The Choral Temple: A Viennese Synagogue Born of the 1866 Riots

In the summer of 1866, while the synagogue on Strada Sfânta Vineri was still under scaffolding, a mob broke into the building site and badly damaged it. A year later a sanctuary designed as a near-copy of a famous Viennese synagogue was dedicated there, and it has been the main synagogue of Bucharest’s Jews ever since.

A Viennese Synagogue in the Heart of Bucharest

The idea took shape in the mid-nineteenth century among Bucharest Jews who wanted a representative house of worship in the style of the Central European capitals. According to the Bucharest City Hall portal, the community bought the plot in 1857, and a first, Gothic-style design was drawn up that year; the portal credits the idea itself to Isaac Leib Weinberg. The plan was shelved for several years, and in 1864 the project was revived by an association for building the temple headed by the banker Iacob Loebel.

The new design was the work of the Viennese architects I. Enderle and Gustav Freiwald, and the foundation stone was laid on 21 July 1864. Their model was the Leopoldstädter Tempel on Vienna’s Tempelgasse, dedicated in 1858. The original no longer exists: the Nazis destroyed it. Bucharest’s temple therefore preserves the form of a lost synagogue.

Fire, Riots and a Dedication in 1867

Construction moved quickly, and by early 1866 the building was nearly finished. That summer, however, Romania was in the midst of a heated public debate over the legal status of its Jews, as the new constitution was being drafted. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, a mob that took to the streets during the debate demolished the “Choir Temple,” then still under construction; the City Hall portal describes an arson attack on the building in June 1866.

The community repaired the damage, and according to the City Hall portal the temple was officially dedicated on 6 July 1867, in a ceremony led by Rabbi Antoine Lévy. The sources disagree on dates: Jewish Heritage Europe gives 1864–1865 for construction, the Encyclopaedia Judaica and the FCER synagogue list give 1866 as the year of completion, and the City Hall portal gives 1867 for the dedication. The difference appears to lie between the end of construction, the repairs after the riots, and the ceremony itself.

What “Choral” Means

The name reveals the small revolution the building embodied. In nineteenth-century Central Europe, a “choral” synagogue meant prayer in the Ashkenazi rite, but with a cantor and choir, a sermon in the language of the country, and an order and decorum borrowed from the “reformed” synagogues of Vienna and Berlin. It was not Reform in the radical German sense, but a middle path meant to keep the educated generation close without cutting it off from tradition. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, the temple became the centre of “Progressive” Jewry in Bucharest.

This debate is also the key to the difference between the temple and its neighbours. A short walk away stands the Great Synagogue, founded by Jews from Poland who held on to the traditional rite, a story told in a separate article. The temple’s choir still exists: it gave a recital at the community’s “Open Synagogues” night in October 2025.

Brick, Arches and a Second Gallery

The temple is built of brick in the Moorish Revival style, on a footprint of about 448 square metres. The façade, with its arches, geometric ornament and small turrets, is a nineteenth-century European interpretation of a style then considered “oriental” and therefore fitting for a synagogue, not a copy of Middle Eastern architecture. Notice the contrast between the lavish façade and the narrow street on which it stands.

The building kept growing with the community. According to the City Hall portal and FCER, external buttresses and a second gallery level inside were added in 1892. In 1932 the building was extended with a new wing designed by the architects Iuliu Leoneanu and Grigore Hirș: a reception hall on the ground floor and, upstairs, a museum, archive and library. In 1934 stairs to the first floor were added.

January 1941 and the Years of Repair

During the Legionary rebellion of 21–23 January 1941, 125 Jews were murdered in Bucharest, and Jewish shops, homes and synagogues were looted (Encyclopaedia Judaica). The Choral Temple was devastated by the Legionnaires and needed extensive repairs; the story of the pogrom and its memory is presented today at the Great Synagogue. In 1945 Leoneanu renovated the whole building, using more modest materials than the originals, as postwar conditions demanded. In the courtyard stands a monument to the martyrs of 1940–1945.

A comprehensive restoration was carried out between 2007 and 2015: structural consolidation, conservation and restoration, led by the architect Niculae Vlădescu according to the City Hall portal. At the end of it the main hall returned to use.

Rabbi Moses Rosen’s Pulpit

During the communist decades, the Choral Temple was the pulpit of Chief Rabbi Dr. Moses (David Moshe) Rosen. Born in Moinești in Moldavia in 1912, Rosen became Chief Rabbi of Romania in 1948, after his predecessor, Rabbi Alexander Safran, left the country. From 1957 he sat in the Great National Assembly, and in the 1960s he also became president of the Federation of Jewish Communities; he held both posts until his death in May 1994. In 1956 he founded the Journal of Romanian Religious Jewry, a fortnightly published in Romanian, Hebrew and Yiddish.

Rosen negotiated constantly with the Ceaușescu regime. In his time the community kept Talmud Torah classes, choirs, kosher restaurants and cemeteries, and in those years hundreds of thousands of Jews emigrated to Israel. A 1978 community pamphlet shows Golda Meir, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Navon visiting the Choral Temple. His critics accused him of collaborating with the regime; his supporters saw him as the man who kept the community alive. In 1978 he also founded the Museum of the History of the Jews in Romania in the tailors’ synagogue, whose story is told in a separate article.

Visiting

The temple stands at Strada Sfânta Vineri 9–11, near Piața Unirii. It is the main synagogue of the Bucharest community and part of the community’s complex. It is a working synagogue, not a tourist site with fixed hours. We found no current visiting hours from an official source, so visits should be arranged in advance with the Jewish Community of Bucharest or with FCER. The community opens the temple to the general public at special events such as “Open Synagogues.”

• What to see: the Moorish façade, the Torah ark and bimah, the two gallery levels and the monument in the courtyard.
• Respect: modest dress, and a head covering for men. On Shabbat and festivals, come to pray, not to tour.
• Nearby: the Great Synagogue on Strada Vasile Adamache and the Jewish Museum on Strada Mămulari, both a short walk away.