Szegő Dóra - Szegő György: Synagogues - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2004)
Beginnings in Pest: the Former Orczy House and the Synagogues of the Association
property, too. The enlightened noble family of the Orczy's rented the house out to Jews moving to Pest. The larger tenement building, one that had two courtyards and three hundred apartments, was given the name Judenhoj). Besides serving as a residential, community and service centre, the building functioned as an important warehouse, too. The house thus became a nucleus in the life of the Jewish quarter, complete with rented apartments, a iachter (ritual slaughterhouse), a kosher restaurant and a café—whose banqueting hall was also used as a stock exchange—a Jewish bookseller's, ritual baths, and religious societies. The first form of society activity appropriate to Jewish traditions, the Holy Society of Funeral Rites or Hevrah Kaddishah, was established in Pest as early as 1790, while the Siur Association for the observance of Jewish traditions came into being in 1800, followed by the Zion Society. The Hesed Neurim Society was formed in the early 1800s for aid to the sick; the Bikur Cholim Association, based in the "White Goose” building by the Orczy House, for relief to the diseased; the Menachem Avelim Association for the consolation of the bereaved; the Tomche Yessomim Association for the care of the orphaned. That charitable intentions were revived time and time again is indicated by the foundation of the National Association for the Patronage of Hungarian Israelites, also for the care of orphans a hundred years later in 1910. From the second half of the nineteenth century, these social and religious organizations including charities, schools, shelters, orphanages and poorhouses no longer settled for assembling in small rooms but sought instead to construct detached buildings as prayer- houses or headquarters for their operations. Their membership can only be guessed at, but based on their headquarters' sizes they must have been 100 to 150 strong each. The majority of these associations and societies established their centres in the Orczy House and environs and, in later times, in the neighbouring districts of Terézváros or Erzsébetváros (Elizabeth Town). The first synagogue used exclusively as a prayer-house was set up on the premises of the Orczy House, in 1796. Its first rabbi, acting from 1799, was Israel ben Salomon Wahrmann, who had been born in Óbuda and whose legal status was only that of comoram in Pest. It was under his leadership that the legal framework of the congregational life of the Pest Jewish community and the structure of its leadership was formed. With the growth of the community, the newly-built additional floor of the Orczy House had to be rented, too, and the synagogue was also extended. Plans for the reconstruction of the great synagogue were made by master-builder Lőrinc Zofahl. In the enlarged building an additional prayer-house was also installed. A women’s gallery and a communal conference hall were built for the traditionalist congregation. In the enlarged 24
