Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Chania launches campaign to saveCrete’s Jewish library

Etz Hayyim Synagogue stands in a small alley off Kondhilaki Streer in Evraiki or the former Jewish quarter in the old town of Chania (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Etz Hayyim, meaning ‘Tree of Life’ (עץ חיים) is a popular name for synagogues. I was writing last week about the reopening of the Etz Hayyim synagogue in Larissa; it is the name of the oldest synagogue in Athens and, closer to home, the name of the synagogue in Milton Keynes. And it is also the home of one of my favourite synagogues, the Etz Hayyim (Ετζ Χαγίμ) Synagogue in Chania.

The phrase is used for the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden (see Genesis 2: 9). It also found throughout the Book of Proverbs, where it refers figuratively to Wisdom (Proverbs 3: 18) and is associated with ‘the fruit of a righteous man’ (Proverbs 11: 30), ‘a desire fulfilled’ (Proverbs 13: 12) and a ‘healing tongue’ (Proverbs 15: 4).

The plural form Atzei Chaim (עצי חיים) is also used for the wooden poles to which the parchment of a Sefer Torah is attached. In Kabbalah, Etz Ḥayim is the name of a work by Rabbi Ḥayim Vital after the death of Isaac Luria in 1572 and the foundational work for later Lurianic Kabbalah.

The courtyard of the Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Chania … there have been Jews in Crete for over 2,300 years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Chania is vital link in Crete’s 2,300-year-old Jewish heritage, and it urgently needs help to buy the neighbouring building on 24 Parodos Kondylaki Street. The building is rented but is integral part of Etz Hayyim as the home to the library, archives, and essential facilities. But now it is at risk of being lost to commercial development.

The synagogue must raise €300,000 by the end of this summer to secure this vital space and protect it for generations to come as part of the historical identity of Etz Hayyim and to protect the synagogue’s cultural and spiritual significance.

Etz Hayyim Synagogue, in the heart of Chania’s historic Jewish quarter, is the last remaining trace of Jewish life on Crete. This space is more than a synagogue – it is a centre for cultural exchange, reconciliation and education. It welcomes over 30,000 visitors annually, offering a unique window into a rich history of resilience and survival.

The building housing the library has been an integral part of Jewish life in Chania for over 15 years. The property is rented and houses the library, archives and the Evlagon Research Centre, as well as an apartment the caretaker and his family.

The building was owned by the Jewish community until 1945. Now it is at risk of being sold and being used for commercial tourism that would pose threats the historical significance and security of the synagogue. Chania is undergoing rapid gentrification, and many properties being transformed into tourist accommodations, eroding the city’s rich cultural fabric.

Losing this building would mean losing the secure location of the library, its archives and the repository of Jewish history in Crete.

The revival of the Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Chania is due to the vision and hard work of Nicholas Stavroulakis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The name of the Evlagon Institute for Cretan Jewish Studies honours the memory of Avraham Evlagon (1846-1933), the last Chief Rabbi of Crete. The library originated in the personal collection of the founding director, Nikos Stavroulakis. It also houses 250 CDs of Romaniote and Sephardi liturgical and secular music.

A significant portion of the collection was lost or damaged in arson attacks in 2010, when the synagogue’s archive were also destroyed, including documentation of its renovation in the 1990s.

The holdings on Jewish history in Crete continue to expand. In collaboration with the University of Crete’s library in Rethymnon, the collection is being integrated into the university’s online library catalogue, improving access for scholars and researchers worldwide.

Etz Hayyim’s archive is also a resource for people of Romaniote and Sephardi descent tracing their family histories in Chania and Crete.

The library is an integral part of Etz Hayyim and houses books, archives,and essential facilities (Photograph: Etz Hayyim

Anja Zuckmantel has been the Executive Director of the Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Chania since 2014. She worked with Nikos Stavroulakis for over 10 years in putting in place his vision for Etz Hayyim as an inclusive and inspiring place, ‘a true synagogue’.

Nikos died at 85 on 19 May 2017. Since then the team of staff members and volunteers at Etz Hayyim have been working at maintaining the unique character of Etz Hayyim, expanding its outreach, especially in education, research and a variety of initiatives, preserving the memory of the Jewish community of Crete. At the heart of these efforts is the library, built largely on Nikos’s private collection of books and papers and also including the research library.

However, in an email this week, Anja Zuckmantel has reached out to the friends of Etz Hayyim with an urgent request, saying Etz Hayyim is facing a serious challenge.

She points out that the building is a space that safeguards the memory and history of the once-thriving Jewish community of Crete. But it is now up for sale, and unless the synagogue finds the resources to buy it, ‘the space risks being lost to commercial development and overtourism in Hania. At the same time, the synagogue would lose an important pilar in the security arrangements for Etz Hayyim.’

The Aron Hakodesh or Ark in the Etz Hayyim Synagogue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Etz Hayyim must raise €300,000 by the end of this summer to secure this vital building and preserve its contents for generations to come. ‘Every contribution counts, and even the smallest donation brings us closer to safeguarding this irreplaceable part of our community’s life,’ she says.

A fundraising campaign has started and the urgency of the campaign is further detailed on the crowdfunding page here.

This is not just about a building. It is about protecting the stories, research, and memory of a community almost entirely destroyed during the Holocaust, when the Jews of Crete were deported by the Nazis on the ship Tanais. Tragically, the ship was sunk by a British torpedo – unaware of its human cargo – and the entire community perished.

By the 1950s, Etz Hayyim stood abandoned and in disrepair. But decades later, with the help of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece and international supporters, the synagogue was restored and reopened – transforming it into a living monument, a place of worship, and a centre for interfaith dialogue and cultural preservation.

Today, Etz Hayyim welcomes thousands of visitors each year – Jewish and non-Jewish alike – from around the world.

Etz Hayyim commemorated the Cretan Jewish community in Crete last year (2024) with a series of cultural events. A documentary film, The Tanais, by Vicky Arvelaki recently premiered at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, renewing public awareness of this tragic history. You can watch the trailer here.

The fundraising campaign is administered by Etz Hayyim, a legally registered charitable organisation. In her email, Anja Zuckmantel promises ‘all donations contribute to the purpose of the fundraising campaign. We post regular updates on the status of the campaign on our Social Media channels.’

The bimah or prayer platform in the Etz Hayyim Synagogue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The campaign to ‘Save Our Library, Safeguard Our Future’ can be supported by

• Donating here: https://whydonate.com/en/fundraising/etz-hayyim-hania

• Sharing the campaign with family, friends and networks

• Following the campaign on social media

• Subscribing to the monthly newsletter on Substack

All these links are in available in one place.

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 84, Friday 1 August 2025, Lammas Day

Jesus Unrolls the Book in the Synagogue (Jésus dans la synagogue déroule le livre), James Tissot (1831-1902), Brooklyn Museum (see Matthew 13: 54)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church, and the week began with the Sixth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity VI, 27 July 2025). We have reached the beginning of a new month today.

In many places, in the past, 1 August was known as Lammas, from an Old English word hlāfmæsse, meaning loaf-mass, or as Loaf Mass Day. The name originates from the word ‘loaf’ in reference to bread and ‘Mass’ in reference to the Eucharist. It is a festival to mark the blessing of the First Fruits of harvest, with a loaf of bread being brought to the church for this purpose. Lammastide falls at the halfway point between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox.

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

Jesus in the Synagogue, as imagined by the Northern Ireland-born artist Greg Olsen

Matthew 13: 54-58 (NRSVA):

54 He came to his home town and began to teach the people in their synagogue, so that they were astounded and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power? 55 Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? 56 And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?’ 57 And they took offence at him. But Jesus said to them, ‘Prophets are not without honour except in their own country and in their own house.’ 58 And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief.

Stained glass windows in my old school chapel at Gormanston College, Co Meath (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This morning’s reflection:

Where do you call home, and where do feel most at home?

I have been living for more than three years now in Stony Stratford, on the north-west fringes of Milton Keynes and by the River Ouse, which separates Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire.

But I was born on Rathfarnham Road in Dublin, spent parts of my childhood in West Waterford and in Dublin, went to school in Dublin and in Co Meath, began working as a journalist in Lichfield, lived in my early adult years in Wexford, I have lived in different houses in south Dublin from late 1974 until 2017, and I spent five years in parish ministry in west Limerick and north Kerry before moving here.

I have studied in Reading, Dublin, Maynooth, Tokyo, Cambridge and London.

If you were to ask me where I am from, I may look puzzled and sound incoherent as I try to reply. Yet, in my sleep and in my mind’s eye, I still wander easily through the many houses where I have lived and through the classrooms and lecture rooms of the many schools and colleges where I have studied.

I wonder how Jesus would have answered a question like that? He was born in Bethlehem, he spent his early days as a refugee in Egypt, Joseph and Mary seem to have grown up in the small town of Nazareth, they returned there after Jesus’ birth and their exile in Egypt, and he spent his childhood there.

Eventually, though, Jesus moved to the more populated town of Capernaum on the shores of the Sea of Galilee (see Matthew 9: 1; John 2: 12). He would go on to spend the last period of his ministry in Jerusalem, and was executed outside the city walls.

In this morning’s reading, Jesus returns to visit his ‘home town’, which may have been Nazareth or Capernaum.

In Saint Luke’s Gospel, when he returns to Nazareth, the people try to kill him (see Luke 4: 16-29). This morning’s reading appears to describe a separate occasions.

Both Nazareth and Capernaum, like most towns in that region at that time, had a synagogue. It was common for visiting rabbis to be invited to speak in the synagogue when in town. Jesus did so in Nazareth and Capernaum, and did some miracles there, perhaps of healing, though not do many (Matthew 13: 58).

The reaction to Jesus’ teaching and his miracles was one of astonishment and rejection, and his own people asked where he got this wisdom and the ability to do these mighty works.

If, as an adult, you live far away from home, what do you do when you return home? Do you return home for Christmas, or family events such as weddings and funerals?

Do you visit family members … ageing parents, uncles, aunts, siblings, cousins? Have they changed much since you left? Do they think you have changed much?

Do you walk past the old family home? Do you wonder how the families who now live there have changed the rooms inside? Do you want to see inside your own former bedroom, or regret the front garden has been changed to make way for car parking spaces?

Do you visit your old school? Do you contact old school friends or old teachers? Have they changed much since you left? Do they accept who you have become?

Do you visit the church you knew as a child or teenager, or your old school chapel? Has it changed much – not just in the clergy who are there, but in its layout and design, in its style of worship and the ways in which it emphasises its teachings?

My school year from Gormanston in 1969 meet up every now and then, and met again for lunch in Dublin last September. We shared memories of members of our year who have died since we left, including Tom Lappin and John McCarthy who died last year. It was not only yet another opportunity to meet each other but also to find out how we had been getting on over the previous 55 years, and to affirm one another and renew friendships.

But so often, sadly, we want to tie people to the memories we have of them in the past, memories that may have been distorted over the years, and that can no longer be placed back in their original contexts.

And too often, we know from our life experiences, that assumptions and prejudices can blind us to truth. When we think we know something, or someone, we tend to favour those expectations over new information.

Many, many people in the world think they already know all about Jesus. Many, however – including those who claim to be closest to often – often know very little about him, continue in their assumptions and prejudices, and are offended when they are presented with the truth (Matthew 13: 57).

My old school at Gormanston College, Co Meath … has your old school changed since you left? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 1 August 2025):

The theme this week (27 to 2 August) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Reunited at Last’. This theme was introduced yesterday with a programme update from Raja Moses, Programme Coordinator, Diocese of Durgapur, Church of North India.

The USPG prayer diary today (Friday 1 August 2025) invites us to pray:

Lord, just like the landlord and AHT team, please bless those who step forward to help. Grant courage to act against injustice.

The Collect:

Merciful God,
you have prepared for those who love you
such good things as pass our understanding:
pour into our hearts such love toward you
that we, loving you in all things and above all things,
may obtain your promises,
which exceed all that we can desire;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

God of our pilgrimage,
you have led us to the living water:
refresh and sustain us
as we go forward on our journey,
in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Creator God,
you made us all in your image:
may we discern you in all that we see,
and serve you in all that we do;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

At No 18 High Street, Wexford, I had the whole top floor of the house – all two rooms – to myself … in my sleep, I still wander easily through the many houses I have lived in (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org