Læderstræde Synagogue, Copenhagen

The Jewish community

The Jewish community of Copenhagen was founded in 1684, when a small group of Jews granted rights in the city were permitted to hold prayers in a private home; some services followed the Sephardi rite. Abraham Salomon of Rausnitz in Moravia was appointed the first rabbi in 1687. The congregation remained small and tightly regulated by the crown, and for decades its members could worship only in private rooms. By the later eighteenth century it had grown considerably: one modern summary puts the number of Jews who worshipped in the Læderstræde building between 1766 and 1795 at around 1,500, although that figure is not documented in the sources read. Many members were merchants living in the streets around the synagogue. The 1756 cadastre records the Jewish merchant Amsel Jacob Meyer as owner of the neighbouring house at Læderstræde 11, and another Jewish merchant, Michael Levin Rothschild, lived there in 1787. Alongside the main synagogue there were several private synagogues serving subgroups within the community, including Sephardic families; the Danish Jewish Museum counts as many as twelve synagogues in this period.

Architecture and design

No picture, plan or description of the Læderstræde synagogue was found in the sources consulted, so its appearance is unknown. The only physical fact recorded is its size: the Encyclopaedia Judaica gives it 320 seats, which applies to the building it dates to 1766. Its architect or builder is not named. A Wikipedia street article notes that the master builder Andreas Hallander built present-day Kompagnistræde 16, the address it gives for the synagogue, but that house is a post-1795 rebuilding and the article does not connect Hallander with the synagogue itself. Earlier Copenhagen synagogues had to be inside private houses, on an upper floor and facing away from the street, and it is possible that the Læderstræde synagogue was also set back from the street frontage, but no source read confirms this. Its style is likewise unknown.

Life inside the synagogue

The Læderstræde synagogue was the seat of the chief rabbis of Denmark in the second half of the eighteenth century. Abraham Gedalia Levin was appointed chief rabbi in 1779. His son Abraham Gedalia came from Poland to join him in Copenhagen in 1782, was made deputy rabbi in 1787 and succeeded his father as chief rabbi on his death in 1793; he therefore led the congregation during the synagogue's last two years. Gedalia was respected for his Talmudic learning but regarded as old-fashioned by members who wanted reform; as late as 1796 he opposed Jews learning Danish. Sephardic and other subgroups prayed in their own private synagogues rather than in the main one. No record was found of the synagogue's cantors, lay leaders or ritual furnishings, or of what was saved from the building in 1795.

Destruction

The synagogue was destroyed in the Copenhagen fire of 1795, one of the great fires that ravaged the city in the eighteenth century, which consumed most of Læderstræde and the surrounding streets. The Danish Jewish Museum's guide says the synagogue burned to the ground, and its walking-tour booklet calls it the congregation's primary synagogue. The Encyclopaedia Judaica, the Danish encyclopaedia lex.dk and Wikipedia's article on Abraham Gedalia all record the same loss. There is no suggestion in any source that the fire was aimed at the Jewish community: the synagogue was lost with the rest of its neighbourhood in a city-wide fire. The building was not rebuilt on its site. According to later accounts, plans for a new synagogue were held up for about three decades by a dispute between traditionalist and reform-minded members, and services moved to private homes in the meantime.

The community’s fate

After the fire the congregation had no common synagogue for 38 years. The Encyclopaedia Judaica says services were held in fifteen private homes. The community split between traditionalists led by Chief Rabbi Abraham Gedalia and members who wanted a modernised service; in 1814, the year a royal decree gave the Jews of Denmark equal civil rights, reform services were started by Nathanson and his circle, with Isak Noah Mannheimer brought in to lead them until he left Denmark in 1823; Gedalia opposed them. Gedalia died in 1827 and Abraham Wolff was appointed chief rabbi. The congregation then built a new common synagogue in Krystalgade, designed by G. F. Hetsch in a late classicist style and inaugurated in 1833. It remains Copenhagen's main synagogue and the seat of Det Jødiske Samfund i Danmark, the successor of the community that worshipped in Læderstræde.

The site today

Læderstræde and its neighbouring streets were rebuilt in the years after 1795, and the street, near Højbro Plads, is today part of the run of old streets known as Strædet. The Danish Jewish Museum gives the synagogue's address as Læderstræde 13; a Wikipedia article on Strædet instead places it at present-day Kompagnistræde 16, a house built after the fire by Andreas Hallander. Both plots are now occupied by houses put up after the fire. No trace of the synagogue survives above ground, and no marker at either address was found in the sources consulted. The Krystalgade synagogue, also in the old city, is the building that replaced it.

Notable names