The dome and the synagogal building: between the unity of faith and the affirmation of nationality

Abstract

During the interwar period, many synagogues employing a vocabulary referred to as “Byzantine style” were built in the United States. Using as a case study the only Brazilian synagogue designed in the same language – the Beth El Temple in São Paulo (1928) – the article proposes an analysis of the context and specific confluences that led to the emergence of these buildings in America, as part of a larger debate on Jewish expression in the arts and architecture at a time when the question of the Jewish National State was being aired. Our analysis introduces the formulations of Lewis Mumford, particularly identified with this discussion, be it through his proximity with the American Jewish intellectual milieu or through his friendship with the writer and urban planner Patrick Geddes, suggesting that the first applications of the concept of regionalism fully developed by Mumford in the 1940’s took place in the 1920’s, when the American historian proposed an alternative to Jewish nationalism.