By COLlive reporter
Catch a Pokemon, get a L’Chaim!
The Grand Choral Synagogue of St. Petersburg in Russia, led by the city’s Chief Rabbi Menachem Mendel Pewzner, is taking a bold approach to the phenomenon of the Pokemon game.
Players who step into the historic synagogue’s majestic interior to catch virtual creatures on their smartphone, will receive a gift if they indeed succeed.
The grand prize: a bottle of kosher wine.
A spokesperson for the synagogue said the hope is to engage Russian youth with its rich past as one of Europe’s largest and most beautiful synagogues, JTA reported.
“The Synagogue is no temple,” the spokesperson said. “It’s a meeting place where fun is permissible within reason… We very much want the youth to know: The synagogue is a modern place, not a boring one.”
Shuttered by communists in 1930 and destroyed almost completely by Nazi artillery during the vicious fight for Leningrad during World War II, the synagogue was rebuilt in the 1940s but was allowed to function under limited use, JTA notes.
The first winner of the prize was Daniel Gurevich, a local Jew whose Pokemon hunt last week at the Grand Choral Synagogue of St. Petersburg was the second time he ever visited the place.
“I was rollerblading nearby, I opened the news [on the smartphone] and saw that the synagogue wants me to come and look for Pokemons. Immediately I went and caught one. It’s great that our synagogue is on the crest of fashion,” he told the Jewish News Petersburg.
Yasher Koach!
Moshiach now!
Grand Idea, really great, super fantastic. The Rabbi understands the minds of the youth very well. Truely like this, Hatzlacha!