The spatial morphology of synagogue visibility as a measure of Jewish acculturation in late nineteenth-century London

Abstract

This paper's historical focus is the latter two decades of nineteenthcentury London. During this period the established Jewish community of the city benefited from political emancipation, but this was not the case for the recently-arrived impoverished Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe. The spatial constitution of religious practice also differed across the city. A comparative study found that the more prosperous West End, other than an isolated case in the impoverished district of Soho, had purpose-built buildings fronting the street; while the poorer district of Whitechapel in the East End was dominated by smaller ad hoc arrangements – one-room or adapted premises, shtiebels – serving a wider communal and social purpose, similar to the practice of the old country. A comparative space syntax isovist analysis of the visibility of synagogue façades from surrounding streets found that while, in the West End, most synagogues had a limited public display of religious practice by this time, East End prayer houses remained visible only to their immediate, Jewish majority surroundings. This paper proposes that the amount of synagogue-street visibility corresponds to the stage of growth in both social acculturation and political confidence.