What is the difference between a Jewish synagogue and a Jewish Temple?

Answer 1

Conventionally, Orthodox Jews call their places of worship a Synagogue and Reform Jews call their place of worship a Temple.

A synagogue will have a clear separation between men & women; with the women behind a partition or on a balcony. Temples have mixed seating.

Synagogues follow the Hebrew order of prayer that Jews have been using for over 1,000 years - you can use a 600 year old prayer book and feel at home. Temples use whatever the latest version of their prayer book is - and it's not necessarily in Hebrew.

In a synagogue all public posts (Rabbi, Sexton, Gabbai, etc.) will be held by Jewish men. In a temple some of these may be women, some of whom may not Jewish.

Answer 2

That's much too simplistic. Many Orthodox Jews call the synagogue a "shul," which is a Yiddish word, and literally means "school." But you will hear that word from Jews of any affiliation who speak Yiddish. Reform Jews did once call their synagogues exclusively "temples," because of a philosophy that the Land of Israel was anyplace where there were Jews who formed a community. But after the Holocaust that philosophy changed, and many Reform thinkers began to question whether that was really possible. So Reform edifices built or named recently tend not to be called "temples." There is also a movement within Reform Judaism to return to traditional ways of living. These Jews still consider themselves Reform Jews, with liberal ways of thinking in regard to women's roles in worship, and as leaders, but reject the sort of "Classic Reform" ideology of 1880-1940, or so, where Judaism tried to come into line with gentile ways of doing things, like calling rabbis "ministers," and singing hymns with organ accompaniment. Nicknamed "Reformadox," such Jews would reject the idea of calling a synagogue a "temple."

There are also a few smaller denominations of Judaism, such as Reconstructionism, which is older than the Conservative movement, and does not use the word "temple," and the fairly new Renewal movement, which has very few edifices of its own, and is new enough that there are not yet many people who "grew up" as Renewal Jews, but members of that movement would tend to shy away from the word "temple," to describe a building, as most of them regard the Temple as a spiritual domain.

Using the word "Orthodox" as though it means one thing is also incorrect. There is Modern Orthodoxy, and then there are the Haredi (sometimes called the Ultra-Orthodox, but they personally find the term offensive), and different ways of expressing those ideas. There are people who refer to themselves as "observant," or "traditional," while rejecting an identification, or affiliation, with a denomination.

There are even synagogues which are unaffiliated.

Any one synagogue will have people with different personal levels of observance, and while it's true you would not find someone at a Haredi shul who refers to it as a "temple," you certainly hear both "shul," and "synagogue" among other Jews. Both those raised in Conservative and Reform homes, as well as those who grew up in Jewish homes that were unaffiliated, people will say "temple," but they tend to be older people, usually older than about 55. Younger people will usually say "synagogue," but some say "shul," and others, who come from large congregations, might call the building the "JCC," for "Jewish Community Center," with the place within the JCC set aside for worship being referred to as the "sanctuary."

Answer 2

There really is no difference. It is simply a question of terminology and who prefers to use which terms. Synagogue is older and tracks back to Greek. Temple is more modern and was an attempt to make Jewish centers of worship more value-neutral to Non-Jews that had firm negative interpretations of what a synagogue was.