Szegő Dóra - Szegő György: Synagogues - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2004)
A Pair of Synagogues in the Buda Castle
Jewry of Egypt and Morocco, the symbol only appears in a magic context." This would point to an Oriental-Polish connection. However, the leaning shape of the letters led Scheiber to conclude that the Jews living here in Turkish times were of Syrian origin. The primitive character of the painting cannot be reconciled with the sophisticated traditions of the Buda Jews, resident here for at least two centuries at the time, including the use of advanced Western technologies of metallurgy in minting and other handicrafts. And yet no alternative explanation has been considered in connection with the shape of the bow in the stecco. Why does the weapon represented here belong to the migration period? Why is the image of the weapon appearing in contemporaneous pictorial representations of Biblical times and scenes the late-mediaeval cross-bow current in the 12th to the 14th centuries? The bow in the stecco of the synagogue is a nomadic weapon and can thus be interpreted in terms of a Khazar-Kabar etymology. The inscriptions were dated to Turkish times by Schreiber, but the house itself had undoubtedly been built in much earlier times, probably in the late 13th century. It was originally used as a residential building, but it is certain to have functioned as a prayer house from the time the great synagogue across the street was built in the 15th century. Some historians believe that the apartment building-turned-prayer-house was used by the Sephardi community, while the great synagogue across the street belonged to the Ashkenazi congregation. In an alternative view, the prayer house was earlier times frequented by non-Ashkenazi, "Khazar" Jews related to the Turks. The issue has been left undecided since the closure of the synagogue excavation across the street. The present-day street front of the house at 26 Táncsics utca is articulated by a row of protruding Gothic arches resting on brackets. Housed in the synagogue is a modest museum displaying objects belonging to the heritage of Buda's mediaeval Jewry, stelae from the old cemeteries of Buda, and bits of the original building. Above the arches is a reconstructed window in a stone frame, which may have opened from the women's segregated prayer room into the synagogue. Built for questionable archaeological reasons into the back wall of the courtyard are Gothic pillars that used to belong to Jakab Mendel's great synagogue of 1461, excavated and then reburied after i960 at 23 Táncsics utca. An important antecedent of the great synagogue was the establishment of the Jewish prefecture by King Matthias (Mátyás) and the settlement here of the Mendels, a Jewish family of great renown richly steeped in Renaissance culture. Matthias supplanted the institution of Jewish Judge with that of the Jewish Prefect. Previously it was a person, usually of Gentile background, appointed 12
