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

A Pair of Synagogues in the Buda Castle

■ The hapade oh the synagogue at 26 Táncsics Mihály utca

by the king who was responsible for matters involving the local Jewry; the Prefect was a leading member of the Jewish community itself. The two titles were thus united as the Prefect was both a court dignitary and a community leader. The liaison to the court through his person further improved the position of the Buda Jewry. The office of Prefect was inherited by Mendel's descendants until the expulsion of Buda’s Jewry. The family raised several grandiose buildings in the quarter, which now bore the name of "Jewish street". The Mendel houses were also found during the excavations of the 1960s. The buildings are likely to have served as community centres, too, as the Prefect had the privilege of appointing the rabbi of Buda. It was in the courtyard of a Mendel house, the one that stood at 23 Táncsics utca, that the late-Gothic great synagogue, a building of impressive proportions (with a ground-space of 26.26 by 10.53 metres), was raised. The two-nave interior must have impressed one with the same sense of space as that experienced in the Altneuschul synagogue of Prague or the destroyed synagogue of Regensburg, a structure one hundred years older than the former. The women's prayer-room was connected with the synagogue proper by narrow apertures enabling female worshippers only to keep up with the prayer recited next door. In Sándor Scheiber's interpretation, the inscription on the central pillar celebrates the temple's 80th anniversary in 1541. The remains of the great synagogue in Buda are of international archaeological significance

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