Building the Great Synagogue of Pest: Moorish Revival Architecture and the European-Ottoman Alliance in the Crimean War

Abstract:In the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions, the search for a symbolic Jewish presence in the urban centers of Central Europe led to the emergence of a monumental synagogue architecture in the Moorish revival style. This new architectural convention experienced a sudden breakthrough in April and May 1854, when it was adopted almost simultaneously in the plans for three major synagogues to be built in Leipzig, Vienna, and Pest. In this article, I will demonstrate that the social and aesthetic agendas of the three community leaderships were interconnected and that they must be understood in the context of the international political events transpiring at the time. In the spring of 1854, Europe witnessed the military and propagandistic run-up to the Crimean War. In the spirit of liberal patriotism, Hungarian Jews identified with the Ottomans against the Czarist Empire and saw the contemporary Islamic-Christian alliance as a globalizing extension of the emancipation process.