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C H A P T E R 1 The Origin of the Atlantic World Synagogue Buildings, like people, contain multitudes: so too the Atlantic World synagogues built between the early seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries. Like people these houses of worship can also be understood as telling distinct, though at times synchronous, narratives: of Jews as they left Europe and settled in the Americas during the early modern period; of architecture as a formal artistic endeavor with aesthetic roots in Roman culture; of the synagogue in its evolution following the destruction of the Second Temple (c. 75 c.e.). Weaving through these narratives is the relationship among the three Abrahamic monotheisms. During the first Christian centuries, Judaism crucially influenced the infant “Jesus movement”; by the fifth century, a robust Christianity had reciprocated with identifiable impact on synagogue architecture and Jewish art. Then, as Islam arose in the seventh century and spread with remarkable vigor, a third great religion inflected the historical narrative. If we take the broadest perspective, the synagogues of the Atlantic World, however distinctive they may seem, belong to this dense, multiform genealogy. Because the history of the synagogue has ancient origins, few actual records have survived.1 Etymology, however, is suggestive: “synagogue,” based on Middle English synagoge, derives from the Greek synagein, meaning “to bring together,” while the corollary in Hebrew are two words, beth kenesset, translatable as “house (beth) of gathering.” In any case it seems likely that early synagogues arose as informal community centers well after the destruction of the First (or Solomon’s) Temple in 586 b.c.e. This date, besides marking the manifest crisis of Babylonian captivity and exile, is an extremely important cultural and ritual demarcator: whereas animal sacrifice conducted by priests was at the center of Jerusalem’s cultic Temple worship, no sacrifice was ever practiced in the precincts of synagogues. The synagogue familiar to us today developed slowly over a millennium and emerged mostly in a postcultic environment , as rabbis gradually supplanted the role of priests.2 After the destruction of the Second (Herod’s) Temple in 70 c.e., rabbis began to codify the prayer-oriented practice of Judaism that became the form The Origin of the Atlantic World Synagogue 11 of worship recognizable today. Again we must emphasize how this transition was seminal—away from cult, sacrifice, and hierarchy toward ethics, texts, and community. Another Hebrew phrase marks a new (and lasting) meaning of synagogue—beth tefilah, or “house of prayer.” The Greek word proseuche (“place of prayer”) was sometimes used as a vernacular reference to a house of worship during this early period among many peoples of the eastern Mediterranean who gathered to pray, and sometimes applies to Jews during the first centuries c.e. Moreover the synagogue was also established as a center of Jewish learning; accordingly the building, or an area within it—later to be housed separately—was usually called beth midrash, or “house of study” in Hebrew. Again there are etymological signposts: the Yiddish (Ashkenazic) term shul and Ladino (Sephardic) esnoga are derived from the Latin word scola, meaning “school.”3 Eventually, after migrations across the Atlantic between 1500 and 1800, similar semantics define snoa, a word in the Papiamento creole language spoken in the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao.4 As three key functions of the synagogue (community center, prayer house, and school) became institutionalized during the first and second centuries c.e., the architectural design components became more fixed. Unlike either the First or Second Temples, in which the most sacred ritual aspect was a place—an interior sanctuary known as the Holy of Holies—the most sacred element of a synagogue is a text—the Torah, a handwritten scroll recording the Five Books of Moses, or Pentateuch. The Torah remains at the core of Jewish thought, practice, and identity—both a theological and a historical document, determining that prayer and education must be central activities in the synagogue. Although in the mature, fully evolved synagogue, these three functions would converge, they may have had different gestations. Looking at the Hebrew names of communal institutions, in a given community, one or more of the key roles might have predominated at first (c. 200 b.c.e.–600 c.e.), later to merge as a tripartite formation under a single roof.5 In any case there is a consensus that the development of the synagogue was multifaceted, complex, and hardly linear.6 Since the early centuries of the...

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