After lunch, armed with a City map from the Gefion Concierge, Nick and I took off on a 5-mile independent wander of Budapest.
The Viking Cruise usually offers an optional tour of Dohany Street Great Synagogue; but it is Saturday, the day of Shabbat, so the Synagogue was closed to visitors. We had passed by the synagogue several times during our various bus rides around the city and Nick wanted to at least visit the grounds and walk around the neighborhood. The Dohany Synagogue and Jewish Museum would be closed to tours all week as the staff prepared for the September 14-15 Jewish New Year, September 23 for Yom Kippur and September 28-29 for Sukkot, theFeast of Tabernacles. As there had been several credible threats to the Synagogue during the High Holy Days the whole area, even the Jewish cemetery was locked down.
You can see the landmark onion shaped domes with gilded ornament of the Dohany Synagogue from most places in the old city. The onion shaped domes are the main reason why the Synagogue looks like an oriental, Moorish building. It was the first synagogue made in this style, it was so admired that around the world, later synagogues were often designed in the same style. Nick and I took many pictures which are in the gallery portfolio below, but I wanted to draw your attention to several details that you might miss if you didn’t know to look for them.
On top of Synagogue there are stone tablets with the Commandments. Visitors to the Synagogue are usually focusing on the beauty of structure as they are entering, they might not notice the gold Menorah mosaic, embedded in the red brick work that decorates the square in front of the Dohany Synagogue. I found the eight-pointed stars in the stone work in the windows odd. Christians and Jews are both “People of the Book”, and as a Catholic I associate the eight point star with the Star of Redemption that represents baptism. Eight is traditionally the number of regeneration, and thus many pre-Vatican II baptismal fonts have an octagonal base. I made a note to look up what an eight point start represented in the Jewish symbology. When Ingot back I found the eight point star symbology in Islam, called the Seal of the Profits, allegedly inspired by the Jewish Seal of Solomon. I also found reference to the eight the eight point start in most of the Worlds religions so my curiosity will have to wait until I have time to research the deign and build of the Dohany Synagogue The Dohany Synagogue, Andrassy avenue and its environs —the 7th district, Elisabethtown, also known as the Jewish Quarter are part of aWorld Heritage site.
We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the Jewish Quarter, stopping to pay our respects at the Holocaust monument a few blocks from the Synagogue.
Nick and I spent the rest of the afternoon, wandering through the streets of Budapest, admiring the architecture, enjoying being just another couple holding hands and strolling toward the Danube on a lazy sunny afternoon.