Jewish Religious Architecture explores ways that Jews have expressed their tradition in brick and mortar and wood, in stone and word and spirit. This volume stretches from the biblical Tabernacle to Roman Jerusalem, synagogues spanning two millenia and on to contemporary Judaism. Social historians, cultural historians, art historians and philologists have come together here to present this extraordinary architectural tradition. The multidisciplinary approach employed in Jewish Religious Architecture reveals deep continuities over time, together with the distinctly local— sometimes in surprising ways.
Steven Fine is the Dean Pinkhos Churgin Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University, director of the YU Center for Israel Studies and of the Arch of Titus Project. A cultural historian of ancient Judaism, Fine is a founding editor of Images: A Journal of Jewish Art and Visual Culture.
"All in all, this book of essays fills a needed gap in Jewish art and material culture. It is the first that provides an expansive overlook of Jewish architecture from biblical times to our days, attempting to include side by side known and well-studied monuments with lesser-known chapters of the long history and vast geography of the Jewish experience."
- Shalom Sabar, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in Review of Biblical Literature 08 (2021)
All interested in the history of Judaism architecture and visual culture from the biblical period to the present, scholars from a broad range of fields and educated lay readers.