A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It has a place for prayer where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, choir performances, and children's plays. They also have rooms for study, social halls, administrative and charitable offices, classrooms for religious and Hebrew studies, and many places to sit and congregate. They often display commemorative, historic, or modern artwork alongside items of Jewish historical significance or history about the synagogue itself.
The history of the Jews in India dates back to antiquity. Judaism was one of the first foreign religions to arrive in the Indian subcontinent in recorded history. Desi Jews are a small religious minority who have lived in the region since ancient times. They were able to survive for centuries despite persecution and antisemitic inquisitions.
Synagogue architecture often follows styles in vogue at the place and time of construction. There is no set blueprint for synagogues and the architectural shapes and interior designs of synagogues vary greatly. According to tradition, the Shekhinah or divine presence can be found wherever there is a minyan, a quorum, of ten. A synagogue always contains an Torah ark where the Torah scrolls are kept, called the aron qodesh by Ashkenazi Jews and the hekhal by Sephardic Jews.
Paradesi Jews immigrated to the Indian subcontinent during the 15th and 16th centuries following the expulsion of Jews from Spain. Paradesi refers to the Malayalam / Tamil language word that means foreign as they were newcomers. These Sephardic immigrants fled persecution and death by burning in the wake of the 1492 Alhambra decree expelling all Jews who did not convert to Christianity from Spain and King Manuel's 1496 decree expelling Jews from Portugal. They are sometimes referred to as "White Jews", although that usage is generally considered pejorative or discriminatory and refers to relatively recent Jewish immigrants, predominantly Sephardim.
Spanish and Portuguese Jews, also called Western Sephardim, Iberian Jews, or Peninsular Jews, are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews who are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the few centuries following the forced expulsion of unconverted Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. They should therefore be distinguished both from the descendants of those expelled in 1492 and from the present-day Jewish communities of Spain and Portugal.
Bereavement in Judaism is a combination of minhag (traditions) and mitzvah (commandments) derived from the Torah and Judaism's classical rabbinic literature. The details of observance and practice vary according to each Jewish community.
Pizmonim are traditional Jewish songs and melodies sung with the intention of praising God as well as learning certain aspects of traditional religious teachings. They are sung throughout religious rituals and festivities such as prayers, circumcisions, bar mitzvahs, weddings and other ceremonies.
The baqashot are a collection of supplications, songs, and prayers that have been sung by the Sephardic Syrian, Moroccan, and Turkish Jewish communities for centuries each week on Shabbat mornings from the early hours of the morning until dawn. They are usually recited during the weeks of winter, from the Jewish festival of Sukkot through Purim, when the nights are much longer. The baqashot services can last for three to four hours. The Ades Synagogue in Jerusalem is the center of the Syrian practice today, and communities in Ashdod and Montreal are the center of the Moroccan practice.
The Portuguese Synagogue, also known as the Esnoga, or Snoge, is a late 17th-century Sephardic synagogue in Amsterdam, completed in 1675. Esnoga is the word for synagogue in Judaeo-Spanish, the traditional Judaeo-Spanish language of Sephardi Jews.
There are many synagogues in the Indian subcontinent, although many no longer function as such and today vary in their levels of preservation. These buildings dating from the mid-sixteenth through the mid-20th century once served the country's three distinct Jewish groups—the ancient Cochin Jews, and Bene Israel communities as well as the more recent Baghdadi Jews.
The Great Synagogue of Vilnius, which once stood at the end of Jewish Street (I-2), Vilnius, Lithuania, was built between 1630 and 1633 after permission was granted to construct a synagogue from stone. Standing on the spot of an existing synagogue built in 1572, the site had first been used to house a Jewish house of prayer in 1440. Damaged in World War II, it was demolished in 1955–1957 and replaced by a kindergarten and a primary school.
Adeni Jews, or Adenite Jews are the historical Jewish community which resided in the port city of Aden. Adenite culture became distinct from other Yemenite Jewish culture due to British control of the city and Indian-Iraqi influence as well as recent arrivals from Persia and Egypt. Although they were separated, Adeni Jews depended on the greater Yemenite community for spiritual guidance, receiving their authorizations from Yemeni rabbis. Virtually the entire population emigrated from Aden between June 1947 and September 1967. As of 2004, there were 6,000 Adenites in Israel, and 1,500 in London.
The Kahal Shalom Synagogue is a Sephardic synagogue in La Juderia, the Jewish quarter of the city of Rhodes on the Greek island of Rhodes. It is the oldest synagogue in Greece today.
Jews' Gate Cemetery is a Jewish cemetery located on Windmill Hill within a nature reserve in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. Also known as the Windmill Hill Cemetery, it is the site of the earliest known Jewish burials in Gibraltar. The cemetery opened by 1746 and closed in 1848. It is the burial site of a number of Gibraltar's Chief Rabbis. The graveyard is protected by the law of Gibraltar.
Solomon Abudarham was Chief Rabbi of the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar until his death from yellow fever in December 1804. Also known as Shelomo Abudarham II, the rabbi established a school of religious study on Parliament Lane and laid the inaugural stone for the Flemish Synagogue on Line Wall Road. In 1820, his academy was converted into the Abudarham Synagogue, named after the rabbi.
Amram Aburbeh, also spelled Abourabia and Aburabia, was the Chief Rabbi of the Sephardic congregation in Petah Tikva, Israel and author of Netivei Am, a collection of responsa, sermons, and Torah teachings.
The Baladi-rite Prayer is the oldest known prayer-rite used by Yemenite Jews, transcribed in a prayer book known as a tiklāl in Yemenite Jewish parlance. "Baladi", as a term applied to the prayer-rite, was not used until prayer books arrived in Yemen in the Sephardic-rite.
The Jewish Cemetery is a cemetery for the Paradesi Jews of Chennai, India. It is located off Lloyd's Road. The cemetery remains the only memoir of the once significant Jewish population of Chennai, which has now almost become extinct. Burials include the tombstones of 18th-century Jewish diamond merchants. The cemetery houses fewer than 30 graves, of which a handful are almost 300 years old.
Jacques (Jaime) de Paiva, a Paradesi Jew of Madras, was a Portuguese Jewish diamond and coral merchant from Amsterdam belonging to the Amsterdam Sephardic community. He was married to Hieronima de Paiva.
The Kadavumbhagham Ernakulam Synagogue in Kerala, India, is the restored oldest synagogue of the Malabar Jews with a Sefer Torah scroll and offering occasional services. It was established in 1200 CE and restored several times through the centuries on the same site. It is modeled on the earliest synagogue of the Malabar Jews at Muziris, which dated from the time of ancient sea trade between the Mediterranean and Kerala.
