Great Choral Synagogue

Great Choral Synagogue, St. Petersburg

The Great Choral Synagogue is a synagogue in the Russian city of St. Petersburg . It was built in the years 1880-1893 in the Moorish style . It is located on Lermontowski Prospekt 2 in the Kolomna district west of the Krjukow Canal. Today the synagogue belongs to the Orthodox parish of Petersburg. About 90,000 Jews live in Saint Petersburg . The synagogue was extensively renovated from 2000 to 2005.

History of origin

The reason for the construction was less the need for a large house of prayer. Rather, religiosity was practiced in many small prayer rooms that were organized in a neighborhood and professional manner. In the new synagogue, the need for representation of the Petersburg Jewish upper class, which leaned towards Reform Judaism, was more manifest. So the divine service took place according to the Reformed rite. The planning of the building was accompanied by a heated discussion between supporters and opponents, Jews and non-Jews alike participated in it, but not the Hasidim and other Orthodox. The art critic Wladimir Wassiljewitsch Stassow propagated the Moorish style because the medieval synagogues of the Spanish Jews were built in it, and saw the cosmopolitanism and multiethnic diversity of the Russian empire expressed in the synagogue building in the capital (at the same time a mosque and a Buddhist monastery were built in Petersburg). Others rejected the pursuit of a genuinely Jewish architectural style and spoke out in favor of assimilating forms of construction, i.e. in the sense of Russian Orthodox design. Tsar Alexander II pushed for the representation building to be downsized, and the governor finally wanted the synagogue to be built in a less prominent place. 24 years passed between the approval of this central Jewish monument (1869) and its inauguration.

Individual evidence

↑ : Anke Hill burner places of Jewish St. Petersburg . in: Karl Schlögel : St. Petersburg. Locations of a city's history. Frankfurt / New York: Campus, 2007, pp. 78–84.

Web links

Commons : Great Choral Synagogue of Saint Petersburg - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Great Choral Synagogue in the online encyclopedia Saint Petersburg (English)

59.92467 30.291511111111Coordinates: 59 ° 55 ′ 28.8 ″ N , 30 ° 17 ′ 29.4 ″ E

[1] : Anke Hill burner places of Jewish St. Petersburg . in: Karl Schlögel : St. Petersburg. Locations of a city's history. Frankfurt / New York: Campus, 2007, pp. 78–84.