Vault, Arch and the Pomegranate Tree
	Eva Laantee Reintamm

	Throughout almost the whole of the Soviet period, the usual meeting place of the Tallinn Jews was the Rahumäe Cemetery. People went there to commemorate their dead, but at more important holidays, also to meet with friends and relatives. All visits to the cemetery turned out to be extremely informative meetings, constituting a real Babel of different languages – people were speaking Estonian and Russian, but often also Yiddish and German and, at very rare moments, even the Hebrew language was heard. The prayer house, at that time located in Magdaleena Street, could not fulfil the function of a meeting place. First, it was too small and could by no means accommodate the whole community. Second, there was no proper rabbi in Estonia and the prayer house did not develop into a real religious centre, which would have been undesirable in the Estonia of that time anyway. By now, the situation has changed. A new synagogue was opened in Tallinn in May; it was a real historical event, as pointed out by Boris Oks, the chairman of the board of the Jewish Religious Community of Estonia. Since 2000, the synagogue has worked in the rooms adapted for the purpose in an annex to the Tallinn Jewish School in Karu Street. The initial plan involved only the idea of making the synagogue (the school annex) more presentable by building a new façade and the Mikvah (a women’s ritual bathing pool). The idea of building a new synagogue was initiated by a visiting rabbi from America, who had come to advise on the building of the Mikvah. The old synagogue did not meet the strict requirements for synagogue buildings, and instead of praying towards Jerusalem, people prayed towards Moscow.
	What should a synagogue of Estonian Jews look like? Regarding synagogues, their content has always been more important than their exterior. Since the very beginning, meaning after the destruction of the first Temple and the first exile in Babylon, the synagogue has primarily been a meeting place, either with God, with the rabbi or with one’s own inner self. Throughout the millennia, schools have been operat- ing at synagogues, where children learned to read and wise men became even wiser. Usually, these were very simple buildings and only a few requirements had to be met when building a synagogue. Those who prayed had to face towards the former Temple in Jerusalem and men and women had to have separate rooms. Even more important than the physical room was the Minyan or the quorum of ten men necessary for communal prayer. It is also necessary to mention that according to the prohibition in the Decalogue, Jews were not allowed to make the images of God or God’s creation. The prohibition was not followed to the absolute, but when decorating synagogues, the Jews mostly used decorative patterns and ornaments. The choice of architectural style depended on the period when the synagogue was built. It is difficult to talk about preferences in taste specific to Estonia. The first reports on Jews in Estonia date back to the 14th century, but information about the first prayer houses can be found only starting from the 19th century. The earliest synagogues were located in buildings adapted for this purpose. The first synagogue was built after the designs of Nikolai Thamm (the elder) in Maakri Street in 1883. The building was destroyed in the bombing of Tallinn in March 1944 and the remaining ruins were blown up in the course of later ‘reconstructions’ in Tallinn. The architectural language of the synagogue built after Thamm’s design was extremely eclectic. He had modelled his work on the synagogue, which had been built in Vienna 40 years earlier using elements of Moorish and Romanesque architecture, but Thamm made use also of local building traditions – the façade of the building was originally made of squared limestone which was later covered with plaster.
	The head of the KOKO architectural bureau, Andrus Kõresaar, said that the job of designing the new synagogue had been a welcome challenge. It was something completely different compared with all their previous tasks. No new synagogues had been built for almost a century and no supporting architectural tradition was in existence in Estonia. The initial plan of the congregation to rebuild the façade of the former synagogue that had been located in Maakri Street to decorate the house in Karu Street was rejected after some consideration, as the proportions of the building would have been wrong and copying of the old façade seemed to be quite senseless. Thus, the original plan of adding a foyer to the existing building developed further and became a plan of erecting a completely new building. For getting a better insight of the subject, Andrus Kõresaar and one of the architects of the synagogue, Lembit Kaur Stöör, spent a few days in Israel. Together with an Estonia-born architect Harri Shein, who now resides in Israel, they walked about in the streets of Jerusalem and learned something about the principles of Judaism and the main rules of synagogue architecture. They understood that the rules were mostly concerned with the religion, which gave them quite free hands for developing the architectural design. The building, designed by Lembit Kaur Stöör and Tõnis Kimmel, first acquired its outward appearance and then began developing towards it interior features. The vault that determined the form of the synagogue sprang from the idea of creating a sacral space. This simple motive became a decisive factor in the interior of the building as well; Lembit Kaur Stöör explained that there had been no reason for covering up or hiding the vaulting of monolith concrete in any way. Such a modern solution initiated quite a lively discussion among the members of the Jewish community, because, as Rabbi Shmuel Kot has said, the number of people who love modern architecture is not very large. People thought that the building resembled a glass barrel or a pool and a concert hall, but a final consensus with the architect was still achieved quite quickly. The motif of a vault emerged just easily, and the idea of the complementing colonnade came as easily. Such motifs of classical sacred architecture allow us to state that models for the building were found primarily from the classical temple architecture. By the words of the Rabbi, it is extremely important that at least a little of the sky could be seen from the synagogue. Due to the glass façade and the colonnade, this requirement has been met. Light pours into the building through the glass-covered side walls and through the glass areas between the columns. As the height of the rooms is about five metres, they are spacious and airy and look majestic. For the architects, it was also important that, as the building and the institution it housed were of cultural importance, they could become a part of the public space so that the passersby could, in an indirect way, participate in its life.
	The most monolithic part of the building is its curved, scalelike tiled roof, smoothly continuing into the side walls. A vault is quite a capricious form to be covered with tiles, but in this case, this seemed to be the only possible and the most functional solution – on the side walls, the roof ends in a wavy line, avoiding the emergence of cornices and covering a part of the colonnade. Due to the partly covered colonnade, an interesting play of light and shade can be seen through the two storeys of the open interior of the building. When the volume of the building had been specified, the spatial programme was determined quite easily. The ground floor had, naturally, to contain the Mikvah – the ritual pool, which had been the original reason for initiating the building of the new synagogue. The building of the Mikvah was under strict control all the time, which made the process rather uncomfortable for the builders. There were a number of special requirements. The water, used in the Mikvah, has to be at least 50% of natural origin and therefore, rain water is used. One of the most difficult problems that the architects had to solve was to find the way of bringing the water into the pool, as it had to run into the collecting vessel only through straight pipes without any bends. The problem of changing the water in the pool was difficult to solve as well. The casting of concrete for the Mikvah was also an important process, because it had to be cast in one piece. In addition to the Mikvah, the ground floor will house the future shop and restaurant of kosher food, which had so far been lacking in Estonia, and an entrance hall/lecture room, where people can sit on the multifunctional stairs leading to the level of synagogue. It took some time and effort to find a suitable location for the hall of the synagogue and finally, it was placed on the first floor. The hall extends through two floors – there are 100 seats for men on its floor and 50 seats for women on the balcony. At more important holidays, the synagogue can accommodate hundreds of people, but on ordinary Saturdays, maybe only about a dozen of congregation members will gather in the hall, so it does not need to be too large. The Rabbi said that usually, men and women are supposed to sit in separated areas, but in case of major holidays or festivities the rules could be loosened. A firm requirement for the synagogue is that the people who come to pray have to be seated facing the south, towards Jerusalem. The Aron Ha-Kodesh (an Ark where the Torah scrolls are kept), which will be made on order in Israel, will be placed by the south wall. On the lower level, the praying men are separated from the outer world by a wall of wooden panelling decorated with the motifs of pomegranate tree, to ensure that the spaciousness of the synagogue will not disturb them. The pomegranate tree is known as the symbol of fertility in the Mediterranean area. The image is totally apolitical, of southern origin and it offers many opportunities for graphical design. The pomegranate tree, which has become an element of ornamentation in the interior design of the building, stands in all its glory on the door of the synagogue. Regarding the symbols used in interior design, the architects and interior designers were given quite a free rein, but in addition to the motif of pomegranate tree, such inseparable symbols of Judaism as the Star of David and Menorah can be found in the synagogue hall. The second and third floors will house work rooms, the library, and in the future, also the community museum introducing the history of Estonian Jewry. The synagogue will be unusual in its multifunctionality, but already the fact of its being built is unusual as well. Eva Laantee Reintamm (1972), graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts as art historian and continues her MA in urban studies at the Tallinn University
	| Estonian Art 1/07 (20) | Published by the Estonian Institute 2007 | ISSN 1406-5711 (Online) | ISSN 1406-3549 (Printed version) | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 |