The Iconographic Study of Synagogue Architecture

The synagogue architecture attracts researchers as both, a historical product of design and construction, as well as a bearer of meanings imbued in its fabric by the builders and beholders. With this respect, a built work does not differ greatly from the works of imitative arts. Like works of painting or sculpture, edifices may be arranged in sequences of visually comparable representations, which are referred to meaningful texts. The visual and textual parts of this assembly are subjected to creative transformations, and the task of architectural historian, like that of an art historian, is to place these both parts in historical context.

The means of architectural expression are the interior layout, composition of built masses, decorative elements, and, sometimes, architectural style. As shows analyses of European synagogues, the series of comparable edifices may be arranged along the pairs of paternal-filial edifices, where the patterns are chosen by the societal criteria, with architect’s advice. These choices are complimented with the references to a historically distant, though meaningful Temple of Jerusalem, known to the clients and architects through verbal descriptions, through their verbal and graphical interpretations. The resulting hierarchies, based on visual and meaningful relationship, bring us closer to understanding of the synagogue architecture as a continuous, variable, and cognizable phenomenon.