And I Shall Dwell Among Them: Historic Synagogues of the World

From 1991-1995 Neil Folberg worked on a commission from the Aperture Foundation to photograph and write a book about Judaism’s sacred spaces, published by Aperture, “And I Shall Dwell Among Them: Historic Synagogues of the World”.

For nearly two millennia, from the year 70 until the founding of Israel in 1948, the Jewish people were without a homeland. But wherever they wandered in the great Diaspora they continued the tradition of building synagogues as refuge for their beliefs and testament to their strength and accomplishments as a people. And I Shall Dwell Among Them considers the spiritual, architectural and cultural significance of these structures. It is the first study to document the synagogues with both scholarly depth and photographic excellence.

Aperture is the largest publisher of fine art photography books in the U.S. Michael Hoffman, the publisher, wanted a book with a unique and singular vision of synagogue architecture that was not merely a catalog but invested the buildings with meaning. To that end, they wanted one photographer with a strong artistic vision to do the entire project and Neil Folberg was chosen. The book, "And I Shall Dwell among Them: Historic Synagogues of the World" was published in 1995 and won the Jewish Book Prize in 1996.

For this project, Neil Folberg collaborated with Professor Bezalel Narkiss of the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University to research the subject and to help choose significant locations to be included in the book. When the book was published in 1997, Professor Yom Tov Assis (also of the Center for Jewish Art) contributed an essay titled “The synagogue throughout the ages” to accompany Neil Folberg’s photographs and essay about the work.

The book has been out of print for years. When it was published, New York Magazine wrote about it: “Among the phenomena Neil Folberg detected in his search for historic synagogues was that wherever Jews settled--whether in Morocco, Hungary or the American South--the designs of their temples reflected the prevailing style of the environment. But it is the building's power to evoke spirituality that comes across most forcefully in his photographs.”

The exhibition originally circulated by Aperture was shown first at Aperture’s Burden Gallery in New York. From there it went to the DeBeyerd Museum of Art in Breda, Holland (now the Stedelijk Museum Breda) and on to over a dozen venues throughout the world. The exhibition included some fifty Evercolor Pigment Prints in formats of 16”x20” and 20”x24”. Aperture also published a limited edition portfolio of twelve Evercolor prints.