In the shadow of empires

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The architect and architectural historian Sergey R. Kravtsov, a scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, takes us back to the Jewish cultures of Central-Eastern Europe. With his profound knowledge of synagogue architecture he guides us through four centuries of architectural history, spanning from Bohemia to Galicia and Bukovina in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, from Volhynia to the Baltic States in the Russian Empire, and finally to Jerusalem, then in the Ottoman Empire. The author traces Jewish identities and cultures under the influences of the great empires that expired in the 20th century. His observations document the cultural awakening of the Reform Judaism in the 19th century and the Jewish cultural prosperity in the final period before their destruction in the Holocaust.