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Guide price for work of LS Lowry of Merthyr Tydfil Synagogue was £180,000; Jewish Heritage Foundation hopes to contact purchaser about plans for building

On a visit to the city of Slonim in Belarus, Ilona Reeves fell in love with a 380-year-old dilapidated building that used to house one of the area’s largest and oldest synagogues.

The interior of the Great Synagogue of Slonim, Belarus, pictured in 2007. (Wikimedia Commons via JTA) JTA — On a visit to the city of Slonim in Belarus, Ilona Reeves fell in love with a 380-year-old dilapidated building that used to house one of the area’s largest and oldest synagogues. Reeves, a 40-year-old author who lives in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, is a Christian, like virtually everyone who lives in the country. And the synagogue hadn’t been operational since before the Holoc...

But new owners often need to commit to restore the structures that local governments and Jewish communities are having difficulties maintaining.