Synagogue Architecture

The article examines the interwar period in the life and work of two architects, Usher Chiter (1899–1967) and Elyukim Maltz (1898–1973), both graduates of the Odessa School of Architecture.During that time the architects were doing work for the Mendele Moicher Sforim All-Ukrainian Museum of Jewish Proletarian Culture in Odessa. Based on documents and visual materials from a number of museums and archives located in Ukraine, Russia and Israel, as well as on private collections (including those of families of architects from Moscow, where Chiter and Maltz moved in the late 1920s),the author attempts to trace and reconstruct the two architects’ research expeditions across the former Pale of Jewish Settlement. A total of seven field trips were conducted in Podolia and the Soviet part of Volhynia – with the aim of collecting materials and exhibition items for the museum and of making nature drawings and watercolors showing Jewish sites, such as synagogues, cemeteries and residential buildings. This empirical approach exemplifies the method of preserving and representing disintegrating Jewish shtetls, commonly practised during the interwar period. The work of both architects is viewed through the prism of musealization of Jewish heritage in the early Soviet period which was closely connected to the formation of state ideology and its transition from «building of the national identity» to class paradigm and atheistic upbringing.

The hometown of Jesus, Nazareth, is an international center of Christian pilgrimage that has capitalized on showcasing its sacred sites. Architect Antonio Barluzzi was commissioned to design Nazareth’s modern Basilica of the Annunciation in 1954, and a cornerstone for the project was laid in a well-attended ceremony. It seems that the establishment of the modern church was the catalyst for the eagerness with which the Israeli authorities approached establishing a Jewish monument in the region. In 1957, a design process for the Central Synagogue in Nazareth Illit (subsequently renamed Nof HaGalil) began, with the aim of proudly competing with the churches and mosques in the Nazareth region. Both the basilica and the synagogue were erected by Israeli construction firm Solel Boneh and were inaugurated in 1968 and 1969, respectively. This article examines the impact of the inception, establishment and building of Nazareth’s Basilica of the Annunciation on the drive to strengthen Jewish ...

"These meticulously researched and clearly presented articles create new ways of looking at East European Jewish architecture that goes beyond the necessary but often superficial country surveys of the past few decades. While collectively presenting an important overview of the development and spread of synagogue types and forms, each article attacks a specific question about why and how buildings were built and what this teaches us about religion, politics, economics, and intellectual circumstances of the period and the Jewish mindset of that time and place.  Kravtsov is this generation’s foremost historian of synagogue architecture and here he gives meaning to what otherwise would be abstract and empty form."

Samuel D. Gruber
President, International Survey of Jewish Monuments

The  Old Synagogue facilitated some of the most pivotal events in apartheid history, namely,  the Treason Trial of former president Nelson Mandela, and the Steve Biko Inquest. For decades restoration proposals  have not been fruitful, due to the costs involved and the impractical reuse functions for the building and surrounding site.
According to the Ethnologue, 377 of the of the almost 7500 known languages,  have become extinct since 1950. In South Africa three languages have suffered extinction, namely, |Xam, Seroa and | |Xegwi, with  N |u,  Xiri and Korana considered endangered.
Although difficult to halt, the current statues of indigenous cultures can be directly attributed to westernization. Therefore it becomes important to document cultures, with the added benefit of extending its existence beyond the individual culture. Should the death of a language or culture be suffered, a well documented archive could ensure the preservation of its memory.
The purpose of the proposed centre is to preserve existing narratives that are culture-specific. The facility should assist in conveying messages more accurately, ensuring the continual retelling of the recorded narratives.

סדרה של תמונות שצולמו - ככל הנראה - כדי לתעד את ההריסה הזדונית בידי הנאצים ועוזריהם של בית הכנסת הגדול והמפואר שנבנה בעיר בעלזא על ידי אבי השלשלת כ"ק מרן מהר"ש זי"ע ונהרס בתקופת המלחמה העולמית השניה

Analysis of a series of photographs of the systematic and deliberate destruction of the famous Belz Synagogue by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War 2

סדרה נוספת של תמונות שצולמו - ככל הנראה - כדי לתעד את ההריסה הזדונית בידי הנאצים ועוזריהם של בית הכנסת הגדול והמפואר שנבנה בעיר בעלזא על ידי אבי השלשלת כ"ק מרן מהר"ש זי"ע ונהרס בתקופת המלחמה העולמית השניה 

Analysis of a series of photographs of the systematic and deliberate destruction of the famous Great Belz Synagogue by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War 2

The architect Alfred Alschuler, a prolific designer of commercial and industrial buildings in the Chicago area, also built several synagogues before his most significant creation, Temple Isaiah, now the home of the Kehilath Anshe Ma’ariv Isaiah Israel congregation. Completed in 1924, it marked a departure from Alschuler’s earlier classical synagogues and was Inspired, he wrote, by a synagogue at Hammat Tiberias in Palestine that Nahum Slouschz excavated under the auspices of the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society. Accordingly, Alschuler switched to Byzantine models and copied details of the late antique ornament uncovered by Slouschz. Though such historical references to Palestine, the architect and the Rabbi of Temple Isaiah, Joseph Schultz, sought to connect their synagogue to Eretz Israel.

Theses of the PhD-Dissertation of Ágnes Ivett Oszkó. The primary aim of my dissertation written about the architecture of Leopold Baumhorn was to present the typical characteristics of the genre of synagogue architecture within his oeuvre. During my research I examined each building in itself as well as with reference to Hungarian architecture of the age, on the basis of primary sources, further contemporary documents and by going over the premises. My analyses also contained Baumhorn’s secular works, since their motifs can be connected to the style of the synagogues. In my thesis the twenty-six synagogue buildings planned during his creative years of four and a half decades are classified according to the change in space and form as well as in the architect’s motifs and approach.

Jewish communities often apperceive old synagogues, either existing or lost, as lieux de mémoire (using Pierre Nora’s parlance); that is, objects that have special significance relating to remembrance of their collective or personal past.
The lecture distinguishes four ways of visualization of such memories. First, it is a construction of a real synagogue building copying, to more or less extent, an older synagogue. The conventional semblance of the new edifice to its origin conveyed the concepts of commemoration of the historical past, maintaining the joint of time or cohesion of a sub-ethnic or sectorial community.  Secondly, building are memorized as a scaled-down likeness that is rendered as either volumetric models or flat images. The large-size masses and spaces of an immovable building are submitted to memory as a portable and easily observable object. Thirdly, from the late nineteenth century on, old synagogues became a target for expeditions of historians of architecture and folklorists, who recorded their visual impressions in series of photographs. The photographers’ selective choice of buildings and views ideologically charged the memories of the past encapsulated in their photographs. Finally, digital reconstructions of old synagogues revive the past in seemingly three-dimensional images. The animated computer images forge simulacra that – as Jean Baudrillard warned – may overshadow the reality. While a virtual simulacrum is reviving lost time and disappeared spaces in their continuity, it deprives their memories of tangibility of material monuments.
Whatever the modus, the images of synagogues are powerful tools of constructing and maintaining collective memories in Jewish communities.

The Architecture of the medieval Synagogue - Sites and Sources;
Table of Contents & Index --- L'architecture de la synagogue au Moyen Age;
Table des matières et index

Als Ort des Gebets und der Versammlung der Gemeinde bildete die Synagoge im Mittelalter den baulichen und spirituellen Mittelpunkt jüdischen Lebens in der Stadt. Für die Juden Zuflucht und religiöse Heimstätte in der Diaspora, wurden die Bauten nicht selten zum Schauplatz grausamer Verfolgungen und willkürlicher Machtdemonstrationen von Seiten der christlichen Umwelt. In der Architektur der Gebäude spiegelt sich die Stellung und das Selbstverständnis der jüdischen Bevölkerung im baulichen und gesellschaftlichen Gefüge der mittelalterlichen Stadt wider. Geprägt durch die funktionalen Anforderungen des jüdischen Kultus und wesentlich bestimmt durch verschiedenste Einflüsse und Einschränkungen der Umgebung, zeigt sich im innen- und außenräumlichen Erscheinungsbild dieser Bauten eine ihnen eigene Ausprägung mittelalterlicher Sakralarchitektur.
Basierend auf einer hier erstmalig vorgenommenen Übersicht erhaltener und überlieferter Synagogenbauten im Siedlungsgebiet des mittelalterlichen aschkenasischen Judentums widmet sich diese Studie der Untersuchung typologischer und stilistischer Merkmale sowie ihrer Einordnung in den Kontext abendländischer Architektur- und Kulturgeschichte.

The Museum's rare collection of photographs and drawings by Alois Breyer (1885–1948) of East-European wooden synagogues destroyed in WWII, in a dialogue with two leading modern artists showing how geometric abstraction transforms the language, narrative and beauty of the synagogues into a modern and contemporary idiom

The present chapter analyses the exceptional designs of three synagogues built during Israel’s first three decades of statehood. In the reviewed period, Israeli architecture was devoted to the building of a nation and the forging of a new Jewish and Israeli identity.
The  architecture of several synagogues built in that period is characterized by exceptional expressive features. Such are the synagogues reviewed in this chapter: the Central Synagogue in Nazareth Illit, designed by architect Nahum Zolotov (1960–1968); the Military Officers’ School Synagogue in Mitzpe Ramon, designed by architects Alfred Neumann and Zvi Hecker (1967–1969); and the Heichal Yehuda Synagogue in Tel Aviv, designed by architect Yitzhak Toledano and structural engineer Aharon Rousso (1972–1980). Architectural historian Amiram Harlap describes these synagogues in his book, where he portrays them as expressing Jewish symbols and ideas. I maintain that Harlap’s interpretation contributed to these buildings’ later reception as canonical Israeli synagogues. The present research investigates the tension between the synagogues’ designs and their interpretations. My argument is that this tension represents the consolidation process of Jewish national identity in Israel’s formative years.

Synagogues represent the longest surviving sacred building type of the Western Hemisphere with a two and a half thousand year old history. However, architecturally this continuity is more fragmented than the relatively shorter history of churches or mosques as Jewish people migrated frequently and Judaism was almost indifferent to the realm of the visual. Still, some types did develop in places of longer Jewish sojourn—antique and Byzantine synagogue types in Eretz Israel, Iberian synagogues until expulsion in 1492, Ashkenazi types in the Rhineland and Central Europe until medieval eviction and the Eastern-Central European, Polish-Lithuanian-Moravian types until modernity. Modernity, the last period of western (Christian) culture, no longer blatantly contradicted Jewish tradition as was the case in previous epochs and some cultural convergence had taken place. This and Jewish emancipation contributed to the dissolution of the last surviving tradition of Central-Eastern and East European synagogue architecture. Traditional types were replaced in the 19th century by new ones in which link between architectural style, composition of volumes, space conception, structure, decoration and many other facets of architecture were deconstructed. This paper tries to establish a system in this apparently free picking of architectural elements.

Most synagogues in Moldavia are adorned with a wide array of murals. The subjects decorating the ark and its surroundings, as well as those ornamenting the walls and ceilings, reveal two main tendencies: preservation of a tradition common to the Jewish East European visual legacy, and new themes, which found their way into pictorial expressions.

The study delves upon the shaping of the identity of the Paradesi Synagogue situated in the Jew Town of Fort Kochi. Across time, the Jewish Community (White Jews) of Fort Kochi have duly claimed that they were a part of the larger Yehuda Legacy or Judaica Diaspora in India. The Paradesi Synagogue was built in 1568 by the leaders of the White Jewish community (Timberg: 1986) who claims to be the oldest functioning Jewish synagogue not only in this area of India but also in the whole country and the rest of the British Commonwealth. It is the only functional synagogue of the Jews of Cochin and conducts religious services albeit.

Studiosi autorevoli portano in questo volume il loro contributo su Attilio Muggia (1861-1936) ingegnere bolognese, docente alla locale Scuola per gli Ingegneri, teorico e utilizzatore del brevetto Hennebique per le costruzioni in cemento armato di cui egli si serve a Bologna, Firenze e in tutta l'Italia centrale. Gli archivi bolognesi hanno consentito di ricostruire un racconto che attraverso le vicende professionali di Muggia si snoda fra le principali questioni che riguardano Bologna fra Otto e Novecento. L'obiettivo è ricostruire il volto di una città alla faticosa ricerca della propria modernità e inserirla nel panorama nazionale ove Attilio Muggia non ha ancora avuto finora il rilievo che gli spetta. Il volume si compone di una serie di saggi illustrati da un ricchissimo apparato di immagini.

Bettazzi M.B., Lipparini P. (editors)

The aim of this thesis is to investigate whether The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) mission of “building peace in the minds of men and women” can remain relevant by promoting World Heritage sites in countries like Germany. European and traditionally Christian, with 39 properties already inscribed on the list, how can Germany further contribute to the spectrum of cultural diversity, and in turn, to peace-building in the 21st century? A study carried out by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) concluded that Europe and Christianity were overrepresented on the list and that “living cultures” (from the 20th century onwards) and “traditional cultures” were underrepresented. In 1994, UNESCO adopted its “Global Strategy”, expanding the definition of heritage to include sites which would reflect a more balanced spectrum of the diversity of the world’s cultural heritage.

What implications does this have for Germany, currently permitted to submit only one cultural and one natural site per year? Can countries like Germany further contribute to the spectrum of cultural diversity vital to furthering UNESCO’s peace-building mission? This thesis examines three German cultural sites, in three cities, and in three different chronological and developmental stages of the application process to the UNESCO World Heritage list, then filters the sites through criteria draw from its foundational theories of as well as from those conceived by the continuing architects of the evolution of UNESCO in relation to World Heritage - futures studies, global education, global culture and global security.

UNESCO’s purpose has always been to preserve culture and heritage through education of the world to the world, so that the past and the present is not only championed by UNESCO, but also protected by global citizens. UNESCO World Heritage sites still have a relevant place in peace-building, because promoting the preservation of these sites allows humanity to share places where one country’s tangible history can be learned as our collective history. This thesis should convey a deeper understanding and internalization of the continuing relevance of UNESCO’s original mission in today’s global landscape and Germany’s role in aiding UNESCO with peace-building in the 21st century by continuing to share its World Heritage.

This article discusses the history of the Late Antique synagogue at Priene, illuminated by its excavation in 2009–2011. First identified as a synagogue in the early twentieth century, the structure was never fully excavated. The two building phases related to its develop­ment as a syn­agogue are discussed first. The chronology and some finds from the synagogue are then presented. The synagogue is then placed within its historical context as a prostas house in the city’s western residential district. Finally, the Priene synagogue is discussed in relationship to other synagogues found in Asia Minor.

In the seventeenth century, the Prague ghetto was the largest Jewish enclave in Europe, and its approximately ten thousand inhabitants made up one-half of the entire population of Prague’s Old Town. This status was reflected in the interiors of its nine exquisitely furnished synagogues and several small private schools. Because of the singular continuity of settlement in the ghetto between the twelfth and the nineteenth centuries, Prague boasted structures built in different periods across this long stretch of time: from the probably Romanesque Old School, the early Gothic Old New Synagogue, the Renaissance Pinkas, High, New, and Maisel synagogues, to the early Baroque Cikán, Velkodvorská and Klausen synagogues. This collection of exemplary renditions of so many architectural styles was unparalleled in Europe. And yet little or only marginal attention has been devoted to the architecture of Prague’s synagogues, even though they are a singular phenomenon within the context of European synagogue architecture and the now demolished Baroque Cikán Synagogue and Velkodvorská Synagogue were unique even compared to Christian Czech work of that era. These latter two structures are the subject of this article. Cikán Synagogue was built before 1613 by Salomon Salkind (also known as ‘Cikán’ or ‘the Gypsy’) and his wife Golde. It was a monumental work of architecture. Its interior was articulated with pilasters and furnished with a three-storey high aron ha-kodesh. The structure of the synagogue, the work of an unknown builder, abandoned the use of Gothic elements, and must for its splendour rank among the best works of architecture not just in the Prague ghetto but in the Czech lands. Velkodvorská Synagogue, built after 1627 by Jacob Bassevi, drew inspiration from the design of the interior of Cikán Synagogue. Its unusual aron ha-kodesh was probably designed by architect Giovanni Pieroni, who in this may have been influenced by the contemporary architecture of Rome and Giovanni Battista Montana’s treatise of 1628. Unfortunately, both synagogues were demolished early in the twentieth century during the clearing of the Prague ghetto, and today fragmentary historical sources are the only source of information on them.

Catalogue to Tel Aviv Museum of Art exhibition (10 July - 18 October 2014), tracing impact of synagogue architecture on modern artists El Lissitzky and Frank Stella, based on museum photography collection of synagogue photos and original architectural drawing done by Alois Breyer of Vienna between 1910-1913.

Article focuses on extant synagogue remains in the biblical town of Capernaum, on the NW shore of the Sea of Galilee. Visible today is a Byzantine-era (3rd Century AD and newer) synagogue that is frequently considered to be from the early 1st Century AD, which infers that it is the synagogue of Jesus’ time. This is not correct. Interestingly, there are stone wall remnants, proven to exist under the current synagogue floor that may be of an earlier synagogue mentioned in the Gospels—particularly Luke 7.

The subject of this article are images of sacred geography in the paintings of synagogues. Three related concepts are investigated. The first one is the Jewish chronotope, the notion of space-time categories in the Jewish tradition and their reflection in visual culture and architecture, which effected the inclusion of these ideas in system of painting decoration. The second one is images of Jerusalem and the Jerusalem Temple in the program of paintings of synagogues as mandatory elements of the iconographic program. The third one is the holy places of Eretz Israel in the context of synagogue mural transformation characteristic of the later period — the end of XIX century.
Visual sources for these images were biblical texts, medieval manuscripts, actual architectural monuments, “scientific” reconstruction blueprints, postcards from holy places in Palestine, as well as local, regional motifs with recognizable particular prototypes. In some cases the images were based on locally revered in the Diaspora edifices — the residences of Hasidic tzaddikim. Under the influence of Historicism and European genre painting, these images became incorporated into samples of stunning interior decoration. They combined the principles of constructing illusory paintings, architectural and scenic imitations of joined terrestrial and celestial spaces and “hung” genre paintings with sights of Eretz Israel.
The decoration system as a whole was designed to transform the prayer space and create a comfortable, staged world, Olam. In this world, the past and the messianic future were united, as well as the earthly and the heavenly. It served to transport the Jews from everyday life to the realm of their dreams and hopes, to emphasize their connection to the Land of Israel, and to enhance the allure of their historical homeland. Portrayed by means of painting, images of holy places created a special system and the hierarchy of sacred space. This system in its artistic forms, abstract and particular geographical coordinates signified the spirit of Judaism and the Jewish meta-history, as well as culture and unique character of a particular community.
(Котляр Евгений. Иерусалим, Храм, Эрец-Исраэль, места «силы и святости» в живописных декорациях синагог // Научные труды по иудаике. Материалы XX Международной ежегодной конференции по иудаике. – М.: Центр научных работников и преподавателей иудаики в вузах «Сэфер», 2013. – Т.I. (Академическая серия, вып. 45). – С. 341-380.)

Though bestowing de jure equality and freedom on the Jews of the former Russian Empire, the Revolution and Civil War simultaneously shattered the Jewish world with bloody pogroms, impoverishment, and the destruction of traditional ways of life. This new reality permanently altered the face of what would become Soviet Jewry, a body born out of the physical and spiritual torment of the transitional period. Culture and art reflected the situation: corresponding treatment of synagogue images in artistic works illustrated the ongoing drama, as synagogues – the chief locus of Jewish life – were being destroyed in front of one’s eyes. The present article makes use of an art-historical study to examine the evolution of the image of the synagogue in the artistic works of the period, as seen through the prism of Jewish discourse. It analyzes the semantic content of the image as a special motif and marker of Jewishness in the visual art of the revolutionary era.
If in previous years ethnographism and genre art had dominated the depiction of such motifs, during the years of revolutionary convulsion the treatment and distortion of synagogue images gradually came to reflect a sense of ruin and horror. In certain cases these depictions reached a climactic, even apocalyptic intensity. Artists utilized various visual idioms and modernist styles – Cubo-Futurism, Expressionism, lubok (woodcut) style, etc. – to achieve a deeper symbolic and emotional resolution of the subject. Within a few years the works of leading representatives of the modernist Kultur-lige association transformed the image of the synagogue from a typical marker of the Jewish oecumene into a tragic symbol of its destruction. Works such as Abram Manevich’s The Destruction of the Ghetto (1919), El Lissitzky’s Had Gadya (1917–1919), and Issachar Ber Ryback’s large series Pogrom (1918), among others, came to serve as representations of various aspects of and psycho-emotional responses to the collapse of the Jewish world.
The subjects portrayed in such works included: the destruction and depopulation of the previously crowded, even packed shtetl; the horror of waiting for a pogrom, as well as bloody scenes of actual violence presented via the traditional narrative of “the labor pains of the Messiah”; and literal self-sacrifice in the spirit of the medieval tradition of Kiddush ha-Shem (“Sanctification of God’s Name”). Compositional and figural resolutions of the synagogue as a place for uniting the whole community with God came to embody the Jewish outlook on life – a living entity, as it were, sharing with the Jews their tragic fate. This development reflected personal tragedies and the general Jewish context, in which the theme of anti-Jewish violence bore an atemporal character. Artists including Ryback also made extensive use of other idioms: the synagogue enveloped in flames; the destruction and desecration of the synagogal prayer space, with the aron kodesh (Torah ark) on fire, martyred Jewish figures, discarded Torah scrolls, and so forth.
These images merged with long-established symbols of the galut (exile/diaspora): the depiction of a goat and the eternally exiled Wandering Jew. All these motifs corresponded with Jewish historical, religious, and literary tradition, while also formulating a definite iconography that would be picked up by artists of subsequent decades.

Kotlyar E. Premonition of Apocalypse: Synagogue Images and the Motif of the Destruction of the Jewish World in Art of the Revolutionary Period // Judaica Ukrainiсa. Peer-reviewed annual journal in Jewish Studies (ed.: Serhiy Hirik, Börries Kuzmany). – K.: Laurus, 2017. – Vol. 6. – С. 51-82.
Котляр Е. Предчувствие апокалипсиса: образы синагог и тема крушения еврейского мира в искусстве революционного времени // Judaica Ukrainiсa. Peer-reviewed annual journal in Jewish Studies (ed.: Serhiy Hirik, Börries Kuzmany). – K.: Laurus, 2017. – Vol. 6. – С. 51-82.

In 2009 research extending over three campaigns began of the synagogue of Priene in Turkey and generated new results about its building phases and interior. This building, incorporated in a Hellenistic prostas house in the city’s western residential district, is smaller and less richly equipped than the large synagogue in Sardis. But a comparison of the two buildings, so not alike, show on the one hand similarities in general structure which are independent of the size, and on the other hand the special status of the synagogue of Sardis.
The comparison between the synagogue of Sardis, one of the largest such buildings conserved from antiquity, with the relatively unkown synagogue of Priene seems to be inappropriate, but the results show that we can learn something new about the context and the requirement of Diaspora synagogues in Asia Minor.

National political movements of XIX - XX centuries, such as Hovevei Zion, Halutz and Zionism effected the transition of the messianic paradigm of return to Eretz Israel. The traditional messianic paradigm was pushed to the background by the practical problems of repatriation to Palestine, land development and the formation of new Yishuv. The process of building of a national home in Eretz Israel contributed to the convergence of Jewish religious worldview with romantic dreams and social ideals of the Zionists.
Combining in Jewish identity the religious spirit on the one hand and the secular and national aspirations on the other hand found its reflection in similar processes in the arts: architecture, synagogue murals, ritual arts, etc. This notion is evident in the Eastern European tradition of synagogue painting, with its programme and a wide subject repertoire.
For instance, in Palestine proper the traditional synagogue decorations with their pathos of impending heavenly life evolved into a romantic picture of everyday Jewish life in Eretz Israel, and Bible stories became augmented with Halutz motives. Image of Temple as a sacred edifice, which symbolizes the Messianic Israel, transformed into modern secular buildings such as “temples” of Education, Science and Art (Hebrew University, School of Arts and Crafts Bezalel in Jerusalem, Gymnasium Herzliya and the Municipal School in Tel Aviv). In turn, the traditional programme of synagogue decoration in Israel, as well as Europe and the countries of emigration got complemented by new cycles of “Holy Places of Eretz Israel,” “12 Tribes of Israel,” “7 fruits of Israel,” the Zionist motives, secular subjects and images of modern buildings in Palestine. In addition to the synagogue decorations, these trends became manifested in the visual decorations of ketubbot and other forms of ritual art.
The advancement of these new trends was effectuated by various parties, including and the School “Bezalel” in Jerusalem, with its proclaimed goal to “create art that benefits all the Jews of the world and strive to build and decorate a new temple to messianic times” (B. Schatz). Among those who had a direct impact on the integration of Zionist ideals into traditional visual culture were Ephraim Lilien, Ze'ev Raban and others, as well as the Jewish National Fund, which arose in the Diaspora Jewry the idea of the Jewish revival in Eretz Israel, including through means of art.
The paper, using a great number of examples of monuments of Jewish Art of Eretz Israel, Europe and the United States will demonstrate the process of modernization and transformation of the traditional programme of Eastern European synagogue decorations influenced by the ideology and aesthetics of Zionism.
Kotlyar Eugeny, «"If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem." Eastern European Synagogue Decoration in the Zionist Paradigm,» Art in Jewish Society. Ed. by Jerzy Malinowski, Renata Piątkowska, Małgorzata Stolarska-fronia, Tamara Sztyma. (The Second Congress of Jewish Art in Poland / World Art Studies. Conferences and Studies of the Polish Institute of World Art Studies. Vol. XV. Warsaw–Toruń: Polish Institute of World Art Studies & Tako Publishing House, 2016. P. 60-72.

This paper examines the construction in 1906-07 of Rodef Shalom Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The relationships between the Paris-trained, New York-based architect, Henry Hornbostel; the Philadelphia-based general contractor, Thomas Reilly; the Rodef Shalom building committee, and a host of sub-contractors, materi-als suppliers and agents on the building site is unusually well-documented and includes the involvement of the New York-based Guastavino Company for the construction of the building’s signature dome. Emerging from the Rodef Shalom correspondence is a clear picture of the sequencing of design documentation as building work progressed, the central role of the general contractor in managing the project, and the hierarchy in communica-tions between architect, client and general contractor. The challenges of coordinating a complex project at a dis-tance relied on correspondence, photography, telephones, telegrams and railways, which together contributed as much as on-site agents to shaping the construction process.

Architectural atlas of Zagreb contains overview of the history of Zagreb architecture and 900 entries on buildings from all parts of the city.
The buildings are grouped according to Zagreb’s neighborhoods: Upper Town, Kaptol, Lower Town - Centre, Lower Town - West, Lower Town - East, Savska street, Vukovarska street and Slavonska avenue, New Zagreb, etc. Each of these neighborhoods has been split into streets, and the buildings are organized according to their official street number. Along with each city area, a map showing the locations of all the marked buildings mentioned in the atlas is also attached.
The buildings in this atlas have been selected primarily according to their importance to the history of Zagreb’s architecture, while also bearing in mind their interest to the average visitor to Zagreb. The city center (Lower Town, Upper Town, and Kaptol) has been covered in most detail.

Architectural iconography, particularly that of the Jerusalem temples, is a powerful tool in studying synagogue architecture. Its instrumentality proves itself in the research in the Jewish architecture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when architectural history and theory became sciences in their own rights, the variety of graphic patterns increased, whereas the older Temple imagery was still remembered. The nineteenth century’s archeological discoveries enriched the architects’ palette with the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Phoenician, Palestinian, and Persian components as plausible for the imagined temples. At the same time, the distinctions between the Temple of Solomon, the vision of Ezekiel, and the Herodian Temple and their combinations became increasingly meaningful in the light of theological and archaeological studies. The paper discusses these visual and meaningful expressions as architects’ contributions to the varied Jewish collective identities

Robert Pinart (b. 1927) was an active stained and dalle de verre glass artist and designer for over fifty-five years--from the late 1940s until 2008. He completed over one hundred stained and dalle de verre glass commissions across the country, and has had his work included in many exhibitions of architectural stained glass.Pinart was known as one of the best colorists and painters of stained glass in the United States during the last half of the 20th century. He was an abstract expressionist glass artist, and he was one of the first to use dalle de verre in the United States.

Arnold W. Brunner (1857–1925), Albert Kahn (1869–1942), and other Jewish architects played an important role in reviving the classical style for American synagogue design at the turn of the twentieth century, putting their stamp on American Jewish identity and American architecture. The American-born Brunner was the preferred architect of New York’s Jewish establishment from the 1880s until his death. He adopted the classical style with his third New York synagogue, Congregation Shearith Israel, dedicated in 1897, and then championed the style in his extensive public writing about synagogue design. The classical style was subsequently widely accepted nationally by Reform congregations, especially in the South and Midwest. Classicism was a mediating device, and served as a new emblem of religious and civic identity. Mixing a variety of architectural and cultural traditions, Jewish architects and their patrons created a bridge between Judaism—or Jewishness—and Americanism

The article aims to describe the semiotic aspect of synagogue architecture in the context of liturgical texts and show the direct relationship between synagogues’ dimensions and the individual verses of prayers. The work’s subject was a synagogue in Siemiatycze, built at the end of the 18th century.
The example of prayer was Tikkun Chatzot, the midnight service that emerged under the influence of Kabbalistic movements in Safed. Under the influence of 17th and 18th-century mystical movements, it became part of the synagogue liturgy in Europe.
The article presents a metrological analysis of the synagogue’s dimensions in Siemiatycze based on in situ research and the related Tikkun Chatzot prayer text’s gematric analysis. Gematria is a special kind of mysticism of the letters and is rooted in a particular way in the Hebrew language. It consists of converting the letters of words into numbers. This method assumes that letters in a word are understood as graphic signs of numbers. During
the research, methods of logical argumentation, historical and analytical, and quantitative and statistical, were used.
During the research, it was possible to indicate the relationship between the Tikkun Chatzot prayer fragments and the synagogue’s dimensions
in Siemiatycze. It applies to external and internal dimensions. We find expressions relating to exile and nostalgia for the temple and Jerusalem more often in the external dimensions, whereas in interior dimensions we encounter expressions praising God. At the same time, it was indicated that this relationship represents the linguistically binary character of the synagogue architecture rooted in the exterior–interior opposition.

The remains of a medieval synagogue, in addition to numerous fragments of plaster decoration, have been found as a result of the excavation work done at the Prao de los Judíos archaeological site in the town of Molina de Aragón (Guadalajara, Spain). These remains suggest that the synagogue was built in the second half of the thirteenth century and that it was refashioned later in the fourteenth century following the same artistic model of the synagogues of Córdoba and El Tránsito. Based on comparative analysis, this article studies the Synagogue of Molina de Aragón in relation to other medieval Iberian synagogues.