synagogue spotlight
What’s happening at ... Beth Sholom Congregation
Beth Sholom Congregation
Celebrates Storied Roots
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
A rchitect Frank Lloyd Wright
died on April 9, 1959, just five
months before the comple-
tion of one of his final projects.

The project, along with being a last
of sorts, was also a first: Beth Sholom
Congregation, tucked away in the
suburbs of Elkins Park, became the
Chicago-based architect’s first and only
synagogue design.

Though the synagogue was founded
more than 40 years prior in 1918,
Beth Sholom is still known best for its
informal moniker as the “Frank Lloyd
Wright synagogue,” but its famous
building is not the congregation’s only
talking point.

With 450 member families, includ-
ing 70 families with children enrolled
in the synagogue’s Brodie Family
Early Learning Center preschool, Beth
Sholom’s membership has remained
robust. It has an active religious school,
an additional chapel, where most of its
services are held, and consistent pro-
gramming. On June 1-4, the Beth Sholom
Synagogue Preservation Foundation (a
separate, but related, entity from the con-
gregation) cosponsored historic pres-
ervation nonprofit Docomomo’s 2022
National Symposium in Philadelphia.

“We also have made a name for
ourselves in the preservation and
architecture world for buildings that
are significant and that are multiuse
because, certainly, Beth Sholom is a
synagogue first and a congregation
first, but we also do, and have the
ability to, host and be a space,” said
Beth Sholom Synagogue Preservation
Foundation Director of Tours and
Marketing Jill Rosen.

The space is home to two arts exhib-
its: one featuring local artist David
Hart and the other, Andrew Pielage,
a photographer specializing in images
of Wright creations. The preservation
foundation offers tours of the Wright
building, which was deemed a National
Historic Landmark in 2007.

Frankl Lloyd Wright and founding
Rabbi Mortimer Cohen discuss the
design details of Beth Sholom’s second
building in 1959.

Beth Sholom Congregation was founded in 1918, but it is known for its Frank
Lloyd Wright-designed building erected in 1959.

Courtesy of Beth Sholom Congregation and Synagogue Preservation Foundation
While the synagogue’s architectural
prominence has afforded it opportu-
nities to connect with outside orga-
nizations through its preservation
foundation, it also serves a spiritual
purpose for the congregation.

Features of the synagogue’s Wright-
designed building were constructed
with prayer in mind.

“The sloping floors are kind of you
being cupped in the hands of God as
you enter that physical space, and the
white carpet is kind of the sands of the
wilderness,” Rabbi David Glanzberg-
Krainin said.

When Wright designed the space
with Beth Sholom founding Rabbi
Mortimer J. Cohen, they considered
how light would filter in the space,
creating intricate, stacked glass work.

During the Ne’ilah service on Yom
Kippur, the last of the day’s five services
before break fast, Glanzberg-Krainin
is struck by the way the natural light
leaves the space after dusk, creating the
illusion that the gates are closing —
that time to be inscribed in the book of
life has run out.

“[Cohen] felt that you perceive God
more in less direct ways,” Glanzberg-
Krainin said of the inspiration for the
building. Few of the synagogue’s components
were by chance when Cohen was at
its helm. Founded at the tail end of
World War I, the synagogue, origi-
nally at Broad and Courtland streets in
Philadelphia, got its namesake as the
“house of peace,” according to syna-
gogue President Herb Sachs.

As decades passed, area Jews
acquired additional wealth and pros-
perity, resulting in many moving north
and to Abington.

“It was in the mid-’50s that they
staged their move to Elkins Park and
purchased land, and they moved the
congregation in stages,” Sachs said.

Cohen opted to move the religious
school first into the synagogue’s
now-administrative building. He also
pushed for the creation of a swimming
pool, hoping the space would become a
community center. Sachs would argue
that the space would, indeed, become
the community’s home, though the
swimming pool is now defunct.

But if the pool wasn’t an indication
of Cohen’s ambition, what followed
certainly was.

“He wanted to build a new vision for
an American synagogue, not a tradi-
tional synagogue building,” Sachs said.

With advice from several people,
Cohen contacted Wright, who agreed
to design a second building for the
synagogue. The two met at the Plaza
Hotel in New York, where Wright was
staying as he worked on his design for
the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Commissioned in 1953, the syna-
gogue’s new building was completed
six years later.

Though the synagogue’s future is
secure in its religious and preschool
programs, its past is immortalized in its
building, with a history that captures
a specific moment in the American
Jewish narrative.

In a period of integration for many
American Jews, a whimsical synagogue
that carried a similar panache as was so
common in churches was representa-
tive of their own complicated identity.

Beth Sholom was evidence of Jewish
assimilation, but it also augmented the
prayer experience, bringing Jews closer
to their spirituality and Jewish identity.

“Mortimer Cohen did not want to
just do things the old way, just to
build a traditional synagogue build-
ing,” Sachs said. “He wanted to do
something special.” JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
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