Great Synagogue of Oran Algeria, 1880-1963

During the later 19th, Jewish communities liked to build large, confident syn­agogues. The buildings had to be big enough to handle all the congregants AND they also had to show that Jews were modern, educated citizens. So the synagogues needed to be architecturally impressive. By mid C19th, the Moorish mudejar style was adopted by the Jews everythere, reminding people of the golden age of Jewry in medieval Spain. Moorish Revival style was quickly adopted as a preferred style of synagogue architecture.

The Great Synagogue of Oran, Algeria

There were 17 synagogues in Oran, a port city on the Mediterranean coast of Algeria, by mid C19th. The biggest of them all, The Great Synagogue, was built and consecrated in 1880, although its in­auguration had to wait until World War One was finishing. Designed in the Orientalist style, it was one of the largest and loveliest synagogues in North Africa. This style was of course in keeping with the rest of the Jewish world.

Oran Synagogue, nave

I have no coloured photos from inside the building so I am totally grateful to the blog Une belle histoire for the post La Synagogue d'Oran - C. He wrote of the multi-coloured stained glass window which lit up the interior. On each side of the main building, the archit­ects created a tower 20 ms high. Three large doors, surmounted by windows, opened onto the nave. Inside, the aisles were separated from the nave by arches that supported columns of red marble. 960 solid oak seats occupied the ground floor.

The Great Synagogue of Timisoara in Romania, completed in 1899, was one of the larg­est synagogues in Europe. This reform synagogue, built in the Oriental style in 1865, was said to resemble the Great Synagogue in Oran.

The Algerian war against French colonial rule placed the Algerian Jewish community in great jeopardy. Sleevez blog showed how the city's Jewish community of 30,000 people continued as best they could in regular life, but from 1954 on, the situation of the Jews deter­iorated. Samuel Gruber's blog and Point Of No Return blog discuss the utter destruction of the lovely synagogue in Algiers by a mob in 1960, but the Oran synagogue seems to have simply been confiscated.

France finally granted Algeria nat­ional independence in July 1962, but worse was to come for the country's Jewish citizens - the Algerian Nationality Code of 1963 granted citizenship in the new state only to Muslims. The end of this ancient community was near. Once the huge community had left, the synagogue was later seized by the government (in 1975) and converted into a mosque, the Mosque Abdellah Ben Salem. At least this wonderful architecture is being used again.

Mosque Abdellah ben Salem

Worth reading is Haim Zeev Hirschberg et al A History of the Jews in North Africa