The Portuguese Synagogue was raised by a Sephardic community descended from Jews who had fled the Iberian Peninsula and found in the Dutch Republic an unusual degree of tolerance. Completed in the seventeenth century, it was among the largest synagogues in the world at the time, and its ambition is unmistakable: a great brick block on its own courtyard island, with an interior of monumental columns, timber barrel vaults, tall windows and an ark of Brazilian jacaranda facing the reading platform across a sanded floor. The building has never been fitted with electric light. Services still take place under hundreds of candles in brass chandeliers, an atmosphere the film captures at length. Adjoining it, the Ets Haim library preserves one of the oldest continuously functioning Jewish book collections in the world. Together they document a community's intellectual life as much as its worship. Filmed in 4K in low natural and candle light.
