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

Beginnings in Pest: the Former Orczy House and the Synagogues of the Association

■ Lőrinc Zoíahl'i choral temple in the backyard of the Orczy Home

Martinelli. The canteens of the building had been leased since 1750, even before the liberalisation of religious worship by Joseph II, by Óbuda Jews who catered for the barracks' residents. The first kosher slaughterhouses and restaurants were opened together with the Jewish Market, north of today's Madách tér, where merchants mainly sold grain, cattle, poultry, leather and textile products at their stalls. That is how the Jewish quarter emerged around the junction of what are Király utca and Madách tér today. In the early 1780s, the first, as yet illegally operated, prayer-room also began to function in the house of the restaurateur and community leader Marcus Sachsel. Although this was closed by the municipality, a new prayer-house was founded in the wake of Emperor Joseph ll’s decree. Operating on the premises of the Heuserl Manor in Király utca, the new synagogue borrowed its Torah scroll from the Óbuda community.

As the Jews of Pest began to grow wealthier, social differentiation also began. The various groups founded several Jewish study circles and relief societies, which founded their own prayer-houses and community centres in Terézváros. The most important ones were maintained on the Eastern side of today’s Károly Boulevard, in the Orczy House built in the early 1700s. One of the originally two houses was owned by the Orczy family, while the other belonged to the architect András Mayerhoffer. In the late 1700s, József Orczy, founder of Budapest’s first public park, the Orzcy Gardens, purchased the Mayerhoffer23