(Hebrew: Beit HaKnesset) A place set aside for Jewish communal worship. Unlike a temple, which is conceived as a residence of God and is administered by a priesthood, the synagogue is a community institution, a place of meeting and prayer, administered by a lay leadership, in particular, the rabbi and cantor. In modern times, synagogues are built and maintained by groups of Jews who voluntarily band together to create such institutions. While, in the United States and in Western Europe, synagogues frequently are affiliated with, and pay dues to, the Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform movements, they are financially and administratively independent, hiring and firing personnel and determining the content and nature of their programs, according to the needs and desires of their particular membership.
Following the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 C.E., the synagogue became the preeminent institutional center of Jewish religion and culture. The growth of the synagogue in the medieval period led to the creation of specific administrative posts, the cantor, responsible for leading worship, and the sexton, charged with maintenance of the building. Only in the nineteenth century, in Western Europe, did the rabbi, previously an employee of the Jewish community and primarily responsible for adjudicating matters of law, become a synagogue employee, charged with synagogue administration, leadership of worship, and pastoral duties. Since that time, especially in the United States, synagogues have increasingly become large, multi-purpose institutions, housing not only sanctuaries for worship but also schools, social halls, and other meeting facilities.
Judaism has few set rules for synagogue architecture, so that synagogues normally are built according to the esthetic demands of the particular community. In the western hemisphere, the sanctuary almost always faces east, toward Jerusalem, and it has as its focal point the ark in which the Torah scrolls are kept. In traditional sanctuaries, women have a separate seating area, either behind a partition (meitzah) or in a balcony.
In modern times, especially in REFORM JUDAISM, the synagogue is often referred to as a temple. This reflects the Reform movement’s break from the traditional Jewish yearning for the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple and the reinstitution of the sacrificial cult that took place there. Early reformers in the U.S.A. took the name “temple” for their places of worship, arguing that their sanctuaries were comparable to the original Temple and that they had no desire for a return to the Jewish ancestral homeland or for the recreation of the earlier, priest-centered form of divine worship.
Since Jewish prayer may take place in almost any location (excluding such obviously inappropriate places as a privy), what ultimately comprises the synagogue must be defined more as what goes on in the building than the architectural character of the space in question. A synagogue is not contained space of a particular design but the presence of a community of Jews assembled for the conduct of certain specific activities, in particular liturgical rites. The essence of the synagogue thus is embodied in the prayer quorum that meets there, not in the building. But the physical building, once sanctified for use as a synagogue, is deemed holier than a space that has not been set aside to this purpose. So the synagogue finds its definition in its function. It is a place in which Jews meet to carry out the holy purposes of prayer and so to form a Jewish community. A synagogue is any location in which this function is carried out, and that is without regard to the location of the Jews or the character of the space, if any, that contains them.
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itzah) or in a balcony. 
