Dozens of Torah arks from disused and/or abandoned synagogues were brought to Israel from European countries after the Holocaust. They include around 40 that were brought from Italy alone: for the most part they are now used in Israeli synagogues or are displayed in museums.
Participants at the conference on Slovenian Jewish Heritage, held this past week in Israel, visited two of the most remarkable:
— the glorious ark from the synagogue in Conegliano Veneto, Italy, part of the transferred and reconstucted Conegliano synagogue, now in the Nahon Museum of Italian Jewish Art in Jerusalem
— the ark from the former Orthodox synagogue in Tokaj, Hungary, rescued from a rubbish heap and now restored and displayed at the Memorial Museum of the Hungarian-speaking Jewry, in Safed.
Both have dramatic — and poignant — stories behind their transfer from Europe to Israel.
The Conegliano Veneto ark is much better known. Made of gilded wood, the magnificently ornate Aron dates from the 17th century — a carved panel on the lower part bears a dedication to Rabbi Nathan Ottolengo, who died in 1615 and was the head of the Talmudic School of Conegliano Veneto.
The museum web site writes:
The magnificent Ark of Conegliano Veneto is decorated with fine golden carved wooden ornamentation, representing large acanthus leaves, vine leaves and grapes. The Ark features two decorated round-topped doors flanked by two columns surmounted by Corinthian capitals. On the inner side of the doors are written sections of the Ten Commandments.
In 1701, the Ark and other synagogue fittings were moved into a “new” synagogue built by the community, and further ornamentation was added to the Aron structure.
The Jewish community dwindled over the next two centuries, particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries, by the early 20th century the synagogue was more or less closed. As the museum web site writes:
The “new” synagogue served the small community as a cultural and spiritual centre for religious studies and family celebrations. It remained in sporadic use until the First World War. The last service was held on Yom Kippur in 1918 by Jewish soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army and their chaplain, Rabbi Harry Deutsch.
After World War II, between 1948 and 1952, the fittings of several dozen synagogues no longer in use were tranferred from Italy to Israel; the idea was to preserve them, as the small Jewish community in Italy did not have the means. The interior of the synagogue was reconstructed in Jerusalem in 1951, at first for the use of the Italian Jewish community there.
It later was incorporated into the Nahon Museum of Italian Jewish Art — but it remains in use on Shabbat and holidays.
The Ark from the Orthodox Great Synagogue in Tokaj — capital of the famous wine region in northeast Hungary –has a much different story.
Tokaj’s first synagogue, established in the mid 1700s, was destroyed in a fire. It was replaced by a grand edifice built in around 1890 that became one of the most imposing buildings in town.
Built in an eclectic style with tall arched windows, it could seat 1,000 people and was so ornately decorated that, according to local reports from the period, it was considered the “jewel box” of the town.
The synagogue was devastated during World War II, and in the 1960s it was sold by the tiny remnant Jewish community and used as a warehouse.
An initial abortive attempt to restore it left it an almost total ruin, without a roof — and with only the stone frame of the Ark surviving; further slow and fitful restoration began in the late 1980s. Renovation was completed in the mid-2000s, and the synagogue is now used as a cultural center.
During a visit to Tokaj in 1996, when the synagogue was still a ruin, the founders of the Memorial Museum of Hungarian-speaking Jewry noticed a pile of wood heaped up like rubbish behind the building. Closer inspection showed that this heap was composed of the dismantled parts of the wooden Ark.
It took several years, but they managed to obtain the wooden parts and transfer them to Safed, where eventually the Ark was restored to what is believed to be is original appearance.
Apparently no photos of the original Ark exists, but the restorers used photographs of similar arks from other synagogues of the same period.
Since 2015, the Ark has been the dominant feature of the a separate section of the museum devoted to destroyed synagogues in today’s Hungary and the areas of surrounding countries that were either part of Hungary before World War I or where Hungarian-speaking Jews lived.
See photos of the synagogue as a ruin
See Center for Jewish Art photos of the restored synagogue today (exterior)