UPDATED with new material: The Origins of the Women’s Gallery (and pictures)

(JHE) — We have posted in the past about women’s galleries in the synagogue, mainly focusing on the architecture and physical sites.

Two recent publications trace the origin of of the separation of women during prayer and the evolution of the separate women’s gallery or section, from antiquity to more recent times —  a lengthy blog post this month by Chen Malul for the National Library of Israel, and a more detailed scholarly paper focusing on eastern Europe by Vladimir Levin, the director of the Center for Jewish Art in Jerusalem, published last year in the journal Jewish History.  (Levin’s paper, “The Architecture of Gender: Women in the Eastern European Synagogue,” can be viewed online  on Academia.edu.)

Levin writes that “it is not clear if there was a special place for women in ancient
synagogues,” and notes that there is a lengthy discussion about it among archeologists and other researchers.  But by medieval times, he writes, “the majority of known medieval synagogues in Europe had women’s sections [that were] separate rooms attached to a side wall of the sanctuary.”

He described several types of women’s sections: An “attached women’s room”  situated in an annex to the sanctuary; an “integrated women’s room”  situated inside
the main volume of the synagogue, usually on the upper floor above the
vestibule;  a  “women’s loft,” or room above the vestibule but open to the sanctuary, and a “women’s gallery” situated within the sanctuary and usually supported by columns.

Malul writes that the earliest evidence “of the existence of a women’s gallery as a separate room in the synagogue next to the men’s section” is an inscription in the synagogue in Worms, Germany, which was built in 1175, with a women’s section added in 1213.

It directly adjoined the original men’s synagogue and was connected to it by a door and five windowlike openings. In the 19th century, the door was replaced by two large gothic arches. (The synagogue was destroyed in WW2 but rebuilt from the rubble after the war, with these large arches.)

Malul writes that the widespread practice of creating women’s galleries within the general synagogue didn’t come in Europe until later centuries.

Read the entire blog post

Levin notes that such women’s galleries were already in existence in the 17th century in synagogues in the Netherlands — and there are women’s galleries in the 16th century synagogues in Venice. The Dutch model, he writes, influenced synagogue architecture in both the Sephardic world and in central and eastern Europe, to the extent that:

By the early nineteenth century, interior women’s galleries along the western, northern, and southern walls of the sanctuary were already the most typical feature of synagogue architecture in central and western Europe.

This spread to eastern Europe by the mid-19th century, and a number of older synagogues were rebuilt with women’s galleries, allowing women to pray “under the same ceiling” as men.

Read Levin’s article, which also addresses how the architecture of women’s sections reflected changing roles for women, on Academia.edu

In surviving synagogues, the women’s section is often located in raised galleries that are at the back of, or surround, or flank the floor of the sanctuary. Sometimes the architecture gave them low railings or raised seats that allowed women to see the service below; other times the gallery was cut off by dense grilles.

In some other, earlier, synagogues, such as the Old-New Synagogue in Prague and Old Synagogue in Krakow, one can still see the women’s section as a separate room. And in  in France, in the synagogues in Carpentras and Cavaillon, one can visit the separate prayer hall for women in the basement, below the sanctuary.

Here are some images of women’s galleries and sections in synagogues.