Europe's synagogue architecture

Currently, most scientists ( Smilovitsky L. L., Manuel Hertz ^[1] , Plotkin K. M ^[2] . And others) are not so much concerned with the buildings themselves, their phenomena, symbolism and features. Of greatest interest are studies of how and to what extent, the Jewish heritage has been preserved in Europe. These scholars, architects are summing up the fate of many synagogues in Central and Eastern Europe after the Holocaust . Features of buildings, the historical background of the creation and reflection of styles in synagogues is a question at the intersection of history and architecture. Among modern researchers, it is worth mentioning A. Lokotko . His work “Architecture of European Synagogues” is unique in Russian architectural studies. The book analyzes the history of Jewish sacred construction from ancient times to the present in the Middle East, the ancient world, European countries, the United States and Australia ^[3] . The architecture of European synagogues, and in particular Belarus , Russia , Poland and Germany, is studied using examples of numerous monuments. Another researcher of synagogue architecture in Europe is the architect Professor Rudolf Klein. He is one of the authors and ideological inspirers of the photo exhibition “Synagogues of Central and Eastern Europe 1782-1944.” ^[4] , organized at the Hungarian Cultural Scientific and Information Center in Moscow. According to most scholars, synagogues do not have a single, universally accepted architectural style. After emancipation, Jews felt the need to clearly declare themselves to the outside world, hence a variety of experiments with architectural forms. Rudolph Klein offers an interesting analogy. If Christian buildings can be compared to a traditional restaurant menu, then synagogues are a buffet, where architectural elements of different styles are combined arbitrarily. ^{[5] The} historian of architecture, the head of the Jewish Art Center of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem ^[6] Sergey Kravtsov devoted a lot of work to the architecture of synagogues , issues of the need to study their features to understand the history and culture of the people ^[7] .

All researchers of the architecture of synagogues in Europe pay attention to eight characteristics:

• resemblance to Orthodox , Catholic , Protestant churches
• plan,
• interior,
• facade,
• material (wood, cement, stone, metal, etc.),
• capacity (from 50 to three thousand places),
• location in relation to the surrounding houses (where the entrance is located) and
• position in the city (in the center, near the river, in a remote area, etc.).

Among the most prominent representatives of the direction, allowing us to understand and feel the harmony and power of buildings, the following can be noted - the Great Synagogue in Warsaw , Budapest , in Grodno , in Kharkov , etc.