The New Synagogue () is a

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

congregation,

community center A community centre, community center, or community hall is a public location where members of a community gather for group activities, social support, public information, and other purposes. They may be open for the whole community or for a sp ...

, and

synagogue A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It is a place for prayer (the main sanctuary and sometimes smaller chapels) where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as wed ...

, located on Synagogenplatz,

Mainz Mainz (; #Names and etymology, see below) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, and with around 223,000 inhabitants, it is List of cities in Germany by population, Germany's 35th-largest city. It lies in ...

in the state of

Rhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; ; ; ) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the sixteen states. Mainz is the capital and largest city. Other cities are ...

, in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. The

Modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

-styled building was erected in 2010, on the site of the former main synagogue, destroyed in 1938, on the Hindenburgstraße of Mainz .

Initial position and planning

Mainz, known to the Jews as , was an important Jewish centre on the

Rhine The Rhine ( ) is one of the List of rivers of Europe, major rivers in Europe. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms part of the Swiss-Liechtenstein border, then part of the Austria–Swit ...

and has had impressive synagogues for many centuries. The ''

Kristallnacht ( ) or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilia ...

'' of 1938 ended this tradition. After the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, the remains and premises of Mainz synagogues accommodated only a small group of returned community members. Before the

fall of the Berlin Wall The fall of the Berlin Wall (, ) on 9 November in German history, 9 November 1989, during the Peaceful Revolution, marked the beginning of the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the figurative Iron Curtain, as East Berlin transit restrictions we ...

the community had a mere 140 citizens in total. In the 1990s, a large number of immigrants from Eastern Europe grew the community and new space was required. By December 2006, the community had grown to number 1,050 members. In 1999, there was a competition to design a new synagogue building and a Jewish community centre. The winner was architect

Manuel Herz Manuel Herz is an architect with his own practice in Basel, Switzerland and Cologne, Germany. Education He was educated at the RWTH Aachen in Germany and at the Architectural Association in London. He has received numerous prizes and awards, ...

. The estimated cost was approximately

€ The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists of a stylized letter E (or epsilon), crossed by t ...

11 million and the city of Mainz gave assurances it would contribute €3.5 million. The financing model outlined that the city,

, and the

Federal Republic of Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen constituent states have a total population of over 84 ...

each contribute one-third of the construction costs. A building permit was issued in 2000. The demolition of the general customs office building (erected in 1955) at the site was not started until October 2008. The prayer sanctuary of the New Synagogue offers approximately 450 places which corresponds to five times the previous prayer capacity. The draft reminded the

deconstructivist Deconstructivism is a postmodern architectural movement which appeared in the 1980s. It gives the impression of the fragmentation of the constructed building, commonly characterised by an absence of obvious harmony, continuity, or symmetry. ...

architecture and symbolic organisation of the Jewish Museum, Berlin. A ''Magenza'' foundation under the patronage of Prime Minister

Kurt Beck Kurt Beck (born 5 February 1949) is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), who served as the 7th Minister President of Rhineland-Palatinate from 1994 to 2013 and as the 55th President of the Bundesrat in 2000–01. In May 2 ...

and Lord Mayor Jens Beutel was committed to the building and sustaining this new synagogue, and a further 29 citizens and notables from Mainz and the region belong to the establishment founders.

Architecture

The building reflects the Jewish-liturgical term Kedushah (). Cologne architect, Manuel Herz, intended to symbolize this with the five Hebrew letters the five ranges of the Jewish center for community events, adult education and as Hebrew school for school children. The letterforms were originally developed from picture symbols, from which the initial at the beginning of the respective symbol was associated later. Hebrew letters attain an object character, a quality of the representational one. The eastward-directed, (towards Jerusalem), horn-shaped roof of the assembly place represents a

shofar A shofar ( ; from , ) is an ancient musical horn, typically a ram's horn, used for Jewish ritual purposes. Like the modern bugle, the shofar lacks pitch-altering devices, with all pitch control done by varying the player's embouchure. The ...

. Mythologically the shofar stands for communication with God. This form is used to express the call of the community after

YHWH The TetragrammatonPronounced ; ; also known as the Tetragram. is the four-letter Hebrew-language theonym (transliterated as YHWH or YHVH), the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four Hebrew letters, written and read from right to left, a ...

, for listening to and receiving of eternal divine light and its wisdom. Traditionally the community was summoned together by blowing the shofar. The synagogue contains a festival room,

Mikveh A mikveh or mikvah (, ''mikva'ot'', ''mikvot'', or (Ashkenazi Hebrew, Ashkenazic) ''mikves'', lit., "a collection") is a bath used for ritual washing in Judaism#Full-body immersion, ritual immersion in Judaism to achieve Tumah and taharah, ...

, kosher kitchen, club room, kindergarten, classroom, social service, community office, library, meeting room and apartments. The Jewish community in Mainz offers an active cultural program, which is also open to non-Jewish visitors. The architect Manuel Herz received the German front prize for

rainscreen A rainscreen is an exterior wall detail where the siding (wall cladding) stands off from the moisture- resistant surface of an air/water barrier applied to the sheathing to create a capillary break and to allow drainage and evaporation. The ''r ...

fronts (VHF) in 2011. The building received the nomination for the Mies van der Rohe Prize for European Architecture, German Facade Prize 2011.

Completion

The foundation stone for the synagogue was laid on November 23, 2008. Andreas Berg and Dr Peter Waldmann wrote the text for the foundation stone. The topping out ceremony was committed on October 16, 2009. The inauguration was held on September 3, 2010, following weather delays; this date was the anniversary of the inauguration of the former synagogue in 1912. Attendees at the inauguration included Prime Minister Beck, Mayor Beutel, Federal President

Christian Wulff Christian Wilhelm Walter Wulff (; born 1959) is a retired German politician and lawyer who served as President of Germany from 2010 to 2012. A member of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, Christian Democratic Union (CDU), he previously ...

, and

Yoram Ben-Zeev Yoram Ben-Zeev (; born 20 July 1944) is an Israeli diplomat and former Israeli ambassador to Germany. Born in the Palestine Mandate (modern day Israel) on 20 July 1944—the date of the attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler, a fact described ...

, the Israeli Ambassador.

Gallery

Synagogue Mainz Exterior1.jpg, New Synagogue Mainz Synagogue Mainz Exterior2.jpg, New Synagogue, entrance Neue Synagoge Mainz Portalsicht.jpg, In the foreground remains of the former Main Synagogue from 1912

Initial position and planning

Architecture

Completion

Gallery

See also

Notes

References

External links