Nomination - Table of Contents   ..................  Temple Beth Zion -Table of Contents

Nomination - Temple Beth Zion
National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

By Francis R. Kowsky

Temple Beth Zion - OFFICIAL HOME PAGE

Ben Shahn (1898-1969) and the Stained Glass Windows and Ten Commandments

From the earliest days of the design of the sanctuary, the architect planned to have large works of art over the entrance and behind the bimah. These would eventually become large areas of stained glass.

For their Chicago Loop Synagogue, which opened in 1958, architects Loebl, Schlossman & Bennett had signed the American expressionist artist Abraham Ratner (1895-1978) to design a colorful, abstract stained-glass window to fill the entire eastern wall. Ratner’s great window on the theme "And God Said Let There Be Light”"inaugurated a vogue for large abstract walls of glass in synagogues.

Well-known American painter, lithographer and photographer Ben Shahn (1898-1969) was the artist selected to participate in the creation of the Temple Beth Zion sanctuary with Abramovitz. In addition to the stained glass windows, Shahn also designed interior furniture and art, including the wooden Ark, a large gilded metal menorah, and two monumental concrete pylons that proclaim the Ten Commandants in brilliant gold and blue expressionistic Hebrew characters.        

Born in Lithuania, Ben Shahn came to New York as child in 1906, when his parents immigrated to America. After studying art in high school in Brooklyn, Shahn attended the Arts Student League in New York, and, in 1923, he became a member of the National Academy of Design. During the 1920s, he traveled in Europe and North Africa, where he developed his intention to devote himself to themes drawn from modern life. By the 1930s, Shahn was a committed social realist painter whose highly stylized version of realism was at times controversial, as when, in a series of paintings, he portrayed the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti in a positive light. During the later 1930s and 1940s, Shahn painted figurative murals for the Works Progress Administration and created lithographs chronicling the plight of the American farmer during the Great Depression. In 1956, Harvard University confirmed his stature as a leading American artist by appointing him to the Charles Elliott Norton Chair of Poetics. During his tenure there, Shahn articulated his philosophy of social realism in a series of lectures that were published as The Shape of Content (1957). His defense of realism ran counter to the rising age of passionate abstraction that the New York School was pioneering at the time. This makes his non- representational windows at Temple Beth Zion all the more remarkable.         

Shahn designed tall abstract walls of colorful glass for over the western entrance and for behind the sanctuary on the east. Willet Hauser, Architectural Glass, Inc. of New York, made the windows. Several processes were utilized, notably acid etched  flashed glass, hand painted fired glass, silver staining, and lead and mouth blown antique glasses. When the windows, which are described below, were finished, Shahn explained in interviews how he went about creating the stained-glass windows, which are unique to his art. Asked how he had arrived at the imagery, Shahn stated that he "took the space and the setting offered him and developed about half a dozen sketches before selecting the final decision." (Anne McIlhenney Matthews, "New Temple Amazing Edifice," Buffalo Courier-Express, November 27, 1966.)          

On viewing the complete stained glass in place, Shahn remarked: "If you get goose bumps on your skin when you view something then you know it is good. If you get those goose bumps on your goose bumps then you know it is great." Apparently, he felt the latter sensation.  ("Temple Window Pleases Shahn," Buffalo Courier-Express, December 8, 1966.)    

In terms of the artist’s stylistic development, the windows represent his late style. Beginning after World War II, Shahn’s paintings and graphics evolved more and more toward melancholy, fantasy, somber tonalities, sometimes even an Edward Hopper-like mood of loneliness. In his Temple Beth Zion windows, these elements are fused into transcendent, messianic visions.        

After mid-century, Shahn turned more and more to subjects drawn from his Jewish heritage. "It seemed to me," wrote his wife, Bernarda, "since he had rather emphatically cast off his religious ties and traditions during his youth, he could now return to them freely with a fresh eye, and without the sense of moral burden and entrapment that they had once held for him.  (John D. Morse (ed.), Ben Shahn. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972.  217.)               

In particular, he held a great reverence for the Psalms and above all, the 150th. "He was deeply affected by its running cadences, its majesty, its vivid imagery," stated Bernarda. 
(Ibid.)   At Temple Beth Zion, he had the opportunity to express his love for the poetry of the psalm in the 28-feet-by-24-feet, slightly concave stained glass window over the entrance, the so-called balcony window. In abstract visual language, Shahn suggested the words of the 150th Psalm, which a choir sang at the dedication of the first Temple Beth Zion in 1865.
Praise God in his holy place!
Praise him in the heavenly dome of his power! Praise him for his mighty deeds!
Praise him for his surpassing greatness!
Praise him with a blast on the shofar!
Praise him with lute and lyre!
Praise him with tambourines and dancing!
Praise him with flutes and strings!
Praise him with clanging cymbals!
Praise him with loud crashing cymbals!
Let everything that has breath praise

The larger eastern window (figure 8), which measures 32 feet by 40 feet, evokes the story of creation as recounted in the Book of Job, verses 38:4-7, wherein God is depicted as the architect of the universe:
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations? Speak if you have understanding.
Do you know who fixed its dimensions?
Or who measured it with a line?
Onto what were its bases sunk?
Who set its cornerstone?
When the morning stars stand together And all the divine beings shouted for joy?

Installing these windows called for almost as much ingenuity as did the building of the temple’s reinforced concrete walls. Not only did the virtual walls of glass need to withstand the buffeting of the winds, but they also had to meet the artist's demand that his designs be done as single compositions rather than a series of small segments, as window manufacturers first proposed. Abramovitz agreed with the artist and told him to "create one unit, we will resolve the problem." ("Temple Window Pleases Shahn," Courier Express, December 8, 1966.)              

To solve the problem, Abramovitz turned to Lev Zetlin, a well-known Israeli-born New York construction engineer whom Abramovitz and other modern architects relied on to solve difficult structural problems. The system that Zetlin devised holds both windows in place by means of one- quarter-inch high strength steel wires stretched across the openings and anchored into the concrete walls. Small metal rods join the window mullions to the cables. This system, compared to a cats' cradle and the principle of the wire wheel, supported the great weight of the glass and secured the vast surfaces against the wind pressures while minimizing the need for supports that would otherwise have obstructed one’s view of the windows. "This acts as a thin net and the perspective and height make the wires practically invisible, creating a fabulous ethereal effect," observed a contemporary commentator. 
(Anne McIlhenney Matthews, " 'Cradle' for Stained-Glass used Here for First Time," Courier-Express, August 2, 1965.)   

For the sanctuary, the artist also created the simple wooden Ark, a large gilded metal menorah, and two monumental concrete pylons displaying the Decalogue. The latter 30-foot-tall elements proclaim the Ten Commandants in brilliant gold and blue Hebrew characters whose elastic shapes echo the words in the Creation and Psalm 150 windows. Shahn often included expressionistic lettering like this in his paintings, one of which may have formed the inspiration for the great bimah end window. 
(According to the Willet Hauser web site, “The congregation had purchased a painting of Shahn’s at a New York gallery. This painting became the inspiration and design for the bema window. The painting was translated into stained glass cartoon by Benoit Gilsoul, who also did the detailed an acid etching of the flashed glass.” See htto://www.willethauser.com/temple-beth-zion-buffalo- ny. Retrieved May 2017.)            

The pylons and the windows also served in the artist’s mind as a powerful contribution to the meaning of the synagogue as a place of coming together. "The public function of art," he wrote, "has always been one of creating a community. There is not necessarily its intention, but it is its result. . .It is the image we hold in common, the character of novels and plays, the great buildings, the complex meanings, and the symbolized concepts, principles, and great ideas of philosophy and religion that have created human community."
( Ben Shahn, The Shape of Content, New York: Vintage Books, 1957, 150.)       


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