Yesterday we went to the Dohany Synagogue.
The Dohony Synagogue, or the Great Synagogue, is the second biggest synagogue in the world and the biggest in Europe! The biggest is Temple Emanuel in New York. Being the second biggest it seats about 3500 people.
This shul is Neolog, not orthodox and Temple Emanuel is reform, not orthodox. So the two biggest shuls in the world are not orthodox which shocked me.
You wouldn’t believe this is a shul from the size and architecture. Outside, the shul appears to be a mosque and inside by the bimah it looks like a Roman Catholic church. Despite this, the shul is stunning and the massiveness is shocking! When I first walked in I thought of it as the Jewish Saint Peters but, of course, much smaller.
In the courtyard, there is a Jewish cemetery with 24 mass graves. Both mass graves and cemeteries are strange things to be in a shul courtyard however they are here because the corpses from the ghetto got stacked there during the end of the war and the Russians buried them there.
At one end of the courtyard is the Hero’s Synagogue. This smaller prayer space is used in the winter since it is to expensive to heat the big shul and there are not enough people on a regular Shabbat to even somewhat fill the main shul. On Saturday, we went to shul in Hero’s Synagogue.
The bimah
Inside side view of the shul
The shul is so huge that there are two levels for the ezrat nashim (women’s section).
Plaque for donor for an assigned seat
Outside the shul
My apologies, all the pictures have bad lighting and are blurry.
-Alexandra