Bedek HaBayit restores and renovates neglected synagogues in Israel to re-establish them as valuable community spaces. 

There are a plethora of neglected and dilapidated synagogues in Israel. These synagogues were built by the state in the 1930s-50s era as responses to the Shoah and anti-Semitism, but were privatized years ago. Today, they are beyond the capacity of the private congregations to clean and maintain.

To address this issue Bedek HaBayit was created nearly a decade ago by the former Haifa Chief Rabbi Eliyahu Yosef She'ar Yashuv Cohen in coordination with RHIF, employing a model developed at Columbia University and Technion. Bedek HaBayit restores dilapidated synagogues in Israel and re-establishes them as valuable community spaces to be used by charities, NGOs and philanthropies. Furthermore, Bedek HaBayit helps refurbish excessively large synagogues that can no longer be maintained by the community. Bedek HaBayit creatively renovates these synagogues with a smaller sanctuary and more space for other uses, such as administrative offices, but in such a way that the sanctuaries can still be enlarged for the High Holy Days.

Despite the self-evident value of this project, it has met with significant resistance from local Rabbinates who would rather see the synagogues deteriorate to a point of no return so that the land can be sold to developers for a profit.

Bedek HaBayit utilizes Robin Hood Israel's crowd funding platform to restore these synagogues and in so doing ensures they retain their value to the community. We are presently working on completing 2 projects in Netanya, and individual projects in Ra’anana, Ashkelon and Beer Sheva.

Accomplishments