A Street Erased, a Synagogue Lost: Bucharest’s Malbim

On a small street called Bravilor, in the heart of Bucharest’s old Jewish quarter, a synagogue named after one of the great Bible commentators stood for more than 120 years. It survived riots, war and an earthquake — but not Ceaușescu’s bulldozers. Today not even its street remains.

Number 4, Strada Bravilor: A Synagogue in the Heart of the Quarter

The Malbim Synagogue stood at Strada Bravilor 4, in the Jewish quarter that stretched between Calea Văcărești and Calea Dudești, near the long-vanished Piața Cauzași. It was a dense district of workshops, small shops and dozens of prayer houses, some only a few minutes’ walk apart. Romanian sources describe the Malbim as a major spiritual centre for Romania’s Jews, and some call it the largest Orthodox synagogue in the country.

The address itself is a frequent source of confusion. Some accounts place it on Strada Mămulari, but that street was home to other synagogues — the A. B. Zisu synagogue (Mămulari 8) and the Achdut Kodesh synagogue (Mămulari 13). The sources we checked, including Radio Romania International and the history magazine Historia, place the Malbim at Strada Bravilor 4.

1864: A Synagogue Named for a Rabbi Forced to Leave

According to Radio Romania International and Historia, the synagogue was built in 1864 on the initiative of Rabbi Meir Leibush Wisser, the Malbim (1809–1879), then Chief Rabbi of Bucharest and of Romania. It was a fraught year: that spring the rabbi was arrested and expelled from the country after a long struggle with the community’s progressive circles. His name thus became attached to a synagogue in which he himself can barely have prayed. For his tenure, the controversy and the expulsion, see our separate article on the Malbim in Bucharest.

The name carried a message. In a city where the Choral Temple, with its choir and organ, was going up in those same years, the Malbim remained the address of an Orthodox public that saw the exiled rabbi as a symbol of loyalty to tradition.

1912: A New Building in a Changing Quarter

In 1912 the synagogue was rebuilt, according to Radio Romania International. The new building was of brick, and early twentieth-century photographs show an imposing façade with arched windows rising above the low houses of the street. Beyond prayer, it served a whole community: study, family celebrations and a meeting place for the Jews of the quarter.

January 1941: The Legionary Pogrom

Between 21 and 23 January 1941, during the Iron Guard’s rebellion against Ion Antonescu, Bucharest’s Jews were subjected to a savage pogrom. According to the final report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania (the Wiesel Commission), 125 Jews were murdered. The great Sephardi synagogue, Cahal Grande, was set on fire and burned to the ground, and many other synagogues were looted and desecrated. The Malbim Synagogue, too, was vandalised by the legionnaires — and it continued to function after the war, when the depleted community returned to it.

From the Earthquake to the Bulldozers

The severe earthquake of March 1977 damaged the synagogue. The final blow, however, came with Nicolae Ceaușescu’s “systematisation” programme of the 1980s. To build the House of the People (today the Palace of Parliament) and the monumental “Victory of Socialism” boulevard — now Bulevardul Unirii — entire streets of the Jewish quarter and the neighbouring districts were wiped out. The Malbim Synagogue stood directly in the path.

Sources differ on the year of demolition: Radio Romania International and Historia give 1986, while other sources give 1987. It was not alone. The Zisu synagogue on Strada Mămulari was demolished in 1986 to make way for the new Hala Unirii market hall, and the Small Spanish Temple (Cahal Cicu) and the Or Hadash (“New Light”) synagogue fell in 1987. Within a few years almost the entire built landscape of old Jewish Bucharest had disappeared.

Visiting

There is nothing to visit at the address: Strada Bravilor itself has been erased from the map, and the boulevards and apartment blocks of Ceaușescu’s “Civic Centre” now run through the area, around Bulevardul Unirii and east of Piața Unirii. This is a place of memory, not a site.

Those who want to see what survives of this world will find, within walking distance, the synagogues that remain in the old quarter:

• The Choral Temple — the city’s main active synagogue, whose story is bound up with the Malbim’s controversy.
• The Great Synagogue — the nineteenth-century Ashkenazi synagogue, today also a Holocaust memorial museum.
• The Holy Union Temple — home of the Jewish Museum of Romania.

Opening hours vary; it is best to arrange a visit in advance with the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania (FCER).