Obj. ID: 3368
Jewish Architecture Old Wooden Synagogue (Besht Synagogue) in Piatra Neamț, Romania
The Old Wooden Synagogue in Piatra Neamț dates from 1766. It underwent restoration in 1826, 1854, 1870, 1928, and 2010. According to legend the Baal Shem Tov prayed here, hence it is sometimes called the "Besht Synagogue." [See: A. Streja and L. Schwarz, The Synagogue in Romania, 2nd. ed. (Bucharest: Hasefer, 2009), p. 152.]
The synagogue building consists of a rectangular prayer hall with a women's gallery on the north side. The interior floor is sunken one and a half meters below the exterior ground level. An octagonal wooden dome, typical of 18th-century wooden synagogue architecture, rises above the bimah in the center of the main prayer hall. A stone vestibule attached to the west side of the wooden building functions in winter as a smaller, warmer prayer hall.
For the main prayer hall see:
For the small prayer hall (vestibule) see:
See also:
15 image(s) Items per page
sub-set tree: 
During the 2009 restoration many original features were destroyed
Wall paintings, Torah ark
Collection of photographs by Lajos Erdélyi (1929-2020), made in the 1970s, at the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives (Milev), https://collections.milev.hu/items/show/38816.
Feldman, Eliyahu, Ba’alei melakhah yehudiim be-moldaviyah (Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 150-151.
Stanciu, Măriuca, “Romanian Synagogues – Between West And East (Trends And Tendencies in the Synagogal Art in Romania),” Studia Hebraica 8 (2008), pp. 110–123, p. 115.
Streja, Aristide and Lucian Schwarz, Synagogues of Romania ([Bucharest]: Hasefer Publishing House, 1997), pp. 102-105, 189, ills 84-85.
Paul Cernovodeanu, “The Jews of Moldova and Wallachia During the Phanariot Regime (1711–1821),” in The History of the Jews in Romania, vol. 1: From Its Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century, ed. Paul Cernovodeanu (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 2005), p. 102.
http:/shadowsoftime.co.nz/synagogues/piatraneamt.html