How I spend my time in syangogue

One of the current exhibits at the Jewish Museum, called Modern Art, Sacred Space. I went on Sunday. In 1951, the rabbi of the Millburn N.J. Conservative syangogue decided to cal on the stars of the modern art world to help him create a synagogue that was both deeply Jewish and also expressed the ideas of the abstract expressionists.

The architect who designed the synagogue itself was Percival Goodman. Goodman essentially created the vernacular of the post-war suburban synagogue. If you have seen a synagogue in the suburbs you have either seen Goodman's work or the work of one of his imitators.

The exhibit is a small one, just two rooms. The piece I really wanted to see was Adolph Gottleib's ark curtain pictured above. I captured the image from the Jewish Museum's website.. Exhibited along with the curtains were Gottleib's sketches. Seeing those sketches was a treat.

First of all, I loved the pure sketchyness of those sketches. His cartoons for the ark curtain don't look all that different from the sorts of cartoons I produce for my clients. Since I'm self taught, I always feel a little anxious about some of my abilities. The sketches made me feel better about my own work.

But moving away from the self-involved commentary. Gottleib's first sketch was awfully close to a traditional ark curtain, a big menorah surrounded by a foliate border. Some of his sketches included more of the traditonal elements, a lion of Judah, the ten commandments, the crown of Torah. The final design deconstructs all of those elements and also adds abstracted views inside of the ark.( The three vertical elements are supposed to be Torahs dressed in their mantles.)

The result is beautiful. But I want more. Gottleib is playing with the visual elements of what the ark curtain is. Me, I want text too.We are such a text oriented religion , the visual is subsuvient to the word. I keep thinking what would happen to this piece if text were part of the mix. Whish texts would be chosen? Suppose one played with the texts the same way as Gottleib played with the images? Suppose you played with both the text and the images?What would this piece be then???

This is actually what I do when I go to new synagogues. Frankly, most syangogues are architectural versions of the Glamour magazine feature " What's wrong with this picture", those photos of women walking the streets wearing Uggs with evening gowns or stilettos with their cargo shorts. I spend my time trying to figure out how to make the spaces better.

Down the street from me is a synagogue with a spectacular stained glass window of mount sinai above the ark. The ark itself, though, is so spectacularly ugly that when they opened it up, I had to turn away. The combination of purple-ish yellow flourescent lighting emerging from the stumpy ark, the plywood facing on the ark and the really ugly torah mantles were too horrible to take in. I had to look away.

So now, as I sti in synagogue, i may think about how to incorporate both the texts one usually sees on an ark curtain along with the deconstructed elements of ark curtains and torah scrolls.

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

sarah in nyc

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