Synagogue

A synagogue or synagog, 'Beit Kneset'—"house of gathering" in Hebrew, also called a shul (meaning school in Yiddish) or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews or Samaritans.

It serves as a house of prayer. It includes a main sanctuary with the Torah ark where the Torah scrolls are kept (called an Holy Closet aron qodesh (Hebrew: אָרוֹן קׄדֶש) by Ashkenazi Jews and a hekhal (היכל) by Sephardic Jews), and a stage called bema in front of it as well as raised galleries for female worshipers. Synagogues have religious services or ceremonies such as Daily prayers, Shabbat prayers (Saturday) weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs. Synagogues often also contain study rooms, social halls, administrative and charitable offices, classrooms for religious and Hebrew studies, and spaces for community gatherings. They frequently display commemorative, historic, or modern artwork alongside items of Jewish historical significance or exhibits about the synagogue itself.

Synagogues are buildings used for Jewish prayer, study, assembly, and reading of the Torah. The Torah (Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses) is traditionally read in its entirety over a period of a year in weekly portions during services, or in some synagogues on a triennial cycle. However, the edifice of a synagogue as such is not essential for holding Jewish worship. Halakha (Jewish law from the Mishnah—the "Oral Torah") states that communal Jewish worship can be carried out wherever a minyan, a group of at least 10 Jewish adults, is assembled, often (but not necessarily) led by a rabbi. This minyan is the essence of Jewish communal worship, which can also be conducted alone or with fewer than ten people, but that excludes certain prayers as well as communal Torah reading. In terms of its specific ritual and liturgical functions, the synagogue does not replace the long-destroyed Temple in Jerusalem.

Any Jew or group of Jews can build a synagogue. Synagogues have been constructed by ancient Jewish leaders, wealthy patrons, and as part of a wide range of human institutions, including secular educational institutions, governments, and hotels. They have been built by the entire Jewish community living in a particular village or region, or by sub-groups of Jewish people organized by occupation, tradition/background (e.g., the Sephardic, Yemenite, Romaniote or Persian Jews of a town), style of religious observance (e.g., Orthodox or Reform synagogues), or by the followers of a particular rabbi, such as the shtiebelekh (Yiddish: שטיבעלעך, romanized: shtibelekh, singular שטיבלshtibl) of Hasidic Judaism.