A Jewish house of worship Traditionally the first synagogues were established during the Babylonian exile The early synagogues had a place in the center of the room where the sacred scrolls were kept and from where they were read It is from the worship order established in synagogues that our modern church patterns of reading and expounding upon scripture from the pulpit are derived
The council of, probably, 120 members among the Jews, first appointed after the return from the Babylonish captivity; called also the Great Synagogue, and sometimes, though erroneously, the Sanhedrin
A synagogue is a building where Jewish people meet to worship or to study their religion. a building where Jewish people meet for religious worship (synagoge, from , from , from synagein , from syn- ( SYN-) + agein ). In Judaism, a community house of worship that also serves as a place for assembly and study. Though their exact origins are uncertain, synagogues flourished side by side with the ancient Temple cult; they existed long before Jewish sacrifice and the established priesthood were terminated with Titus's destruction of the Second Temple (AD 70). Thereafter, synagogues took on even greater importance as the unchallenged focal point of Jewish life. There is no standard synagogue architecture. A typical synagogue contains an ark (where the scrolls of the Law are kept), an "eternal light" burning before the ark, two candelabra, pews, a bimah (see bema), and sometimes a ritual bath (mikvah)
(Gr sunagoge, i e , "an assembly"), found only once in the Authorized Version of Ps 74: 8, where the margin of Revised Version has "places of assembly," which is probably correct; for while the origin of synagogues is unknown, it may well be supposed that buildings or tents for the accommodation of worshippers may have existed in the land from an early time, and thus the system of synagogues would be gradually developed