A small exhibit at the Jewish Museum in Budapest details the history and displays the remnants of the 18th century wooden synagogue that once stood in the town of Náznánfalva, Transylvania — now Nazna, Romania — just outside of Târgu Mures.
Called The Writing on the Wall, the exhibit centers on wooden panels from the synagogue, some of which were known to exist and others that were recently found tucked away in the attic of the museum, which is housed in the Dohany St synagogue complex, by three young members of the museum staff who had been given the assignment of tidying up the space.
“In the summer of 2024 two of my colleagues — Balázs Som and Tamás Lózsy — and I discovered three-meter long wooden panels wedged between the crossbeams of the Dohány Street Synagogue’s attic and waiting to be rediscovered,” Mátyás Király, who helped create the exhibit, told JHE. “They bore unique Hebrew scriptures, partially faded, showing visible signs of their age.”
The exhibit opened at the beginning of February and will be up until the end of May, but it can only be viewed by appointment. Király and his colleague Som recently guided JHE’s Ruth Ellen Gruber on a visit.
The synagogue was built in 1747 and is believed to have been the only wooden synagogue in Hungary (though this is not certain). At the time, Jews were not allowed to live in royal cities such as Târgu Mures, so they settled outside the city in Nazna, on the private estate of the noble Barcsay family. In the 18th century, the Jewish community there became the second largest Jewish community in Transylvania after that in Alba Iulia (in Hungarian Gyulafehérvár).
The community dwindled sharply after restrictions on residency were lifted in the mid-19th century, and by around 1910 or a bit later the community had ceased to exist. The disused wooden synagogue was left abandoned and collapsed in around 1940.
When news of the collapse reached the Jewish Museum in Budapest, Rabbi György Balázs, a historian at the museum, traveled to Târgu Mures — about 500 km east of Budapest — and arranged to bring eight wooden panels from the building back to Budapest by train. He was supported in this by the rabbi of Târgu Mures, Ferenc Löwy, who was keenly interested in the synagogue and had already published a monograph about it in 1911, calling it calling it “the oldest Jewish temple in Transylvania.” The Târgu Mures Jewish community was listed by the Budapest museum as the donator of the panels.
“Löwy remained interested in the subject for decades, and in 1934, he even took a journalist from Jerusalem to see the synagogue,” an article on the web site of the Hungarian Jewish umbrella MAZSIHISZ writes. “However, they were saddened to find that due to the declining Jewish population in the area, the wooden synagogue had fallen into disrepair—a fate it ultimately met within a decade.”
György Balázs also published an article about the history of the Nazna Jewish community and the rescue of the panels in a Hungarian periodical called Libanon. An original copy forms part of the exhibition. (Click here to see the article online.)
“Not only in Romania, but in all of Hungary it was the only synagogue made entirely of wood and adorned with paintings,” he wrote. “As such, it serves as an relic of great significance in cultural studies.”
Balázs and Löwy were victims of the Holocaust, both deported to their deaths in 1944. Balázs and his wife were deported to Auschwitz in July 1944, leaving behind their young daughter, who survived the war and eventually moved to Canada. According to an account she gave to an Ottawa newspaper in 2023:
One week after arriving at Auschwitz, he was transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. As U.S. forces approached that camp in April 1945, the Nazis sought to evacuate, and Balázs was loaded onto a train bound for Terezin, another concentration camp near Prague. En route, the train was bombed by the Allies. [He] either died in the bombing or was shot by the Germans as he tried to flee. There are no records of his death.
The synagogue looked like a simple barn on the outside, but the wooden interior featured richly painted decoration that included the signs of the Zodiac and other iconography as well as the text of prayers.
The exhibition displays the recently discovered long, thin panels from the walls and/or barrel vaulted ceiling, which bear traces of elaborate painting and Hebrew texts.
It also displays the two panels that were already known to exist — these look like peaked doors, or the sides of the tablets of the 10 commandments, but according to old photos are believed to have been placed on the eastern wall above the ark.
These two panels, which also bear painted decoration and text, formed part of an exhibition the museum mounted in 2016 to mark its 100th anniversary. It told the story of Hungarian Jews over 100 years through 100 objects.
In addition to the wooden panels, the exhibition includes photographs, publications, information about Balázs and Löwy, and other material.
If you would like to visit, contact the museum at: [email protected]
Watch a digital video reconstruction of the synagogue:
Though the synagogue collapsed 85 years ago, Nazna still has two Jewish cemeteries, with burials dating from the 18th century — people who would have worshipped in the wooden synagogue.
Here is the gravestone of Moses, son of Israel. His epitaph tells us that he was a man of integrity:
Click here to see Balasz’s article about the synagogue online
See a Jewish Museum blog post about the discovery of the panels and research about them