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Medieval Synagogues In The Mediterranean Region, Samuel D. Gruber

Religion - All Scholarship

Throughout the Middle Ages, the synagogue developed as the central identifying institution and physical building for Jews, replacing the still yearned for but increasingly distant Jerusalem Temple as the focus of Jewish identity. Equally important, the synagogue became the symbol par excellance of the Jews and their community for the Christian (or Muslim) majority populations in the countries where Jews were settled. For Christians, the synagogue was a Jewish church, but much more so, it came to symbolize in opposition all that the church represented.

Though relatively little known today, medieval synagogues were not symbolic abstractions to the men and …