478:, and was employed in the fields of architecture and engineering in the public works departments of British India. Working with Wilkins, the Ohel David congregation, like other Baghdadi communities, chose an architectural style developed in England or other parts of Europe and revived in the nineteenth century as a precedent for their houses of prayer. When seeing these synagogues for the first time, foreigners and nationals alike may be surprised by what they can regard as buildings appearing un-Indian and Christian. Yet in the British colonial landscape, these imposing Baghdadi structures were in keeping with the tastes of the British and their allegiances at the time, which included much of the Baghdadi Jewish community.
493:) is separated from the side aisles by a colonnade. Positioned above the side aisles is a gallery where, in the Orthodox Jewish tradition of separating the genders, the women sat. Tall windows with transoms filled with a geometric pattern of stained glass, a gray marble tiled floor, the raised tebah with wooden newel posts/handrail and brass balusters, plaster medallions and trim work, and the wooden guardrail at the gallery are prominent design features in the sanctuary. The wooden ceiling of the sanctuary is flat, and hanging from it are period lighting fixtures. Filling the sanctuary, as in Baghdadi and other Indian synagogue design traditions, are freestanding long wooden benches and chairs.
504:(a place of ritual baths), caretaker and community apartments, and the Gothic-revival mausoleum of David Sassoon (also designed by Wilkins), who died in Pune in 1864 before Ohel David was consecrated on 29 September 1867. As a consequence of social and political change during the second half of the twentieth century, Ohel David's congregation today is considerably smaller and less active than it once was. In recent years, the synagogue is guarded, and access to the building is controlled. Despite these changes, the synagogue continues to remain open and vital. Regular prayer and holiday services are held here, conducted by congregational laymen, a
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convention, is set within a double-height niche that is elaborately embellished with plaster decoration. Framing the heckal at the sanctuary side is a pointed arch flanked by engaged pilasters, and they are also highly decorated with plaster reliefs. From within the sanctuary, the heckal curtain and doors appear to front a conventional, cabinet-like space. Yet once they are opened, a walk-in apsidal-shaped room as deep as ten feet (three meters) and considerably wider is revealed. Here one hundred or more Torah scrolls placed within decorated silver cases were once proudly displayed.
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tall square tower featuring a clock with faces on each of the tower's sides. This clock was manufactured in London specifically for Ohel David. The tower, detailed with Gothic-style pointed-arched openings and capped by a steeply-pitched slate roof, closely matches the design of the one at
Sassoon Hospital, also designed by Henry Wilkins.
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sits on a relatively large open site that is now surrounded by a high protective wall. Today this site offers a peaceful respite from congested and noisy areas of the city. Abutting the main brick and Deccan trap stone massing of the building is the synagogue's most prominent feature: a ninety-foot
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Ohel David follows the pattern of other
Baghdadi synagogues in India and Myanmar with a particularly impressive architectural feature: a sizeable heckal (ark) that is raised a few feet above the level of the sanctuary floor. The heckal, positioned on the wall nearest to Jerusalem as per synagogue
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with a clock brought especially from London. One of the largest synagogues built in India, Ohel David (Hebrew for Tent of David), constructed from 1863 to 1867, is located on a prominent site on
Moledina Road near M. G. and Ambedkar Roads. This area came to be known as Pune Camp (or
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The synagogue sanctuary is a large and impressive space able to accommodate a membership that, at its height, numbered over one hundred families. In plan, the generous central nave with its tebah (bimah/raised platform containing a table for reading the
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word for "Red" as a reference to the brilliant color of the building's exterior brick. "Deul" is the
Marathi word for "Temple". The construction of the synagogue and its endowment were made possible by David Sassoon, patriarch of the great
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and immigrated to India during the early years of the nineteenth century. The first
Baghdadi Jews to come to India did so seasonally or temporarily in the late eighteenth century, arriving first in the western port city of
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and the East during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The
Sassoons funded the construction of many other religious, civic, and institutional buildings in the city and elsewhere in India, including Pune's
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community for about a century-and-a-half, has been known locally as Laal Deul (Red Temple). "Laal" is the
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architecture. The churchlike building was constructed with red brick and trap rock and has a 90-foot tall
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This article is about the synagogue in Pune, India. For the synagogue in London, England, see
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and was then completed by his successors in 1867. The synagogue was designed by
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Jewish heritage of the Deccan: Mumbai, the
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Robbins, Kenneth X.; Sohoni, Pushkar; Surendra Kumar (2017).
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The Ohel David
Synagogue compound also contains a now-closed
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The construction of the synagogue started in 1863 by
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450:(Burma). Jewish people mostly from
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691:Reference for 9 June edits
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16:Synagogue in Pune, India
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604:www.jacobsassoon.com
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247:73°52′29″E
244:18°31′09″N
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346:Laal Deul
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555:At night
187:Location
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448:Myanmar
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427:Baghdad
398:Marathi
381:obelisk
360:History
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