Solomon Nunes Carvalho, the son of a prominent Sephardic family in Charleston, South Carolina, had a career as both a painter and a photographer. While he was a distinguished portraitist, he also painted other subjects including his childhood synagogue, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim. In the 1840s, Carvalho made daguerreotypes, and in 1853 and 1854, he accompanied General John C. Fremont as the official photographer for an expedition through the territories of Kansas, Colorado, and Utah. Carvalho subsequently had studios in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charleston and was active in the Jewish communities of those cities.
The only image of the interior of the first synagogue of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, a congregation established in Charleston in 1749, is this picture, painted from memory by Solomon Nunes Carvalho. The…
The Yeshivat Dijet Synagogue was located in the Hara Seghira (the “small ghetto”) neighborhood of Djerba, Tunisia. It was one of several synagogues in this area, which, along with Hara Kebira, were…
The Grand Synagogue of Lyon was built shortly after the establishment of a regional consistory by Emperor Napoleon III and the appointment of a regional chief rabbi. In 1858, a new synagogue for the…