Synagogue

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Synagogue

A syngagogue is a building devoted to the practice of Judaism through prayer, study of the Torah, and practice of the religious obligations set forth by God through Moses to Israel at Mount Sinai; a community of Jews formed for the purpose of practicing Judaism. The synagogue, along with the associated cemetery, was the first institution Jews created in the United States, beginning in colonial times in New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, Savannah, and Newport, and it remains the principal institution for the practice of Judaism, including religious education, in the United States. Public worship ordinarily takes place in buildings constructed for that purpose, which set aside as the focal point of public worship an ark in which the Torah scrolls of the community are kept.

In Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative synagogues, men and women sit together; in Orthodox synagogues they are seated separately, and a mehisah, or partition, separates them; or the women are seated in balconies. Synagogue worship may be led, and the Torah may be read, by any qualified person (male in Orthodoxy). But in the United States it is common for synagogues to employ full-time clergy, called rabbis, who are qualified for service by knowledge of the Torah, and many synagogues also call on cantors, hazzanim, to recite the service. In addition to large public halls for community occasions, synagogues always encompass schoolrooms for regular class sessions for all age groups and often provide for smaller prayer spaces for occasions on which the congregation is few in number. In the United States, where large numbers of persons attend services on a few occasions during the year, such as the New Year (Rosh Hashanah) and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), a synagogue will provide for expansion through folding doors and walls to open up the main sanctuary. But synagogue worship also takes place in private homes, and a congregation may number from ten upward.

The synagogue, a place of organized communal worship of God and study of the Torah, is well attested from the first century c.e. and certainly antedates that time, though its origins are still unclear. Many think that the synagogue originated after the destruction of the first Temple in 586, finding in Ezekiel 8:6, 14:1, 209:1 references to such an institution (e.g., "the little sanctuary" of Ezekiel 11:16). For Jews outside the Land of Israel, in any event, the synagogue was the center of the religious life. Synagogues small and large were built by Jewish communities wherever Judaism was practiced, and the synagogue has been the principal institution of that religion for nearly the whole of its existence. Prayer took the place of sacrifice, and the word for Temple service, abodah, "labor," was taken over as the word for prayer, "the labor of the heart." The liturgy of the synagogue morning and evening corresponds to the liturgy of the Temple when it stood. And from ancient times forward, the synagogue served not only as a center for prayer and Torah study but also as a meeting place for the Jewish community.

In the United States the conception of the synagogue as a community center, set forth originally by Mordecai M. Kaplan, founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, greatly broadened the scope of synagogue activity. The synagogue center includes not only a place for prayer and study but also space for a library, clubrooms, activities in music, drama, photography, dance, and sports, social and cultural programs, and even sports and swimming facilities, so that the synagogue-center serves as a center for all leisure-time activities. The center model redefined in broad terms the character of the synagogue and the Jewish community that it served, extending the definition of Judaism as a religion to include the Jews as an ethnic group.

Synagogues in the United States fall into six main groups: Reconstructionist, Reform, Conservative, integrationist ("modern") Orthodox, segregationist Orthodox, and Hasidic. Reconstructionist synagogues look for rabbis to the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and follow the teachings of Mordecai Kaplan. Reform synagogues turn to Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion and originate in the synagogue reforms first of liturgy, then of law and theology of nineteenth-century Germany, whence immigrants brought Reform Judaism to the United States. Conservative synagogues look to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America for rabbis; they differ from Reform synagogues in using more Hebrew in public worship and adhering more closely to the received liturgy and forms of prayer. Integrationist Orthodoxy, the Orthodox Judaism that affirms the possibility of observing the Torah and also participating in modern life, finds its rabbis at Yeshiva University. Segregationist Orthodoxy, which holds that the life of the Torah requires separation in all possible ways from all aspects of the Gentile world, takes shape around yeshivas, or intensive seminaries for Torah study. There are no important liturgical differences between integrationist and segregationist Orthodoxy, though there are important distinctions in the everyday life patterns of adherents to the one and the other. Hasidic groups conform to the norms of Orthodox Judaism in most respects, but they have some customs and convictions that distinguish them as well. Chief among these is the importance they assign to their rabbis, rebbes, who are not only teachers of the Torah, as in the normative synagogues, but also holy men and intermediaries between man and God. They dispense blessings and advice and are at the very center of Hasidic Judaism. Some Hasidic groups take shape around a small number of congregations, but others form worldwide organizations. The leading Hasidic Judaism is Habad, a.k.a. Lubovitch, which maintains representatives in every country in which Jews, however few, are located, and which further sends rabbis into prisons and other locations not commonly ministered to by mainstream synagogues and national organizations.

Synagogues in the several classifications form national synagogue organizations as well. These are as follows: Reform: Union of American Hebrew Congregations; Conservative: United Synagogue; integrationist-Orthodox: Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations. Reform and Conservative synagogues also relate to overseas counterparts through the World Union of Progressive Judaism and the World Council of Synagogues, respectively. All American synagogue organizations maintain relationships, in addition, with Israeli counterparts.

In architecture, contemporary American synagogues have aimed at simplicity of design and decoration, using painting, sculpture, textiles, mosaics, and stained glass to create a sacred space. While for a long time the congregation was seated in long rows facing the bimah, or platform, from which the service was presented, a different pattern has taken shape in the recent past. The congregation is seated around the center point, or on three sides of it, with the ark at the back wall; a greater sense of community at worship is attained, in place of the experience of an audience at a play on a stage that the former pattern afforded. The auditorium plan of organization of the synagogue had the lectern in front of the ark, but the new pattern makes the ark the visual focus and sets the lectern to the side.