NONFICTION - July 23, 1995

THE SYNAGOGUE by H.A. Meek (Phaidon/Chronicle: $59.95; 240 pp.). Jews have been constructing houses of worship since the Tabernacle in the desert and Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, and this exceptional examination of the buildings and their styles tastefully documents all the high points. Written by a British architectural historian, the book’s text is surprisingly personal and accessible and even has room for tidbits such as the existence of a new service that allows the devout to update tradition and fax messages to be placed in the cracks of the celebrated Western Wall of Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem. Photographer Matthew Weinreb has taken rich color photographs that range across Europe from Venice’s gaudy palaces to Prague’s venerable Gothic Altneuschul to less familiar structures such as the Princes Road synagogue in Liverpool. American synagogues are well-represented as well, with Sidney Eisenstat’s Temple Mount Sinai in El Paso (above) making as dramatic an impression as an Old Testament prophet.