Synagogue

• 1. Introduction

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  A synagogue is not simply a building. It is, as one scholar put it, a "portable system of worship" - a form of communal life that Jews carried with them across centuries of exile, displacement, and survival. The Hebrew name for it, bet knesset, means "house of assembly". And that word, assembly, is the heart of everything.

  Long before any synagogue was built, Jewish worship centered on the Temple in Jerusalem. Pilgrims came there three times a year for Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot. Sacrifice was the currency of devotion. Then, in 586 BCE, the Babylonians destroyed that Temple and scattered the Jewish people. Somewhere in the diaspora that followed, in communities far from Jerusalem, the synagogue was born.

  What makes this institution remarkable is not its architecture or its age, though both are striking. What makes it remarkable is what it replaced, and how. The synagogue did not rebuild the Temple. It did something stranger and more durable. It turned prayer into a portable alternative to sacrifice, and it planted that alternative in cities from Alexandria to Antioch, from Dura-Europos in Syria to Elche in what is now Spain. Today the largest synagogue in the world sits in Jerusalem, with a sanctuary that seats up to 20,000 people. The oldest active one still stands in Kochi, India, built in 1568.

  This documentary follows the synagogue from its uncertain origins in exile to its role as the architectural, spiritual, and social backbone of Jewish life across more than two thousand years. Along the way, it will introduce the people who shaped it, the communities that built it, and the quiet theological revolution it set in motion.

• 2. Born in Exile

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  The earliest certain evidence for a synagogue is a stone inscription found in Lower Egypt, carved in the second half of the third century BCE. It predates the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by more than three hundred years.

  That detail alone reframes the standard story. The synagogue did not emerge from the catastrophe of 70 CE, when the Romans destroyed the Second Temple. It was already old by then. Its roots reached back to the Babylonian Exile of 586 BCE and the communities of Jews who settled in Egypt, where the first gathering places for communal prayer and Torah study were called proseukhái, a Greek word meaning "houses of prayer".

  Alexandria, the foremost Greek-speaking city of the ancient world, was home to some of the most lavishly adorned of these early synagogues. The philosopher Philo mentioned them. The historian Josephus described similarly grand synagogues in Antioch. Alexandrian Jews also produced the Septuagint, the Koine Greek translation of the Torah, likely read aloud in those very proseukhái.

  By the Hellenistic period, evidence points to synagogues in both Egypt and the wider diaspora. The oldest Samaritan synagogue yet discovered stands on the island of Delos in the Aegean, with an inscription dated between 250 and 175 BCE. Samaritans and Jews in the diaspora used the same Greek word, proseukhē, for their gathering places during this era.

  The synagogue's arrival in the Land of Israel came later, several centuries after its appearance in the diaspora. By 2018, the archaeologist Mordechai Aviam reported at least nine synagogues had been excavated that pre-dated the Temple's destruction in 70 CE. His conclusion was striking: he believed that almost every Jewish settlement of that period, whether a city or a village, had a synagogue.

• 3. The Second Temple Sites

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  Gamla, a city in the Golan northeast of the Sea of Galilee, was destroyed by the Roman army in 67 CE and never rebuilt. Near its city gate, archaeologists found a synagogue that captures the pre-destruction world in frozen form.

  At Masada, the synagogue was discovered on the western side of the fortress complex. Among its most unusual finds was a cache of 14 scrolls, including biblical, sectarian, and apocryphal texts. At Herodium, Herod's palace fortress yielded a first-century synagogue. At Magdala on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, excavations in 2009 revealed what became known as the Migdal Synagogue, notable for an intricately carved stone block found in the center of its main room.

  The oldest synagogue found within the borders of modern Israel is at Modi'in, between Modi'in and Latrun. Built during the second century BCE, it includes three rooms and a nearby ritual bath, a mikve. Its age pushes the presence of synagogues in the Land of Israel back further than many once assumed.

  Chris Keith and Anders Runesson, responding to a 1995 argument by Howard Clark Kee that synagogues were not a developed feature of Jewish life before the First Jewish-Roman War, concluded that the historical Jesus almost certainly preached in synagogues in Galilee. The archaeological record had settled the debate. These were not later constructions read backward into earlier texts. They were real buildings, in use, during the first century.

  The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE did not create the synagogue. It elevated it. Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, credited with reformulating Judaism for the post-Temple era, advocated for individual houses of worship to fill the void. The institution that had grown quietly for centuries in the diaspora now became the center of Jewish life everywhere.

• 4. A New Kind of Worship

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  Lester L. Grabbe wrote that the rise of the synagogue was "a fortuitous but vital development which paved the way for a post-temple Judaism which became necessary after 70". He added that synagogues were not planned as a substitute for the Temple, but proved a useful vehicle for the transition.

  The transition required real theological negotiation. Rabbinic authorities maintained that certain Temple practices should remain exclusive to the Temple, even if the Temple no longer existed. The Mishnah directed prayers toward Jerusalem. Most synagogues were oriented to face the Temple site, not to mirror its layout, establishing them as extensions of sanctity rather than replacements for it.

  New forms of worship emerged alongside preserved ones. Traditional sermons and scripture readings continued. But piyyut, a form of liturgical poetry, developed. Organized prayer took on structures that would carry through generations. At Shavuot, when synagogues were decorated with flowers, special arches were built over the bimah and adorned with floral displays.

  The Torah itself found a new ceremonial life inside the synagogue. Traditionally, the entire Torah is read in weekly portions over the course of a year, completing the cycle and beginning again. Some synagogues follow a triennial cycle instead. The Torah scrolls are kept in an ark, the Aron Kodesh in Ashkenazi practice, or the heikhal in Sephardic tradition. The ark is positioned so that worshippers facing it are automatically facing Jerusalem, wherever in the world they may be.

  Above the ark in nearly every synagogue burns the ner tamid, the Eternal Light. In ancient synagogues it was a flame. In contemporary ones it is usually electric. Its purpose has not changed: to honor the Divine Presence in a space where prayer has replaced sacrifice as the central act of devotion.

• 5. Architecture Across Continents

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  The synagogue in Kaifeng, China, looked like a Chinese temple. It had an outer wall and an open garden in which several buildings were arranged. This was not an accident or a compromise. It was the norm.

  Historically, synagogues were built in whatever architectural style dominated their time and place. The earliest ones resembled the temples of other cults in the Eastern Roman Empire. Medieval synagogues in Spain were decorated with mudéjar plasterwork. The surviving medieval synagogues in Budapest and Prague are Gothic structures. During late antiquity, the Sardis Synagogue in what is now Turkey was especially large and monumental.

  The great turning point in synagogue architecture came in the 19th century, when Jewish emancipation in Western Europe gave Jewish communities the right to build synagogues without special permissions. Large communities seized the opportunity to express their newfound civic status through architecture. The result was an explosion of styles: Neoclassical, Renaissance Revival, Neo-Byzantine, Romanesque Revival, Moorish Revival, Gothic Revival, Greek Revival, Egyptian Revival, and at least one Mayan Revival synagogue.

  In 1675, the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam was completed. At that time it was the largest synagogue in the world. It was built to accommodate 1,227 men and 440 women, stands 19.5 meters high, and covers an area of 1,008 square meters. Today the Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest holds the title of the largest synagogue in Europe by square footage and number of seats, with space for 3,000 worshippers in a building 26 meters tall with towers reaching 43 meters.

  The Great Beth Midrash Gur in Jerusalem is the largest synagogue in the world today. Its main sanctuary seats up to 20,000 people; its entire complex covers approximately 35,000 square meters. Construction took more than 25 years.

• 6. Inside the Sanctuary

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  Every synagogue contains a bimah, the raised platform where the Torah scroll is placed to be read. The word itself is post-biblical Hebrew, almost certainly derived from the Ancient Greek bema, meaning a raised platform. Among some Ashkenazi Jews it is also called the almemar, from the Arabic minbar, meaning pulpit.

  Where the bimah sits within the sanctuary reveals something about the tradition of the congregation. In Orthodox Judaism, it stands in the center of the room, separate from the Torah ark. In Reform and other branches, the bimah and the ark are joined at the front. The first Reform synagogue, which opened in Hamburg in 1811, moved the central reader's table to the front and added an organ, a choir, and vestments for the rabbi, changes that made the synagogue resemble a church while keeping its Jewish function.

  Seating arrangements carry their own long history. Jews in Spain, the Maghreb, Babylonia, the Land of Israel, and Yemen traditionally sat on mats and cushions on the floor. Maimonides, the philosopher and rabbi who lived from 1138 to 1204, described the customs of his day: in Spain, the Maghreb, Babylonia, and the Holy Land, lamps were kindled and mats spread on the floor. In the lands of Christendom, he wrote, worshippers sat on chairs and benches.

  Many current synagogues contain an elaborate chair named for the prophet Elijah, used only during the ceremony of brit milah. A stone-carved inscribed seat discovered at Chorazin in Galilee and dated to the 4th-6th century was reserved for prominent congregation members and important guests. Another such seat, complete with a footstool, was found at the Delos Synagogue.

  In Orthodox synagogues today, men and women sit separately, divided by a mechitza, a partition. In Reform and many other congregations, gender separation was removed, a change first introduced in Hamburg in 1811.

• 7. Samaritans and Shared Spaces

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  Samaritans, like Jews, call their house of worship a synagogue. During the third and second centuries BCE, both communities in the diaspora used the same Greek word, proseukhē, for their gathering places.

  What distinguishes a Samaritan synagogue from a Jewish one begins with orientation. Jewish synagogues face Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Samaritan synagogues face Mount Gerizim, the holiest site in Samaritan faith. The same mosaicists often worked for both communities, as well as for Christian churches and pagan temples of the same era, so some decorative elements appear across all four traditions. Their meanings differed entirely.

  Samaritans have historically observed the commandment against graven images more strictly than many Jewish communities. Depictions of the zodiac, human figures, or Greek deities like Helios, which appeared in Byzantine-period Jewish synagogue floors, have no place in Samaritan buildings of any period. The lulav and etrog, which appear in Jewish synagogue mosaics, are absent from Samaritan floors because those objects have a different ritual meaning in how Samaritans celebrate Sukkot.

  After 70 CE, Jews stopped building ritual baths next to their synagogues. Samaritans did not. Mikvehs continued to appear beside Samaritan synagogues through the Byzantine period.

  The oldest Samaritan synagogue found so far is the one at Delos, with an inscription dated between 250 and 175 BCE. Most Samaritan synagogues in the Land of Israel and ancient Samaria were built between the fourth and seventh centuries CE, during the late Roman and Byzantine periods. One at El-Khirbe, discovered about three kilometers from Sebaste, was built in the fourth century CE and remained in use into the Early Islamic period, with a gap in the late fifth and early sixth centuries.

• 8. Survivors and Landmarks

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  The Worms Synagogue in Germany was built in 1175. It was razed on Kristallnacht in 1938, then painstakingly reconstructed using many of its original stones. It is still in use.

  The Synagogue of El Transito in Toledo, Spain, was built in 1356 by Samuel ha-Levi, who served as treasurer to King Pedro I of Castile. Its design draws on the Nasrid style also used in the Alhambra in Granada. Since 1964 it has housed a Sephardi museum.

  The Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem served as the city's main Ashkenazi synagogue from the 16th century until 1948, when the Arab Legion destroyed it shortly after capturing the quarter. After the Six-Day War, an arch was built to mark where it had stood. A full reconstruction, designed by architect Nahum Meltzer, opened in March 2010.

  The Paradesi Synagogue in Kochi, Kerala, built in 1568 by the Paradesi community in the Kingdom of Cochin, is the oldest active synagogue in the Commonwealth of Nations. The word Paradesi means "foreigners" in several Indian languages and was applied because the synagogue was historically used by Jewish communities of Middle Eastern and European origin. It sits in the quarter of Old Cochin known as Jew Town and is the only one of eight synagogues in the area still in active use.

  The Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, built in 1759 for the Jeshuat Israel congregation, is the oldest Jewish house of worship in North America still standing. Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City, founded in 1654, is the oldest congregation in the United States, though its present building dates only from 1897.

  The Nidhe Israel Synagogue in Bridgetown, Barbados, first built in 1654, was destroyed in the hurricane of 1831 and rebuilt in 1833. It is one of the oldest synagogues in the Western hemisphere, and its survival through storm and reconstruction echoes the wider story of the synagogue itself: an institution rebuilt, repeatedly, wherever Jewish communities found ground to stand on.