Jewish Religious Architecture: From Biblical Israel to Modern Judaism(1 Jews, Judaism, and the Arts)

Jewish Religious Architecture explores ways that Jews have expressed their tradition in brick and mortar and wood, in stone and word and spirit. This volume stretches from the biblical Tabernacle to Roman Jerusalem, synagogues spanning two Millenia and on to contemporary Judaism. Social historians, cultural historians, art historians and philologists have come together here to present this extraordinary architectural tradition. The multidisciplinary approach employed in Jewish Religious Architecture reveals deep continuities over time, together with the distinctly local— sometimes in surprising ways.

Table of Contents:
Preface List of Figure  Introduction  Steven Fine 1  The Biblical Tabernacle: From Sinai to Jerusalem  Carol Meyers 2  The Temple of Jerusalem in Biblical Israel  Victor Avigdor Hurowitzז״ל 3  The Second Temple of Jerusalem: Center of the Jewish Universe  Joseph L. Angel 4  Herod’s Temple: An Ornament to the Empire  Peter Schertz and Steven Fine 5  Synagogues in the Greco–Roman World  Steven Fine 6  The Ancient Synagogues of Asia Minor and Greece  Mark Wilson 7  Synagogues in the Islamic World  Joshua Holo 8  Synagogues of Spain and Portugal during the Middle Ages  Vivian B. Mann 9 Western Ashkenazi Synagogues in Medieval and Early Modern Europe  Ena Giurescu Heller 10  Synagogues in Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Modern Period  Batsheva Goldman-Ida 11  Christian Perceptions of Jewish Sacred Architecture in Early Modern Europe  Yaacov Deutsch 12  Jewish Sacred Architecture in the Spanish and Portuguese Diaspora  Ronnie Perelis 13  Jewish Sacred Architecture in the Ottoman Empire  Reuven Gafni 14  Synagogues in India and Myanmar  Jay A. Waronker 15  Italian Synagogues from 1492 to the Present  Samuel D. Gruber 16  Reimagining the Synagogue in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries  Jess Olson 17  Modern Synagogue Architecture  Samuel D. Gruber 18  The Sacred Architecture of Contemporary Hasidism  Maya Balakirsky Katz 19  The Sukkah as Sacred Architecture  Shulamit Laderman 20  The Eruv: From the Talmud to Contemporary Art  Margaret Olin

About the Author :
Steven Fine is the Dean Pinkhos Churgin Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University, director of the YU Center for Israel Studies and of the Arch of Titus Project. A cultural historian of ancient Judaism, Fine is a founding editor of Images: A Journal of Jewish Art and Visual Culture.

Review :
"(...) this book of essays fills a needed gap in Jewish art and material culture. It is the first that provides an expansive overlook of Jewish architecture from biblical times to our days, attempting to include side by side known and well-studied monuments with lesser-known chapters of the long history and vast geography of the Jewish experience." - Shalom Sabar, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in: Review of Biblical Literature 08/2021.