Abstract
Many scholars view the choral synagogues in the Russian Empire as Reform synagogues, influenced by the German Reform movement. This article analyzes the features characteristic of Reform synagogues in central and Western Europe, and demonstrates that only a small number of these features were implemented in the choral synagogues of Russia. The article describes the history, architecture, and reception of choral synagogues in different geographical areas of the Russian Empire, from the first maskilic synagogues of the 1820s–1840s to the revolution of 1917. The majority of changes, this article argues, introduced in choral synagogues were of an aesthetic nature. The changes concerned decorum, not the religious meaning or essence of the prayer service. The initial wave of choral synagogues were established by maskilim, and modernized Jews became a catalyst for the adoption of the choral rite by other groups. Eventually, the choral synagogue became the “sectorial” synagogue of the modernized elite. It did not have special religious significance, but it did offer social prestige and architectural prominence.
Highlights
The synagogue was the most important Jewish public space until the emergence of secular institutions in the late nineteenth century
The question of whether the Reform movement existed in Tsarist Russia has much greater significance than it may seem at first glance
In anticipation of her study, the present article concentrates on the analysis of one facet of this question, namely the choral synagogue, which is usually perceived as a kind of Reform synagogue in the Tsarist Empire in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Summary
The synagogue was the most important Jewish public space until the emergence of secular institutions in the late nineteenth century. There were, until now, two scholarly approaches to the development of the Reform movement in Russia Both were formulated by Michael Stanislawski in two successive sentences in his book Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews. In anticipation of her study, the present article concentrates on the analysis of one facet of this question, namely the choral synagogue, which is usually perceived as a kind of Reform synagogue in the Tsarist Empire in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See a recent work by Assaf Yedidya, in which he argued that “the followers of Geiger [in Russia] merely adopted certain aspects of the German liberal agenda, while rejecting other, more cardinal aspects” and that “German liberal Judaism remained alien to Russian Jewry” Without discussing the developments in Poland in detail, I will refer to Polish examples when necessary.
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