Košice Status Quo Prayer Hall

La comunidad judía

Organised Jewish life in Košice began in the 1840s. The community was registered in 1843, its first rabbi, Marton Kohn, came from nearby Rozhanovce, and services were first held in a rented house; Borský gives 345 Jews in 1843 and 729 by 1850. The Hungarian Jewish Congress of 1868-69 divided the community. The mother community joined the Congress (Neolog) movement, Orthodox secessionists founded Shomrei ha-Dat, whose statutes were approved in 1871, and a further group of the Orthodox formed Adath Shalom, the Congregation of Peace, which became the Status Quo community. Borský names its leader as Rabbi Abraham Katz. Kinga Frojimovics's archontology of Hungarian Neolog and Status Quo rabbis describes the Status Quo congregation as a small group that broke away from the Orthodox community soon after 1871. It lists only two Status Quo rabbis in Košice: Ábrahám Seelenfreund, also called Aba Katz, from soon after 1871 until 1890, and Márk (Mordechai) Eckstein from 1890 to 1944. By 1914 the Status Quo and Neolog bodies had re-affiliated while keeping their own services.

Arquitectura y diseño

Almost nothing is recorded about the building itself. Borský calls it a small prayer hall built by the traditionalists to the east of the 1866 synagogue, and elsewhere says it stood behind that synagogue; he adds that it is shown on some older city maps but gives no plan, dimensions or description. Its date is known only from its context: it was built as a result of the ministry ruling of 1872, so after that year, and probably soon after. It was a free-standing building on the community's plot on Rákóczi Circle Road, on the ground later covered by the large domed Neolog synagogue of 1927, now the State Philharmonic at Moyzesova 66. Because it was built for a traditionalist congregation that objected to the eastern bimah of the 1866 synagogue, it is likely, though not documented, that its reading desk stood in the centre of the hall. The architect, the builder, the style, the materials and the seating capacity are unknown, and no photograph, drawing or plan of the prayer hall was found.

La vida dentro de la sinagoga

The prayer hall was built for the traditionalists who would not worship in the 1866 synagogue. Borský explains that a rabbinical ruling of 1865 issued at Michalovce under Rabbi Hillel Lichtenstein and signed by 72 rabbis declared synagogues with an eastern bimah, towers or a choir unfit for prayer, and that in Košice the communal butchers stopped praying in the new synagogue because meat from its slaughterers would no longer be accepted as kosher. The 1866 synagogue also had an organ. The small hall behind it therefore gave traditionalist worshippers a place to pray beside the main synagogue without accepting its innovations. It served the Status Quo congregation for about half a century, under Rabbi Ábrahám Seelenfreund (Aba Katz) until 1890 and then under Rabbi Márk Eckstein. No record of its furnishings, its daily services, its prayer-book rite or the number of its regular worshippers was found. After 1927 the congregation moved its services into the rebuilt 1866 synagogue, where the organ was removed and the bimah placed in the centre for its use.

Destrucción

The prayer hall was not destroyed by war or persecution. It was taken down in 1926 by agreement between Košice's Jewish congregations. In 1924 the Neolog community announced an international competition for a new synagogue with a school, and instead of acquiring a new building plot it exchanged buildings with the Status Quo prayer group. The Status Quo congregation received the old 1866 synagogue, which was shortened, stripped of its organ and given a central bimah for the traditionalist rite, while its own small prayer hall behind the synagogue was demolished so that the new Neolog synagogue could be built on its site. Borský dates the demolition to 1926 and says construction of the new synagogue began on the cleared spot the same year. The winning design was by the Budapest architect Lajos Kozma, and the building was carried out by the firm of the Barkány brothers. Both the new Neolog synagogue and the remodelled Status Quo synagogue were consecrated in 1927. The demolition was therefore the work of the Jewish community itself; no contractor for the demolition is named.

El destino de la comunidad

In November 1938 Košice was annexed to Hungary after the First Vienna Award, and Hungary's anti-Jewish laws were imposed on the city. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, as given by the Jewish Virtual Library, there had been 8,762 Jews in Košice in 1921 and 11,420 in 1938. After the Nazi German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, the Hungarian authorities concentrated the Jews of Košice and the surrounding district in two brickworks on the edge of the city, where 10,590 people were held, with several hundred more in a ghetto in the town. Deportations to Auschwitz began on 16 May 1944, and some 15,707 Jews were deported from Košice. Rabbi Márk Eckstein's term as Status Quo rabbi is recorded as ending in 1944, and his fate is unknown. After the war communal life was restored and Košice became the centre of Jewish life in eastern Slovakia; 2,542 Jews lived there in 1947, and more than 1,000 left for Israel in 1949-50. The surviving congregations united on an Orthodox basis.

El lugar hoy

The site of the prayer hall lies under the former Neolog synagogue designed by Lajos Kozma and completed in 1927, at Moyzesova 66 in the Staré Mesto district of Košice. After the Second World War the city acquired that building, and in the 1950s it was converted into a concert hall; today it is the House of Arts (Dom umenia), home of the State Philharmonic Košice. Its portico was replaced by a large vestibule block, but the dome survives above the concert hall's inserted ceiling. The 1866 synagogue in front of it, later used by the Status Quo congregation, was demolished after the war, and its site is now a park in front of the House of Arts. No trace of the prayer hall is known to survive.

Nombres destacados