Brick from the domed arches of the synagogue in Brody.

Brick from the domed arches of the synagogue in Brody.

The synagogue

In the first half of the 18th century, a wooden synagogue (from the 16th century) burned down during a fire. In 1742, the Jewish community decided to build a brick synagogue. The local authorities, pressured by the Lutsk Bishop, did not want to give permission to the construction and requested a payment of 350 zlotys a year for an annual maintenance of one student in the Lutsk Seminary. It was only when the Quahal consented to this condision; the construction of the great synagogue began, as evidenced by the inscription on the attica on the east side of the building.

The synagogue in Brody was one of the largest in Galicia. The fortified building was erected on a square plan. The main prayer hall was surrounded by lower outbuildings from the south, west and north.

In May 1859, the synagogue burned down in a fire that destroyed the greater part of Brody. At the beginning of the 20th century, renovation works were conducted.

The synagogue suffered considerably during World War II; outbuildings from the south and north were destroyed. In the middle of the 1960s, the building was renovated and the interior was adapted as a warehouse. Due to the leaking roof, the building was put out of use, which has led to its rapid ruin. In the summer of 1988, the western wall and the adjacent outbuilding collapsed. In February 2006, a part of the vaults also collapsed. Currenty, the synagogue is a ruin.

On the site of the building on Honcharska 10, there was once a so-called Small Synagogue. After the great fire at the beginning of the 19th century, the synagogue was restored (c. 1804), and received the name of a "New" synagogue. It was demolished shortly after World War II.

According to data from the census of synagogues conducted in 1826, in addition to the two mentioned synagogues, there were 6 others, ilcuding two wooden ones.

In 1756, in a synagogue in Brody, the Orthodox Jews condemned the Frankists and in 1772, they condemned the Hasidim, who were exiled from the city in the next years, аnd their books burned. Nevertheless, at the turn of the 18th and the 19th century, Brody became an important centre of the Hasidic culture.

In the 18th century, Brody was a famous Jewish center of the Kabbalah studies. There was the so-called "Broder kloyz" (a private kloyz, maintained by the family of Rabbi Jacob Babada), associated with the predecessors of the Hasidim – a group of rabbis forming a closed community dedicated to studying the Torah and the Kabbalah. Initially, they were against the Hasidic movement, but some of them became its followers. Although the ritual and the Kabbalistic practices were the same in both groups, the representatives of the first of them opposed to the dissemination of the Kabbalistic knowledge. However, with the creation and rapid development of Hasidism, an increasingly larger group of Jews joined this new movement. It should also be noted, that Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer Baal Shem-Tov himself lived in Brody for some time and married a daughter of a local merchant and scholar Ephraim Kutower. Before World War I, the local Hasidic Jews were closely involved with the Belz Hasidic dynasty. Its founder Shalom Rokeach was born in Brody in 1781.

For 50 years, the post of a dayan (a judge in the religious court) in Brody was held by Rabbi Shlomo Kluger (1785–1869), also known as the Magid of Brody. He was the author of 174 songs. Kluger was against the Haskalah. He died and was buried in Brody.

Shlomo Kluger (1785–1869) was a famous rabbi, Talmud expert, preacher, commentator and teacher of religion, one of the most prominent experts of the Torah in Galicia in the 19th century. He was born in the village of Komary in the Lublin governorate, which was then a part of the Russian Empire, to a family of a rabbi. From an early age, he showed an outstanding capacity to learn; he wrote his first commentary to the Torah at the age of 6. He was educated by Rabbi Yaakov Kranz in Zamość, known as the Magid of Dubno. In 1809, he was appointed the Rabbi of Kulykiv and in 1817, he became the Rabbi of Jozefiv (the Lublin governorate); in the summer of 1820, he was appointed the Rabbi of Brody. In 1845, he was offered the position of a rabbi in Berezhany. Despite requests from the local community, Rabbi Shlomo accepted this offer. Shortly after arriving to Berezhany, he fell ill with typhoid and doctors gave him no chances to survival. He promised to go back to Brody if he was ever to recover. He kept his promise and returned to Brody. He lived in Brody until old age (d. 1869).

Shlomo Kluger holds a special place in the rabbi literature of the Eastern Europe and Russia of the first half of the 19th century. Being an outstanding Talmudic and halachic authority, with vast knowledge and outstanding moral features, Kluger became the most popular rabbi not only in Galicia, where he lived and worked, but also in the Russian Empire. His opinion was valued by both the Hasidic Jews and the opponents of Hasidism – the Misnagdim.

At the end of the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th century, the Jews of Brody, who maintained close business relationships with Germany, fostered the spread of the ideas of the Enlightenment (the Haskalah) in Galicia and then in the nearby territories of the Russian Empire. Because its supporters were associated with the German culture, Brody was thought to be the most germanized city in Galicia.

With the support of a well-known Galician Haskalah activist Herz Homberg, a Jewish general school, two lower-level schools and a school for girls were established in Brody. All these facilities, however, were closed by the Austrian Government in 1806. In 1815, the Quahal founded a 3-form school. The headmaster of the school was not a Jew, and religion was replaced with ethics according to the moral-religious reading for children Bnei Zion (Heb. The Sons of Zion) written by Homberg. The school had many enemies among the Orthodox Jews, who opened a rabbinical institute and invited a famous expert in the Talmud Grisha Heller. However, he had to leave Brody, because he was accused of teaching from forbidden books. Soon, also the institute was closed. In 1851, the general school was taken over by the state and converted into a middle school. Initially, there were no classes on Saturdays, and later, 3.5-hour Saturday classes were introduced. In 1847, a Jewish folk school was opened, and the post of the headmaster was held for many years by a famous pedagogue Leopold Herzel. In 1907–1908, he also taught religion in the middle school. During this period, the school had 688 students, including 273 Jewish children.

In the 19th century, Jews accounted for 88% of the population of the city. Brody was the largest city in Europe with such a large percentage of the Jewish population. In the first half of the 19th century, Brody was considered to be the second (after Lviv) town in Galicia in terms of its importance, and was often called the "Jerusalem of the Austro-Hungarian Empire" or the "Trieste on the continent". In the second half of the 19th century, the town became the largest trading center in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The importance of Brody as a centre of trade began to decline after 1879, when it lost the status of a "free city". However, its location on the border remained significant.