THE SYNAGOGUES OF THE COMTAT VENAISSIN - Vaucluse -
Location planPlan of the comtat Venaissin
Text : Elisabeth Sauze
Photographs : Gérard Roucaute
HTML : Christophe Chetaneau (CC&ZV)
Version Française
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| THE SYNAGOGUES OF THE COMTAT VENAISSIN - Vaucluse -Location planPlan of the comtat Venaissin Text : Elisabeth Sauze Photographs : Gérard Roucaute HTML : Christophe Chetaneau (CC&ZV) | Version Française |
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The synagogues of Avignon, Carpentras and Cavaillon are some of the most original elements in the heritage of the Vaucluse department, bearing witness to the long history of Judaism in the old papal state of the Comtat Venaissin. The presence of a Jewish population in the Comtat possibly dates back to the Diaspora of the first century AD, and is well documented from the thirteenth century. In the middle of the fifteenth century, ghettos appeared, called "carrières", after the Provençal word "carriero" meaning road. Of the four places of worship which existed under the Ancien Régime, only one, the synagogue at L'Isle-sur-Sorgues, has disappeared. These synagogues of the Comtat were highly complex constructions, more often than not groups of buildings progressively amalgamated over the centuries. For the sake of convenience, each Jewish community also created two vital establishments close to the synagogue, the ritual baths and a bakehouse. The synagogues at Carpentras and at Cavaillon, which date from the eighteenth century in their present form, have preserved the specific spatial organisation of the Jewish rites in the Comtat: the superposition of two prayer rooms and the Rabbi's tribune. But these specificities no longer survive in the Avignon synagogue, which was completely rebuilt in 1846. |
