The year 2022 marks the 10th anniversary of Jewish Heritage Europe, and we are celebrating it throughout the year with special content. The theme of JHE’s 10th birthday celebrations is the “Anniversary of Anniversaries” — that is, using JHE’s own anniversary to feature other significant or symbolic anniversaries related to Jewish heritage that also take place this year.
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The High Holidays are a time when newly built or newly restored synagogues are often opened or rededicated.
Here are three that are celebrating “Big Birthdays” this High Holiday season: The stunning art nouveau synagogue in Subotica, Serbia turned 120; the Nagy Fuvaros st. synagogue in Budapest turned 100; the modern New Synagogue in Livorno, Italy, turned 60
SUBOTICA, SERBIA
After decades of fitful starts and setbacks, the stunning art nouveau synagogue in Subotica was rededicated in 2018 after a full restoration.
Known in Hungarian as Szabadka, Subotica was part of Austro-Hungary at the time the synagogue was built in 1902. It was designed by the Budapest-based architects Dezső Jakab and Marcell Komor, who also designed the town hall and the buildings of the park in Palić, outside of town. (Click to see an online exhibition about the synagogue.)
They had submitted an identical (or very similar) design in the competition for the synagogue in nearby Szeged in 1899 — but their design lost out to the grand synagogue designed by Lipot Baumhorn.
In the 1920s, architect Jakab commented on the synagogue’s concept in the Jewish weekly Szombat: “We designed the whole temple to be a light, bright place in lively colors, where sorrow passes away and believers, after having finished their prayers, leave it with peace in their hearts, as an opposition to the gloomy intimacy of Gothic churches.”
The Synagogue has a tall central, eight-sided dome, whose roof is patterned in multi-colored tiles. This dominates smaller, bulbous domes, sinuously curved gables and ornamental buttresses. Each dome is topped by a star of David. The cream stucco outer walls are edged in red brick or terracotta tiles molded into floral or other decorative shapes.
With its glazed tile roof and zinc-clad domes, the synagogue was one of the first buildings to employ concrete and steel construction, a technique that did not become commonplace until later in the twentieth century.
Eight steel columns arranged in a circle support the vast central dome. Interior walls, columns, and balcony panels are decorated with brightly colored murals, woodcarvings, and plaster elements. These include Secessionist-style forms and stylized motifs including roses, carnations, tulips, peacock feathers, and stems with leaves inspired by Transylvanian folk art.
Particularly notable are the stained glass windows, originally from the studio of Miksa Roth, and the elements made from unglazed terra-cotta produced in the Zsolnay factory in Pécs.
Click to see more pictures and read more about the restoration
Click to read about the rededication event
See a World Monuments Fund online exhibition about the synagogue
BUDAPEST — SYNAGOGUE AT NAGY FUVAROS ST. 4
Designed by Dezső Freund in a modified art deco style, the synagogue was inaugurated on September 17, 1922 and is tucked away on the ground floor of an anonymous looking building that once housed the Józsefvárosi Kaszinó, or gentlemen’s club, in the Budapest’s rundown Eighth District, once a lively Jewish neighborhood that was home to thousands of poor and lower-middle class Jews, many of them immigrants from the eastern territories of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
The prayer room is relatively large, with a women’s gallery and beautiful glass ceilings. The complex also hosts a small prayer room and a kitchen.
It is still an active synagogue, under the umbrella of the Neolog Budapest Jewish community, but led by a rabbi from the Chabad-associated EMIH community.
Watch a 2020 video about the synagogue. It’s in Hungarian, but the images show the interior and also the street frontage and entrance.
See photo documentation by the Center for Jewish Art
LIVORNO, ITALY
Designed by the Roman architect Angelo di Castro, the small but striking New Synagogue stands on the site of the magnificent old synagogue, built in the early 17th century and expanded in the 18th century, which was hit during an Allied bombing raid in World War II and later pulled down.
Watch a rare video of the inauguration in 1962 (ignore the music!):
The new synagogue, built in reinforced concrete, features vertical exterior and interior ribs and two rows of hexagonal windows. The sanctuary focuses on an elaborate carved wooden Ark, originally from Pesaro (it dates from 1708 and is signed by one Angelo Scoccianti dal Massacio).
According to the Foundation for Jewish Cultural Heritage in Italy’s Visit Jewish Italy web site:
The shape of the building, with its structure in reinforced concrete, is inspired by the Tent of Meeting described in Exodus. The composition of the design is strictly similar from on the interior and exterior, a symbolic reference to the monotheism of the Jewish people.
Inside, the hall is arranged with a central plan layout, with public seating arranged in amphitheatre formation. At the centre, the tevah was made by re-using marble elements that had belonged to the furnishings of the old temple. Meanwhile, the carved, gilded wooden aron (1708) came from Pesaro, and was transferred here in 1970.
The basement rooms house the Oratorio Lampronti, a small synagogue for use in the winter months. It was furnished using items from the Spanish Temple of Ferrara, which received them as gifts in the early 18th century from the Rabbi Isacco Lampronti.