Campus Expansion Project
New Radiance. New Song. NEW SPACE.
Rejoicing in our new Sanctuary
Our Sanctuary
The design, meaning and interpretation of our sacred space
-Steve Rajninger, Architect
Judaism has a lovely way of embracing the oneness and wholeness of everything while simultaneously making beautiful distinctions between things: the sacred and the everyday, Shabbat and the rest of the week, childhood and adulthood, a hallah cover and a parokhet (curtain in the Ark). Jewish thresholds and rituals play an important role in amplifying our awareness of important transitions, life and Torah cycles and the passage of time and seasons.
The space for the Torah scrolls and Neviim is one that can be entered and occupied such that each time one reaches for a scroll, one is, in fact, surrounded by sacred texts. The scrolls are nested in their own containers, glowing with light. The Ark doors and screen are made from hundreds of resin tablets. There are three types: one marries the letters “bet” and “lamed” the first and last letters of the Torah that together make the word “lev” (heart); another includes the letter “shin” evoking “Shaddai” (The Almighty, one of the names of God); and the third recalls the yuds in the doors of the Pressman Ark. These tablets, with their golden band, are arrayed to evoke the Kiddush Cup composition of the original stained glass. Each of the yud tablets also contains five cylindrical voids — places where congregants can write and insert their prayers, wishes and dreams. This ritual recalls the long-standing tradition of slipping folded notes into The Kotel. Above, the Ner Tamid glows in the upper right pillar of the Ark.
54 etched glass panels, each a unique expression of the weekly Torah portions, surround and hold the congregation. They, too, glow and sparkle with light. The words and patterns in each representation carry subtle layers of meaning distilled from the Torah portions themselves, as well as numerous ancient and contemporary parsha commentaries. The intent was for each illuminated manuscript to employ a degree of reductive abstraction so that the focus is on the primacy of words rather than images. The hope is that they will be accessible to readers and viewers in numerous ways, such that the meanings of the panels will both be open to interpretation and discovery and also prompt questions (a very Jewish disposition), just as the Torah portions themselves challenge us to do.
Upon entering the layered, concentric spaces of the Sanctuary, one is greeted with the warm embrace of wood-clad walls, a suspended wood-slat ceiling, and circles and alcoves of pews and linked chairs. Here, the curved walls, ceiling and seats of the Sanctuary are meant to hug and hold the congregation. If they could speak, they’d say, in a heimish tone, “barukh haba”.
As one moves through, reflects and davvens in the Sanctuary, one might also be struck by the quality of light in this sacred space — a distinct light that feels special, different from the light we appreciate every day. It shines through skylights arrayed around the perimeter of the room and in the center, washing walls with a gentle glow and casting whimsical strokes across wood, fabric, plaster and glass surfaces. The central skylight shapes an ever-changing pattern of light and shadow, recalling a billowing tallit slung over the shoulders before Shaharit or stretched above the congregation like a huppah in the wind. These gentle, dappled patterns and lines of light and glows give the space an ethereal and spiritual quality. Light does not just shine through a window or skylight: it becomes an occupant of, and participant in, the space. It has a presence, like The Shekhinah.