A Forgotten Network? New Perspectives on Progressive Synagogues in Galicia and the Kingdom of Poland

In the post-partition Polish lands there functioned a number of prayer houses and synagogues that strove for the ‘modernization’ of religious life and introduced some innovations and moderate liturgical reforms. Those innovations, which were different in different places and changed over time, ranged from simply putting more emphasis on aesthetics, order, and decorum to more radical yet still limited changes, such as the introduction of a musical instrument, a choir (in some cases mixed-sex), or a regular modern sermon delivered in German or Polish by an academically educated preacher. While there is no common name that all these synagogues used consistently, they often employed the term ‘temple’ and the adjective ‘progressive’ as well as ‘modern’, ‘new’, ‘German’, and ‘civilized’.¹

These synagogues are significantly under-researched, although they have drawn some scholarly attention. Even in the interwar period they had become an object of academic investigation by Jewish Polish historians. The most significant was Majer Bałaban’s book on the progressive synagogue in Lwów (Lviv).² Although many years have elapsed since its publication, this monumental study has not lost its academic importance. Two years later, in 1939, Leon Streit published a similar study on the progressive synagogue in Stanisławów (Ivano-Frankivsk).³ Two other synagogues became the subjects of study by Bałaban’s disciples, Teofila Mahler and Sara Zilbersztejn, who both graduated from the University of Warsaw in the 1930s. Mahler wrote about the synagogue in Kraków and the so-called ‘progressive–orthodox conflict’ there in the 1860s,⁴ while Zilbersztejn devoted her study to the Daniłowiczowska Street synagogue in Warsaw.⁵

One of the characteristics of the pre-war research was its focus on the histories of particular progressive circles and the activities of progressive leaders. Although the pre-war authors perceived the progressive synagogues in the various cities of Galicia and the Kingdom of Poland as being the product of a similar intellectual formation, those studies significantly lacked a transregional approach. ⁶ The research conducted after the war did not bring any significant shift in this regard. The same two main narratives dominate: the biographies of religious leaders and the histories of particular synagogues. ⁷ A comparative approach is virtually absent, and even if partially implemented pertains only to the synagogues in one region of Poland.⁸ Moreover an explicit methodological postulate has been formulated to research the development of those synagogues separately in each of the partitioned Polish territories. This approach, according to the historian who proposed it, Stephen D. Corrsin, might allow us to encompass various local, cultural and social factors that shaped the scope of religious life in different political contexts.⁹

This chapter offers an analytical perspective that differs, on the one hand, from Corrsin’s and, on the other, from the one that is already present in the literature, focusing on the histories of particular synagogues or the biographies of individual leaders. My approach is transregional inasmuch as it reaches beyond the local contexts and across the partition borders. By focusing on the synagogues of both Galicia and the Kingdom of Poland and analysing the contacts and exchanges that existed between them (correspondence, travel, the circulation of books, and so on), I propose to test the hypothesis that all these synagogues may have functioned as a network rather than operating independently of each other.¹⁰

The chapter focuses mainly on the second half of the nineteenth century. In that period the three major synagogues (Lwów, Kraków, and Warsaw) were already operating and a number of others opened. Moreover, the progressive synagogues in interwar Poland originated before 1914, usually dating back to the second half of the nineteenth century.

Although in both the Kingdom of Poland and Galicia a number of synagogues existed which were perceived as ‘modernized’ and/or ‘progressive’, this chapter does not seek to encompass all of them. Nor does it offer a broader comparative perspective. Rather, using selected examples, I would like to offer a different angle of...