Synagogues

A synagogue, sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of worship. Synagogues have a place for prayer (the main sanctuary and sometimes smaller chapels), where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies (including Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs or Bat Mitzvahs, Confirmations, choir performances, or even children’s plays), have rooms for study, social hall(s), administrative and charitable offices, classrooms for religious school and Hebrew school, sometimes Jewish preschools, and often have many places to sit and congregate; display commemorative, historic, or modern artwork throughout; and sometimes have items of some Jewish historical significance or history about the Synagogue itself, on display.

Synagogues

Sinagogas

Synagogues are consecrated spaces used for the purpose of Jewish prayer, study, assembly, and reading of the Torah (read in its entirety once a year in weekly Torah portions during religious Services). However, a Synagogue is not always necessary for Jewish worship, due to adaption during times of Jewish persecution in countries and regions that banned Judaism, frequently destroying and/or reappropriating Synagogues into Churches or even government buildings. Halakha (Jewish “law,” or Mitzvot, from the Mishnah — the “Oral Torah”) state that communal Jewish worship can be carried out wherever a minyan (a group of at least 10 Jewish adults) is assembled. Worship can also happen alone or with fewer than 10 people, but there are certain prayers which are considered by halakha as solely communal, and these can therefore be recited only by a minyan, depending on sect of Judaism. In terms of its specific ritual and liturgical functions, the Synagogue does not replace the symbol of the long-destroyed Temple in Jerusalem (1st or 2nd Temple).

Synagogen

犹太教堂

Although synagogues existed a long time before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, communal worship in the time while the Temple still stood focussed mostly on korbanot brought by the Kohanim (Aaronic priesthood line of Rabbinical succession) in the Temple in Jerusalem. The all-day Yom Kippur service, was an event in which the congregation both observed the movements of the kohen gadol (“high priest”) as he presided over the day’s traditions and processions, and administered prayers for success. According to Jewish tradition, the men of the Great Assembly (around 5th century BCE) formalized and standardized the language of the Jewish prayers. Prior to that people prayed as they saw fit, with each individual praying in his or her own way, and there were no standard prayers that were recited. Johanan ben Zakai, one of the leaders at the end of the Second Temple era, promulgated the idea of creating individual houses of worship in whatever locale Jews found themselves. This contributed to the continuity of the Jewish people by maintaining a unique identity and a portable way of worship despite the destruction of the Temple, according to many historians.

المعابد

Sinagoglar

Synagogues in the sense of purpose-built spaces for worship, or rooms originally constructed for some other purpose but reserved for formal, communal prayer, however, existed long before the destruction of the Second Temple. The earliest archaeological evidence for the existence of very early synagogues comes from Egypt, where stone synagogue dedication inscriptions dating from the 3rd century BCE prove that synagogues existed by that date. More than a dozen Jewish (and possibly Samaritan) Second Temple era synagogues have been identified by archaeologists in Israel, and in other countries belonging to the Hellenistic world.
Any Jew or group of Jews can build a synagogue. Synagogues have been constructed by ancient Jewish “kings”, by wealthy patrons, as part of a wide range of human institutions including secular educational institutions, governments, and hotels, by the entire Jewish community of living in a particular village or region, or by sub-groups of Jewish people arrayed according to occupation, ethnicity (i.e. the Sephardi, Yemeni, Polish or Persian Jews of a town), style of religious observance (i.e., Reform, Orthodox synagogue), or by the followers of a particular Rabbi (only in very small congregations or ultra-orthodox Hasidism).