The Synagogue.

There are synagogues vying with the great cathedrals and mosques in scale that have been built in quite unexpected places. Some, such as the Moorish-style Toledo synagogue (now a church), are very beautiful. This richly produced book is full of such surprises.

Synagogues were devised to keep a culture alive in foreign, often hostile places. Many are awkwardly planned; some had to be hidden away. A proscription against ornament, originally against the making of effigies, allied with recurring bouts of anti-materialism, has prevailed against a flowering of Jewish sacred art. In times and places where a self-confident community has arisen, the architecture tends to the eclectic and vulgar. Architectural evolution has also been impeded by the cycles of persecution and the destruction of synagogues.

No synagogue is imbued with the awesome serenity expected of the shrines and temples of other great religions. Synagogues are emphatically not temples only the Temple at Jerusalem is allowed such status. Synagogues are essentially supposed to be humble gathering places.

Professor Meek has recorded an immense and well-illustrated knowledge of synagogues, introduced and threaded through with a lyrical cameo of Jewish life and culture. The book is at its best presenting this vivid interplay between a people and its architecture. The more it connects the personality of the traditions and people to the structures housing them, the more it illuminates both, providing a fresh understanding of the subject.

At the same time there is a conventional art historical structuring of the information, categorising periods and buildings by the labels of Western art; Gothic, Baroque, Post-Modern etc. Using this art history format, the buildings seem to lack firm character of their own and seem mere imitations of something better done within the more powerful host community.

If it is true that synagogue architecture has lacked a focus of its own, this is a remarkable thing, for the primary function of synagogues is to maintain the distinctive culture of the community served. Nothing would seem more important to the institution than the maintenance of unique historical traditions. Certainly the artefacts, crucial artwork, texts and rituals within a synagogue have changed little over thousands of years. The style of services, the choreography, the processions within, the sounds and sights, have evolved, but extremely slowly until the present century. Indeed the point is made in the introductory chapter called 'a Morning in the Synagogue', that all the details of the atmosphere the author so vividly describes would be familiar to Jew's across all the great spans of time and space in which synagogues have existed. In working on one myself, I became involved in a discussion with the rabbi about the colour of the curtain across the front of the ark, which holds the sacred scrolls. He brought out some weighty books from his library's upper shelves, and sure enough, there were spelled out the names of the insects from which the dyes for the veil should be made.

Given the author's ability to bring so much to life through the commentary, more plans and sections would have been welcome. I wish there had been more discussion of Modern synagogues. From Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn to more contemporary examples, a new vitality is evident. The Modern period looks likely to rescue synagogue architecture from the centuries-old doldrums.

MICHAEL GOLD