The only synagogue currently in Ein Gedi, Israel, is really the remnants of a synagogue: a beautiful mosaic floor that once graced a 3rd century structure. If Mayor Dov Litvinoff has his way, though, Ein Gedi will have a fully functioning shul once again in 2018.
“It’s actually a big deal,” Litvinoff told The Jewish Press on a visit to New York last week. “It’s the first time after 2,000 years that someone is building a beit knesset in the area.”
Billed as “Ma’makim: The Synagogue situated at the lowest place in the world,” the shul is set to include a mikveh, a multi-functional hall, and, of course, a praying area for 100-150 people.
Litvinoff said the shul is just one project among several that he has promoted on behalf of observant Jews. He cited, for example, the fully separate beach for men and women that opened in Ein Bodek in 2012 and which 200,000 people use annually.
The great-grandson of Jews who escaped Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution, Litvinoff was born in Argentina, immigrating to Israel with his family in 1969. The Tamar Regional Council, over which he currently presides as mayor, represents only 1,400 residents, but it also looks after the needs of two million tourists who visit the Dead Sea area annually.
The Dead Sea itself, though, is in danger. Its shoreline is receding a meter a year – its surface area shrank by 30 percent in the last two decades – and Litvinoff is anxious to avoid what some see as a looming ecological disaster.
“Today, instead of one billion cubic meters of water flowing from the lower Jordan River to the Dead Sea, only 100 million cubic meters is flowing down…. We have more people living in Israel drinking the water while [at the same time] Jordan closed the Ganya Dam as well as the Yarmouk River in Syria that brought water to the Dead Sea.”
Litvinoff was in the United States last week in part to attend a Jewish National Fund conference in Chicago in the hopes of sparking the organization’s interest in addressing the Dead Sea’s woes. Solutions over the years have included constructing a canal from the Red Sea or the Mediterranean Sea, “but for now, nothing has been done yet,” Litvinoff said.
Nonetheless, Litvinoff remains committed. “I see the Dead Sea as a life project. Maybe God put me in this position to do things for the area.”
