Where Did the Synagogue
Come From?

One question we will answer

To answer this, we need to go back about three thousand years, much further than the year you were born, much further than your great-great-grandparents.

The answer begins with a building called the Temple, in a city called Jerusalem.

King Solomon builds the First Temple

About three thousand years ago, a king named Solomon built a great stone building in the city of Jerusalem. It was called the Temple. Inside it, priests offered prayers and sacrifices to the one God of the Jewish people.

The Temple stood on a high platform of stone called the Temple Mount. The First Temple stood for about 370 years.

Solomon's Temple, from an early-20th-century history textbook.
Internet Archive · public domain

The Temple is destroyed

Rembrandt, Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem, 1630.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam · public domain

In the year 586 BCE, a powerful empire called Babylon attacked Jerusalem. They knocked down the walls, burned the city, and destroyed the Temple.

Many Jewish families were taken far from home to live in Babylon. This is called the Exile.

For the first time, Jewish families lived where they could not go to the Temple to pray. They had to find a new way.

An idea that traveled

If we cannot go to the Temple, we will bring the prayers to wherever we are.

The Jewish families living in Babylon began to do something new. They gathered in small groups in houses of assembly, places to meet, pray, read sacred writings, and teach their children.

In Hebrew, this kind of place is called a beit knesset, which means "house of meeting."

In Greek (the international language at the time), the same idea was called a synagogue, which also means "gathering" or "assembly."

The Temple is rebuilt

After about 70 years in Babylon, many Jewish people were allowed to return to Jerusalem. They rebuilt the Temple on the same platform where the first one had stood. This is the Second Temple.

But Jewish families did not stop using their synagogues. People liked having a place close to home where they could pray every week.

So now there were both: the Temple in Jerusalem and synagogues in every Jewish town.

James Tissot, Reconstruction of Jerusalem and the Temple of Herod, c. 1886.
Brooklyn Museum · public domain

The Temple is destroyed again — for the last time

David Roberts, The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans Under Titus, A.D. 70, 1850.
Public domain

About 600 years later, in 70 CE, the Roman Empire, the same Romans who built the Colosseum, attacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple. The Temple has not been rebuilt since.

This was a moment that changed everything. With no Temple at all, the synagogue had to carry everything Jewish families needed.

The synagogue became the heart of Jewish life. It has been ever since.

What is inside a synagogue?

Every synagogue, anywhere in the world, has these same five parts. The numbers on the photo point to each one:

• 1 · Ark — cabinet for the Torah scrolls
• 2 · Torah — handwritten scroll inside the ark
• 3 · Bimah — raised reading platform
• 4 · Ner Tamid — eternal lamp
• 5 · Mezuzah — case at the doorway

Photo: Reconstruction of the Gwoździec Synagogue (a wooden Polish synagogue, originally built in the 1640s), at POLIN Museum, Warsaw. Photograph by Kamil Kulawik (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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Historic synagogues — and the one near you

Once Jewish families learned that they could pray in any house of meeting, they built synagogues everywhere they went. Some are still being used for prayer every week.

Dura-Europos

c. 244 CE · Syria

ruins · paintings in a museum

Altneuschul

c. 1270 · Prague

still in use today!

El Tránsito

1357 · Toledo

a museum you can visit

Touro

1763 · Newport

still in use today!

Eldridge Street

1887 · New York

still in use today!

★

Near You

Today

probably a short drive away!

Most towns have a synagogue. Many welcome school visits, just ask.

Image credits: Dura-Europos, Crossing of the Red Sea fresco (c. 244 CE), National Museum of Damascus (public domain). Altneuschul, Prague, photo by Richard Mortel (CC BY 2.0). El Tránsito, Toledo, photo by Antonio Vélez (CC BY-SA 3.0). Touro, Newport, photo by Zellner55 (CC BY-SA 4.0). Eldridge Street, New York, photo by Rhododendrites (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The most important words in this lesson

The synagogue is a portable idea

Anywhere ten Jewish adults can meet, there can be a synagogue.

This is something special about the synagogue. A church needs a church building. A mosque needs a mosque building. But a synagogue is, at its heart, just a place where people gather.

Because the synagogue was an idea, and not a single building tied to one place, Jewish families could carry it with them anywhere they went. To Babylon, to Rome, to Spain, to Poland, to Yemen, to Morocco, to America. Wherever they settled, they built a beit knesset, a house of meeting.

That is how the Jewish people kept their traditions alive for more than 2,500 years.

What we now know

• Long ago there was a great building called the Temple in Jerusalem.
• When the Temple was destroyed, Jewish families invented something new — the synagogue, a "house of meeting."
• A synagogue can be anywhere, because it is a gathering of people, not a single special building.
• Inside every synagogue: the Ark, the Torah scroll, the Bimah, the Ner Tamid, and the Mezuzah.
• Synagogues exist all over the world today — including, almost certainly, near you.

Now you know where the synagogue came from.