Shaarei Tora/ Shaar Torah/ Saar HaTorah/ Beit Midrash

Satu Mare Saar HaTorah Synagogue

Saar HaTorah, built in 1927, sits just across the courtyard from the Great Synagogue with a Holocaust memorial resting between the two structures. Unlike its massive and imposing neighbor, Saar HaTorah is smaller, one-story and flat-fronted. Constructed of brick, the building’s curved surmounting pediments and longitudinal attics indicate its Baroque style. A row of three-foiled windows surmounting a row of semicircular windows is partitioned by fine sash bars and filled with glass of different colors.[1,2,3] The ornaments framing the holy ark and the wrought-iron balustrade around the central bimah carry the same style. The plainly painted walls, the refined decorativeness of the neat Baroque forms, the artistry of every form and outline, including those of the central candelabrum make both the sanctuary exterior as well as its interior appear nearly modern.[3]

Worshippers enter the synagogue through a narthex, or antechamber, into the main hall. The ark on the eastern wall is shaped as a portal with a smooth concave surface, or conch, flanked by two towers and surmounted by a pediment bearing the tables of the covenant. At the center of the conch, a sun is drawn and an inscription surmounts it. The women’s gallery is placed against the western wall.[2] A sign on the lobby wall today attempts to discourage chatter with the message “Only God speaks in the synagogue.”[4]

Also inside Saar HaTorah, a board with a rotating wheel contains each week’s Torah portion. Before the Holocaust, the rabbi would turn the wheel weekly. However, beginning on May 3, 1944, the entire Jewish population from Satu Mare and surrounding villages was forced into a ghetto, followed by the deportation of all 18,863 Jews to Auschwitz where they were murdered. The wheel has not been touched since the last service in 1944, remaining at Kedoshim, Hebrew for “martyrs.”[5,6]

An organization that monitors historical synagogues in Romania rates the condition of Saar HaTorah as C, or poor. The local Jewish community bears the burden of maintenance but has no funds for its upkeep or renovation. Still, as the only operating synagogue in Satu Mare, Saar HaTorah, a Neolog congregation, holds regular services in a small prayer room off the narthex. The synagogue also maintains a Beit Midrash for study.

With only a handful of Jews still living in Satu Mare and without enough money for a rabbi, members of the Jewish community conduct the services. Frequently, though, the congregation does not have a minyan.

Prepared by Anne Armel, December 2019

Sources

1. Ruth Ellen Gruber, Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to Eastern Europe (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2007), 272-73.

2. “Historic Synagogues of Europe,” “Small (Shaarei Tora) Synagogue in Satu Mare,” The Center for Jewish Art at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Foundation for Jewish Heritage, accessed October 29, 2019, http://cja.huji.ac.il/mhs/browser.php?mode=set&id=5461 and http://cja.huji.ac.il/image.php?id=34385&m=medium

3. Aristide Streja and Lucian Schwarz, Synagogues of Romania, trans. Viviane Prager (Bucharest: Editrua Hasefer, Hasefer Publishing House of the Federation of Romanian Jewish Communities, 1997), 152.

4. Ron Csillag, “Holocaust Continues to Resonate in Home of Satmar Dynasty,” Canadian Jewish News, September 2, 2015, https://www.cjnews.com/news/international/holocaust-continues-resonate-home-satmar-dynasty

5. Cnaan Lipshiz, “A Hasidic dynasty began in this Romanian town. Now the Jewish community is barely surviving,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Global, September 15, 2017, https://www.jta.org/2017/09/15/global/a-hasidic-dynasty-began-in-this-romanian-town-now-the-jewish-community-is-barely-surviving

6. “Satu Mare,” Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies, accessed November 10, 2019, https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%207459.pdf

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