Origin 200 to 300 CE
The cabinet in a synagogue holding the Torah scrolls, set in the wall facing Jerusalem and usually raised by a step or two. It is curtained or doored, and the congregation stands when it is opened. Above or beside it hangs the ner tamid, a lamp kept continuously alight.
The ark is the architectural reason a synagogue faces the way it does, and the direction is the reason synagogue buildings across the world are oriented as they are: east in Europe and the Americas, west in Iran and Iraq, south in Russia. In Jerusalem itself the orientation is toward the Temple Mount.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Origin PeriodThe earliest surviving example is at Dura-Europos 1 Use
Who May Handle ItAdherents of the tradition 1 ConsecrationNot consecrated; an instrument, not a consecrated object 1 Learn More
The Cabinet That Faces Jerusalem
The Torah ark is the cabinet in a synagogue that holds the Torah scrolls, and its placement and treatment make it the focal point of the building.
Set toward Jerusalem
The ark is set in the wall that faces Jerusalem, so that a congregation praying toward the ark is praying toward the holy city, and it is usually raised by a step or two above the floor, marking it as the highest point of the room. It is closed by doors or a curtain, the parokhet, which recalls the veil of the Tabernacle, and it is opened with ceremony at particular moments of the service, the congregation standing while it is open. Its whole treatment, elevation, curtain, the standing of the people, expresses the holiness of what it contains.
What it holds and recalls
The scrolls within are the most sacred objects the community possesses, and the ark that guards them takes its name and its significance from the Ark of the Covenant that held the tablets of the law in the Temple, so the synagogue ark is understood as its successor and remembrance. Above or near it commonly burns a perpetual lamp, the ner tamid, recalling the continual light of the sanctuary. Bringing the scroll out of the ark and returning it are among the high points of the service, so the cabinet, beyond storing the scrolls, orders the direction of prayer and the drama of the reading around itself.
How the Cabinet Is Built, and Who Is Given the Honor of Opening It
A Torah ark is built into or against the wall of a synagogue that faces Jerusalem, so its construction is architectural as much as it is furniture making, carved wood or stone doors set into a recess, fronted by a curtain called a parochet that is frequently the most elaborately embroidered textile in the building.
Construction and craftsmanship
The parochet is commissioned separately from textile artisans, often embroidered with verses, family names as memorial gifts, or symbols like the tablets of the law, and is changed for different occasions, a more festive curtain for holidays than for ordinary weekdays. Ancient synagogues sometimes used a portable ark, a chest that could be carried in for the Torah reading and removed afterward, a form later replaced by the fixed built in cabinet nearly universal today.
Who is allowed to open it
Opening the ark during a service is considered an honor assigned to a specific congregant rather than something anyone present may do freely, and in many congregations this honor is given out deliberately, to mark a simcha or to include a guest. The ark itself is not consecrated the way a scroll is, but it is treated with the seriousness architecture reserves for a focal point, kept locked outside of services, and a synagogue that closes permanently will arrange for its scrolls, and often the ark itself, to be transferred respectfully to another congregation rather than left in an empty building.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The ark is set facing Jerusalem; in Jerusalem itself the orientation is toward the Temple Mount.
Belongs to Tradition
Element Of
The scrolls are kept in a cabinet on the wall facing Jerusalem, and the congregation stands when it is opened.
Related To
The Torah Ark is the cabinet in a synagogue holding the Torah scrolls.
Sources
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