Dohány Street Synagogue

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Basic information
Dohány Street Synagogue
Dohány utcai Zsinagóga
Location	Budapest, Hungary
Geographic coordinates	47°29′45″N 19°03′39″E / 47.49583, 19.06083Coordinates: 47°29′45″N 19°03′39″E / 47.49583, 19.06083
Religious affiliation	Neolog Judaism
Year consecrated	1859
Ecclesiastical status	Active Synagogue
Website	synagogue.uw.hu
Architectural description
Architect(s)	Ludwig Förster
Architectural style	Moorish Revival
Direction of facade	SWbS
Year completed	1859
Specifications
Capacity	2,964
Length	75 metres
Width	27 metres
Width (nave)	12 metres
Height (max)	43.6 metres

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Great Synagogue in Dohány Street

The Great Synagogue in Dohány Street, also known as Dohány Street Synagogue (Hungarian: Dohány utcai Zsinagóga/Nagy Zsinagóga, Hebrew: בית הכנסת הגדול של בודפשט‎) or Tabakgasse Synagogue, is located in Belváros, the inner city of the historical old town of Pest, in the eastern section of Budapest. It is the largest synagogue in Europe.^[1] It seats 3,000 people and is a centre of Neolog Judaism.

The synagogue is 75m long and 27m wide ^[2] and was built between 1854 and 1859 in the Moorish Revival style, based chiefly on Moorish models from North Africa and Spain (the Alhambra),^[3] according to a plan by German Ludwig Förster, with interior design partly by Frigyes Feszl.

Theodore Herzl's house of birth was next to the Dohány street Synagogue. In the place of his house stands the Jewish Museum, which holds Jewish Religious and Historical Collection, built in 1930 following the synagogue's architectural style and attached in 1931 to the main building.

1 History
2 Exterior
3 Interior
4 Renovation
5 Trivia
6 Notes
7 References
8 Gallery
9 See also
10 External links

[edit] History

Built between 1854-1859 by the Neolog Jewish community of Pest according to the plans of Ludwig Förster, the monumental synagogue has a capacity of 2,964 seats (1,492 for men and 1,472 in the women's galleries) making it the largest in the Europe. The consecration of the synagogue took place on September 6, 1859.

The original synagogue was bombed by the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party on 3 February, 1939^[4]. Used as a base for German Radio and also as a stable during World War II, the building suffered some severe damage from aerial raids during the Nazi Occupation but specially during the battle for the liberation of Budapest. During the Communist era the damaged structure became again a prayer house for the much-diminished Jewish community. Its restoration started in 1991.

[edit] Exterior

Aerial view of the Dohány Street Synagogue complex

The synagogue was originally built in a residential area. One of the buildings inside the compound was the birth house of Theodor Herzl. The Dohány Street Synagogue complex consists of the Great Synagogue, the Jewish Museum, the Heroes' Temple, the graveyard and the Holocaust memorial.

[edit] Great Synagogue

The building has a length of more than 53 meters while its width has 26.5 meters. The style of the Dohány Street Synagogue is Moorish but its design also features a mixture of Byzantine, Romantic and Gothic elements. Two onion-shaped domes sit on the twin octogonal towers at 43 m height. A rose stained-glass window sits over the main entrance.

[edit] Jewish Museum

The Jewish Museum was constructed on the plot where Theodor Herzl's two-story Classicist style house used to stand, adjoining the Dohany synagogue^[5]. The Jewish Museum constructed between 1930-1931 holds collection of religious relics of the Pest Hevrah Kaddishah (Jewish Burial Society), ritual objects of Shabbat and the High Holidays and a Holocaust room.

[edit] Heroes' Temple

The arcade and the Heroes' Temple, which seats 250 people and is used for religious services on weekdays and during the winter time, was added the Dohány Street Synagogue complex in 1931. The Heroes' Temple designed by Lázlo Vágó and Ferenc Faragó, serves as a memorial to Hungarian Jews who gave their lives during World War I.

[edit] Jewish Cemetery

The cemetery is located in the back yard of the Heroes' Temple, enclosed by the Jewish Museum and the Dohany synagogue. According to the Jewish traditions cemeteries can not be on the premises of the house of prayer^{[citation needed]}. This graveyard is the result of tragic historical events during World War II. In 1944, the Dohány Street Synagogue was part of the Jewish Ghetto for the city Jews and served as shelter for a lot of people. Over two thousand of those who died in the ghetto from hunger and cold during the winter 1944-1945 are buried in the courtyard of the synagogue.

The Memorial of the Hungarian Jewish Martyrs (Imre Varga, 1989)

[edit] Raul Wallenberg Holocaust Memorial Park

The Raoul Wallenberg Emlékpark (memory park) in the rear courtyard holds the Memorial of the Hungarian Jewish Martyrs — at least 400,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered by the Nazis.^[6] Made by Imre Varga, it resembles a weeping willow whose leaves bear inscriptions with the names of victims. There is also a memorial to Wallenberg and other Righteous Among the Nations, among them Swiss Vice-consul Carl Lutz, who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II.

[edit] Interior

Similarly to basilicas, the building consists of three spacious richly decorated aisles, two balconies and, unusually, an organ. Its ark contains various torah scrolls taken from other synagogues destroyed during the Holocaust^{[citation needed]}.

The torah-ark and the internal frescoes made of colored and golden geometric shapes are the works of the famous Hungarian romantic architect Frigyes Feszl. A single-span cast iron supports the 12-m wide nave. The seats on the ground-floor are for men, while the upper gallery, supported by steel ornamented poles, has seats for women.

Franz Liszt and Camille Saint-Saëns played the original 5,000 tube organ built in 1859 ^[7]. A new mechanical organ with 63 voices and 4 manuals was built in 1996 by the German firm Jehmlich Orgelbau Dresden GmbH ^[8].

[edit] Renovation

Only in the nineties, following the return to democracy in Hungary, renovation works could start. A three-year program of reconstruction (funded largely by a US$ 5 million donation from Hungarian Jewish immigrant Estée Lauder^[9]) was completed in 1996.^[10]

[edit] Trivia

Dohány means tobacco in Hungarian. Theodor Herzl in his speeches^[11] and the Jewish Encyclopedia referred to the Dohány Street Synagogue as the Tabakgasse Synagogue. The Dohány Street Synagogue is also known under the name of the Tabac-Schul, the Yiddish translation of Dohány.

[edit] Notes

^ Out of Darkness, New Life. The New York Times. Retrieved on 2008-03-12.
^ 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.
^ Frank, Tobor (2003). Discussing Hitler: Advisors of U.S. Diplomacy in Central Europe 1934-1941. Central European University Press. ISBN 9639241563, p. 225.
^ Herzl, Theodor (January 1898). "An Autobiography". London Jewish Chronicle: 20. “I was born in 1860 in Budapest in a house next to the synagogue where lately the rabbi denounced me from the pulpit in very sharp terms (...)”
^ Rosen, Ilana (2004). Hungarian Jewish Women Survivors Remember the Holocaust. University Press of America, ISBN 0761827048, p.3.
^ Perlman, Robert (1991). Bridging Three Worlds: Hungarian-Jewish Americans, 1848-1914. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 0870234684, p. 72.
^ Jehmlich Orgelbau Dresden GmbH. Organ of the Budapest Synagogue. Retrieved on 3-17, 2008.
^ 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.
^ Herzl, Theodor (1960). "Herzl Speaks: His Mind on Issues, Events and Men". Herzl Institute Pamphlet 16. New Yotk: The Herzl Press. “I went...to the synagogue [in Paris] and found the services once again solemn and moving. Much reminded me of my youth and the Tabakgasse synagogue in Pest.”