authorities to take back the territories on which different buildings are located. As practice showed, the “compensation of the damage” in its financial equivalent doesn’t allow anybody to purchase an equal building. And if we take into account that the building of the Community Center is in the center of the city, where the price for the 1m² reached 2000 and more dollars in the recent years, it becomes clear that the trifling sum of compensation (after all, the valuation of the property includes the prices of ten years’ prescription, including the deterioration of the building) can deprive the Community from the only Synagogue in the country. It is worth saying, that the Community Center besides the SINAGOGUE hall includes also a Charity canteen and a Sunday school.

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April 16, 2007. 10.00 am. The piercing voice of hooter “paralyzed” the life in Israel for one minute. People, cars, plants, shops-everybody was thrilled in and grew numb for a minute. Iom –a- Shoa is a memory about the perished Jews during the years of Holocaust. The young and the old people, who passed or didn’t pass across the hell-the trials to destruct a whole nation by the fascist Germany-everybody began to think for a minute: how could this happen? How could the country with high culture allow this happen in it, allow the hellish machine “be born” in it, a machine, that destructed women, children, old men. And all by one reason-because they are Jews.
   On April 12, 1951 the Knesset of Israel adopted a resolution to declare the 27th of Nisan (by the Jewish calendar) as a day of Memory and heroism, day of “Shoa”. The word “Shoa” means a destruction by fire. This word became a synonym of the Jews’ destruction on the years of World War II.

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   On the Eve of the Pesach festival the Jewish Religious Community got two important presents. First of all, it was the donation from a dear friend and a particular guest of the Synagogue Mr. Avi Goldstein from New York. Mr. Goldstein’s support made it possible to organize Pesach actions. And the second present was made by the administration of the “Sil” hotel, in the head of its director Mr. Garnik Nersisyan, who gave the hotel’s hall at Community’s disposal absolutely for free.
   In the morning of 1st April it seemed to everybody that Pesach Seder couldn’t be organized caused by the lack of matzah. And this is not a joke for 1st April-really, the container with Pesach meals wasn’t received in time, it was still “wandering” on the Black Sea. The longstanding friendship between the rabbis of Georgia and Armenia saved the situation. Rabbi Gersh Meir Burshteyn managed to bring 50kg of matzah from Georgia.

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On the eve of one of the main festivals of Judaism-the festival of Pesach, on the 25th of March in the Jewish Religious Center of Armenia “Mordechay Navi” there was organized a seminar, which had the purpose to prepare for the coming event. It is worth saying that the class room, in which the seminar was held, was overloaded. Except the people who live in Yerevan, the representatives of the Sevan and Vanadzor Communities also took part in the seminar. By the way, from the words of the eye-witnesses, such practice helps them and the members of their local communities to get acquainted with the traditions of their nation.
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