Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine:
Sumy.
Chairman of the community: r. Yechiel Levitansky
Tel: +38 (0542) 78-83-77
Address: Kooperativnaya Str., 15, Sumy
Community history
As a county town in the province of Kharkov Sumy were outside the "Pale" and until the abolition of this law by the Provisional Government in March 1917, maintained restrictions on the residence of Jews. This explains the scarcity of the Sumy Jewish community in different years of city existence and at the same time, more affluent character of its members in a material respect.
In 1897 in Sumy of 28 thousand inhabitants 759 were Jews, that is 2.8% of the population, and in Sumy county the population of Jews was 1012. The Jewish population of Sumy belonged to the petty-bourgeois and merchant class because only they had the right to live outside the Pale. In this way, according to family lists, in 1905, out of 56 merchant families five were Jewish, and by 1912 the number of Jewish merchants doubled.
Engineers, financiers, doctors, pharmacists, etc. began to come to town with the development of capitalist relations. The first Jewish intellectuals of the city was forming. Sumy Jews kept their language, religion, culture, traditions and family life. There were three prayer houses, a handcraft Synagogue with the schools for boys, a Jewish kindergarten and a trade school in the city.
Sumy had massacres and other disasters, but the Sumy Jewish community was able to help healing the wounds of their fellow believers. During the World War II from February 1942 to September 1943 about thousand of innocent Jews were murdered.
Education of the independent Ukraine has made possible the existence of the Jewish community in the city, and in the early 90s Sumy Jewish community numbered 700 people. Since 2005 the community created programs for young Jews to study Torah and Jewish traditions. The Jewish kindergarten was opened in 2007. The same year was the beginning of mikvah construction.
With the arrival of the rabbi and his family in the city of Sumy, the Jewish community began to pay more attention to 10 companies which had been initiated by the Lubavitcher Rebbe.