INTRODUCTION

As the sun rose on the early modern era (mid-fifteenth century) Jews found themselves in a dynamic and changing world. It gradually afforded them new socio-economic and civic opportunity that they had not known in nearly a thousand years. The Middle Ages began with the end of the Roman Empire and Christianitys efforts at religious hegemony. Jews had endured much persecution during the previous millennium (c. 450c. 1450). This new era included the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, Humanism, the Age of Reason and the Scientific Revolution, among other historical movements. Though they were a minute proportion of the worlds population, the Jews not only had a profound impact on Western civilization, but were also greatly influenced by the peoples they lived amongst during this era. Important scholarship has recently been published on early modern Jewish history and here I intend to build upon and enhance what previous historians have contributed.1 Their approach has focused on intangible aspects of this heritage, such as social, cultural or economic history in contrast to tangible buildings and artefacts. My focus is on how the experience of early modern Jews had an effect on material cultural heritage, with an emphasis on the synagogue. Not since late antiquity had Jews experimented with synagogue design and development to such a degree.2 Now, approximately fifteen centuries after the destruction of Herods Temple (70 ce), which resulted in the first proliferation of synagogue development, synagogue design was revisited in response to the socio-cultural changes that had taken and were taking place. Thus, the social and cultural movements of the early modern period afforded Judaism a rebirth, or renaissance, of its diasporic house of worship. This study is not a traditional examination of architectural history. Synagogue architecture and design, especially the early modern, is little different from the architecture that predominates in built environments wherever Jews live. However, synagogues can be a valuable marker of cultural transmission. They can reflect global influences on design and local impacts, as well as the commonalities and differences among Jews, and all at the same time. The present work will provide detailed descriptions of buildings, but is more concerned with

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Jews and the Renaissance of Synagogue Architecture, 14501730

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illuminating deeper, more powerful meanings of architectural form that explain why it is that we see what we see, as well as why there are some things we do not find in Jewish houses of worship. The majority of synagogues treated here will be discussed collectively in order to bring attention to trends linking the socio-economic and political position of Jews, and the architecture in which that position is reflected. The small number of individual synagogues that this work assesses in greater detail serves to illustrate specific points, as well as to discuss examples of exceptionality. Furthermore, due to the nature of this research, my work prioritizes the study of physical buildings, their pathology, as well as environmental context. These architectural material sources are every bit as important as the paper and parchment documents found at libraries and archives. As Saskia Coenen Snyder has argued, Synagogues are great storytellers. While their brick-and-mortar exteriors appear silent, if one is willing to listen they tell lively tales about themselves, their audience, and their surroundings.3 Snyders research focuses on the nineteenth century and on Europe. By contrast, my study is primarily about synagogues built between the mid-fifteenth and early mid-eighteenth centuries in North Africa, Asia and the Americas, in addition to Europe. Their stories will be presented with a perspective that will bring a new understanding to early modern Jewish history. The synagogue as both an institution and a building was an important part of Jewish life during the Middle Ages, but became an even greater physical, social, religious and cultural centre in the time of the early modern Jewish communities. Medieval Christian and Islamic governments often restricted synagogue architecture and design. Jews were also frequently forbidden from working as architects or working in the building trades. Synagogues across the known world were thus confined to vernacular architectural traditions on their exteriors, making them invisible or at least unrecognizable as houses of worship in comparison to a church or mosque. Vernacular refers to informal architecture and is defined by construction methods that use readily available resources and folk building traditions to address local needs and circumstances. This is in contrast to formal or polite architecture, which is characterized by stylistic elements that serve purely aesthetic purposes and are designed by artistically trained architects and constructed by builders often experienced in engineering. Owing to the informal construction methods associated with it, vernacular architecture also evolves in a different way than formal architecture, reflecting environmental and folk cultural change over time. With the onset of the early modern era and its revolution in socio-political thought, restrictions on synagogue architecture and design began to loosen, and continued to do so steadily throughout the period. The early modern renaissance of synagogue architecture was not just attributable to the enhanced social and

Introduction

economic standing of Jews during the period, but was also a reflection of philosophical and cultural changes within society at large. Jews are a people, an ethnic group as much as a religious community. Thus, the changes affecting their most important communal building were not merely religious. The rebirth of synagogue architecture was a by-product of societal and cultural changes that developed during the European Renaissance, which had a great effect on gentile governments and individuals attitudes towards Jews both on the Continent and abroad. While there is consensus amongst scholars that early modern studies, sandwiched between the late Middle Ages and modern times, is an appropriate specialty, there is disagreement as to when the period begins and ends. For purposes of analysis this study employs the dates c. 1450 and c. 1730. The year 1453 corresponds with the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, an event that had a profound impact on the Western world, and many historians acknowledge this crisis as the dawn of the early modern.4 The Turkish conversion of Constantinople to Istanbul did not, by itself, result in the creation of new synagogues. However, the Ottoman Empire which replaced the Byzantine became a land of refuge for displaced Jews (and subsequent synagogue development). This was especially so after the Iberian expulsions of the 1490s. Indeed, if we were to assign a synagogue to represent the front bookend for the early modern period, the Gothic synagogue of Tomar, Portugal, built c. 1450, could be such an edifice. It was one of the last (if not the last) synagogues built in Iberia before modern times5 an epicentre of medieval Jewish culture and constructed at about the same time as the Ottoman conquest. Over the successive centuries numerous synagogues would emerge that epitomized the socio-cultural movements and artistic trends of which they were a product. Two synagogues that stand out above the rest, both literately as well as figuratively, are the Grote Sjoel (built 16701, Great Shul in Dutch) and the Portuguese Synagogue (built 16715, colloquially called the Esnoga) of Amsterdam. Both buildings are impressive feats of architecture within Amsterdam as a whole not just within the Jewish quarter, where they are positioned across the street from one another. Thorough planning and forethought by their respective Jewish congregations and the secular authorities went into the development of these synagogues. The end of the early modern period is often associated with the spread of industrialization, political revolution and nationalism during the eighteenth century. The year 1730 corresponds with the construction of congregation Shearith Israels first synagogue building in New York. This was the first structure built specifically as a Jewish house of worship in North America. While Jews had struggled to make a livelihood and establish an organized community in the colonial town on the edge of the Dutch, and then British, empires for several decades, the small and architecturally insignificant building embodied

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Jewish aspiration for permanence in this corner of the New World. If there were to be an official icon for modern diasporic Jewish culture and history, it would have to entail some aspect of metropolitan Jewish New York. The first Shearith Israel Synagogue on Mill Street was the foundation stone of Jewish New York, both materially as well as symbolically. There are several themes that appear to have affected early modern Jewish synagogue architecture, design, development, ornamentation and location. These factors had lasting impacts on aesthetics, usage, as well as the socio-cultural appreciation of synagogues and their built environments. The focus of each chapter will be on one of these themes, beginning with the first, namely the contrast between medieval and early modern synagogues. Chapter 1 will reconstruct a historical context and provide a formal comparison of the typical Jewish house of worship from the Middle Ages, as well as the current state of knowledge on these structures. Understanding the medieval history of synagogues is fundamentally important in order to appreciate the achievements of synagogue design and construction in the ensuing early modern period. What survives of medieval synagogue material culture may not be representative of what was common during the long period. In Chapter 2, Jews, Synagogues and Compulsory Urban Consolidation at the Dawn of the Early Modern Period, a panoramic approach is used to view the development of new synagogues in the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries throughout the Mediterranean. As already mentioned, a defining moment separating the early modern period from the Middle Ages was the conquest of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottomans during the mid-fifteenth century. The rise of the Ottoman Empire had a profoundly positive effect on Mediterranean Jewry and synagogue development, since the Ottoman Turks were more tolerant of Judaism than their Christian counterparts. The Byzantine emperors in particular had expressed an endemic hostility towards Jews. Ottoman Sultans compelled Jews, among other groups, to relocate to strategically important cities in order to bolster their populations and economies. Beyond the Ottoman Empire, Jews were forced into dense urban quarters along the Mediterranean basin, most notoriously the ghettos of the Italian peninsula and the mellahs of north-western Africa. I quantitatively discuss the synagogues of these places in order to highlight the numerous socio-political and structural similarities that existed between the affected Jewish communities. For instance, in both cases the forced segregation of Jews from the rest of the populace caused the closure of hundreds of older synagogues, as well as the opening of new ones within the designated Jewish quarters. I assess the effects on synagogue development of internal migrations of Jews within the Italian peninsula, North Africa and the Ottoman Empire from the mid-fifteenth century onward. Accordingly, the chapter includes discussion of Sephardic Jews expelled from Iberia during the

Introduction

1490s, many of whom sought refuge in the Jewish ghettos and quarters of the Italian peninsula, the Ottoman Empire and the Moroccan sultanate. Following the theme of ghettoization and the densifications that it caused, Chapter 3 assesses Urbanisation and Jewish Public Space: The First Great Synagogues, with an emphasis on seventeenth-century PolandLithuania and the Netherlands. In these commonwealths synagogues of unprecedented physical size and architectural significance began emerging within the larger cities and towns. The new structures were the first Great Synagogues, and the architectural predecessors of those that defined modern synagogue architecture during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The development of great synagogues came about owing to a number of factors. These included liberal governments that were tolerant toward Jews, urbanization, the formation of large Jewish communities and the economic and social success of Jews. A greater interest in synagogue attendance by women was also a contributing factor. The first great synagogues increased the visual presence of Jews in the urban fabric, skyline and in city planning. Other urban innovations, in respect to synagogues, such as landscape design, comprehensive town planning and timekeeping occupy the chapter as well, in order to flesh out the argument that these buildings were, in multiple ways, a template for modern synagogue architecture. Continuing with the Dutch Republic as one of multiple foci, Chapter 4, Readmission and Colonial Frontiers: New Synagogues in Lands of Tolerance looks at the Jewish experience there as well as in seventeenth-century England, France and Denmark. All except Denmark (where no Jews had lived before this time) had expelled their Jews during the Middle Ages and later readmitted them. The emphasis of this chapter is on the development of synagogues in the Dutch and English Atlantic World, with a comparison made between the synagogues in the various colonial powers from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The peculiarities of the frontier environment ecologically, economically as well as socially and its effects on synagogues are also a focus of exploration. Chapter 5 discusses Jews and Early Modern Cultural Exchanges: CrossPollination and its Effects on Synagogue Design. In Early Modern Jewry, David B. Ruderman proposes that previous scholars have explored the concept of Mingled Identities, and the blurring of religious identities in the history of interactions between Jews, Conversos, Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Christian Hebraists, Sabbateans, and so forth.6 Following this precedent, Chapter 5 analyses how synagogue design changed during the early modern period as a result of socio-cultural interactions, beginning with some processes (such as the evolving place of women in sacred architectural space) that were in evolution prior to the mid-fifteenth century. Jews borrowed various features from Christian and Muslim houses of worship, knowingly and unknowingly. Additionally,

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non-Jewish architects of synagogues also had a profound impact on synagogue design, further fostering cultural exchange. The Atlantic World was built on the shoulders of trade and colonization, which bolstered a vast mercantile network in which early modern Jews participated. Furthermore, besides economic exchanges, markets were important places for cultural exchanges. Hence, Chapter 6, Lavishing the House of Assembly: Synagogues, Global Trade and Exotic Ornamentation, examines synagogue dcor and furnishings. With the rise of mercantile empires hospitable to Jews during the seventeenth century, Jewish communities across the globe began furnishing their synagogues with valuable goods from the places and communities with which they traded. These valuable goods included Jewish ritual objects, furniture and ornamental building materials. While synagogues had featured imported furnishings for centuries, never before had they displayed such a geographically broad and exotic mixture. Many seventeenth-century synagogue interiors were a by-product of early modern globalization and Jewish involvement in multinational trade. Questions that are addressed from a comparative perspective include whether a synagogues location was in an imperial mother country, in contrast to a colony or in a third-party trading partner. In the concluding chapter, From Early Modern to Modern: Synagogues in Transition, the findings of the investigations undertaken in the previous chapters are tied together. I conclude by examining how synagogue design and Jewish culture underwent an additional metamorphosis at the closing of the early modern period. Synagogue development in the modern period witnessed a new participation of Jews in the architectural and building professions. Thus, in a certain way, Jewish synagogue innovation and design came full circle from where it had left off during late antiquity.