Synagogue and Simon

[kalypso_v]

Sunday was the final day of the Didsbury Festival (which lasted nine days, but I missed last weekend as I was away). I decided to follow up my visit to Didsbury mosque last year with one to the nearby Shaare Hayim Sephardic synagogue. I'd never been there before - only to the Ashkenazi synagogue on Wilbraham Road, which has now pushed off to

Comments

[anonymous]

Regarding the placing of the Bimah: I'm having difficulty reading the pictures, but if it's like the Sephardi synagogues I've seen before the seats face across, rather as in a college chapel, so there isn't really a front and a back, both Ark and Bimah being in full view. This has the advantage that the reader can pray towards the Ark without turning his back on the congregation.

As for the balcony - well, lot of churches had galleries once, though they didn't segregate men and women. Sometimes they were used by children, sometimes by servants, sometimes just by those who couldn't get a seat on the ground.

Hermes.

[kalypso_v]

Yes, sorry, I didn't take a proper picture of the pews, but they ran down either side, in several rows, with a big space in the middle partly occupied by the bimah (at the end where we came in). There was a sort of glass screen in front of the women's side, I think connected to the idea that they might be distracting (you can just see it behind the circumcision chair).