Jewish History and Architecture: Notes Module 8 done
Jewish History to the Middle Ages
Early Israelites
The early Israelites practiced animal sacrifices at the Holy Temple.
They were distinct from other Levantine peoples who worshiped local gods.
The Diaspora
The Hebrew Bible describes a Temple in Jerusalem erected by King Solomon around the tenth century B.C.E.
The Bible also recounts its destruction by the Babylonians 500 years later.
After the fall of the First Temple, Jews scattered throughout the Levant and Mesopotamia.
Rabbinical scholars began writing down oral interpretations of Jewish laws.
Hillel (70 B.C.E. to 10 C.E.) developed flexible methods for interpreting the Hebrew Bible.
Judaism has been subject to community ritual interpretation and context since its beginning.
A new Temple was constructed a century after the first was destroyed when some Jews returned to the Land of Israel.
In 70 C.E., during the Roman siege of Jerusalem, Jews dispersed throughout northern Africa, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean.
This dispersion is called the Diaspora.
The Middle Ages
During the Diaspora, Jewish groups lived in both Muslim- and Christian-dominated areas.
Local communities had distinct traditions, but differences were more pronounced between those from Muslim areas and those from Christian areas.
Jews from Central and Eastern Europe are known as Ashkenazim.
Jews from the Islamic world are known as Sephardim.
Sephardic Jews technically trace their origins to the Iberian Peninsula, but Jews from historically Muslim lands of the Middle East and North Africa (Mizrahi and Maghrebi) have been conflated with contemporary Sephardim.
These labels became widely used in the 1960s when Jews from Islamic lands emigrated to Europe, the United States, and Israel.
These distinctions weren't relevant on a global scale until after World War II.
In both Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities, Jews in the Middle Ages paid taxes for communal autonomy.
They adopted the vernacular languages, architectural, musical, culinary, and literary styles of their neighbors.
Synagogues
Synagogues in Christian-dominated lands were sometimes drab on the exterior but ornate on the inside.
Synagogues in Muslim lands had domes and arches that mimicked Islamic architecture.
Examples include Santa Maria la Blanca in Toledo, Spain, and the Algiers Grande Synagogue in Algeria.
Persecution and Tolerance
In Europe, persecution of Jews began after the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity.
In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, crusading mobs massacred Jews throughout Europe.
Crusaders blamed Jews for crucifying Jesus and accused them of the ritual murder of Christian children (blood libel).
Jews in Europe were early targets for Crusaders because the Muslims were far from home.
Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Jews in Spain were subject to violent forms of anti-Judaism.
The Spanish Inquisition forced conversions and expulsions of Jewish residents of the Iberian Peninsula.
Life for Jews in Islamic lands was comparatively tranquil where Jews were tolerated as "dhimmi" or "people of the book".
Unlike in the Christian world, Jews were not the only non-Muslim inhabitants.
Jews were integrated into the economy and allowed to practice their religion freely.
Jews conducted business with non-Jews, and similarities in art, music, and food traditions reflect Jewish and non-Jewish interaction.
However, communal lives remained mostly separate due to Jewish dietary laws (kashrut).
Jewish dietary laws meant that Jews had their own butchers, bakers, and wine producers.
The weekly Sabbath meant that Jewish merchants and peasants would refrain from work, while Christian or Muslim commerce might continue.
Jewish law forbade marriage outside of the religion, solidifying boundaries between Jews and their neighbors, which in some instances became walled ghettos.
History of Jewish Architecture
Judaism is included in the history of religious architecture alongside Christendom, Islam, and Buddhism, despite Jews being a small nation .
The Jewish population is around fourteen million, the same as before the massacre of six million in Europe and the dissolution of communities across Europe and the Arab world during the 1940s.
From the first century through the establishment of modern Israel in 1948, Jews could not claim a "national" identity or style of art based on landed nationalism.
Theirs was a minority architecture reflecting a minority existence.
Longevity and Cultural Heritage
Jews, or "the Judeans," trace their cultural heritage and sometimes their physical lineage to the biblical patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel)—and to the land of Israel (Judaea) over an unbroken chain of 3000 years.
This history is supported by rich documentary and physical evidence.
Jews have encountered Cyrus the Great and Innocent III, Caligula and Mohammed, Victoria, Stalin, and Rembrandt.
Jews maintained rich mimetic traditions across empires and a complex book culture that sustained their sense of group cohesion.
From antiquity to modern times, it was possible to travel from Jewish community to Jewish community from Persia to Spain and beyond and find Jews who shared a religious culture.
Even with different vernacular languages, Jews communicated using a mix of Hebrew and Aramaic gained through exposure to canonical religious texts.
Jews and their texts have been active in the "Western Experience" from its beginning.
The religious traditions associated with Jesus and Mohammed assert that Jewish scripture and interaction with Jews are essential to their own revelations.
Jews "matter" to Christians and Muslims, and vice versa.
Academic Study of Jewish Art and Architecture
The academic study of Jewish architecture developed from the eighteenth century onward, when Christian Hebraists and bible scholars developed interests in biblical architecture.
Post-"biblical" Jewish architecture did not become a focus of research until discoveries by the Palestine Exploration Fund of late antique synagogues during the 1860s.
Medieval and early modern buildings took longer to occasion scholarly interest.
Jews in 19th-century Europe, America, and Islamic lands were engaged in a full-scale building boom.
Newly emancipated communities asserted their presence by building huge synagogues, experimenting with various forms.
Scholars began to study "Jewish art" at the end of the 19th century, looking for roots for the contemporary boom in earlier periods.
Jews hoped to prove their humanity through the creation and study of Jewish art.
The first comprehensive surveys of Jewish religious architecture were written by Rachel Wischnitzer in post-war New York, including "European Synagogue Architecture" and "Synagogue Architecture in America."
By then, the State of Israel had been established, and "Jewish art" became the national art.
Cecil Roth's "Jewish Art: An Illustrated History" (1958) brought together scholars to present a comprehensive history.
The study of Jewish architecture has been of particular interest to Israeli, American, and European scholars.
The Hebrew University's Center for Jewish Art has documented historical synagogues worldwide.
In Europe, this work aims to regain a now-lost heritage and develop a more tolerant European tradition.
Contemporary Scholarship
Jewish visual culture has been deeply assimilated into the academic study of Judaism.
Cultural historians, art historians, and architectural historians focus on the elements of Jewish "minority" architecture.
The process by which a small minority group melded with its general environment has become the subject of contemporary scholarship.
Jews have been the "canary in the coal mine," the test case for theoretical discussion of diaspora and being Europe's earliest colonized people.
Medieval Synagogues in Toledo, Spain
Jews had lived in Spain for over a thousand years by the time the first surviving synagogues were built.
The first Jews likely arrived on the Iberian Peninsula with Roman conquerors in the first century C.E.
Jews were persecuted by Christians during the Late Antique period (4th century).
Muslim rule was established in 711, improving the legal and economic status of Jews.
Many Jews spoke Arabic and wore the same clothes as their Muslim neighbors.
The Jewish population of Spain grew to be larger than the Jewish populations of every other part of the medieval world combined.
Many synagogues were built in the Jewish quarters of Spanish cities, but none survive from before the south of Spain was reconquered by Christian rulers.
Spain's most remarkable medieval synagogues are found in former Islamic capitals, built after these cities were governed by Christians.
By the late Middle Ages, there were at least eleven synagogues in Toledo, Spain.
The Samuel Halevi Abulafia synagogue and the Ibn Shoshan synagogue are a few blocks apart in the old Jewish quarter.
Both synagogues display a style inspired by Islamic buildings, called Mudéjar.
This style was used by Muslim, Christian, and Jewish patrons and builders living in parts of Spain formerly governed by Muslims.
Muslim builders borrowed from Romans and Late Antique Christians, reusing columns and Corinthian capitals.
Jewish Architecture
The Temple of Solomon (c. 900 B.C.E.) was a typical near eastern temple.
Synagogues constructed at the turn of the twentieth century were art deco palaces.
It is hard to include Jewish architecture among the great religious architecture of the world.
The temples of Solomon (destroyed 586 B.C.E.) and Herod in Jerusalem (destroyed 70 C.E.) are long gone.
Jews have never again controlled extensive resources for building or land for construction.
There is no Jewish parallel to Saint Peters or Hagia Sophia.
Small Jewish communities across the world built synagogues—often buildings of great beauty and historical significance but limited architecturally.
There were no Jewish benefactors to compete with Justinian or Saladin.
Jewish architecture is always derivative of local styles and responds to the needs of local minority communities; it never drove those styles.
Jewish "architecture" through the ages was a hybrid architecture.