Marginalia. Limits within the Urban Realm 115 Constructed Jewish Spaces. Exploring Traces in 19th Century Moldavia Irina-Teodora Nemțeanu PhD student, “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism, Bucharest, Romania
[email protected] Keywords: construct; diaspora; Jewish quarter; shtetl; eruv; Moldavia e theme and historiography of Jewish communities in Romania is a topic which has been widely researched, beginning with the 19th century1 and, up until today, is still an ongoing inquiry.2 Usually depicted by historians, the subject, however, lacks an architectural and urban overview of the phenomenon in terms of analyzing the relationship between Jewish constructed spaces and their developing urban context – the city. As an ongoing research, this paper does not intend to oer peremptory conclusions for the spatial layout of Jewish communities inside Romanian cities3, but merely explores a common ground and certain general traits which could have served Jewish communities in creating their local variations of constructed spaces. Furthermore, we do not want to illustrate a representative portraiture of Jewish architecture or urban space, but simply convey a few spatial patterns which could be considered common when dealing with Jewish habitation, “a mosaic of possible Jewish and non-Jewish spatial practices, spatial debates and spatial constructions in various urban contexts”.4 e question of Jewish living typologies arises in contemporary research; Frederic Bedoire5 considers that one cannot demonstrate the existence of Jewish architecture, while Felix Heinert regards the intent to oer a typological overview upon Jewish urban space to be misleading6 and Rudolf Klein, however, considers the use of templates to be suitable in analyzing Jewish urban space and architecture.