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

Glossary

Glossary

apse a vaulted semicircular recess covered with a half-dome that emerged in late Roman architecture. It normally joins the larger interior space, which it terminates; holding the altar in Christian architecture, it is the place of the Ark in Jewish temples.

Ark the holiest part of the Holy of Holies in the ancient Temple of Jerusalem. It was here that the two stone tablets received from God were kept in a case. That is what today’s cabinet holding the Torah scrolls symbolises. In the diaspora it has traditionally stood in the middle of the wall nearest Jerusalem— the Eastern one.

Ashkenazi Jews who migrated mostly to Eastern Europe after their expulsion from German-speaking territories bimah, almemor a Torah-reading rostrum

Cohanite a descendant of Aaron, brother of Moses, on the father's side and thus a member of the priesthood attending to church duties Hasidism 18th-century Jewish movement related to Cabbalism and formed in Poland, in opposition to the Orthodoxy of the period. In the midst of pogroms and other tribulations, it proclaimed that the love of God and man, together with good-will and the purity of mind, came before a strict observance of the Law. One best served the Lord with dancing and joy rather than fasting and asceticism.

lantern small turret with open windows in it, placed on the opening on the top of a dome admitting light into the enclosed area beneath the dome, menorah a candelabrum having seven branches that pointed the way for the Jews led by Moses during their forty-year wanderings. Its branches stand for the seven days of the week with the Sabbath in the middle; its flame was supposed to burn at all times. In another interpretation it symbolises, as the tree of life, the fulfilment of Jewish life, pendentive dome a semi-spherical structure covering a square or polygonal space whose plan is the largest possible circle that can be drawn in the ground plan. Its corners are supported by pendentives. The pendentive itself is a vaulting spherical triangle. It serves as a transition between square and polygonal spaces and spherical domes covering the latter.

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