Szegő Dóra - Szegő György: Synagogues - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2004)

gical art can only be assessed in terms of anonymous artisanship. What has arranged itself into a genuine historical narrative, then, is the destiny of the community commissioning the work rather than the succession of masters and masterworks. As these communities have all been destroyed or dispersed, it would be both erroneous and profane to recite the dry architectural history of synagogues without evoking the memory of the believers.

The other ecclesiastic space has no terrestrial location but is an archetype of sacral places. If we speak of the Temple of Jerusalem, we must also speak of the relevant aspects of Jewish philosophy. That is not only because it is "different", but because it is little-known. Religious philosopher György Gabor's pithy observations will serve as a reliable guide:

"In the nth year of Solomon's reign, Israel consecrated its temple. When the priests and the Levites deposited the Ark wherein two stone tables inscribed with the covenant of the Lord is placed, 'the house of the Lord was filled with a cloud'. The plan of building the Temple was born in the heart of his father, David, but the Lord set the task aside for the "man of rest’’—Solomon (i Chron. 22:9). And he stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the congregation of Israel to say his prayer hallowing the Temple. He concluded his prayer with a supplication for an everlasting Israel and with a blessing of his people. [...] The Temple is the place where the everlasting Lord hears, as Solomon believes, the supplication made by his people before him. The king knows that the heaven of heavens itself cannot contain the Everlasting Lord, much less the Temple, but his name 'would be put there’, giving the hope that he would hearken unto the prayer which his servant prays to his Lord on his heavenly throne.

With his name the unnameable will thus be present, his name signifying his presence pregnant with holy significance. It is not by man that the Temple is hallowed; its sanctity is that of imago mundi, the mirror image of the world as its accurate description and painstakingly elaborated plan has been reconstructed on the basis of the ’writing by the hand’ of the Lord (1 Cron. 28:19): ’Thou [...] hast commanded me to build a temple on thy holy mount, and an altar in the city of thy dwelling place, a resemblance of thy holy tabernacle, which thou hast prepared from the beginning’ [Wisd. 9.8] [...]. It is not coincidental that it was in the period of the kingdom that the portable tent (miihkan) of the wandering in the wilderness was replaced with the splendid building of the Temple. Under the prosperous reign of Solomon, the buildings of the royal palace and the holy of holies were conjoined, or built as one, spiritually as well as architectonically, charging the complex with powerful symbolism (1 Kings 9:1, 10)."

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