The Ferrara Synagogue is a
synagogue located in
Ferrara,
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
.
The synagogue is the only surviving representative of the several synagogues that once flourished in Ferrara.
[Sacerdoti, Annie, ''Guide to Jewish Italy'', Rizzoli, New York, 2003, 2004 English edition, pp. 116–121.] It is located in the historic Jewish community building of 1421 at 95 via Mazzini, which once housed two other synagogues, destroyed by fascists during World War II. Other synagogues were once located nearby. The building also houses a
Jewish museum A Jewish museum is a museum which focuses upon Jews and may refer seek to explore and share the Jewish experience in a given area.
List of Jewish museums
Notable Jewish museums include:
*Albania
** Solomon Museum, Berat
*Australia
** Jewish Mu ...
.
[
]
Synagogue
The surviving synagogue, the Scola Tedesca, German Synagogue, is a large room with a women's gallery upstairs. The barrel-vaulted
A barrel vault, also known as a tunnel vault, wagon vault or wagonhead vault, is an architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve (or pair of curves, in the case of a pointed barrel vault) along a given distance. The curves are ...
ceiling and walls are decorated in the Regency/Empire style fashionable when the room was renovated in 1820. The plaster designs on the walls are the work of Gaetano Davia, designer of the interior design of the Ferrara City Theater, Teatro Comunale. They feature Jewish motifs such as the Torah ark
A Torah ark (also known as the ''Heikhal'', or the ''Aron Kodesh'') refers to an ornamental chamber in the synagogue that houses the Torah scrolls.
History
The ark, also known as the ''ark of law'', or in Hebrew the ''Aron Kodesh'' or ''aron ha- ...
carried by the Jews during their Exodus from Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
, and the vestments of the High Priest in the Temple at Jerusalem. The synagogue retains its 18th-century bimah and Torah ark in dark wood, set off by a white marble balustrade.[
]
Jewish museum
The museum displays the Torah Ark of the Scola Italiana, Italian rite synagogue, once located in a large room in the same building. The room, now in use as a lecture hall, retains its original, vaulted, Baroque ceiling. Other furnishing were destroyed in a fascist attack on the building. The museum also displays several Torah arks from former synagogues in small towns in the region.[
Among the artifacts are an eighteenth-century contract between a local Jewish family and a newly hired nursemaid in which the nursemaid undertakes not to baptize the Jewish baby, and a stamp used to seal Jewish graves to prevent medical students at the university from using the cadavers for dissection practice.][
]
References
External links
Current community website
{{Authority control
Synagogues in Emilia-Romagna
Jewish museums in Italy
Regency and Biedermeier synagogues
Buildings and structures in Ferrara
Museums in Ferrara