Szegő Dóra - Szegő György: Synagogues - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2004)
The Synagogue in Rumbach Sebestyén utca
The first important international work in the epoch-making oeuvre of the architect combining elements of Art Nouveau with early modernist trends in his style is now a fully-reconstructed building; however, it stands empty, closed and abandoned. The building harmonizes a Moorish style with an iron supporting structure, a technology seen as innovative at the time. The Jewry of Budapest played an increasingly important role in the country's modern economy. They chose a curious and, in comparison with the changing architectural trends of the century, somewhat marginal model in their quest of a particular "Jewish style" of shaping the past into brick and mortar. Through evoking the architecture of times past, the Jewry of the 19th century intended to explore its very own cultural identity, simultaneously using historicizing architectural forms yet still fixing its gaze on the future. That is how the synagogue could so often become the scene of experimentation that facilitated progress in architecture. That is one reason that the commission to design the Rombach was a real challenge to the young Otto Wagner—by now the best student of Ludwig Förster, the designer of the Dohány utca synagogue. The social constellation under which the new building came into being was also unique. By the 1850s the growth of Pest's Jewish population had accelerated, with more than twenty thousand Jews living in the capital at the time. After the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, the Jewish population of the dual monarchy was legally emancipated in the public as well as the private domain. As a result, Jewish intellectuals, bankers, and industrial magnates formed an important basis upon which Budapest's economic and cultural development could unfold at a speed unprecedented in the world in the post-settlement era. Against that social-historical background convened the Universal Congress of Hungary’s Jews in 1868—69. The event turned out to be a major turning point in the history of the country's Jewry, which split into the Orthodox, the itatui quo ante, and the Neologue communities. Although the Dohány utca synagogue (1859) welcomed among its walls every Jewish believer, followers of the traditionalist Orthodox and itatm quo tendencies did not accept it as their own. The reasons lay in religious observance—the furniture, the liturgy and the very spirit of the Dohány utca temple all reflected Neologue principles. To traditionalists it was unthinkable to admit an organ, a choir or the vernacular as the liturgical language in a synagogue, not to mention a liberal-that is, partial—separation of women from men in the temple. That was why followers of both traditionalist tendencies decided to build a new synagogue. And within a few decades the two temples reflecting the identities of the traditionalists were indeed constructed—the ótatuó quo synagogue in Rumbach Sebestyén utca and the Orthodox one in Kazinczy utca. 37
