Roy Saatchi has recently visited Middle Street Synagogue in Brighton - read the following to find out more.
"The camera never lies. So when I look at the pictures I took during
my recent visit to a special week-long opening of the Middle Street Synagogue
in Brighton, I find they have filed themselves under “Cathedrals”.
I had absolutely no
hand in this clever bit of tech which somehow knew that the term
"cathedral" is often applied colloquially to any large and impressive
building for public worship. And my,
what an impressive building this synagogue is.
Not from the outside, mind you. The
low-key yellow bricked Italian Romanesque shaped exterior, on a narrow street, belies the visual splendour waiting inside.
Middle Street
Synagogue was being especially reopened for one week only as part of the Brighton Festival. It certainly lives up to its claim
to have the finest 19th century decorative interior of any building in Brighton
- with the exception of the Brighton Pavilion of course. It is officially described as "an extremely sumptuous example of
late 19th century craftsmanship".
It was built during the so-called golden age of high Victorian synagogue
architecture in the period after 1858 when Britain granted equality and citizenship rights on a communal, not merely individual
basis, to its Jews.
It is basilican in
design and a riot of marble, brass, mosaic, stencilling, gilding and
stained-glass, much of it donated by the Sassoon family, the synagogue’s chief
patrons. The 12 richly decorated iron columns that support the gallery are
individually fashioned from hammered iron and copper; each one with a different
representation of flora from the land of Israel. It is said the columns
represent the 12 tribes.
It was the first synagogue in Britain to be
lit by electricity but perhaps the most interesting thing for me was the Hebrew
writing you would normally expect to see at eye level above the ark. The words are way up in the heavens, out of
the way, conceivably not to spoil the symmetry!
Middle Street has to
be one of the finest historic synagogues in this country and deserves national
recognition as an important part of Anglo Jewry’s architectural heritage."
