1952), arrests and interrogations of Jews in East Berlin and East Germany (January 1953), and the Soviet Doctors' plot (started on 13 January 1953). Members of the Jüdische Gemeinde in East Berlin, hoping to spare themselves from further persecution, formed a new provisional executive board competent only for the eastern sector, and thus divided the Jewish community into an eastern and a western one (21 January 1953). In 1958 the Jewish Community of East Berlin was prompted to demolish the ruined rear sections of their building, including the soot-blackened ruin of the main prayer hall, leaving only the less-destroyed front section. The damaged, but mostly preserved, central dome on top of the front section was also torn down in the 1950s. East Berlin's Jewish Community, impoverished and small after the Shoah (Holocaust) and the flight of many surviving members from anti-Semitism, saw no chance to restore it. It was not until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 that reconstruction of the front section began. From 1988 to 1993, the structurally intact parts of the building close to the street, including the façade, the dome, and some rooms behind were restored as the "Centrum Judaicum" ("Jewish Center"); the main sanctuary was not restored. In May 1995, a small synagogue congregation was reestablished using the former women's wardrobe room. The area behind the restored frontage, formerly the main prayer hall, remains an empty space, and is open to visitors. Together with the New Synagogue, the whole Spandauer Vorstadt neighbourhood (lit. "suburb towards Spandau", often confused with the Scheunenviertel) experienced a revival. Chic restaurants and boutiques opened up in the area, catering to an increasingly bourgeois clientele. In 2007 Gesa Ederberg became the first female pulpit rabbi in Berlin when she became the rabbi of the New Synagogue. Her installation was opposed by Berlin's senior Orthodox rabbi, Yitzchak Ehrenberg. Today Jewish services are now held again in the New Synagogue; the congregation is the Berlin community's sole Masorti synagogue. Most of the building, however, houses offices and a museum. The dome may also be visited. See also Religion in Berlin Fasanenstrasse Synagogue Louis Lewandowski – Choirmaster at the Neue Synagogue and composer of sacred music Notes References Sources External links Centrum Judaicum Interior image c1870 2nd interior image c1870 Ashkenazi Jewish culture in Berlin Ashkenazi synagogues Buildings and structures in Mitte Conservative Judaism in Germany Conservative synagogues Synagogues completed in 1866