The Baal Shem Tov Synagogue of Piatra Neamț: A Wooden Prayer House Sunk in the Earth

At the eastern edge of Piatra Neamț’s old princely court stands a low timber building whose prayer hall is sunk into the ground. This is the “Baal Shem Tov” synagogue, an 18th-century wooden synagogue still used for prayer, and beside it stands the Leipziger synagogue of the late 19th century. Together they are all that remains of the community’s dozens of houses of prayer.

A Synagogue on Church Land

According to Yad Vashem’s Pinkas HaKehillot, local tradition holds that Piatra Neamț’s great synagogue was built as early as the 16th century, and that the town’s Jews hid Prince Petru Rareș in it during his war with the Turks. This is tradition, not documented fact. The earliest physical evidence of Jews in the town is a tombstone of 1627 in the old cemetery.

The Pinkas relates that the first synagogue was built of stone and collapsed, and that in 1766 Prince Grigore Alexandru Ghica allowed it to be rebuilt, this time in wood. The building stood on land belonging to a nearby church, and the community paid a rent that the church raised again and again. The dispute dragged on for decades; only in 1873 did the Court of Appeal in Iași rule that the community should buy the building and pay in cash. Romanian sources describe the land instead as part of the princely court’s domain, on which an annual levy was paid.

The Pinkas adds a social detail: craftsmen prayed in the women’s gallery, merchants in the main hall. The synagogue was also the centre of the organised community. The burial society’s register, preserved from 1771, was probably kept by Rabbi Yechiel Michal ben Yosef, who died in 1775 and is regarded as the community’s first rabbi.

When Was It Actually Built?

The year 1766 appears in the synagogue list of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania (FCER), in the Pinkas, and in a 2015 Radio Romania International feature. But the sources are not consistent. The Neamț county tourism portal and a Romanian business paper give 1763, while citing in the same breath a princely charter of 19 July 1766. Another page on the same portal dates the charter to 1776, probably a typo. The World Monuments Fund (WMF) describes the building as one of Romania’s few remaining 17th-century synagogues. The synagogue’s Torah-ark curtain bears an embroidered Hebrew inscription dated 1767. The likeliest reading is that the present building went up soon after the permit of 1766, on the foundations of an earlier synagogue, but we found no architectural study that settles the question.

The Baal Shem Tov: Tradition, Not Record

The name “Baal Shem Tov” rests on local tradition. According to the legend, Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, the founder of Hasidism, withdrew into the nearby Ceahlău mountains and came down to pray in the synagogue on the Sabbath. The Pinkas mentions local stories that the Baal Shem Tov lived in the nearby Carpathians, and some say he was born in a nearby village, but it does not link him to any building.

Radio Romania points out the chronological problem: the Baal Shem Tov died in 1760, six years before the permit for the present building. If the story has a historical kernel, it concerns the earlier synagogue on the same site. Restoration work did find evidence of an earlier building, but according to the same source no document confirms the legend.

The Building

The synagogue is built of thick oak and fir beams, and according to Radio Romania it was raised by local craftsmen. Its dovetailed corner joints resemble those of the wooden churches and monasteries of the Bistrița valley, and from outside the building recalls the region’s Orthodox churches. The prayer hall lies about 1.80 metres below ground level. The explanation usually given locally is a rule attributed to Stephen the Great, under which a non-Christian house of worship near a church could not rise above it.

Inside stands a Torah ark carved from solid wood in 1835, in three tiers on columns clad in bronze and silver. The county portal attributes it to a craftsman named Saraga Itchok ben Moishe. On the north side is a two-level gallery, on the west the women’s gallery, and on the south a small children’s gallery. The women’s gallery has been turned into a small museum of ritual objects, books, menorahs, photographs and documents from the town’s demolished synagogues.

The Jewish Courtyard

The synagogue does not stand alone. In the same fenced courtyard, at Strada Dimitrie Ernici 7, stands the Leipziger synagogue, also known as “the Temple.” The Federation lists it as a building of 1898 and both synagogues as active. In 2003, according to JewishGen, the Temple was the only working synagogue in town, while the wooden building awaited restoration. According to Radio Romania, these two are the only survivors of the town’s synagogues, many of the others having been demolished in urban redevelopment. Before the war the Pinkas counts, besides the great synagogue, 16 houses of prayer and study, among them the Tailors’ study house, the Chabad study house of 1844 and the “Kleizle.”

About thirty metres away, on the same street, are the remains of the princely court’s wall and Stephen the Great’s tower, so the synagogue is part of the town’s historic core.

Restoration and New Life

In 2001 the World Monuments Fund funded a survey and planning, followed by some eight years of restoration. On 14 December 2009, at Hanukkah, the synagogue was rededicated, and according to Radio Romania a Torah scroll was brought from Israel for the occasion. The sources say the restoration preserved the original structure rather than rebuilding it. In 2015 Radio Romania spoke of 2,000 to 2,500 visitors a year, mostly between April and October. Today the synagogue is also a cultural venue: the community’s president, the writer and art critic Emil Nicolae Nadler, holds an annual “Victor Brauner Day” here in memory of the town’s surrealist painter, and 2025 saw its twelfth edition in the current format.

Visiting

The synagogue is at Strada Dimitrie Ernici 7, next to the princely court and Stephen the Great’s tower. The courtyard is fenced and locked, and we found no published fixed hours. Arrange your visit in advance with the Jewish Community of Piatra Neamț, Strada Petru Rareș 7, tel. +40 233 223 815, per the Federation’s website. What to look for:

• The sunken prayer hall and the thick dovetailed beams
• The carved Torah ark of 1835 and the curtain with its Hebrew inscription
• The small museum in the women’s gallery
• The Leipziger synagogue in the same courtyard

For the community’s history, see our story on the Jews of Piatra Neamț.