Israeli Synagogues: Architecture and Avant-Garde

The proposed lecture deals with atypical synagogue architecture in the Israel’s post-Independence era. The discussion will center on how atypical synagogues’ appearance reflects architectural perceptions that were dominant post WWII, by what means, and how aspirations for social change were articulated through architectural forms.

Modern Israeli synagogues convey a turning point in the tradition of synagogue design: the collective desire to leave behind the trauma of the Holocaust led to a rejection of the modern European synagogue typologies. Moreover, Israeli synagogue architects of the period took pains to distinguish it from Christian and Islamic sacred architecture.

Following the Second World War, international architectural discourse directed a profound criticism into the Modern movement’s perceptions, which had identified with the International Style. The controversial discussion demanded a return to humanism, localization and communal involvement at the core of the architectural praxis. The

Brutalist Style identified with these values, and thus became the bedrock of Israel’s new architectural approach. In Israeli synagogues of that period, the architectural forms common to post-war architecture were reinvented or reinterpreted within a Jewish-national context.

The lecture will present the works of architects that informed Israel’s radical synagogue heritage, including Yehuda Landau, Zvi Hecker, Alfred Neumann, and Nahum Zolotov, and it will explain how their innovative use of Jewish symbols consolidated a complex new identity for Israel’s Jews in a time of dramatic upheaval.