USA: Modern Orthodox / Orthodox Modernism I, Beth David in Binghamton, NY

Binghamton, NY. Beth David. Exterior. It was wet morning, and the concrete holds the dampness. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Binghamton, NY. Beth David. Front elevation drawing. image: Recent American Synagogue (NY: The Jewish Museum, 1963).  

Binghamton, NY. Beth David. One of two concrete columns at entrance to front courtyard. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

USA: Modern Orthodox / Orthodox Modernism I: 
Beth David in Binghamton, NY, Designed by Werner Seligmann
by Samuel D. Gruber

When I stayed over in the Binghamton, New York, the other week, I had an opportunity to attend early morning services at the Orthodox Congregation Beth David.  This small building has long been known by religious architecture cognoscenti as a masterwork of modern design; an example of Orthodox Modernism for the Modern Orthodox. Designed as a light box perched atop a heavy base; the small building is full of big ideas. In its creation of a welcoming unified space Beth David is a forerunner of the many small sanctuaries built since the 1990s that strive for "intimacy" and to create "community." Since it was designed for a small Orthodox congregation the sanctuary dimensions hardly exceed those used for chapels at the some of the large suburban synagogues also built in the 1960s.

Binghamton, NY. Beth David. Sanctuary. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

 Binghamton, NY. Beth David. Sanctuary, view of Ark and bimah. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

 

Binghamton, NY. Beth David. Plans: Recent American Synagogue Architecture (NY: The Jewish Museum, 1963).

The small building, set on an urban corner, was designed by Werner Seligmann and dedicated in February, 1964, at the time when Seligmann was teaching architecture at Cornell University.  The budget was less than $200,000 and the building lot is only 80 x 120 feet. Seligmann managed to pack a lot into this space and to accommodate the needs an Orthodox congregation, including two kitchens, mikvah, and places for congregants to store books and tallit, and also a well-designed hand washing station near the social hall.

Seligmann would later design the synagogue in nearby Cortland, New York, where he lived, and go on to be Dean of the School of Architecture at Syracuse University (where I knew him slightly in his later years). The scale of Beth David fits in the neighborhood of late 19th and early 20th-century wood frame houses, but the style is distinct. Constructed mostly of poured concrete and concrete block (polished on the inside) Beth David is a superb example of how urban contextualism does not require stylistic imitation, but rather a sympathy for scale and massing. 

As Seligmann's colleague Bruce Coleman has pointed out, Beth David has roots in the work of both Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright. The building was, still unfinished, selected for inclusion in the seminal 1963 Jewish Museum exhibition on new synagogue design curated by Richard Meier. Seligmann and Beth David also won a Progressive Architecture citation for religious architecture that same year. In his remarks about the project included in the exhibition catalog, Seligmann quoted Corbusier on form. The sanctuary design, however, especially recalls Wright's work (Unity Temple and even some early house designs. Susan Solomon, in her book Louis I. Kahn's Jewish Architecture (Walthan, Ma: Brandeis univ Press, 2009), offers an enthusiastic appreciation of Beth David and also links it to Louis Kahn's designs. 

Seligmann wrote:  

"...Hierarchy was quite clearly a problem. There was not enough room on the site to organize the whole axially with the sanctuary as the center, but it was possible to contrast the sanctuary to the other functions. Isolation is a powerful way to create hierarchical significance. This was all possible in the design of the Beth David Synagogue by moving the sanctuary to the roof top. ...By form I do not refer to shape, but to the ideas organizing it, just as we talk of form in poetry or music. Form in this sense is a matter of the mind, it is a way in which knowledge is made manifest. Architecture speaks primarily through its form and, as Le Corbusier says, "it will strike a chord in us, when form has been sparked by poetic emotion. Passion creates drama out of inert stone."

Interestingly, Seligmann makes no reference to the Talmudic recommendation that synagogues be located high up, nor does he refer to the tradition of upper story sanctuaries in Germany, his own country of origin (which he may not have know) and Italy (which he probably did). Nonetheless, the experience of reaching the sanctuary is one of "going up" (aliyah).

 

Binghamton, NY. Beth David. Plans. Sections. Images: Recent American Synagogue Architecture (NY: The Jewish Museum, 1963).

The upper level is reached from either external steps to the roof, or more regularly from an interior stair lit by a skylight. Both lead to a glass faced vestibule that opens onto the roof and into the sanctuary. Seligmann planned a roof garden at this level, but like him planned garden outside the Cortland synagogue, this was never implemented. Consequently, at both buildings the architects interlined dialog between planned space and natural forms, never got started. It was left for other architects in the 1960s to carry this forward. The flat roof serves as both a podium and a frame for the central elevated sanctuary space. Practically, however, the large expanse of flat roof (which I got to know well, since got locked out there!) has caused problems over the years as do most 1960s flat roofs in the snow, ice and water filled Birmingham weather.
 

Binghamton, NY. Beth David. Stair from front courtyard to roof. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Binghamton, NY. Beth David. View into vestibule and sanctuary from roof. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

 Binghamton, NY. Beth David. View from sanctuary to roof and neighboring houses. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

The morning was overcast when I visited, but still the sanctuary glowed with light which entered form every side.  The sanctuary reminds me of the bridge of ship, one can look out all sides. For the separation of men and women Seligmann and the congregation eschewed the use of a gallery (which would have made the building that much higher). Instead the women's seating in included in the broad space of the sanctuary, but set slightly higher and to the side, and they face inward.

Binghamton, NY. Beth David. View to bimah. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

 
Binghamton, NY. Beth David. Bimah. Some new rails have been added for the safety of the congregation's aging members. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Binghamton, NY. Beth David. View to Ark showing both women's and men's seating. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

A more common version of this plan, a favorite of mine for Orthodox shuls, was used very effectively in the early 20th century at Philadelphia's Mikveh Israel designed by Tachau and Pilcher and dedicated in 1909.  More contemporary with Seligmann's work is the Sons of Israel Synagogue in Lakewood, New Jersey, designed by Davis, Brody and Wisniewski and also included in the Jewish Museum exhibit. Seligmann would surely have known the early design from Rachel Wischnitzer's 1955 book Synagogue Architecture in the United States, and he was probably aware of the the Lakewood synagogue, too. Both these plans, however, have all the men's seating facing center as in traditional Sephardi and early American synagogue designs. Seligmann and the Beth David Congregation mix things up a bit; they use this plan and have facing seats near the bimah, but behind are seats facing front in a more common Ashkenazi fashion.Significantly, there is no mechitza in front of the women's seating and today it is practice to bring the Torah to the women when it is carried throughout the sanctuary.

 

Binghamton, NY. Beth David. Sanctuary. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

 

Philadelphia, PA. Former Mikveh Israel. Tachau & Pilcher, archs. (1909). View of sanctuary showing raised women's seating on the sides. Photo: R. Wischnitzer, Synagogue Architecture in the United States (Philadelphia: JPS, 1955).

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Philadelphia, PA. Former Mikveh Israel. Tachau & Pilcher, archs. (1909). Plan: R. Wischnitzer, Synagogue Architecture in the United States (Philadelphia: JPS, 1955).

 
Lakewood, NJ. Congregation Sons of Israel. Davis, Brody, Wisniewski, archs. Women's seating is off the edges of the photo behind a mechitza. Photo: Recent American Synagogue Architecture (NY: Jewish Museum, 1963)

The ground floor consists of a central flowing social area, from which other functional space open. There is a hallway to the small daily chapel on the corner of the lot, and to classrooms.  A curved stair leads to the second floor.

Binghamton, NY. Beth David. Ground floor flexible space social area. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Binghamton, NY. Beth David. Stair to second floor. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

 

Binghamton, NY. Beth David. View across roof with added beams for sukkah and the top part of the daily chapel. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Probably the most used space at Beth David is the small tall chapel set on the corner of the lot, where as a block-like tower it guards the intersection of the two streets. This space is used for daily prayers. It incorporates the Ark and a stained glass window of lions flanking an open book with the Ten Commandments, which were transferred from the congregation's previous home. The ceiling seems to float on a frame of natural light which filters into the space. The reader's table is a permanent fixture made of a cast column of concrete.  Similar but taller columns flank the main entrance to the synagogue courtyard.

Binghamton, NY. Beth David. Exterior of daily chapel on corner.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Binghamton, NY. Beth David. Chapel, interior. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Binghamton, NY. Beth David. Chapel, interior. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Binghamton, NY. Beth David. Chapel, reader's table. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Modest changes over the decades accommodate the needs of an aging congregation (shallow front steps changed to ramp, new horizontal rails on the bimah), and a few additions that are less sympathetic (air conditioning fixtures on the roof, and an ornate front door at odds with the modern style). In addition, wood beams have been placed across the front courtyard to allow the seasonal erection of a sukkah.Despite these changes, the building conveys most of the spatial and visual experience as intended and the small congregation appears to maintain much of its original spirit, too.

You can read the history of the congregation here.  

USA: Syracuse University Library has acquired the personal papers of architect Morris Lapidus

Miami Beach, Fl. Temple Menorah, 1962. Morris Lapidus, arch. From D. Desilets, Morris Lapidus: The Architecture of Joy (New York: Rizzoli, 2010), 167. This photo is now part of the Lapidus Collection at Syracuse University.

USA: Syracuse University Library has acquired the personal papers of architect Morris Lapidus.

Syracuse University Library has acquired the personal papers of the flamboyant and trend-setting architect Morris Lapidus (1902-2001). Although clearly an architectural original, and a man who worked and pleased a varied clientele, Lapidus can also has serious credentials as a Jewish architect. He designed several synagogues, and his Miami architecture was especially in tune with a unique phase of American Jewish leisure life.

The Lapidus papers join other collections at the Syracuse University Library Special Collections and Research Center (SCRC) of the other leading modern American architects who also happened to design synagogues, including Marcel Breuer, Pietro Belluschi, Minoru Yamasaki and Werner Seligmann.

Pikesville, MD. Temple Beth Tfiloh, 1961. Morris Lapidus, arch. From D. Desilets, Morris Lapidus: The Architecture of Joy (New York: Rizzoli, 2010), 167.

Though his interior design and hotels are better known, Lapidus's synagogues deserve study, if only to see have they compare with contemporary work. His Temple Menorah in Miami Beach, for instance, bears at least a superficial resemblance to Gropius and Leavitt's Oheb Shalom in Baltimore, built just about the same time. I'm sorry I did not include any of Lapidus's work when I published my American Synagogues (Rizzoli) book in 2003.

Baltimore, MD. Oheb Shalom. Walter Gropius and Sheldon Leavitt, architects. Photo: Paul Rocheleau (2002).

Miami Beach, Fl. Temple Menorah, 1962. Morris Lapidus, arch. Photo: Julian H. Preisler.

According to the release from the Syracuse University Library:

Lapidus, who died in 2001, is perhaps best known for hotels like the Fontainebleau, Americana, and Eden Roc in Miami Beach, Fla., buildings which embodied the growth of leisure in American life during the 1950s and 1960s. The Fontainebleau has served as a backdrop for variety of iconic scenes in American film, including the James Bond thriller "Goldfinger" (1964). Most of Lapidus' buildings exhibited a mélange of historical styles--French provincial, Italian and Baroque--and anticipated the post-modernism of later architects.

Lapidus was born in Odessa, Russia, in 1902, but his family immigrated to the United States soon thereafter. As a wide-eyed youth, he marveled at the splendor of Coney Island and he would later impart a similar spirit of excess to his work as an architect. That spirit would place him at odds with his function-minded modernist peers. However, contrary to the editor's choice of title for his 1996 autobiography, "Too Much is Never Enough," Lapidus was interested less in hedonism than he was in a "quest for emotion and motion in architecture."

Frustrated by his sometimes antagonistic relationship with the architectural establishment, Lapidus destroyed many of his firm's records when he retired in 1984. However, he retained a core collection of especially valuable papers that he entrusted to his last collaborator and confidant, architect Deborah Desilets. The archive includes a large collection of photographs dating to the 1920s, conceptual drawings, manuscript drafts of his written works and correspondence with his long-time friend, mystery writer Ellery Queen.

Desilets approached Syracuse, which has held a small Lapidus collection since 1967, and a gift of the material was finalized in December. Speaking on her decision to place the archive with Syracuse, Desilets says, "The archive is an extremely important missing link in the discourse on Lapidus' influence on 20th-century architecture. I am thrilled to place it in such a distinguished research institution where it will be available for use by generations of students and scholars."

In Syracuse's Special Collections Research Center, the Lapidus archive will reside in one of the most important mid-century modern collections in the country. Among the other architects represented are Marcel Breuer, William Lescaze and Richard Neutra, as well as designers like Russel Wright and Walter Dorwin Teague.

Syracuse School of Architecture faculty member Jon Yoder offered this assessment of the Lapidus archive's value for teaching and research: "The recent proliferation of architect-designed boutique hotels, coupled with the pervasive disciplinary focus on architectural effects suggests that Lapidus was indeed one of the most influential architects of the 20th century. This acquisition of his personal archive comes as welcome news to designers and scholars who are finally beginning to reassess the lavish contributions of this much-maligned architect across a surprisingly broad spectrum of design disciplines."

For more information, contact Sean Quimby, senior director of Special Collections, at 315-443-9759 or smquimby@syr.edu.

Conference Session: From Historicism to Deconstructivism: Reconsidering European Synagogue Architecture

Prague, Czech Rep. Spanish Synagogue addition. Karel Pecanek, arch. (1935). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber

Brno, Czech Rep. Agudas Ahim Synagogue, Brno. Otto Eisler, arch. (1936). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2004).

Nis, Serbia. Former Synagogue. 1920s? Photo: Veljko N.

Leeds, England. Former Leeds New Synagogue. J. Stanley Wright, arch. (1929-1932). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2003).

Conference Session: From Historicism to Deconstructivism: Reconsidering European Synagogue Architecture
by Samuel D. Gruber

Next week I'll be at the annual meeting of the Association for Jewish Studies in Washington, D.C. to give a paper in the session "From Historicism to Deconstructivism: Reconsidering European Synagogue Architecture." Michael Meng and Gav Rosenfeld, both of whom have new books out, will also be on the panel - so I guess we are reprising our act from last year's AJS, though with slightly new topics.

My paper "What Was New and Why? Synagogue Modernisms in Pre-Holocaust Europe," is, in fact, the prequel to last's years presentation, in which I described the role of refugee and Survivor architects in shaping the modern Jewish aesthetic in post-WWII America. This year I'll talk about the architecture they left behind - the many modernisms of the early 20th century and especially the interwar years. Thanks to the documentation of previously forgotten synagogues by many researchers in different countries, we can now see the broad outlines of the fertile and popular modern movements before the Holocaust.

Budapest, Hungary. Heros’ Syn. Lazlo Vago & Ferenc Farago, archs. (1929-31). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber.

Zilina, Slovakia. Neolog synagogue. Peter Behrens, arch. (1928-30). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber.

Schedule Information:
Mon, Dec 19 - 8:30am - 10:30am
Building/Room: Grand Hyatt Washington, Penn A

From Historicism to Deconstructivism: Reconsidering European Synagogue Architecture
Session Participants:
Chair: Michael Meng (Clemson University
"If Only It Were “As Simple As Bonjour”: Synagogue Building in Nineteenth-Century Paris," Saskia Coenen Snyder (University of South Carolina)
"What Was New and Why? Synagogue Modernisms in Pre-Holocaust Europe,
Samuel D. Gruber (Syracuse University)
"“Between Memory and Normalcy: Synagogue Architecture in Postwar Germany,”
Gavriel Rosenfeld (Fairfield University)
Respondent: Michael Meng (Clemson University)

Abstract:
The scholarly literature on Jewish architecture has long been dominated by analyses of synagogue design. In recent years, however, the focus of this literature has begun to change. If prior scholarship concentrated on the construction histories of synagogues, newer studies have begun to take interest in their reception histories as well. This panel follows in the spirit of this new scholarly approach by going beyond construction technique, style, and aesthetics to probe the wider social perceptions of, and reactions to, Jewish synagogues in the communities where they were built. Covering trends from the 19th to the 21st centuries, the three papers discuss how different styles of synagogue design – historicism, modernism, and postmodernism – reveal the interplay between architecture, on the one hand, and Jewish history, memory, and identity on the other. Saskia Coenen Snyder’s paper, “If Only It Were “As Simple As Bonjour”: Synagogue Building in Nineteenth-Century Paris,” investigates the relationship between Jewish building committee members and French political institutions during the Second Empire and the Third Republic. She argues that as synagogues became public buildings, municipal authorities played an increasingly intimate role in the construction process and public representation of Judaism. Samuel Gruber’s paper, “What's New and Why? Synagogue Modernisms in Pre-Holocaust Europe,” focuses on the variety of what was considered new and modern in Jewish architecture in the early 20th century Europe, and especially following World War I. The paper considers the role of architecture in furthering Orthodoxy, Zionism, nationalism, and other disputed religious, political, social and aesthetic movements. Gavriel D. Rosenfeld’s paper, “Between Memory and Normalcy: Synagogue Architecture in Postwar Germany,” discusses three phases of synagogue design in the Federal Republic of Germany between 1945 and the present. He shows how modernist, postmodern, and deconstructivist designs have grappled to varying degrees with the legacy of the Holocaust and how postwar German synagogues collectively reflect lingering uncertainty among German Jews about the extent to which they should remember the Nazi past or move beyond it towards a normalized future.

Arise and Build: American Synagogues and Jewish Identity

West Hartford, CT. Interior of sanctuirary, restored in 2006. Photo: courtesy of Cong. Beth Israel.

Arise and Build: American Synagogues and Jewish Identity

Samuel D. Gruber lecture at Congregation Beth Israel in West Hartford, Connecticut

Sunday, October 23, 12 noon

In the last century, American Jews have built synagogues at a rate never seen in the world before, and in the process they have integrated the synagogue into the American landscape, and Judaism into the American cultural mainstream. This illustrated lecture explores the evolving form and meaning of the American synagogue, especially in the 20th century, as shaped by architects and their congregational patrons.

Through synagogue design, I'll trace changes in the organization of the American Jewish community and its relationship to American culture as a whole. The location, size, shape, and stylistic language adopted for synagogue designs throughout the century is a reflection of the changing needs and values of American Jews.

West Hartford, CT. Congregation Beth Israel. Exterior. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (1997).Beth Israel is an apt setting for this talk. The synagogue, listed on the National Register of Historic Places was designed by Charles Greco and dedicated in 1936. The sanctuary was fully restored in 2006 - I'm looking forward to seeing it.

You can read more about the congregation and building history here. It is one of the few synagogues in america entirely contructed in the 1930s. Synagogues in Hartford, West Hartford and nearby areas are significant in their won right, but also representative of broader trends.

Publications: Kravel-Tovi on Katz, "The Visual Culture of Chabad"

Potomac, Maryland. Chabad Center of Greater Washington, Shinberg/Levinas, architects. Photo courtesy of Shinberg/Levinas.

Publication: Maya Katz, The Visual Culture of Chabad

I haven't had a chance yet to read Maya Katz's new The Visual Culture of Chabad but look forward to doing so soon. Meanwhile, I post a recent review from H-Judaica Michal Kravel-Tovi (University of Michigan).

This book clearly delves deep into the history and beliefs of Chabad, and also Chabad's survival and growth mechanisms. Katz mostly deals with Chabad 2-D imagery, espeivally portraits, but she touches on other forms of artistic expression and media. My own interest is this right now is two-fold. First, Chabad is now commissioning new architecture, such as small and elegant Chabad Center of Greater Washington in Potomac, Maryland by Shinberg/Levinas. Also, Chabad's by its massive presences throughout the world, and especially in Russia and Eastenr Europe, is deteriming Jewish visual culture for the next generation through its decoration of synagogues, schools and other institutional buildings. Lastly, Chabad is taking over many synagogues built by and for other Jews, from very old buildings, to new ones like the synagogue in Dresden, Germany.

How will Chabad interpret, preserve and present the visual culture it has inherited? Unlike movements in much of American Judaism, Chabad's taste is influenced and largely controlled from a single place - 770 Eastern Parkway. Like many past Jewish movements Chabad is expansive, but at the same time it is uniquely centralized. That said, I've spent time with Chabad emissaries in far flung parts of the world and have seen how they have influences - and been influences by the non-Chabad world in which they live - often as a lonely minority. Given this, the evolution of Chabad visual culture may evolve in similar ways to other Jewish art in the past.

Kravel-Tovi on Katz, The Visual Culture of Chabad

Maya Balakirsky Katz. The Visual Culture of Chabad. Cambridge
Cambridge University Press, 2011. Illustrations. 264 pp. $95.00
(cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-19163-0.

Reviewed by Michal Kravel-Tovi (University of Michigan)
Published on H-Judaic (August, 2011)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

Among Faces and Gazes: The Visuality of Chabad Hasidism

In The Visual Culture of Chabad, Maya Balakirsky Katz directs her perceptive scholarly gaze to the expansive field of visual culture that has come to mark the Hasidic movement of Chabad. Katz focuses on the array of images, personal portraits, and visual artifacts that so extensively permeate the public surroundings and daily experiences of those who encounter and participate within this global religious movement. Throughout the text, one is struck by Katz's attentiveness to phenomena that, pervasive as they are, might otherwise escape the eye or appear trivial. But nothing is trivialized in Katz's study of how Chabad has produced, consumed, and embedded itself within a rich, two hundred-year-old visual tradition. Rabbinical portraiture of the Chabad dynasty, the Chabad printer's mark, public menorahs, and replicas of "770" (the central headquarters of the Hasidic court, located at 770 Eastern Parkway in New York City), among other material expressions, are all examined within the pages of this book.

In conducting such an examination, Katz successfully chronicles some of the yet untold aspects of Chabad's social history. Indeed, rather than only unpack the aesthetic choices and visual tastes expressed by Chabad, the book reflects a broader scholarly agenda--to "tease out how the social life of 'things' ... provides insight into Chabad's social life" (p. 227). Through both a careful historical excavation and a close reading of Chabad's visual productions, the author offers an insightful analysis of how individuals, organizations, and communities within Chabad learn to both make visible and perceive their religious worlds. Since these undertakings have made Chabad one of the most visible movements in the contemporary Jewish world, The Visual Culture of Chabad can be read as a book about the interrelated dynamics of visuality, public visibility, and religious piety. These dynamics reveal the extent to which there is more to Chabad's visual culture than meets the eye; Katz offers a multilayered analysis of how historical, social, and institutional forces have underwritten the visual engagements of the Chabad movement. These engagements, Katz argues, have played a constitutive role, rather than solely a reflective one, in the development of religious ideologies and devotional practices among Chabad Hasidim.

The structure of the book conveys Katz's commitment to both visual culture and to her disciplinary orientations as an art historian. The Visual Culture of Chabad is organized along the thematic, material lines of visual culture; but Katz also temporally situates the objects investigated here with a historical analysis that unfolds both within and across chapters. The eight chapters are divided into two parts. The first part (chapters 1-4) focuses on rabbinical portraiture--from the portrait of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the late eighteenth-century founder of the Chabad movement, to the contemporary religious and messianic industry revolving around the image of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. The second cluster of chapters (5-8) focuses on material objects that take center stage in Chabad's public life, from the building of "770" and its replicas to museological displays. Though in these chapters Katz develops the structure of her text in relationship to a particular object, detailing in each case a nuanced historical narrative, the book avoids fragmentation into a series of isolated stories. The chapters, effectively framed by the book's introduction and postscript, coalesce to produce a dynamic and well-integrated account--one that is held together by the numerous analytical and methodological threads (dealing specifically with the intersection of visual culture and religion), which are skillfully woven through each chapter.

However, the strength of the book lies less in the novelty of these analytical and methodological threads than in the richness of Katz's account of Chabad's material trajectory. The author, for example, does not coin new concepts, nor does she problematize extant theoretical frameworks of visual culture. Also, while uniquely applying an analysis of the "sacred gaze" to a Jewish rather than Christian context, the author fails to explain what we might learn about Jewish visual piety from the case study of Chabad. Finally, the structure of the book, particularly its division into thematic clusters of "the rebbe portraiture" (and thus of images of subjects) and "objects of Hasidism," would have been better reinforced if it had been grounded in the analysis of subject/object relations that is so prevalent in scholarly discussions of material culture.

These unexplored theoretical trajectories do not lessen the power of The Visual Culture of Chabad as a truly original work on the Chabad movement. In the context of a scholarly discussion that has predominately dealt with textual representations, Katz's analysis of the crucial role of visual material culture in the formation of the religious messianic movement that Chabad has become yields an especially innovative account. The perspective of visual culture not only allows Katz to employ a refreshing terminology (such as "Chabad image bank," "devotional portrait," and "visual messianism"), but also allows Katz to introduce new narratives about Chabad's development. Even if Katz is not the first scholar to refer to or engage with Chabad through the lens of visual culture (see, for example, Richard Cohen's epilogue in his Jewish Icons [1998], Jeffrey Shandler's chapter on Chabad in his Jews, God, and Videotape [2009], or Samuel Heilman's chapter in Jack Wertheimer's edited volume Jewish Religious Leadership: Image and Reality [2004]), she adds a number of new and valuable pieces to the discussion. Furthermore, while a book exploring the dynamics of a continuously evolving empirical field can never fully constitute, in and of itself, a comprehensive project, the book's breadth remains quite remarkable. The cover of the book--its own visual representation--appears to frame it as an analysis of Chabad messianism. After all, it features the face of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the celebrated icon of Chabad's messianic campaign, displayed on a New York highway billboard with a written message heralding the immanent redemption. However, by covering a range of themes, including institutional infrastructure, leadership, and the movement's relationship with cultural Zionism, Katz's contribution to the literature on Chabad transcends the issue of messianism alone. Ultimately, the book offers new understandings of how Chabad has endured, and even thrived, despite numerous moments of crisis.

Take, for example, how Katz's analysis of photography during the tenure of Yosef Yitzchak, the geographically displaced sixth rebbe, (chapter 3) sheds light on the crucial function of this visual medium in the maintenance of leadership amid potential disruption. In particular, Katz shows how, through the production of the rebbishe photographs, as well as the circulation of photographs between the rebbe and devotees, Yosef Yitzchak established a virtual court in Poland, while maintaining authority and relationships in absentia. Or, consider how, as Katz shows, Chabad's visual program builds simultaneously on the tradition of interactive visualization of a rebbe (discussed in chapter 4) and an architectonical infrastructure that detaches the Hasidic court from the person of the rebbe (discussed in chapter 6), thereby driving the movement's messianic ideology and enabling it to cope with the leadership void.

Katz is at her best when she weaves her analysis of a particular visual tradition or object together with an ostensibly unconnected part of Chabad's history. The connections to which she draws attention are illuminating--such as the psychological and aesthetic connections she traces (in chapter 2) between the puzzling four portraits of Yosef Yitzchak, drawn by a woman artist in 1930s Vienna, and the experience with psychoanalysis of his father, and predecessor of the Chabad
dynasty, the RaSHaB, in early twentieth-century Vienna.

Katz's position as a viewer calls for some commentary. There is no fascination, let alone adoration, in how Katz uses the lens of visual culture to describe Chabad. As she historicizes the devotional objects and sacred visual images with which Chabad identifies, she by necessity presents the movement with an often challenging "textual portrait": she provides counter-narratives to some of its hegemonic myths and attends to objects from which the archival gatekeepers would have probably preferred she divert her gaze. At the same time, her critical, even daring, analyses are always sensitive, engaged, and empathetic, both reflecting and creating a close aesthetic distance. Neither a detached scholar nor admirer of Chabad's sacred material culture, the author positions herself at a critical distance from her objects--a position that allows her to zoom in and out in order to produce a convincing analysis. However, we know almost nothing about this position; while Katz writes on the visuality of Chabad Hasidism, she remains for the most part out of sight. We do know that the four portraits of Yosef Yitzchak were hung by her bedside table for two years; we know Katz engages with and even produces images of Chabad, as some of the photos included in the book are attributed to her private collection; and we even know that she is "one of David Berger's indifferent Orthodox Jews" (with regard to Chabad's disputed messianic theology) (p. 15). But we know hardly anything about her own modalities of seeing the world and especially the Chabad movement. Since the author does acknowledge in her analysis the implications of a "female gaze," it would have been helpful to locate her own perspective within the framework of gender politics--for example, as an orthodox woman who views and writes about portraits of (male) rebbes. To the extent that Katz adopts the
idea that images should be treated "not only for what they depict but also for how they make us see"--and also that she works under the premise of "multiple visions"--it would have been constructive to know how the images of Chabad effected her own vision (pp. 10, 232).

The added value of a more reflexive positioning becomes apparent in one revealing moment in which the author does locate herself in relationship to her field of study. As she writes: "In the weeks after I lost my own mother prematurely and inherited her precious family photograph albums that she spirited out of the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, I felt inexplicably moved by the gentle intimacy of Yosef Yitzchak's portraits. Although I had previously cynically dismissed the portraits' identification with RaSHaB as an attempt to alleviate the stigma of the female gaze, I came to see RaSHaB's presence as consciously inscribed in Yosef Yitzchak's portraits. In confronting photograph after photograph of my teenage self imitating what I always saw as my mother's larger-than-life beauty with the same pout and disinterested eyes I knew by heart from her family photographs, I could see RaSHaB's likeness posthumously embedded in the life portraits of Yosef Yitzchak" (pp. 60-61). This moment is memorable not only because it captures the author's own intimate reflections on the recent death of her mother, but also because it provides us with a glimpse of how Katz has come to change her view of a particular Chabad object. By utilizing her positionality in this way, she traces an unexpected layer of the object's already intricate aesthetics.

I hope this book will set an agenda for scholarship on both Jewish visual and material culture, as well as on the Chabad movement and the ongoing development of its visual world. While the book teaches us about the power of visual representations, its quality also reminds us of the strength of good textual representations.

Citation: Michal Kravel-Tovi. Review of Katz, Maya Balakirsky, The Visual Culture of Chabad. H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews. August, 2011.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3D33605

USA: Jean-Jacques Duval's Connecticut Synagogue Stained Glass Still Dazzles After 50 Years

Hamden, CT (USA). Congregation Mishkan Israel. Chapel windows by Jean-Jacques Duval (1960). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2011)

Hamden, Connecticut. Congregation Mishkan Israel, Chapel. Fritz Nathan and Betram Bassuk, archs. Jean-Jacques Duval, stained glass artist. Ark design, unidentified.

Woodbridge, CT (USA). Congregation B'nai Jacob. Sanctuary windows by Jean-Jacques Duval (1962). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2011)

Woodbridge, CT (USA). Congregation B'nai Jacob. Sanctuary windows by Jean-Jacques Duval (1962). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2011)

Woodbridge, CT (USA). Congregation B'nai Jacob. Chapel windows by Jean-Jacques Duval (1962). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2011)

USA: Connecticut Synagogue Stained Glass Still Dazzles After 50 Years:
Jean-Jacques Duval Has Helped Change the Look of American Synagogues

In 2009 I wrote an article for Tablet Magazine about Abstract Expressionist artist Adolph Gottlieb's stained glass windows in the Kingsway Jewish Center in Brooklyn (this article has just been republished, without slide show, in a special Shavuot synagogue issue of New York's Jewish Week). I was already long interested in synagogue stained glass, but Gottlieb's work made me more attentive to the innovative techniques, colors and symbols employed by synagogue stained glass artists in the 1950s and 1960s, the heydey of American abstract art. Gottieb was able to successfully transform the traditional Jewish use of a limited number of religious and cultural symbols to a larger abstract artistic aesthetic. Gottlieb's program also suggested a nearly-attainable grasp of archetypal highly charged symbols of both personal and cosmic significance, in the tradition of Jewish mysticism.

Brooklyn, New York. Kingsway Jewish Center. Sanctuary window detail, designed by Adolp Gottieb. Photo: Samuel Gruber.

I was therefore delighted when visiting Connecticut earlier this spring to encounter two exemplary stained glass programs by artist Jean-Jacques Duval (b. 1930) in synagogues I was visiting for their architecture. Both Congregation Mishkan Israel in Hamden and Congregation B'nai Jacob in Woodbridge were designed by Fritz Nathan and Bertram Bassuk (1918-1996), and both include chapels with stained glass by Duval, and Duval did the sanctuary work at B'nai Jacob, too. According to Duval, who remains active as a artist today with more 450 major commissions completed, he and fellow artist Robert Pinart were brought in by the architects for Mishkan Israel.

These synagogues were truly international efforts. Nathan (1891-1960), who had been a prominent modernist in Germany before World War II and arrived in the United States as a refugee in 1940. Duval was born in Strasbourg, France in 1930 . After the War he studied at Ecole des Arts Decoratif in Strasbourg, and then in 1950, he accepted an offer to design stained glass in United States. In 1957 he opened his own studio in New York City. Pinart was born in Paris in 1926 and came to America in 1951. Both Duval and Pinart have achieved great success in their long careers). Today Duval lives and maintains Duval Design Studio in the Adirondack Mts. near Saranac, NY.

Pinart made windows for the Mishkan Israel sanctuary, and Duval for the chapel. According to Mishkan Israel Rabbi Herbert Brockman, his predecessor Rabbi Robert E Goldburg disagreed with architect Nathan over the Ark design, and brought in artist Ben Shahn to create a more monumental arrangement (flanked by Pinart's ark-wall windows). When near-by Conservative Congregation B'nai Jacob adapted the recent Mishkan Israel design for their new suburban synagogue, Duval was engaged for all the stained glass work.

One of Duval's windows at Mishkan Israel has a similar feel to Gottlieb's - and it immediately drew my attention. But Duval's fractured symbols are much more recognizable than Gottlieb's, (more akin to those Robert Motherwell used in his painted panel in Millburn, New Jersey), and firmly within the Jewish symbolic "canon." One reads the long strip window on one side of the Mishkan Israel chapel as a unrolled scroll, with each "sheet" illustrated by one symbol. There are tablets, a book, kiddish cups, etc. and a domed form that may be a tent, or a priest's hat, or something else (in fact, it look remarkably like the Beth Shalom synagogue designed by Percival Goodman in Miami).

Hamden, CT (USA). Congregation Mishkan Israel. Chapel windows by Jean-Jacques Duval (1960). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2011)

Duval's greatest success, however, in both chapels, was his ability to create full walls of stained glass that actually helped emphasize and strengthen the shape of the space instead of distracting from it. Duval has demonstrated this talent for making architectural walls that complemented the architecture design in many synagogue and church commissions. Most of his stained glass windows are not to be seen through, or even to be looked at as pictures. Rather, they enclose the viewer to create a container of worship space. Betram Bassuk, writing of Duval in Faith & Form the Interfaith The Journal on Religion, Art and Architecture said “I regard his empathy toward the architectural enclosure of which his work is to be an integral part, to be as fundamental a factor in his creative imagination as is his composing of its symbolic content.” At Mishkan Israel duval created a mosaic like affect of colored glass panels, roughly rectangular in shape, out of which appear across the entire composition - but only a certain angles - large nine-branched menorahs (see above). A similar effect is achieved over the Ark in the main sanctuary at Congregation B'nai Jacob (see above), though there the form of the seven-branch Temple Menorah is used. in the B'nai Jacob Chapel the use of symbols is more overt and I think, therefore, less successful artistically.

Woodbridge, Connecticut. Congregation B'nai Jacob, Chapel. Fritz Nathan and Betram Bassuk, archs. Jean-Jacques Duval, stained glass artist.

Woodbridge, Connecticut. Congregation B'nai Jacob, Sanctuary. Fritz Nathan and Betram Bassuk, archs. Jean-Jacques Duval, stained glass artist.

Jean-Jacques Duval has provided me with a list of the synagogues for which he and his studio designed stained glass. Both Mr. Duval and I encourage readers familiar with these windows - or those who wish to discover them - to send us photos of heir current descriptions. In some cases synagogues have moved and buildings have been sold, and the fate of the Duval stained is unknown.

List of Synagogues with Duval windows (names of congregation may be inexact):

Ahavath Achim, Bronx, NY

Ohav Sholom Congr., Merrick, NY

Jackson Heights Jewish Ct., Jackson Heights, NY

State Hospital Chapel, Orangeburg, NY

Shellbank Jewish Center, Brooklyn, NY

B’Nai Zion, EI Paso, TX

Forest Hills Jewish Center, Forest Hills, NY

Beth Jacob, Newburg, NY

United Syn. of America, New-York, NY

Huntington Jewish Center, Huntington, NY

Mt Sinai, New-York, NY

(Former) Congr. B’nai David, Southfield, MI

Southfield, Michigan. (Former) Congr. B’nai David. Sidney Eisenshtat, arch. Jean-Jacque Duval stained glass artist. Photo: Samuel Gruber.

Temple Israel, Dayton, OR

Temple Beth EI, Stamford, CT

Congr. B’Nai Jacob, Woodbridge, CT

Temple Mishkan Israel, Hampden, CT

Westchester Jewish Center, Mamaroneck, NY

East End Temple New-York, NY

Cong. Etz Chaim, Jacksonville, FL

Temple Israel, Boston, MA

Ohab Emeth, New Brunswick, NJ

Congr. Tifereth Israel, New Bedford MA

Temple Beth Tikuah, Wayne, NJ

Temple B ‘Nai Jeshurun, Short Hills, NJ

Highland Park Temple, Highland Park, NJ

B’Nai Shalom, Long Branch, NJ

Beth Avodah, Westbury, NY

Temple Shalom, Plainfield, NJ

Mt Sinai Congr., Brooklyn, NY

Temple Beth EI. Huntington, NY

Temple Beth EL, Monroe, NY,

Temple Concord, Binghampton. NY

Sephardic Temple. Cedarhurst, NY,

Temple Anshe Emeth, Yougstown, OH,

Temple Beth Sholom Flushing, NY,

Temple Emanu-EI Yonkers, NY,

Midchester Jewish Center Yonkers, NY

North Shore Congregation, Syossett, NY

Beth Torah Temple, Philadelphia, PA

Congregation B’nai Israel, Pittsburgh, P A

Agudath Achim, Savannah, GA

Heska Amuna Synagogue, Knoxville, TN

Beth EI Synagogue, Minneapolis, MN

Beth EI Temple, Steubenville, OH

Temple Sinai, EI Paso, TX

El Paso, Texas. Temple Sinai, chapel. Sidney Eisenshtat, arch. Jean-Jacque Duval stained glass artist. Photo: Paul Rocheleau.

Bergenfield Dumont J.C., Bergenfield, NJ

Westville Synagogue, New Haven, CT

Hebrew Tabernacle, New-York, NY

Temple Oheb Shalom, South Orange, NJ

Temple Israel Center, White Plains, NY

Temple Israel, New York, NY