The Spanish Synagogue stands in Josefov, the former Jewish Town of Prague, near Dušní Street and the Church of the Holy Spirit. It is the most recent synagogue built in the historic Jewish Town and today one of the main sites of the Jewish Museum in Prague.

From the Old Shul to the Spanish Synagogue

The site is older than the present building. The Spanish Synagogue was built on the place of the Old Shul, also known as the Altschul, which was regarded as the oldest Jewish house of worship in the Prague ghetto. The Old Shul was demolished in 1867.

In 1835, the first Society for Regulated Worship in accordance with the Viennese rite was founded in Prague’s Old Shul. This marked an important stage in the religious and cultural transformation of Jewish Prague during the nineteenth century.

The new synagogue was commissioned in 1867-1868 by the Society for Regulated Worship among the Israelites in Prague. It was designed by Vojtěch Ignác Ullmann and Josef Niklas, with Jan Bělský responsible for construction.

Its name does not mean that the synagogue belonged to a Sephardic community or followed the Sephardic rite. The name “Spanish Synagogue” refers to its Moorish Revival decoration, inspired by Islamic-period architecture in Spain, especially the Alhambra.

Architecture and Reform Worship

The Spanish Synagogue expresses the nineteenth-century transformation of Jewish Prague. A medieval synagogue site was replaced by a modern urban synagogue connected to Reform worship, galleries, music, an organ and a new architectural language.

The former Old Shul was also associated with František Škroup, composer of the Czech national anthem, who served there as choirmaster between 1835 and 1845.

The richly decorated interior was completed between 1882 and 1883 by Antonín Baum and Bedřich Münzberger. The synagogue has a square ground plan, a large central dome, built-in galleries and an Aron ha-Kodesh, the Torah ark, shaped like a mihrab-like niche. Its interior combines polychrome decoration, gilding, stained glass and ornamental stucco arabesques.

In 1935, a Functionalist annex was added beside the Spanish Synagogue, based on a design by Karel Pecánek. The extension included a vestibule and an upper-floor winter prayer room connected to the synagogue. It was also used by the Jewish community as a hospital before the Second World War.

The Spanish Synagogue and the Jewish Museum

During the Second World War, the Spanish Synagogue was used as a warehouse for items confiscated from synagogues in Bohemia and Moravia. Its wartime role belongs to the wider history of the Jewish Museum in Prague and the Central Jewish Museum, where liturgical objects, books and archival documents from Jewish communities were gathered under Nazi control.

In 1955, the Spanish Synagogue came under the care of the State Jewish Museum. Its interior was reconstructed in 1958-1959, and an exhibition of synagogue textiles opened there in 1960. The building later fell into neglect and was closed in 1982. Its full reconstruction took place after the fall of the Communist regime, and the synagogue reopened in 1998.

Today, the Spanish Synagogue houses the permanent exhibition Jews in the Bohemian Lands, 19th-20th Centuries. The exhibition presents Jewish emancipation, the Czech-Jewish movement, Zionism, the Hilsner Affair, the urban renewal of the Jewish Town, the Holocaust and the post-war renewal of Jewish life.

The exhibition also presents figures connected to modern Jewish culture in Central Europe, including Franz Kafka, Sigmund Freud and Gustav Mahler. Among its displayed objects are a Hanukkah menorah from 1785 with a portrait of Emperor Joseph II and material documenting Jewish monuments in Bohemia and Moravia.

The Klausen Synagogue stands beside the Old Jewish Cemetery in Josefov, the former Jewish Town of Prague. It is the largest surviving synagogue of the former Prague ghetto and the only preserved example of early Baroque synagogue architecture in this part of the city.

From the Klausen to the Baroque synagogue

The importance of the site begins before the present building. In the sixteenth century, three smaller buildings stood here, known as the Klausen. The name refers to earlier enclosed or separate spaces used for study, prayer and communal functions. One of them was a yeshiva, a Talmudic school, associated with Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Maharal of Prague.

This means that the place was already connected to rabbinic study and Jewish learning before the Baroque synagogue was built. Its position beside the Old Jewish Cemetery also placed it close to one of the most sensitive communal spaces of the Prague Jewish Town.

In 1689, a major fire devastated the Prague ghetto and destroyed the earlier Klausen buildings. After the fire, the community rebuilt the site as a larger synagogue. The present Klausen Synagogue was completed in 1694 in the early Baroque style.

The new building became the largest synagogue in Prague’s Jewish Town. It was also the second main synagogue of the Prague Jewish community, after the Old-New Synagogue. Several prominent Prague rabbis served there, which shows that the building had a central communal role and was not merely a local prayer hall.

Klausen Synagogue and the Prague Burial Society

The Klausen Synagogue was closely connected to the Prague Burial Society, the Chevra Kadisha. Because the building stood next to the Old Jewish Cemetery, the Burial Society used it as a place of prayer. This gave the synagogue a specific role in the religious life surrounding illness, death, burial and memorial practice.

The nearby Ceremonial Hall later continued this funerary association. Built between 1906 and 1908, it served the Prague Burial Society and was later used by the Jewish Museum in Prague for exhibitions on Jewish burial customs. Together, the synagogue, cemetery and Ceremonial Hall formed one of the clearest surviving spatial connections between prayer, burial care and communal memory in Josefov.

The Klausen Synagogue survived the large-scale redevelopment of Josefov at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when much of the old Jewish Town was demolished. Its survival preserved one of the major religious buildings of early modern Prague Jewry, together with the Old-New, Pinkas, Maisel and Spanish synagogues.

The Jewish Museum and the Nazi occupation

The Jewish Museum in Prague was founded in 1906 by Salomon Hugo Lieben and August Stein. Its early collection included objects from synagogues demolished during the clearance of the Prague Jewish ghetto.

During the Nazi occupation, the museum entered a different and deeply violent historical context. The Jewish Museum Association was abolished in 1939, after the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Its collections were taken over by the Prague Jewish community. In 1942, the Central Jewish Museum was created under Nazi occupation.

The Nazi authorities approved the project for their own purposes. However, Jewish museum workers used it to preserve liturgical objects, books and archival records from Jewish communities in Bohemia and Moravia that were being dismantled, deported and destroyed.

In 1943, the Klausen Synagogue was used as an exhibition space of the wartime Central Jewish Museum. Displays there dealt with Jewish festivals, ceremonies and the course of life, including birth, wedding and death. Another exhibition presented works of modern art from the museum’s collection.

This wartime use gives the Klausen Synagogue a specific place in the history of the Jewish Museum in Prague. While Jews from the Czech lands were being deported and murdered, the synagogue became part of a forced museum structure in which Jewish objects and traditions were classified, displayed and preserved under Nazi control.

Jewish customs, renovation and present status

After the war, the museum came under state administration. In 1950, it was nationalized by the Communist regime. The Klausen Synagogue continued to function within the State Jewish Museum’s exhibition system.

For decades, the Klausen Synagogue housed the exhibition Jewish Customs and Traditions. It used ritual objects, manuscripts and ceremonial material to explain synagogue worship, Jewish holidays, the Jewish home and the course of life, including birth, circumcision, adulthood, marriage and divorce. Together with the Ceremonial Hall, it also presented illness, death, burial, memorial prayers, tombstone fragments and objects connected to burial societies.

In 1994, after the fall of Communism, the Jewish Museum in Prague regained independence from the state. Its buildings were returned to the Prague Jewish community, and most of its collections were returned to the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic.

In July 2024, the long-standing exhibition was removed as part of a wider redevelopment of the museum circuit. The Klausen Synagogue and the Ceremonial Hall then entered a period of renovation and exhibition renewal. The museum has announced that the Klausen Synagogue is expected to reopen by 2028 at the latest, with a new core exhibition on Jewish customs and traditions. In the meantime, the building has also been used for special occasions and temporary exhibitions.

The Klausen Synagogue should therefore be understood through five connected layers: the sixteenth-century Klausen and yeshiva, the Baroque synagogue built after the fire of 1689, its role as a prayer space of the Prague Burial Society, its wartime use within the Central Jewish Museum, and its modern function as part of the Jewish Museum in Prague.

The Maisel Synagogue stands on Maiselova Street, in Josefov, the former Jewish Town of Prague. It is one of the historic synagogues of Prague and is today part of the Jewish Museum in Prague.

Mordecai Maisel and Renaissance Prague

The Maisel Synagogue was founded by Mordecai ben Samuel Maisel, one of the leading Jewish figures of Prague in the late sixteenth century. Maisel was a financier, merchant, court Jew, community leader and benefactor of the Jewish Town during the reign of Emperor Rudolf II.

In 1591, Rudolf II granted Maisel a special privilege allowing him to build a private synagogue. Construction took place between 1590 and 1592, under Judah Tzoref de Herz and Josef Wahl. The synagogue was ceremonially opened on Simchat Torah in 1592.

The original building was a large Renaissance prayer house with three naves, twenty pillars and women’s side aisles. For about a century, it was one of the largest and most prominent buildings in the Prague ghetto. Jewish memory associated it with Maisel’s wealth, his social position and his role as a builder of the Jewish Town.

Maisel’s importance was not limited to this synagogue. He used his fortune to support communal institutions, charity, education and public works. His patronage was connected to the Jewish Town Hall, the High Synagogue, public baths, an alms-house, communal buildings and the paving of streets in the Jewish Town.

After Maisel’s death in 1601, his estate became the object of confiscation and long legal disputes. The synagogue, which he had intended for the Prague Jewish community, was also caught within these conflicts over inheritance, imperial privilege and communal ownership.

Fire, reconstruction and the redevelopment of Josefov

The Maisel Synagogue was severely damaged in the great fire of the Prague ghetto in 1689. Its vaulting collapsed, and the building was later shortened and rebuilt. Further alterations followed in the nineteenth century.

The original Renaissance form did not survive. The present Neo-Gothic appearance belongs mainly to the redevelopment of the Jewish Town at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when Josefov was transformed through large-scale urban clearance and reconstruction.

Within this altered urban setting, the Maisel Synagogue lost the dominant position it had held in the older ghetto. Even so, the building remained one of the main material references to the early modern Jewish Town and to the memory of Mordecai Maisel.

Maisel Synagogue and the Jewish Museum in Prague

During the Second World War, the Maisel Synagogue was used by the Nazis as a warehouse for confiscated Jewish property. After the war, the building passed into the care of the Jewish Museum in Prague and was used as a depository. In 1965, a permanent exhibition of synagogue silver opened there.

Today, the Maisel Synagogue houses the exhibition Jews in the Bohemian Lands, 10th-18th Centuries. The exhibition presents Jewish settlement, communal life, scholarship, legal status, social relations, discrimination, anti-Jewish violence and early modern Jewish culture in Bohemia and Moravia.

The central part of the exhibition focuses on Renaissance Prague Jewry, including Mordecai Maisel, the Jewish Town, the Golem legend and the urban world of Prague’s Jews before the modern redevelopment of Josefov.

Sahar Hassamain Synagogue, in Ponta Delgada, is the most important surviving Jewish religious building in the Azores and one of the key monuments of modern Jewish life in Portugal. Built in 1836 at Rua do Brum, it was founded by members of the nineteenth-century Jewish community that settled on São Miguel after Moroccan Sephardic Jews began arriving in the island in late 1818 or early 1819. The synagogue gave architectural form to a community that had reestablished Jewish religious life in the Azores through trade, family networks, and communal organization.

The Jewish Community of Ponta Delgada

The Jews who settled in Ponta Delgada in the early nineteenth century came mainly from Morocco and were active above all in commerce. Over the following decades they formed the main Jewish community in the Azores. One of the central figures in that history was Abraham Bensaúde, born in Morocco, who became a leading member of the community and is closely associated with the founding of the synagogue. In this context, Sahar Hassamain was not an isolated building. It was the religious center of a small but active Sephardic community established in the city during the liberal period.

The Building

The synagogue was installed within the urban fabric of Ponta Delgada in a discreet building that outwardly resembles an ordinary townhouse. That exterior restraint is one of its defining features. Inside, however, the structure was adapted to Jewish worship and communal use. The building preserved the liturgical organization expected of a synagogue while remaining architecturally integrated into the street. This combination of modest exterior and distinct interior reflects the scale and character of Jewish life in the Azores in the nineteenth century.

Decline and Reopening

During the twentieth century, the decline of the local Jewish community led to the building’s long disuse. Even so, it remained the clearest surviving architectural trace of Jewish life on São Miguel. After restoration, it reopened in 2015 as the Museu Hebraico Sahar Hassamaim. Today it functions as a museum and heritage site, preserving the memory of the Jewish families who reestablished communal life in Ponta Delgada in the nineteenth century.

Bet Heliahu is not a medieval survival but the modern public synagogue of the reconstituted Jewish community of Belmonte, a town whose Jewish presence is documented from the medieval period and locally associated with a Hebrew inscription dated 1297. The present community obtained legal constitution in 1988, public religious practice had resumed before 1985, and the synagogue was inaugurated on 5 December 1996, deliberately coinciding with the quincentenary of Manuel I’s expulsion edict. The building therefore marks not only a place of worship, but the visible return of Jewish communal life after centuries of concealment.

What makes Belmonte historically exceptional is not the survival of an ancient building, but the survival of a community. After the forced conversions at the end of the fifteenth century and the later Inquisition, open Jewish institutions disappeared, yet Belmonte preserved a crypto-Jewish nucleus whose religious memory endured through domestic ritual, secrecy, kinship and endogamy. Paulo Mendes Pinto describes Belmonte as the only such community to have survived until 1974, and stresses that its later recognition by Orthodox Jewish authorities turned it into a powerful symbol of return to Judaism for descendants of Iberian forced converts.

The modern emergence of this community is inseparable from Samuel Schwarz. The Biblioteca Samuel Schwarz records that, while working in the region, he identified the first signs of crypto-Judaism in Belmonte in 1917 and later published Os Cristãos-Novos em Portugal no Século XX, the work that brought the community to far wider scholarly and public attention. Belmonte’s own historical route states that Schwarz’s study contributed decisively to the beginning of the community’s religious “de-occultation”, making visible a world that had remained hidden for generations.

The present synagogue gives material form to that passage from secrecy to institution. Before the current building, worship also took place in a house at Travessa da República, no. 10. The 1996 synagogue was designed by architect Neves Dias and named Bet Heliahu in honor of the father of the Jewish benefactor who commissioned it. Belmonte’s municipal route guide adds details that are far more revealing than generic description: Stars of David identify the gates, candlestick motifs appear on the entrance and railings, and exterior rainwater channels were conceived to collect water for a mikveh. The same guide records ritual objects kept inside, including a Torah scroll, a keter Torah, a yad, candlesticks and spice vessels, all of which show that the building was conceived not as a symbolic memorial, but as a functioning synagogue for an active community.

The former synagogue of Rawalpindi, located on Nishtar Street in Babu Mohallah, is one of the most singular remnants of Jewish presence in present-day Pakistan. The building is generally described as the last still recognizable example of the city’s Jewish architecture and should be understood not as an isolated structure, but as a material remnant of a community that for decades maintained religious life, its own social framework, and a place within Rawalpindi’s commercial urban fabric.

The history of this community is connected to the arrival of Jews from Mashhad, in Persia, who sought refuge in 1839 after violent persecution. Many of these refugees settled in Babu Mohallah, a neighborhood then favorable to trade and well positioned within wider networks of circulation and exchange. There, the Jews of Mashhad found the conditions to rebuild collective life and, over time, established a synagogue and a communal hall within an urban setting marked by the coexistence of different religious traditions.

From an architectural perspective, the building still preserves elements that explain its visual force even in a worn condition. Stars of David remain visible on the façade, and several descriptions also mention decorative motifs such as winged forms and Masonic symbols. Set between a Bohra mosque, a Victorian church, and a Hindu temple, the former Jewish building condenses within a single street the memory of a Rawalpindi that was once more diverse and plural than the present-day cityscape might suggest. The accessible sources, however, do not securely identify either the building number or the architect.

The decline of the community was directly tied to the Partition of India in 1947. The new border between India and Pakistan caused a profound rupture in local life, leading many Jewish families of Rawalpindi to leave, in several cases for Bombay, while the remaining families departed gradually over the following decades, into the 1960s. The disappearance of the community was not immediate, but Partition marked the beginning of its definitive collapse.

Today, the former building survives amid residential and commercial adaptations, detached from its original function yet still charged with historical meaning. Its value lies not only in the fact that it once served as a synagogue, but in the way it bears witness to an almost erased layer of the city: that of a Jewish community formed by refugees, integrated into the mercantile networks of Punjab, and later undone by the major political upheavals of the twentieth century. In Rawalpindi, Jewish memory does not survive as a restored monument, but as a vulnerable, discreet, and historically revealing urban fragment.

Congregation Rodeph Sholom is one of the historic Jewish congregations of New York City. Founded in 1842 on Attorney Street, in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, it began as a German-speaking Jewish congregation created by immigrants who needed more than a place of prayer. Its first charter included worship, care for the sick, support for new immigrants, education for children, and the purchase of cemetery land. From the beginning, Rodeph Sholom was both a synagogue and a communal structure.

Movement Through Jewish New York

Its history follows the movement of Jewish life in New York. The congregation moved from Attorney Street to Clinton Street, later to Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street, and eventually to the Upper West Side. These changes reflect the wider transformation of Jewish New York, from immigrant neighborhoods downtown to established communities further uptown.

Religious Development

Religiously, Rodeph Sholom also changed with American Judaism. It began in an Orthodox framework, later adopted a more modern service under Rabbi Aaron Wise, and became formally connected to Reform Judaism in the early twentieth century. In 1901, it joined the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, now the Union for Reform Judaism, and in 1924 it adopted the Union Prayer Book.

The Present Synagogue Building

The congregation’s present synagogue, at 7 West 83rd Street, was built between 1928 and 1930 and designed by Charles Bradford Meyers. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission describes the building as Neo-Romanesque and Byzantine in character, with limestone, granite, stained glass, ironwork, and large arched forms. Dedicated in 1930, the building gave Rodeph Sholom a monumental presence on the Upper West Side while preserving its role as an active center of Jewish communal life.

Education

Education became one of its strongest contributions. Rodeph Sholom supported Jewish schooling from the nineteenth century and, in 1970, founded what the congregation identifies as the first Reform Jewish day school in North America, today Rodeph Sholom School. This made education a central part of its identity, not only an extension of synagogue life.

Memory and the Czech Memorial Torah Scroll

The congregation also carries a significant memorial responsibility through its Czech Memorial Torah Scroll, one of the Torah scrolls rescued after the destruction of Jewish communities in Bohemia and Moravia during the Shoah. Although its exact town of origin is unknown, the scroll stands as a material witness to destroyed communities and as a living object of memory.

Rodeph Sholom Today

Today, Congregation Rodeph Sholom remains an active Reform synagogue, school, and community on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Its importance lies in the continuity between immigrant Jewish history, religious adaptation, education, social responsibility, memory, and contemporary Jewish life.

Congregation Sha’ar Zahav stands as one of the most significant expressions of modern Jewish communal life in the United States, embodying the intersection of Judaism, social inclusion, and LGBTQ+ history. Founded in San Francisco in 1977, the congregation emerged at a moment when LGBTQ Jews were largely excluded from both religious institutions and public Jewish life. Sha’ar Zahav responded to this absence by creating a fully inclusive synagogue grounded in halachic tradition, Jewish learning, and communal responsibility, while affirming the dignity and spiritual legitimacy of LGBTQ identities.

From its earliest years, the congregation functioned as more than a prayer space. It became a center for pastoral care during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, offering religious support, memorial practices, and communal solidarity at a time of widespread stigma and loss. In this period, Sha’ar Zahav played a critical role in shaping Jewish responses to illness, mourning, and social justice, integrating traditional liturgy with contemporary realities without abandoning ritual depth or textual seriousness.

The congregation is affiliated with Reform Judaism, yet its liturgical life incorporates Hebrew, music, and ritual structures that emphasize continuity with broader Jewish tradition. Over time, Sha’ar Zahav has become a national and international reference point for inclusive Jewish practice, influencing synagogue models far beyond San Francisco. Its educational programs, lifecycle rituals, and public advocacy demonstrate how Jewish communities adapt to social change while remaining anchored in historical frameworks.

Today, Congregation Sha’ar Zahav is recognized not only as an LGBTQ synagogue but as a landmark of American Jewish history, reflecting late 20th-century transformations in identity, belonging, and religious expression. Its physical presence in San Francisco anchors decades of lived experience, memory, and cultural production, marking it as a key site in the cartography of contemporary Jewish heritage.

HaAva veHaHava (“Love and Friendship”) is the synagogue of Papeete and the central Jewish place of worship in French Polynesia. Founded in 1993 in the Fariipiti area, it serves a small, geographically isolated community in the South Pacific, sustaining Shabbat and holiday life for locals and visitors. Its warm interior is known for stained-glass windows by Deanna de Marigny, blending Jewish liturgical themes with Tahiti’s cultural setting.

HaAva veHaHava, whose name is commonly translated as “Love and Friendship,” is the central Jewish place of worship in French Polynesia. It stands in the Fariipiti area of Papeete and is widely described as the only synagogue in Tahiti, serving a small, geographically isolated Jewish community in the South Pacific. After decades of an itinerant community life, the congregation consolidated its presence in the early 1990s, establishing a community center and building the synagogue in 1993 on Rue Moerenhout.

Contemporary reports portray the community as small, often counted in the low hundreds or fewer, yet able to sustain communal prayer, Shabbat and holiday life, and visiting rabbinic leadership for major occasions. Architecturally, the synagogue is noted for its warm interior and stained-glass windows created by the artist Deanna de Marigny, whose designs evoke Jewish liturgical themes while situating the building within Tahiti’s distinct cultural landscape. As a landmark of modern Jewish continuity in Polynesia, HaAva veHaHava represents both diaspora resilience and the re-rooting of communal institutions in one of the world’s most remote Jewish settings.

The Lusaka Synagogue is a key reference point for the history of Jewish presence in Zambia and, more broadly, in Central Africa. Jewish settlement in the region developed primarily during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, within the framework of British colonial rule in Northern Rhodesia. Jews arrived mainly from Eastern Europe, South Africa, and other parts of the British Empire, often engaged in commerce, administration, medicine, and technical professions. Lusaka, which became the capital in 1935, soon concentrated the country’s small but organized Jewish population.

The synagogue was established in the mid 20th century to serve this growing community. It was conceived as both a religious and communal space, allowing the maintenance of Jewish ritual life, collective identity, and social cohesion in a geographically isolated context. Religious services, lifecycle events, and communal meetings were held there, reinforcing continuity with Jewish traditions while adapting to local conditions.

The building itself is architecturally modest, reflecting the size and resources of the community. Rather than monumental design, its structure prioritized functionality, housing the essential liturgical elements required for prayer and communal use. This simplicity is characteristic of many synagogues established by small diaspora communities in Africa, where permanence was often uncertain and populations were mobile.

During the second half of the 20th century, particularly after Zambian independence in 1964, the Jewish population of Lusaka began to decline. Political change, economic shifts, and new migration patterns led many Jewish families to relocate to South Africa, the United Kingdom, Israel, or other countries. As a result, regular religious activity diminished, and the synagogue gradually ceased to function as an active center of worship.

Despite this decline, the Lusaka Synagogue remains an important site of memory. Its documentation through photographs and archival references preserves the material evidence of Jewish life in Zambia and testifies to a broader history of Jewish dispersion across Africa. Within the context of Jewish heritage, the synagogue represents both presence and transition, marking a chapter in which Jewish communities established religious, social, and cultural structures far from traditional centers, and later dispersed in response to historical change.