Synagogue architecture
Synagogue architecture often follows styles in vogue at the place and time of construction. There is no set blueprint for synagogues and architectural shapes and interior designs of synagogues vary greatly. According to tradition, the Shekhinah or divine presence can be found wherever there is a minyan: the quorum of ten required for Jewish prayer.
Synagogues have some requirements. They always contain a Torah ark where the Torah scrolls are kept by Ashkenazi Jews and a hekhal. Also, since synagogues are buildings for congregational worship, they require a large central space. They are generally designed with the ark at one end, typically opposite the main entrance on the east side of the building, and a bema either in front of that or more centrally placed. Raised galleries for female worshipers have been common in historical buildings.
Beyond these requirements, there is little to dictate synagogue design. Historically, synagogues were typically according to prevailing architectural styles. For example, the synagogue of Kaifeng looked like Buddhist temples of that region and era, with its outer wall and open garden where several buildings were arranged.
Considerations
The ark may be more or less elaborate, ranging from a cabinet not structurally integral to the building to a portable arrangement whereby a Torah scroll is brought into a space temporarily used for worship. There must also be a table, often on a raised platform, from which the Torah is read. The table or platform, called a bima by eastern Ashkenazi Jews, an almemar or balemer by Central and Western Ashkenazim, and a teba by Sephardic Jews, where the Torah is read and from where the services are conducted in Sephardi synagogues, can range from an elaborate platform integral to the building to elaborate free-standing raised platforms, to simple tables.A sanctuary lamp, a constantly-lit light as a reminder of the constantly lit temple menorah of the Temple in Jerusalem. Many synagogues, primarily in Ashkenazi communities, feature a pulpit facing the congregation from which the rabbi addresses the assembled. All synagogues require an amud "post, column", a desk facing the Ark from which the hazzan or "cantor" leads the prayers.
A synagogue may or may not have artwork; synagogues range from simple, unadorned prayer rooms to elaborately decorated buildings in every architectural style.
The synagogue, or if it is a multi-purpose building, prayer sanctuaries within the synagogue, are typically designed to have their congregation face towards Jerusalem. Thus, sanctuaries in the Western world generally have their congregation face east, while those east of Jerusalem have their congregation face west. Congregations of sanctuaries in Israel face towards Jerusalem. However, this orientation need not be exact, and occasionally synagogues face other directions for structural reasons; in such cases, the community may face Jerusalem when standing for prayers.
History
The styles of the earliest synagogues resembled the houses of worship of other faiths in the Byzantine Empire, such as the ancient synagogues in Palestine. Later styles continued this practice: synagogues of Morocco are embellished with zellij, colored tilework characteristic of Moroccan architecture. The surviving medieval synagogues in Budapest, Prague, and the German lands are typical of Gothic architecture.For much of history, the constraints of antisemitism and the laws of host countries restricting the building of synagogues visible from the street or forbidding their construction altogether meant that synagogues were often built within existing structures or opened from interior courtyards. Old synagogues with elaborate interior architecture can be hidden within nondescript European buildings and the Islamic world.
Where synagogues were permitted, they were built in the prevailing architectural style of the time and place. Many European cities had elaborate Renaissance synagogues, of which a few survive. In Italy, numerous synagogues were built in the style of Italian Renaissance architecture, including the Old Synagogue of Livorno, the Padua Synagogue, and the Spanish Synagogue of Venice. With the coming of the Baroque era, Baroque synagogues appeared across Europe.
The Jewish emancipation in Europe and Muslim countries colonized by European countries gave Jews the right to build large, elaborate synagogues visible from the public street. Synagogue architecture blossomed. Large Jewish communities wished to show their wealth and newly acquired status as citizens by constructing magnificent synagogues. Handsome 19th-century synagogues from the period of revival stand in virtually every country with a Jewish community. Most were built in revival styles then in fashion, such as Neoclassical, Neo-Byzantine, Romanesque Revival, Moorish Revival, Gothic Revival, and Greek Revival. There are Egyptian Revival synagogues and even one Mayan Revival synagogue. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century heyday of historicist architecture, however, most historicist synagogues, even the most magnificent ones, did not attempt a pure style, or even any particular style, and are best described as eclectic.
Hasidic Judaism often established their own houses of worship, which are usually known now by the Yiddish loanword shtiebel. These comparatively modest buildings were the focus of Hasidic practice in early modern and pre-war Eastern Europe and afterwards in Israel and North America.
In contrast, the Chabad movement has made a practice of designing Chabad houses as replicas of or homages to the architecture of 770 Eastern Parkway.
Central Europe: Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
Significant exceptions to the rule that synagogues are built in the prevailing style of their time and place are the wooden synagogues in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and two forms of masonry synagogues: synagogues with bema support and nine-field synagogues.Wooden synagogues
Wooden synagogues in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth were a unique artistic and architectural form. Characteristic features include the independence of the pitched roof from the design of the interior domed ceiling. They had elaborately carved, painted, domed, balconied and vaulted interiors. The architectural interest of the exterior lay in the buildings' large scale, the multiple, horizontal lines of the tiered roofs, and the carved corbels that supported them. Wooden synagogues featured a single, large hall. In contrast to contemporary churches, there was no apse. Moreover, while contemporary churches featured imposing vestibules, the entry porches of the wooden synagogues were a low annex, usually with a simple lean-to roof. In these synagogues, the emphasis was on constructing a single, large, high-domed worship space.According to art historian Stephen Sally Kayser, these wooden synagogues, with their painted and carved interiors, were "a truly original and organic manifestation of artistic expression—the only real Jewish folk art in history."
According to Louis Lozowick, writing in 1947, the wooden synagogues were unique because, unlike all previous synagogues, they were not built in their region's and era's architectural style, but in a newly evolved and uniquely Jewish style, making them "a truly original folk expression," whose "originality does not lie alone in the exterior architecture, it lies equally in the beautiful and intricate wood carving of the interior."
Moreover, while in many parts of the world Jews were proscribed from entering the building trades and even from practicing the decorative arts of painting and woodcarving, the wooden synagogues were built by Jewish craftsmen.
Art historian Ori Z. Soltes points out that the wooden synagogues, unusual for that period in being large, identifiably Jewish buildings not hidden in courtyards or behind walls, were built not only during a Jewish "intellectual golden age" but in a time and place where "the local Jewish population was equal to or even greater than the Christian population.
Synagogues with bimah-support
In the second half of the 16th century, masonry synagogues whose interiors present an original structural solution, found in no other kind of building, were constructed in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. These were synagogue halls whose bimah was surrounded by four pillars. Placed upon a podium, connected above by arcading, in one powerful pier, the pillars constituted the bimah-support or bimah-tower supporting the vault, consisting of four barrels with lunettes intersecting at the corners. The bases of the vault-rips rested on the podium or were transmitted through a balustrade, solid or pierced. A small cupola covered the field above the bimah. These cupolas were occasionally significantly lower in comparison with the remaining fields of vaulting. Thus, a kind of inner chapel, built inside the bimah-tower, was created.One of the first synagogues with a bimah-support was the Old Synagogue of Przemyśl, which was destroyed during World War II. Synagogues with a bimah-tower were built up to the 19th century and the concept was adopted in various Central European countries.