ABSTRACT
India has been home to synagogues serving its Baghdadi Jewish community for over a century and a half. Waronker presents these religious buildings, all built within the short time frame of 1855 to 1911 within the framework of India’s history, identity, development and sense of place. The three primary queries to be examined in the context of these synagogues are why they as physical objects appeared the way they do, what were their distinct architectural and cultural influences, and how they became mediums for elucidating the conditions of a people. So too will the architecture of each of the Indian Baghdadi synagogues be described and explained alongside congregational overviews. This chapter also calls attention to a vanishing tradition in that six structures consecrated as synagogues and for many years serving their respective congregations have managed to survive on valuable land in the centres of large cities despite the precipitous shrinkage in the Jewish population of these places beginning in the mid-1950s as a result of social and political changes in India.
