Life Less Ordinary is the podcast from the BBC World Service,

bringing you extraordinary personal stories from around the globe.

Search for Lives Less Ordinary, wherever you get your BBC Podcasts.

Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service with me Farajaraal.

For heart and soul, exploring personal approaches to spirituality from around the world,

I'm in Sarajevo, Bosnia.

I'm seeking out this city's most precious artifact, an ancient Jewish prayer

book that was saved from destruction twice by Muslims and Christians. I want to find out what its survival says about the

possibility of living together despite our differences. 30 years ago this city in Southeast Europe was in the midst of a horrific war.

Sarajevo was besieged for nearly four years and this beautiful synagogue was turned into a refuge and a

delivery center for aid. Today though it's back to being a house of worship and

at the Friday night Shabbat service as the Cantor or Hazan, Igor Kojimyakin recites the prayers,

it feels safe and welcoming.

So basically, Sarevans are kind of a distinguished species.

Once upon a time, Sarajevo used to be a real cultural center of former, Yugoslavia, because here you can feel this

brotherhood and unity.

Here it really became a way of life and it's not something that was introduced lately

like just before the Second World War and it's something that we lived here for centuries before

real I would not say even coexistence because the coexist means to live one next to each other, I would rather say a common living. People were used to live

together, not to care about anyone's ethnic or religious background but as their qualities as human beings.

This may sound surprising because for many people, the Bosnian War fought in the 1990s between three ethnic and religious groups,

made the very name Sarajevo synonymous with armed conflict.

...