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Jewish architecture comprises the architecture of Jewish religious buildings and other buildings that either incorporate Jewish elements in their design or are used by Jewish communities. Oriental style— Belz Great Synagogue (2000), Jerusalem.
Heading the list of noteworthy buildings in Israel are the buildings of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Tel Aviv University, and the new Technion campus in Haifa, as well as the Haifa University (architect: Oscar Niemeyer).
Ancient Jewish art is mainly represented by the Temple and its fittings, of which all that is left to contemplate is the lower portion of a fortified wall. Even if this overstates the fact, it is most probable that very little distinctively Jewish art ever flourished for an extended period.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Israel built rows of concrete tenements to accommodate the masses of new immigrants living in the temporary tents and tin shacks of the maabarot, some of these were known as "rakevet" or train in Hebrew due to their relative monotony and length.
According to tradition, the Shekhinah or divine presence can be found wherever there is a minyan, a quorum, of ten. A synagogue always contains an Torah ark where the Torah scrolls are kept, called the aron qodesh (Hebrew: אָרוֹן קׄדֶש) by Ashkenazi Jews and the hekhal (היכל) by Sephardic Jews.
Domestic architecture, ancient Israel refers to the typical structures that housed most Israelite families in the Iron Age (c. 1200–587 BCE). Although some house forms that existed in the pre-Israelite periods continued into the Iron Age, mainly in enclaves of non-Israelites, one house form came to dominate in settlements identified as Israelite.
Jewish “architecture” through the ages was a hybrid architecture—a term scorned by nineteenth and twentieth century racial and national purists, but celebrated in our own “post-modern” age. What Jews lacked in territory, wealth and numbers, they made up for in longevity.
