Passing Fancies in Jewish American Literature and Culture

Abstract

by the emerging scholar, Jess Olson, in “Reimagining the Synagogue in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” he identifies the “unprecedented number of modern, monumental houses of Jewish worship between 1830 and 1930 in Europe and North America was a remarkable departure from Jewish architectural history in the diaspora” (288). The second is by the eminent scholar Samuel Gruber, in “Modern Synagogue Architecture,” where he states, “Monumental synagogues in the State of Israel often present similar expressive tendencies to those in America and Europe” (324). A third impactful chapter was Maya Balakirsky Katz’s “The Sacred Architecture of Contemporary Hasidism,” where she finds that “Hasidic rebbes operated hundreds of such shtieblach, especially in the New York City neighbourhoods of Borough Park, Williamsburg, and Monsey and in the Israeli neighbourhoods of Bene Berak and Geula” (336). Together, the findings from these three chapters suggest that there is a significant quantity of Jewish material culture of the built environment that is being glossed over because the majority of synagogue/Jewish architecture scholars are focused on the more ancient structures of the Levant and Europe. More qualitative studies could be conducted on these underrepresented chapter subjects. Jewish Religious Architecture also lacks a concluding chapter where the content editor could have tied together big ideas across chapters as well as explained the reasoning for gaps in the scholarly contributions as directions for future research. The other chapters of Jewish Religious Architecture are of very good quality, but this publication is following an entrenched canon of Jewish art and architectural history at a time when the field of art and architectural history is considering new and innovative directions for studying visual material culture. This is exemplified by Yale University’s announcement eliminating the traditional western art history canon from its curriculum. While not as academic as Jewish Religious Architecture, this book has nearly the same pattern of chapter subjects as H. A. Meek’s The Synagogue (2003) and And I Shall Dwell Among Them: Historic Synagogues of the World by Yom Tov Assis (2000), among others. Since Jewish Religious Architecture is the first volume of the new Brill series Jews, Judaism, and the Arts, the series editors should consider current trends in art and architectural history scholarship in relation to that of or by Jews, such as the abandonment of an official canon of material.