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

The Páva utca Synagogue

spaces that made up the ancient Holy of Holies. Another advantage of this arrangement is that it enabled the architect to preserve the buildings that were already in the courtyard.

Both the Tűzoltó utca side and the courtyard front made for a bulky, introverted effect, articulated by no more than the pilasters and the narrow orders of ogee arches around the windows. Before its recent restoration, the main front struck one with its monumentality. Above the vaults of the portal, filling almost the entire wall space, was the sculptural decoration of Moses’ crowned tablets, made of Zsolnay pyrogranite tiles. (There are several types of crown in Jewish tradition—the Torah, and the priest’s and the king's crown. In a synagogue, it symbolises the presence of God and suggests sublimity.) The Orientalising ornamentation surrounding the tablets is reminiscent of the mosaic-decorated orders of arches in the portals of a Muslim religious school or madrassah. The allusion made here to the study-house form is a hint at the archaic educational, as well as religious, function of synagogues. The books of the temple are at the disposal of all members of the community. For the Jewish believer, learning is an activity similar to prayer in that it, too, demands continuous repetition. The gate is framed by two lesenes on either side with sculptural decoration reminiscent of the fluting on Doric columns. These pilasters support a tympanum of a size matching the proportions of the gate. The contrast between the delicately vaulting order of pyrogranite-decorated arches displaying a mixed style of Orientalism and Art Nouveau on the one hand and the geometric, Neo-Classical shapes of the frame on the other gives expression to the tensions of the period.

Inside the temple, Jewish religious symbols are in evidence. The small Eastern wall, which looks back on Muslim prototypes and matches in style the tabled- topped tympanum of the main front, is framed by a pair of columns symbolising the Biblical princes Jachin and Boaz. The columns are inscribed with relevant Hebrew quotations. On the structural elements beneath the star-of-David-span- gled "firmament" of the barrel-vaulted ceiling is the quotation, in Hebrew and Hungarian, from the tablets of the law: "Love thy neighbour.” On the walls are azure- white-and-gold framed patterns with meandering Maccabean lilies among them. Together with the pyrogranite order of arches decorated with stellar and floral patterns on the main front, certain elements of the interior decoration suggest a pomegranate, that myriad-seeded symbol of fecundity. The pomegranate, which is also used to dress the Torah, symbolises the future of the Jewish people and faith.

By the 1990s the Páva utca synagogue had fallen into decline. The government undertook to have it restored, not to its original function as a synagogue, but as part of a new Holocaust Memorial and Documentation Centre.

70