The Synagogue’s New Look
An American Synagogue for Today and Tomorrow.
by Peter Blake.
Union of American Hebrew Congregations. 311 pp. $10.00.
Suppose some art historian in remote future times lights on the synagogue lately built by Percival Goodman for the Temple Beth El congregation of Providence, R. I. Suppose further that little more of our present architecture has come down to him; and, lastly, that the vocabulary of criticism in that distant day has gained nothing in semantic rigor, but remains, as now, unfettered, vague, and metaphorical.
Very likely this author of the latter 3rd millenium C.E. will find interesting ties between the structure and the thought and feeling patterns of the religious group it served. If he pursues the method of his literary forebears (by which they found affinities between the Parthenon and the Platonic doctrine of ideas, between Gothic cathedrals and the systems of the schools) his thesis might run somewhat as follows:
“All the vital essence of Judaism found expression in this 20th-century construction. To begin with, the planning of the entire pile is distinctly horizontal. It cleaves to the ground, spurning the effects of height and marvelous suspension. Even the laminated wooden vault seems anchored and low-slung. The effort is to sanctify this earth, not to abandon it by soaring to the skies along the lines of ogives, spires, and steeples.
“Secondly, both the edifice and its setting in the grounds convey a sense of mobility, of transitional relations and spontaneous adjustment Only within, at the point of the bema, is fixity sought and achieved. The planning of all but the prayer hall is non-axial, asymmetrical. And the prayer hall itself is designed, by means of sliding walls, to expand or contract as necessity bids. What could be more symbolic of the Jews’ peregrine tradition than this flexibility at the heart of the architect’s design?”
Then again my hypothetical historian might point out that the separation of sacred and profane has always been alien to Judaism; that, traditionally, the Jews’ life of religion suffuses every activity, whether social or private, economic or devotional. And here too he will find a structural analogue in the Providence synagogue. For the edifice is conceived as a system of interpenetrating functions. The children’s classrooms form, as it were, wings for the house of prayer (“Out of the mouths of babes hast Thou ordained strength”), and are designed to fuse with it in the High Holiday season. This interpenetration of functions and corresponding spaces is indeed a salient feature of both plan and elevation; and it accords perfectly with the ancient concept of the synagogue as house of prayer, house of study, and house of assembly.
Thus, concludes the future historian, Percival Goodman’s synagogue design is a masterly projection in architectural terms of Jewry’s theological and social attitudes.
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Unfortunately we know better. We know that Mr. Goodman’s design is a fine example of modern building ideals and techniques; that its virtues are essentially those of modern architecture; that the principles of fitness, flexibility, and interpenetration are the achievements of contemporary Western building, not the symbolic expression of ancient Judaism. And Mr. Goodman’s merit is to have applied these principles, with sensitivity and skill, to the needs of a Jewish Community Center.
But the point of the parable is this: Though there is no familiar “synagogue look” to this modern building, there is nothing in its structure or appearance incompatible with the idea of a synagogue. To make it expressive in a Jewish way—as the menorah has become through years of pious use—will be up to the congregation.
I remember standing in one of Switzerland’s famous blond rococo churches—plastered white, with cursive gold rounding every edge and frolicking among the lilting curves of domes and vaults. To my unaccustomed eyes it looked every inch a ballroom. But the charwomen who were washing the stone floors curtsied every time they crossed before the altar, and these genuflections, quite as much as the presence of the altar, turned the place into a sanctum. The architect, by making it as lovely as he knew, had offered no more than the precondition for making it a sacred place.
Whether indeed an edifice that scorns historically branded styles can really project anything Jewish is at present an unanswerable question. It is doubtful whether the architectural design can be conceived which, to quote the hope of Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath, “forth-rightly proclaims the essence of Judaism.” And so we must reserve our assent when we read Dr. Mario Federico Roggero’s account of the B’nai Amoona Synagogue in St. Louis, built by the late Eric Mendelsohn: “. . . (the) west wall, whose verticality is accented by a row of protecting fins, interrupts the spiral movement suddenly and majestically—symbol of the divine power that rules the universe—while the counter-action of dynamic horizontals and static verticals symbolizes the complementary forces to which man’s existence is subjected. By purely architectural means the architect achieves the expression of the unity of the monotheistic credo, echoed also in the structural clarity of the temple’s interior.”
The writer’s reverent enthusiasm fails somehow to convince. We remain unsure that any theological conviction has found concrete embodiment in these architectural forms. One suspects that the interpretation of embodied spiritual content in such abstract forms is not a fruitful subject for contemporary judgment. It is a field for posthumous, comparative analysis. Only when two or three styles are sufficiently removed in time, when numerous examples can be strung out side by side, their common features noted and their differences defined, only then can the historian speak of those non-architectural intentions which inform the design. And by then there will be none but colleagues present to challenge his speculations.
Thus today’s scholars are still arguing whether Renaissance and Baroque churches are, or are not, truly religious in feeling. The question will never be answered for the sufficient reason that a building is sui generis, and any verbal transposition of its expressive meaning must be, by its very nature, wild. Only this is certain: the great builders of the past put all they knew of beauty into their houses of God. And if they built them beautifully and well, they had done all they had been called to do. They could not also make them holy. That look of holiness (or Jewishness) is a patina deposited by centuries of veneration. It must not be expected to inhere in any architectural design. Accordingly the modern synagogue must be judged by standards that are purely aesthetic and functional, not by its approximation to some fancied “synagogue look.”
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Such a specific look does not exist, in any case. In their self-conscious search for it the 19th-century builders knew only what they must avoid—the Gothic look, for instance, which had become specifically Christian by historical association (for medieval architects did not scruple to erect Gothic courts of law and pleasure palaces). The styles available for synagogues were those which hinted at Oriental origins—Moorish, Byzantine, and Romanesque. And so the temple architects achieved resemblances to Masonic lodges, mosques, and Turkish baths, and for a century the Jewish rites proceeded behind learned counterfeits of foreign faces.
Since World War II this current of eclecticism is visibly spent. Many new synagogues now going up from coast to coast to accommodate a decentralizing population are built intelligently “from the inside out.” That is to say, the architect does not begin by deciding on an aspect, a stylish west façade, but begins by asking what a synagogue is, whom it serves, what its varied functions are in the community, and its vicissitudes throughout the calendar. Solving these problems he achieves—as an end result—an appearance, just as the form of the human body is determined by the functions it contains. And in the building, as in the body, what definable expressiveness there is, is not a built-in cause but the effect of long association.
This point of view is, I believe, implicit in the handsome volume, entitled An American Synagogue for Today and Tomorrow, just published by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations under the editorship of Peter Blake. The book’s main position is not so much stated as implied in the organization of the material. Nowhere is an attempt made to specify a desirable look for synagogues. Some 60 pages out of 300 discuss the traditions of the Jewish prayer house, and the theological and ritual factors involved in its construction. The balance is devoted to practical issues, from site selection and relations with the law, to problems of seating, lighting, heating, ventilation, and acoustics. There are sections on finance, on facilities for child education, and on the role of art and music. This proportioning of the material lends a sober usefulness to a work which might easily have turned partisan and argumentative. And for this the credit surely goes to editor Blake. He has contrived to make this book a guide for the perplexed communities in countless suburbs of America; a way to more effective action at a time when funk and indecision vitiate a thousand architectural opportunities.
The best part of the book is in its illustrations. Carefully chosen, well laid out and reproduced, they document the early history of the synagogue, by-pass its eclectic phases, and reveal, in its American postwar avatar, an unsuspected richness, beauty, and potential.
The accompanying text comprises almost thirty contributions from rabbis, scholars, architects, and engineers. Here the quality naturally tends to be uneven, but there are admirable contributions on “The Synagogue in America” by Rabbi Alexander S. Kline of Clarksdale, Mississippi, and on “Art in the Synagogue” by Dr. Stephen S. Kayser, Director of the Jewish Museum in New York.
Some of the most gratifying sections are those written by practicing architects. Mr. Percival Goodman discusses “The Character of the Modern Synagogue,” while others, among them some of the ablest living architects, describe work already done. Their all too brief notations are distinguished by clarity and directness. They also convey a strong sense of social values, a sort of kindly humanism, untainted by sentimentality. Through their professional recommendations one hears a note of anxious, almost fatherly, concern for good will and companionship. This concern is typical of most contemporary architects, but not of them alone. You hear it voiced two thousand years ago by Vitruvius as he discusses the spacing of columns in classical temple facades. To the close-set pillars of the Systyle he objects on the grounds that “when matrons mount the steps for public prayer or thanksgiving they cannot pass through the intercolumniations with their arms about one another, but must form single file.”
We hear the same note struck again five hundred years ago in Alberti’s great architectural treatise. In his città ideale, the chief feature of the houses should be their wide porticos “in which old men may spend the heat of the day or be mutually serviceable to each other.”
And we recognize the same accent in the text contributed by Richard M. Bennett, Chicago architect, to the present volume. On the subject of corridors, aisles, foyers, etc., he writes that “if these elements are generous in size, they permit friends to pause and talk without obstructing the flow of traffic. For the same reason there should be wide walks outside the building, and a large paved area or courtyard (the traditional shulhoif) that invites ‘stopping to chat. ’“
Mr. Bennett’s solicitude flows, one feels, from a strong humanistic bias. For the preoccupation of modern architects is with human life at its ideal best; with furnishing that environment which will promote, or at least permit, the maximum in fellow feeling. Perhaps this is not the mood from which soul-stirring display architecture takes its rise. But then the goal of modern builders is to make men breathe more freely, not to take their breath away.
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