Not meant to be a complete visual inventory of Brooklyn's synagogues, past or present, but an evocation of that history into the present day.

Roughly half the photographs are of synagogues functioning now; the balance are buildings that were once synagogues but have since been adapted to other uses (churches, community centers, and government offices). The pictures are divided into five sections, each section containing a picture of an empty lot where a synagogue once stood. In these haunted shots, at first we are tempted to wonder which building pictured was once a synagogue, but then we spy the barren ground of the empty lot and we understand: none of them.

The work is personal and unavoidably elegiac. Thomas Roma, who with his wife Anna extensively researched Brooklyn synagogues, looking through rel estate records and old telephone books, could have easily filled the book with images of presently functioning Jewish houses of prayer, but chose instead to give equal emphasis to buildings deserted by their congregations.

When a congregation quits its house of prayer, do the walls retain a trace of the sacred ? If the building is razed do the charred concrete foundations, the weeds, continue to hold a memory of God's name ? Thomas Roma leaves the choice up to us."
——Phillip Lopate

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