Dohány Street Synagogue

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Basic information
Dohány Street Synagogue Dohány utcai Zsinagóga

Location	Budapest, Hungary
Religious affiliation	Neolog
Ecclesiastical status	Active Synagogue
Architectural description
Architect/s	Ludwig Förster
Architectual style	Moorish
Year completed	1859
Specifications
Capacity	2,964
Length	75 metres
Width	27 metres
Height (max)	43.6 metres

The Dohány Street Synagogue or Great Synagogue (Dohány utcai Zsinagóga/Nagy Zsinagóga) in Budapest is the largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world, after the Temple Emanu-El in New York City. It seats 3,000 people and is a centre of Neolog Judaism.

The synagogue is 75m long and 27m wide ^[1] and was built between 1854 and 1859 in the Moorish style, based chiefly on Muslim models from North Africa and Spain (the Alhambra),^[2] according to a plan by Ludwig Förster, with interior design partly by Frigyes Feszl.

Franz Liszt and Camille Saint-Saëns played the organ here.^[3]

The original synagogue was bombed by the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party on 3 February, 1939^[4] and was used as a base for German Radio and also as a stable during World War II.

A three-year program of reconstruction (funded largely by a US$5m donation from Estée Lauder)^[5] was completed in 1996.^[6]

The square in front of the synagogue is named after Theodor Herzl, who was born in a house nearby in 1860. The Jewish Religious and Historical Collection adjoins the synagogue.

The Raoul Wallenberg Emlékpark (memory park) in the rear courtyard holds the Memorial of the Hungarian Jewish Martyrs (600,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered by the Nazis) together with a memorial to Wallenberg and other Righteous Among the Nations, such as Swiss Vice-consul Carl Lutz, who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II.

The Memorial of the Hungarian Jewish Martyrs

[edit] References

^ Frojimovics, Kinga; Komoróczy, Géza; Pusztai, Viktória and Strbik, Andrea (1999). Jewish Budapest: Memories, Rites, History. Central European University Press. ISBN 9639116378, p. 111.
^ Mendelsohn, Ezra (2002). Painting a People: Maurycy Gottlieb and Jewish Art. UPNE. ISBN 1584651792, p. 90.
^ Perlman, Robert (1991). Bridging Three Worlds: Hungarian-Jewish Americans, 1848-1914. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 0870234684, p. 72.
^ Frank, Tobor (2003). Discussing Hitler: Advisors of U.S. Diplomacy in Central Europe 1934-1941. Central European University Press. ISBN 9639241563, p. 225.
^ Mars, Leonard (2003). Jewish Identity in Contemporary Hungary. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 48(1-2), 35-48.
^ Troen, Selwyn (1998). Jewish Centers and Peripheries: Europe Between America and Israel Fifty Years After World War II. Transaction Publishers, ISBN 1560003731, p. 135.