@article{1479154,
      recid = {1479154},
      author = {Coenen Snyder, Saskia, },
      title = {Building a Public Judaism : Synagogues and Jewish Identity  in Nineteenth-Century Europe /},
      pages = {1 online resource (330 p.) :},
      abstract = {Nineteenth-century Europe saw an unprecedented rise in the  number of synagogues. Building a Public Judaism considers  what their architecture and the circumstances surrounding  their construction reveal about the social progress of  modern European Jews. Looking at synagogues in four  important centers of Jewish life-London, Amsterdam, Paris,  and Berlin-Saskia Coenen Snyder argues that the process of  claiming a Jewish space in European cities was a marker of  acculturation but not of full acceptance. Whether modest or  spectacular, these new edifices most often revealed the  limits of European Jewish integration. Debates over  building initiatives provide Coenen Snyder with a vehicle  for gauging how Jews approached questions of  self-representation in predominantly Christian societies  and how public manifestations of their identity were  received. Synagogues fused the fundamentals of religion  with the prevailing cultural codes in particular locales  and served as aesthetic barometers for European Jewry's  degree of modernization. Coenen Snyder finds that the  dialogues surrounding synagogue construction varied  significantly according to city. While the larger story is  one of increasing self-agency in the public life of  European Jews, it also highlights this agency's  limitations, precisely in those places where Jews were  thought to be most acculturated, namely in France and  Germany. Building a Public Judaism grants the peculiarities  of place greater authority than they have been given in  shaping the European Jewish experience. At the same time,  its place-specific description of tensions over religious  tolerance continues to echo in debates about the public  presence of religious minorities in contemporary Europe.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1479154},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674067493},
}