Jewish Building Research Articles

“Jewish Building” in the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic after the Holocaust. Possibilities, Limits, Spaces

As early as the first months after the Second World War had ended, newly founded Jewish communities were beginning to form in Germany. These communities were established further in the years to follow, in the course of which new synagogues and community centers were erected. In today’s perceptions, these building projects are often seen in the context of the efforts of gentile society to make reparations (Wiedergutmachung). This article examines the possibilities and conditions under which non-Jewish post-Nazi society was operating in regard to enabling “Jewish building (Jüdisches Bauen)”, and highlights the tremendous influence that political action has had on the projects of the Jewish communities. The synagogue projects in Mannheim and Würzburg are used as examples to illustrate this issue as it reflects in the Federal Republic of Germany. This article brings forth, for the first time, a description of the situation in the German Democratic Republic providing an overview on the extent of the construction activity. Subsequently, observations over the use of the term and the concept of “Jewish building (Jüdisches Bauen)” are outlined.

The Menorahs of Limyra in Jewish Art and Visual Culture

This article describes first the discovery and identification of Jewish buildings and artifacts in Asia Minor. Subsequently it addresses the classification of the Limyra menorah-slabs. At the end, it asks for a possible origin of the menorah plaques in another building in Limyra and lists iconographic parallels for them.

Shattered Spaces: Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland, Michael Meng (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), xiv + 351 pp., hardcover, $35.00

Shattered Spaces tells the complex story of material traces of Jewish life in Germany and Poland over the last sixty years. In this excellent study of the multiple factors responsible for “turning rubble into ruins” during those six decades, Michael Meng asks why and how, in what has become a “region of few Jews,” seemingly worthless broken bricks and stones from destroyed Jewish buildings, neighborhoods, and cemeteries were first ignored and then transformed into meaningful and prized cultural objects. The book is part urban history, part sociological study of collective memory-making. By showing in detail why local, national, and trans-national social actors first ignored, then recovered and saved, and finally elevated remnants of Jewish life in central Europe, Meng sheds light on the complex process through which the cultural value of objects—ruins, in this case—is established. He shows how that value is shaped and constrained by national narratives, political ideologies, and global aspirations.

Jewish Identity and Egyptian Revival Architecture

Jewish Identity and Egyptian Revival Architecture Diana Muir Appelbaum Between 1798 and 1806, a highly unusual synagogue complex was built around a courtyard in the city of Karlsruhe, capital of the Grand Duchy of Baden. An enormous pair of Egyptian-style trapezoidal pylons flanked a gate that led to a courtyard, open to the sky and lined with a Doric colonnade. Buildings on three sides of the courtyard contained the rabbi's home, a school, and community offices. At the far end of the courtyard, a Grecian pediment topped the façade of the synagogue proper. The Karlsruhe synagogue (destroyed by fire in 1871) was a thoughtful attempt on the part of architect Friedrich Weinbrenner to employ a style that would evoke Jewish ancientness and also allow him to work in two avant-garde modes: Greek and Egyptian revival. Weinbrenner also attempted to evoke the Temple of Solomon itself in the layout of the Karlsruhe complex. First Kings specifies that the Temple have three parts, the ulam (a porch or vestibule, perhaps roofless), the hekhal (great hall), and the dvir (Holy of Holies), separated from the hekhal by a parochet, or curtain. At the ulam stood a pair of named columns, Boaz and Jachin. The text does not make clear whether these columns were free-standing or structural, or whether they were inside or in front of the building. Architect Weinbrenner built Boaz and Jachin as pylons in the style of the entrance to the Temple at Karnak, Egypt, the ulam as a roofless courtyard, the hekhal as the synagogue building and, inside that, the Holy of Holies as the curtained Torah Ark. Greek revival architecture was still new in Click for larger view View full resolution Image 1. Egyptian-inspired pylons at synagogue complex, Karlsruhe. Synagogue façade and pediment visible through arch. (Friedrich Weinbrenner Collection, the Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania) [End Page 1] Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century. Weinbrenner was one of the first German architects to visit the early Doric temples at Paestum, and they inspired not only his synagogue but also his faux-ruined Doric temple, designed for the Baden Grand-Ducal gardens.1 He was also unusual for his time in having seen ancient Egyptian buildings, albeit only in a spectacularly innovative stage set. Weinbrenner was a student in Vienna in 1791, the year of the premiere of Mozart's opera, The Magic Flute. The sets were notable for their exotic Egyptian style. Weinbrenner attended twice, and saw Mozart himself conduct.2 Although Dominique Jurasse notes that Weinbrenner's "peristyle, worship area, [and] sanctuary" design was "inspired by the Temple," the reasons for building of this and other Egyptian revival synagogues has not been satisfactorily explored.3 Weinbrenner was among the first architects to explore the idea of discovering the appropriate historicist architectural style for specific building types. During his early years in Karlsruhe, he designed an Ottoman-style building for new steam-baths, a Gothic chapel for one of the country estates of the ruling family, a small medieval fortress to serve the army as a powder magazine, and the synagogue in ancient Egyptian and Doric styles.4 Weinbrenner later abandoned this wide-ranging historicism, devoting his career to masterful application of Classical forms. His students would popularize the idea that the identity of a building should inform the choice of architectural style. And among the most intriguing of these choices this movement faced was the puzzle of identifying an appropriate historicist style for synagogues. The Temple, of course, was the ancient Jewish building most intimately familiar to Europeans for the simple reason that it is the only building that the Bible describes in detail. An architect seeking to embody ancient Jewish architecture naturally opened the Bible to the Book of Kings, only to be disappointed by the detailed descriptions of layout and utter lack of attention to style. Weinbrenner may have used Egyptian and Doric elements because they were the most ancient styles then known to Europeans. It has not previously been noted that two of Weinbrenner's students also built synagogues that evoked Jewish antiquity with nods to both Doric and Egyptian styles. In 1822, Weinbrenner's nephew...

Yeshiva College and the Pursuit of a Jewish Architecture

Yeshiva College and the Pursuit of a Jewish Architecture Eitan Kastner (bio) In the 1920’s, New York City saw the culmination of a great Jewish building boom. Between the end of the Great War and the onset of the Great Depression, elaborate and impressive synagogues, temples, and educational institutions were built by the entire range of the city’s prominent Jewish factions. The members of the oldest Reform congregation in Manhattan, Temple Emanu-El, raised a colossal Romanesque house of worship on Fifth Avenue in 1929.1 The Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA), which would serve as the flagship institution for Conservative Judaism, opened the doors to its grand Georgian Morningside Heights building in 1930.2 And while these two institutions decided upon established aesthetic styles for their buildings, the fledgling Orthodox Yeshiva College chose a striking and innovative combination of traditional and modern styles for the first structure of its Washington Heights campus in 1928.3 As is apparent from promotional documents aimed at potential donors, public statements from the schools founders, and comparisons with other buildings constructed by the school’s architects, the appearance of the Yeshiva College campus served as a physical embodiment of the school’s mission. At a time when American Jews struggled to find an appropriate and fitting architectural aesthetic for their various structures, Yeshiva’s founders chose to erect an edifice [End Page 141] that boldly proclaimed pride in their ideology of teaching secular and sacred Jewish studies under one roof. In the battle to retain a strong modern Orthodox population, the founders of Yeshiva sought to impress American Jewry with a grand and original Jewish aesthetic that simultaneously emphasized their commitment to Jewish tradition and progress. The Origins of Yeshiva College Yeshiva sprang from the combination of two of the earliest Orthodox educational institutions in America: Etz Chaim and the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS).4 Founded by Eastern European immigrants on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1886, Etz Chaim served as the first full-time Jewish school in the country. The students spent the bulk of their day in traditional study of the Talmud and Jewish law. In the late afternoons, the school administration hesitantly sanctioned the teaching of state-mandated secular courses, but Jonathan D. Sarna points out that Etz Chaim “resisted modernity as much as possible.”5 A decade after Etz Chaim entered the scene, the Orthodox eastern European Jews of the Lower East Side founded RIETS, America’s first yeshiva (institute for the advanced study of Talmud), where high school graduates could continue their traditional Jewish studies. Many of the students at RIETS desired pastoral training and secular studies as supplements to their Talmudic learning, but the yeshiva’s higher-ups frowned upon such pursuits. The restrictive atmosphere caused some of the students to transfer to JTS, especially after noted Cambridge scholar Solomon Schechter took control of the Seminary in 1902. While the Seminary could not boast a strength in traditional Talmud study as RIETS could, it offered the combination of rabbinical training and academic Jewish studies that many found attractive.6 While the students and administration clashed over the nature of the education at RIETS, the Orthodox community felt overburdened by its support of two educational institutions. In 1915, Etz Chaim and RIETS [End Page 142] merged under the new umbrella organization known as the Rabbinical College of America and thus streamlining their expenses. Both schools retained their original names and purposes, but shared expenses while the high school served as a feeder of students and funds for the rabbinic ordination program of RIETS.7 Prominent New York builder Harry Fischel, the new vice president of the institution, chaired the building committee for the Rabbinical College’s new home at 9–11 Montgomery Street on the Lower East Side. Fischel, who possessed a strong interest in architecture, had struck it rich as an investor in real estate.8 Just a few years prior to his involvement in RIETS, he held the presidency of the Uptown Talmud Torah, a modernized Orthodox supplementary school. Fischel’s push for modernization, such as placing a piano in the Talmud Torah’s sanctuary and showing motion pictures at...

Argentine space, Jewish memory: memorials to the blown apart and disappeared in Buenos Aires

This paper traces a new memory map for Latin America, a map anchored in contemporary events not in pre-Columbian monuments. This paper will focus on Buenos Aires where a painful twentieth-century history of dictatorship, disappearance, and terrorism has given rise to new sites of memory that defy older traditions tied to exclusion and nationalism. The 1994 terrorist bombing of the AMIA community center in Buenos Aires, the most important Jewish building in Latin America, is a particularly knotty instance of the controversies surrounding remembering and forgetting on a continent often marked by narrow, authoritarian views of belonging. This paper will analyse the issues involved in memorial building and the performance of remembering at the site of the AMIA as an example of larger questions of who controls communal remembrance and what paradigms can be used to construct contemporary memory. Jewish memorial practices and the Holocaust play an especially important role in Argentina, entering into a dialogue with newly minted forms of Argentine remembering and creating a new language more suited to our times.

Constructing Identity: Anglo-Jewry and Synagogue Architecture

This essay seeks to explore the relationship between Jewish and British identity in the architecture of Anglo-Jewry by reference to a small selection of architecturally important or representative synagogues in this country that are still standing and that have been recorded for the Survey of the Jewish Built Heritage. The Survey was set up in 1997 under the auspices of the Jewish Memorial Council with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund, English Heritage and the RIBA to record and research the vanishing architectural heritage of the Jewish communities of Britain and Ireland. In the process it aims to promote protection and preservation and public access to historic Jewish buildings and sites nationwide.

Past and Future Values: The Architectural Legacy of Metropolitan Religion

In spite of the increasing secularisation of the world around them, religious buildings in Britain are difficult to ignore. Often the most architecturally important buildings in their communities, concern for the use and development of churches and chapels is by no means confined to regular worshippers. In rural areas, declining populations and reduced congregations have led to radical reorganisations of parochial ministry which have been characterised less by closure of churches than by the creation of multiple benefices: here as many as four or five parishes, each of which once had their own priest, may be served by a single incumbent. In the urban context the problems have been rather different. The large number of church buildings is less easy to justify geographically and attempts at urban rationalisation have involved closure, change of use, and demolition more often than in the countryside. In both contexts these developments have provoked fierce local debate, so that those who find themselves at the sharp end of such controversies are often surprised by how hard people will fight for the right to have a church to stay away from! The tendency over the last decade to regard 'heritage' as a packaged commodity in which there is no room for future development, coupled with a growing dissatisfaction with the modernist architectural styles of the post-war years, has considerably added to the burden of those responsible for buildings which are too large or costly for present needs but which are also too architecturally important, or have too many 'historical associations' to be consigned to the bulldozer. Deliberations about the future use of some of London's most important churches are now under way, and two recent publications reveal that concern about the architectural legacy of religious observance in the capital is by no means confined to the established church nor, indeed, to Christian denominations. Jewish monuments have not sofar figured prominently in general debates on conservation, and 'saving' campaigns directed at specific Jewish buildings have been rare. For most non-Jews, knowledge of the types of buildings and artefacts which constitute the 'Jewish heritage' is very limited, and within the Jewish community itself appreciation of the artistic value and historical significance of buildings, furnishing and records has not been widespread. In the last two or three years, however, attempts have been made to increase awareness of the riches which survive, and to encourage a systematic policy of recording and (when appropriate) preservation. In July 1990 a conference on the theme 'Preserving the Jewish heritage' was held at Southampton University, and was the first nationwide attempt to co-ordinate action on Jewish heritage conservation in Britain. Later the same year a symposium organised in New York by the Jewish Heritage Council of the World Monuments Fund addressed similar themes from an international perspective. Both events were influential in deciding the shape and content of a conference devoted to Jewish monuments in the British Isles organised by Dr Sharman Kadish in association with the Centre for Metropolitan History and held at the Yakar educational foundation in Hendon in October 1991. About 100 Jewish and non-Jewish delegates heard sixteen wide-ranging papers dealing with the history, preservation and future use of Jewish sites and buildings. Abstracts of the papers have now been made available, and provide a useful introduction to a subject which does not usually figure prominently in discussions on the preservation and destruction of historic monuments in London and other urban centres. 1 The papers fall into three groups, considering in turn London, the regions and 'Jewish heritage conservation and the wider community'. They are introduced by a summary of Dr Kadish's opening address which outlines some of the problems facing campaigners for Jewish monuments and recom-

Anti-Semitism and the Birth of Europe

In August 1976 the remains of a substantial building were uncovered in the courtyard of the Palais de Justice at Rouen, by the street which has been called at least since 1116 the rue aux Juifs (see plate I). That it was a Jewish building is confirmed by the Hebrew graffiti on its interior walls. It can be dated firmly to the years around 1100 by its scale, style, and workmanship, which are strongly reminiscent of the so-called ‘Norman exchequer’ in the ducal castle at Caen. The quality of its masonry is as good as may be found anywhere in northern Europe at this time. The function of the building is not altogether certain. At 14.14 X 9.46 metres, with at least one storey above the ground floor, it seems too large for a private dwelling, and indeed it is bigger than any known synagogue of this date north of the Alps. Not only the graffiti, but the lions of Judah finely carved at the base of one column, and the dragon from Psalm 91 on another, strongly suggest a religious purpose. The synagogue was on this street, but it is usually thought to have been on the south side, opposite the Palais de Justice site. This has led Norman Golb, the author of a major study of the Jewish community at Rouen, to suggest that the building unveiled in 1976 was a school, which acted as a centre of advanced study, not only for the Jewry of Rouen, but for a much larger region in which educational and scholarly activity is attested throughout the twelfth century by a rich crop of surviving manuscripts and other references, including many from places like Pont-Audemer, Touques, Falaise, Evreux, and Coutances, which were by no means major urban centres at this time.

English heritage, statutory control and Jewish buildings

English Heritage was created in 1984 to take over historic buildings and monuments responsibilities of the Department of the Environment. It has direct responsibility for almost 400 historic sites and monuments in England, including Stonehenge and Hadrian's Wall. English Heritage advises the government on all conservation issues, and exercises special statutory powers in London. The annual grant budget is around £30 million. This article explains the role of English Heritage in the conservation of Jewish buildings, particularly synagogues, through listing and grant aid.

Squandered heritage: Jewish buildings in Britain

In the winter of 1987–88 the United Synagogue sold the magnificent East London synagogue in Stepney Green (1877) to property developers, without consultation nor apparent concern for its fate. This sale drew attention to an issue long neglected by the leaders of Anglo‐Jewry: the conservation of the Jewish architectural heritage in the British Isles. Immediate steps must be taken to arrest the disappearance of historic Jewish landmarks: synagogues, cemeteries and secular buildings. This article recommends co‐operation between the Jewish community and the general conservation agencies (especially English Heritage) in the systematic documentation of Jewish sites, in order to establish priorities for preservation and to draw up guidelines for the listing of Jewish buildings. It calls for Anglo‐Jewry to put conservation on the communal agenda and for the education of the Jewish public to appreciate the importance of our architectural heritage.