Synagogue Architecture in America

Synagogue Architecture in America PDF Author: Henry Stolzman
Publisher: Images Publishing
ISBN: 9781864700749
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
This full colour publication explores the rich and diverse response to the quest to sustain the Hebrew heritage that has resulted in prominent designs.

Synagogue Architecture in America

Synagogue Architecture in America PDF Author: Henry Stolzman
Publisher: Images Publishing
ISBN: 9781864700749
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
This full colour publication explores the rich and diverse response to the quest to sustain the Hebrew heritage that has resulted in prominent designs.

American Synagogues

American Synagogues PDF Author: Samuel Gruber
Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
American Synagogues is the first book to explore the exceptional architecture of modern American synagogues in the twentieth century, and this intriguing book relates the fascinating history of the Jewish people in America and how it is expressed in twentieth-century synagogue design. The book features all new photography of synagogues in many styles from a dozen states, many never before published in any form. The synagogues were designed by European masters, the best-known modern American architects, and by important contemporary architects including Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Minoru Yamasaki.

Eric Mendelsohn's Synagogues in America

Eric Mendelsohn's Synagogues in America PDF Author: Ita Heinze-Greenberg
Publisher: Lund Humphries Publishers Limited
ISBN: 9781848222946
Category : Synagogue architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In America between 1946 and 1953, the German-Jewish architect Eric Mendelsohn planned seven synagogues, of which four were built, all in the Midwest. In this book, photographer Michael Palmer has recorded in exquisite detail Mendelsohn's four built synagogues in Saint Paul, Saint Louis, Cleveland, and Grand Rapids. These photographs are accompanied by an insightful contextual essay by Ita Heinze-Greenberg which reflects on Eric Mendelsohn and his Jewish identity. Mendelsohn's post-war commitment to sacred architecture was a major challenge to him, but one on which he embarked with great enthusiasm. He sought and found radically new architectural solutions for these "temples" that met functional, social, and spiritual demands. In the post-war and post-Holocaust climate, the old references had become obsolete, while the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 posed a claim for the redefinition of the Jewish diaspora in general. The duality of Jewish and American identity became more crucial than ever and the congregations were keen to express their integration into a modern America through these buildings. Hardly anyone could have been better suited for this task than Mendelsohn, as he sought to justify his decision to move from Israel and adopt the USA as his new homeland. The places he created to serve Jewish identity in America were a crowning conclusion of his career. They became the benchmark of modern American synagogue architecture, while the design of sacred space added a new dimension in Mendelsohn's work.

Louis I. Kahn's Jewish Architecture

Louis I. Kahn's Jewish Architecture PDF Author: Susan G. Solomon
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
ISBN: 161168868X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
In 1961, famed architect Louis I. Kahn (1901-1974) received a commission to design a new synagogue. His client was one of the oldest Sephardic Orthodox congregations in the United States: Philadelphia's Mikveh Israel. Due to the loss of financial backing, Kahn's plans were never realized. Nevertheless, the haunting and imaginative schemes for Mikveh Israel remain among Kahn's most revered designs. Susan G. Solomon uses Kahn's designs for Mikveh Israel as a lens through which to examine the transformation of the American synagogue from 1955 to 1970. She shows how Kahn wrestled with issues that challenged postwar Jewish institutions and evaluates his creative attempts to bridge modernism and Judaism. She argues that Kahn provided a fresh paradigm for synagogues, one that offered innovations in planning, decoration, and the incorporation of light and nature into building design.

Beth Sholom Synagogue

Beth Sholom Synagogue PDF Author: Joseph Siry
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780226761404
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book examines the design, construction, and reception of Beth Sholom Synagogue, and its place in relation to Frank Lloyd Wright's other religious architecture.

The Synagogue in America

The Synagogue in America PDF Author: Marc Lee Raphael
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814775829
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Chronicles the history of the Jewish synagogue in America over the course of three centuries, discussing its changing role in the American Jewish community.

Ambivalent Embrace

Ambivalent Embrace PDF Author: Rachel Kranson
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469635445
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
This new cultural history of Jewish life and identity in the United States after World War II focuses on the process of upward mobility. Rachel Kranson challenges the common notion that most American Jews unambivalently celebrated their generally strong growth in economic status and social acceptance during the booming postwar era. In fact, a significant number of Jewish religious, artistic, and intellectual leaders worried about the ascent of large numbers of Jews into the American middle class. Kranson reveals that many Jews were deeply concerned that their lives—affected by rapidly changing political pressures, gender roles, and religious practices—were becoming dangerously disconnected from authentic Jewish values. She uncovers how Jewish leaders delivered jeremiads that warned affluent Jews of hypocrisy and associated "good" Jews with poverty, even at times romanticizing life in America's immigrant slums and Europe's impoverished shtetls. Jewish leaders, while not trying to hinder economic development, thus cemented an ongoing identification with the Jewish heritage of poverty and marginality as a crucial element in an American Jewish ethos.

Art and Architecture of the Synagogue in Byzantine Palaestina

Art and Architecture of the Synagogue in Byzantine Palaestina PDF Author: Asaf Friedman
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527535053
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
The Byzantine era was a time of the formation of the Abrahamic religions and a battleground for people’s hearts and minds. This book shows that, during the time of the Byzantine Empire, the synagogues in Palaestina developed a visual language adhering to traditional literary sources. Until now, scholars believed that Judaism was oblivious to all art forms, regarding them as mere “decoration.” This book shows that, contrary to those beliefs, Jewish art was, in fact, flourishing in this period. The visual language that emerged is a trope that utilizes literal and figurative readings to arrive at an inquisitive mixture—a probing language that facilitates learning. It is a visual language of “becoming,” of inward introspection and outward scrutiny. This new analysis goes beyond the limits of compositional rules, and requires an analytical, as well as emotive, thought process, to form a cultural interpretation that reveals the hidden language. This means that some parts of Judaism and some parts of Christianity were in agreement despite the commandment of “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image,” and operated under the assumption that paintings were not necessarily the creation of idols. Thus, we see that the modern movements of art and architecture were not the first to deal with images through themes such as abstraction and denotation. The language developed during the Byzantine period could rival the best of such visual languages.

Landmark of the Spirit

Landmark of the Spirit PDF Author: Annie Polland
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300124708
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
New York City’s magnificent Eldridge Street Synagogue was built in 1887 in response to the great wave of Jewish immigrants who fled persecution in eastern Europe. Finding their way to the Lower East Side, the new arrivals formed a vibrant Jewish community that flourished from the 1850s until the 1940s. Their synagogue served not only as a place of worship but also as a singularly important center in the development of American Judaism. A near ruin in the 1980s that was recently reopened after a massive twenty-year restoration, the Eldridge Street Synagogue has been named a National Historic Landmark. But as Bill Moyers tells us in his foreword, the synagogue is also “a landmark of the spirit, . . . the spirit of a new nation committed to the old idea of liberty.” Annie Polland uses elements of the building’s architecture—the façade, the benches, the grooves worn into the sanctuary floor—as points of departure to discuss themes, people, and trends at various moments in the synagogue’s history, particularly during its heyday from 1887 until the 1930s. Exploring the synagogue’s rich archives, the author shines new light on the religious life of immigrant Jews, introduces various rabbis, cantors and congregants, and analyzes the significance of this special building in the context of the larger American-Jewish experience. For more information, go to: www.EldridgeStreet.org

Finding a Spiritual Home

Finding a Spiritual Home PDF Author: Rabbi Sidney Schwarz, PhD
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
ISBN: 158023657X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
The Jewish community has lost some of the most sensitive spiritual souls of this generation. They are Jews who were looking for God and found spiritual homes outside of Judaism. Their journeys traversed the Jewish community, but nothing there beckoned them. The creation of synagogue-communities in which the voices of seekers can be heard and their questions can be asked will challenge many loyalist Jews. It will upset and enrage them. But it would also enrich them. —from Chapter 18 In this fresh look at the spiritual possibilities of American Jewish life, Rabbi Sidney Schwarz presents the framework for a new synagogue model—the synagogue community—and its promise to transform our understanding of the synagogue and its potential for modern Judaism. Schwarz profiles four innovative synagogues—one from each of the major movements of Judaism—that have had extraordinary success with their approach to congregational life and presents practical ways to replicate their success. Includes a discussion guide for study groups and book clubs as well as a new afterword by the author describing developments in synagogue change projects since the book was first published.