Откровения в берлине (!) строят копию СТЕНЫ ПЛАЧА

The 100-square-metre replica will be part of Szloma Albam House, which is set to open on 2 September.

The project began when a team from the Chabad-Lubavitch organisation travelled to Jerusalem to photograph a section of the Western Wall, famous for the tradition of inserting tiny prayers on paper into its many cracks.

Almost 19 tons of "Jerusalem Gold" sandstone quarried in the region arrived in Berlin on 11 July and have since been chiselled and installed to match the photographs.

The complete replica, located in the centre's entrance, will also include identical plants sprouting from the cracks.

The Western Wall replica is not meant to be used for worship, but as a symbol and reminder of the centre's mission.

"The Western wall is the Western wall, people go there to pray. When people see this they remind themselves and they get inspired," the centre's executive director, Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal, told AP Television on Wednesday.

He said the centre was a symbolic part of making Berlin a central hub of Jewish life again.

"We believe that in the centre of Germany which was once the essence of evil and darkness, we will bring light, we have to set a positive example that here we will once again rebuild, re-establish and renew Jewish life and spirit," Teichtal said.

The Szloma Albam House, located on Muenstersche Strasse in Berlin's Charlottenburg neighbourhood, has been under construction for three years.

Though opening officially on 2 September, its synagogue is already open for worship and classes are being held amid construction noise.

More than 30 rabbis from around the world and high-ranking German officials will attend the opening.

Teichtal, a native of Brooklyn, New York, whose grandfather's family was killed in the Holocaust, stressed that the centre was meant for everyone, including non-Jews.

Along with a synagogue, Szloma Albam House will have a kosher restaurant, a tourist welcome centre, a library and media centre, conference

centre, seminary, youth lounge, shop, and a top-of-the-line mikvah, or ritual bath.

Ninety percent of the centre's funding was raised within Berlin's Jewish community.

The Jewish community in Germany is the fastest growing in the world, according to the World Jewish Congress, fed by immigrants from the former

Soviet Union.

The Central Council of Jews in Germany says the Jewish community has some 110-thousand registered members.

Some 560-thousand Jews lived in Germany before the Holocaust.

Berlin, with 12-thousand Jews and eight synagogues, has the largest Jewish community in Germany.

One of the Szloma Albam House's primary functions, Teichtal says, is to help these Jewish immigrants integrate into German society.

All services and classes will be taught in German.

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