Eisenman

Eisenman is an Orthodox synagogue in Antwerp, Belgium, whose street façades conceal a prayer space spanning two adjoining buildings. Jacob Eisenmann established the congregation in 1905. After beginning with a minyan in three rented rooms on Breughelstraat, he bought land on Oostenstraat beside the railway embankment. Joseph De Lange designed the building, completed in 1909. Eisenmann had moved from Frankfurt am Main to Antwerp in 1884, bringing Frankfurt’s religious traditions into the congregation’s foundation.

The congregation follows the Ashkenazi rite, preserving customs associated with Frankfurt’s Jewish community. Those traditions shaped its prayers and communal life. During the Holocaust and Nazi occupation of Belgium, its unassuming exterior helped this synagogue survive when other Jewish sites were destroyed. It became the only synagogue in Antwerp to survive that period. The building serves worship, community life, and Jewish heritage in the city. Its most striking detail remains the deliberate concealment: a synagogue extends through two buildings while the façades give little indication of what lies inside.