USA: Portland, Oregon's Beth Israel Stained Glass Window Restoration Project

Portland, Oregon. Congregation Beth Israel, 3rd building (1928). Exterior. Photo courtesy of Louis Davidson @ synagogues360.org.

Portland, Oregon. Congregation Beth Israel, 3rd building (1928). Sanctuary. Photo courtesy of Louis Davidson @ synagogues360.org.

USA: Portland, Oregon's Beth Israel Stained Glass Window Restoration Project

by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) While many historic American religious congregations, including synagogues, are having a hard time maintaining their buildings and especially raising funds to properly care for and restore stained glass windows, good news comes from Portland, Oregon, where Congregation Beth Israel (CBI) has begun an ambitious campaign to restore the windows in their 1928 Byzantine style sanctuary. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 – one of the first synagogues so designated.

Read more here.

Congregation Beth Israel, designed by Morris H. Whitehouse, Herman Brookman and Harry A. Herzog, is one of the grandest synagogues in the pacific Northwest, and one of the finest examples of the Byzantine style in the country. Built shortly before the onset of the Great Depression, the lavish building combines historicism with contemporary Art Deco motifs, and what was at the time modern design.

You can visit the sanctuary online through the photos of Louis Davidson at synagogues360.org.

The eighteen tall windows around the sanctuary, grouped in triads, and the round window above the Ark, were designed by Albert Gerlach, chief designer for Portland's Fuller Studios. Gerlach was chosen for the job in 1926 after a “manufacturer's competition” resembling an architectural competition, but something unusual for choosing stained glass. Gerlach reportedly worked closely Henry Berkowitz, the congregation's rabbi beginning in 1928, in choosing the subject matter for the windows, which include days of the Creation, major festivals, biblical personalities and symbols of the tribes of Israel. Each window is 20 feet high and three feet widow, and taken together these complement the interior architectural articulation of applied elements and blind round-head arches, and they also echo the tall 4,500-pipes in Reuters organ. There is also a stained glass “corona” step at the apex of the great dome that surmounts the space. The windows add light and color to the great space.

The restoration and repair of three of the eighteen windows began on Monday, May 20. The windows will spend the summer being restored. And will be re-installed for High Holy Days. Meanwhile, colored decals of the windows serve as place holders. This is the first phase of a multi-year project.

Work has begun on the middle three windows on the south wall, which face Flanders Street. Following the general iconographic program, these depict Rosh Hashanah, the Tribes of Levi and Judah, and the Patriarch Jacob. This middle window is designated as the “Fellowship Window,” symbolized by the clasped hands in the lower portion of the panel. This was donated to the congregation by Trinity Episcopal Cathedral and St. Mary’s Cathedral. Plans are to complete the other two sets of long windows on the south side which sustain the most weather and are in urgent need of restoration, .over the next two years.

David Schlicker Stained Glass Studio is the glass conservator. According to the Congregation website, he “is a noted stained glass artisan, with over 30 years of experience in stained glass restoration and repair. David is an adjunct professor of historic stained glass preservation at the University of Oregon and a member of the Stained Glass Association of America.”

The congregation's Building and Grounds Committee has been working for several years on a campus-wide inventory and maintenance plan, including recommendations for capital improvements. This is an exemplary undertaking, one that every congregation no matter how big or small, should begin. My own congregation – Temple Concord in Syracuse – is presently doing this for its buildings (for more information on how to organize such a work, feel free to contact me).  Good planning is necessary for safety and security, and it also saves money in the long run.

Congregation Beth Israel wisely maintains a building fund for maintenance. With a membership of close to 3,000 it is, of course, better positioned to do this than many smaller, poorer congregations. Still, it is important for all congregations – especially those with older buildings – to have some money in place for repairs and not have to always be forced to raise new money at a moment's notice. Fund raising for maintenance should be on-going part of the planning process. A CBI, the window restorations are made possible by a prior gift of $100,000 by Harold and Arlene Schnitzer’s to the restoration fund, and a bequest from Jack Neustadter.

A Little History

CBI, founded in 1858, is the oldest Jewish congregation in Oregon. In the late 19^th century, its monumental two-towered (165 feet) synagogue at Twelfth and Southwest Main., erected in 1887, was one of the most prominent building on the Portland skyline. 

 Portland, Oregon. Congregation Beth Israel, 2nd building, 1887.  Sanctuary. Photo: postcard.

The sanctuary seated 750 people and was the largest religious space in the city. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise presided from 1900 to 1906. This magnificent building burned down – due to arson - on December 29, 1923. This led to the design of construction of the present building – fortunately undertaken during the booming 1920s, when America was full of money and talented artistic and architectural designers and craftsman.

The new synagogue at Northwest 19th and Flanders Streets seats 1,000, and was dedicated in April 1928. Instead of the two-tower design, preferred 19th-century,its is distinguished by its 100 foot Byzantine-inspired dome.  Other contemporary "Byzantine" synagogues include Boston's Ohabei Shalom,  Chicago's Temple Isaiah and Detroit's Shaaray Zedek.

In 1948 the congregation erected the Sherman Education Center, opposite the Temple which was then expanded in 1994.  In 1993, the Schnitzer Family Center, which includes a chapel, was dedicated to provide more classroom, office, and meeting space.

Further Reading:

City Guide to Sacred Spaces– Portland, OR, pdf online at http://www.pbs.org/godinamerica/art/pdx_cityguide.pdf

Friedman, Elaine S., “Congregation Beth Israel,” the Oregon Encyclopedia online at http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/entry/view/congregation_beth_israel/ (accessed 6/21/2013)

Lowenstein, Steven. The Jews of Oregon. Portland: Jewish Historical Society of Oregon, 1987.

Temple Beth Israel. Temple Beth Israel: A Temple for the Ages. Portland: Temple Beth Israel, 2002.

http://www.bethisrael-pdx.org

Death of Prof. Yom-Tov Assis

Death of Prof. Yom-Tov Assis

I am sad to report the death of Prof. Yom Tov Assis (1942-2013), Professor of Medieval Jewish History at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.  Born in Aleppo, Prof. Assis settled in Israel in 1971 where he became a leading scholar of Hispanic Jewry and also a popular academic tour guide.  His deeply researched and documented historical articles about Jews in medieval Spain will remain essential reading for generations.   

Though best known as a political and economic historian, his 1992 article "Synagogues in Medieval Spain," in Jewish Art remains an essential go-to reference for anyone wanting to understand the role of medieval synagogues in Spain.  Typical of Assis's work, it is both erudite and accessible.  In this work, he showed the valuable role of responsa literature in our identifying and understanding forgotten synagogue buildings and the culture around them.  His many important books include The Golden Age of Aragonese Jewry: Community and Society in the Crown of Aragon, 1213-1327 and  Jewish Economy in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (1213-1327), Money and Power.

A full list of his publications can be found here:
http://www.sefarad-studies.org/136725/Yom-Tov-Assis.

Germany: Weissensee Cemetery Documentation Published

Cross Posted jewish-heritage-europe.eu from June 16, 2013  

Full results of the Weissensee cemetery documentation published

The complete results of the documentation of the Weissensee Jewish cemetery in Berlin have been published as 115.628 Berliners. The Weißensee Jewish Cemetery – Documentation of the Comprehensive Survey of the Burial Sites (Berlin, 2013).

The entire text is provided in German and English.

Click here for a downloadable PDF of the full publication.

Also — see the presentation on this documentation given by Tobias Rütenik at the conference on Managing Jewish Immovable Heritage held in Krakow April 23-25.

Conferences: All Sessions of Krakow Conference on Jewish Immovable Property Are Now Online

Krakow, Poland. Opening Session of the Conference on Jewish Immovable Property. Photo: Marla Raucher Osborne 2013

Conferences: All Sessions of Krakow Conference on Jewish Immovable Property Are Now Online

Last month month than 100 activists, Jewish leaders, scholars and historic preservationists from about 20 countries gathered in the historic Kazimierz District of Krakow, Poland to address long-standing problems affecting European Jewish Heritage sites, and to share news and methodologies of recent successes and solutions.

The three-day conference on Managing Jewish Immovable Heritage held in Krakow (April 23-25, 2013) was sponsored by several international organizations and foundations that have regularly supported Jewish heritage education, museum and preservation projects as well other Jewish community efforts.  The conference was organized under the aegis of the website Jewish-Heritage-Europe.eu, and hosted by the Jewish Community Center of Krakow.  More about the conference can be found at Jewish-Heritage-Europe.eu., where news and opinion generated from the conferecne are begin regularly posted and a long report written from the gathering was filed by Hagay HaCohen for Polish Radio’s Hebrew service.  You can read the English translation here.

There were so many fascinating presentation and so much stimulating discussion that it will take a long time to report on it all - but now you can feel as if you were there by watching full length videos of all of the conference sessions.  since there were overlapping sessions, the posting of the videos also allows participants to now see what they missed.

Videos from all three formal plenary sessions and all of the parallel seminar workshops at the conference  are now posted in the section of this web site dedicated to the conference.

Krakow, Poland. conference participants visit the Kupa Synagogue.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2013

I was honored to be invited to deliver the keynote talk to open the conference, and you can watch the talk here, or read the the full text.  It was a very moving moment for me, since the opening plenary was held in the Tempel Synagogue, the largest and first successful  synagogue restoration on which I worked (with many others) when I was director of the Jewish Heritage Council of the World Monuments Fund (WMF) back in the early 1990s.  I am pleased to say that all we hoped for and everything we predicted for the Tempel pretty mcuh came true - and the success of the work has actually been so great, that the building now needs - unfortunately - new structural work.  The concerts held at the Tempel (which also still serves for worship) have been sometimes too lively.  The 19th-century structure which was built for a Progressive congregation that valued "decorum" was conserved but not re-enforced, and the stress of the occasional stomping Klezmer and Jewish rock audiences have been to much for the building.  Tens of thousands of visitors have attended religious services and cultural events in the Temple since the first concerts were held there to kick off the restoration process more than twenty years ago. WMF was a co-sponsor of the Krakow conference and Sarah Sher, the new Jewish Heritage program officer for WMF attended and participated in the conference, as did WMF's technical director Mark Weber).  

Lesley Weiss, the new Chair of the U.S, Commission for the Preservation of  America's Heritage Abroad also attended.  You can read more about her appointment here.