The Architectural Analysis of Tabernacle, Temples I and II (original) (raw)
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The term “architecture of Judaism” is very diffi cult to defi ne, and in this form does not appear in the literature. Analyzing the context in which objects are created, and their designers, makes a kind of inexplicable phenomenon. Researchers are more of the opinion that Jews in the Diaspora did not develop any particular architectural form, they derived rather from existing patterns. At the same time these authors often use interchangeably the concept of culture and religion, making it even more diffi cult to defi ne the relevant terms. The aim of this article is to understand better the meaning of “architecture of Judaism” and, looking through the prism of culture and religion and the symbolism ingrained in them, to demonstrate certain universal patterns that are part of the constitutive phenomenon of architecture rooted in religion.
Contextualizing Jewish Temples
Contextualizing Jewish Temples, 2020
Jewish temples stood in Jerusalem for nearly one thousand years and were a dominant feature in the life of the ancient Judeans throughout antiquity. This volume strives to obtain a diachronic and topical cross-section of central features of the varied aspects of the Jewish temples that stood in Jerusalem, one that draws on and incorporates different disciplinary and methodological viewpoints. Ten contributions are included in this volume by: Gary A. Anderson; Simeon Chavel; Avraham Faust; Paul M. Joyce; Yuval Levavi; Risa Levitt; Eyal Regev; Lawrence H. Schiffman; Jeffrey Stackert; Caroline Waerzeggers, edited by Tova Ganzel and Shalom E. Holtz.
Bloomsbury
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The Topography of Symbol: Between Late Antique and Modern Jewish Understanding of Cities
Zeitschrift Fur Religions-und Geistesgeschichte, 2006
The place of cities in eschatological speculations and the prominence of urban topographies in sacred texts mark their religious importance as settings for and symbols of the community. It may be said, furthermore, that the distance between their role as places of everyday life and their symbolic status is at the heart of the religious process of mediation between the earthly and heavenly realms. For the purpose of illuminating the part of cities in this process I will examine, in what follows, two very different Jewish urban settlements and their theological understandings. In positioning one against the other, the late antique town of Sepphoris and the 19 th century settlement of Me'ah She'arim in Jerusalem, I will stress the significant religious questions emerging in Judaism with the advent of the modern era. The implications of European modernity (in which architecture played a central role) for Judaism have hardly been studied in regard to the paradigm of city. 1 Hence, while fusing, in the Gadamerian sense, two historical horizons around the topic of city, I will try to show, in the course of this discussion, how cities are themselves settings for engaging with different horizons.
“Studies of Jewish Architecture in Central–Eastern Europe in Historical Perspective”
Studies of Jewish sacred and profane structures in Central-Eastern Europe started in the 19th century. The Jewish architecture was documented and considered by architects, art and architectural historians, ethnographers, photographers, artists, writers and poets. Through the long period of public interest, the objectives and methodologies of study significantly varied. The synagogue architecture was analyzed for practical formulae of an “appropriate” style for new structures, for physical and virtual preservation of monuments and historical landscapes. It was also studied to define the place of Jewish monuments in universal architectural history, thus evolving from the Enlightenment to romanticist, racial and national romanticist theories, which would be abandoned altogether in the 20th century for the sake of critical knowledge about priceless remains, iconographical studies, and construction of shared places of memory. The architectural history of synagogues in Central-Eastern Europe became one of the most advanced fields of study in last decades.
The United and Divided Monarchy was the period that saw the development of the Israelite monumental architecture, royal fortifications, casemate walls and palace-temple complexes. Nevertheless, without waiving the evidence for an indigenous development which was influenced by preceding prototypes, a Phoenician tradition is demonstrated, especially in the building techniques, and the Assyrian Bit Hilani architectural type may also have been responsible for the general outline of the structures. Emphasis is given to the questions regarding the plan of the now missing Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem. It is assumed that this supposedly solid tripartite temple could have been influenced by cult structures of the Middle and Late Bronze Age and possibly provided the prototype for later temples. The information in the text derives from specific Israelite cult places which are cross-examined in terms of religious architecture and chronology with sites in Palestine and Syria.