A New Synagogue in the Old City
GELERNTER, DAVID
A New Synagogue in the Old City Architecture matters. BY DAVID GELERNTER ARCHITECTURE is politics by other means—at least some of the time. An emerging architectural story in Jerusalem is, in...
...That move poses deep problems, and won't happen for a long time...
...Too often Israel sounds (is forced to sound) angry and defiant...
...buildings—and blew up the Hurva synagogue, just for the hell of it...
...Butting in is everybody's right—Jerusalem is the quintessential world-city...
...Recently the Jerusalem Post ran a story on a project that is bound to attract plenty of attention before long: the rebuilding of the monumental Hurva synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Old Jerusalem...
...In the long run, the Knesset (whose current building looks like a parking garage in Mineola) is no doubt fated to move to the Jewish Quarter too, to look out across the plaza that fronts the Western Wall...
...It was a dignified but unremarkable building...
...it is time to step up and speak...
...Equally important: The Hurva synagogue is the story of modern Israel in microcosm...
...I've just described Edwin Lutyens's famous Viceroy's Palace in New Delhi...
...Not even the doviest elements of the Jewish community contemplate returning the Jewish Quarter to Arab occupation...
...in part, a tragic missed opportunity...
...So why are the Israelis treating this as such a low-key project...
...Amber, deep terra cotta, and emerald green come to mind...
...Making decisions about Jerusalem is the exclusive right of Jerusalem residents and Israeli citizens, of all creeds...
...Israel has more than its share of weird architectural mistakes...
...ruins speaking of war and destruction are to be replaced by a reassertion of hope, peace, holiness...
...Jerusalem is full of domes...
...once upon a time, three domes (appropriately) stood out: the Muslim Dome of the Rock, the christian Holy Sepulcher, the Hurva synagogue...
...the current plan is to rebuild this 19th-century synagogue verbatim...
...but when the topic is love, third place suggests a certain lack of ardor...
...But that's no excuse not to show and tell...
...Send an international exhibit of the design submissions around the world...
...Thus, cause for rejoicing: A gap is being filled in the skyline of one of the world's most important cities...
...The project falls under Natan Sharansky's authority...
...Third holiest," which is how the city ranks with Muslims, is a respectable distinction as far as it goes...
...Also required: an eminent international panel to judge the competition...
...The platform is ready, the mike is on, the tape is rolling...
...It's just a message of power that says 'We are sovereign.'" If an Israeli professor says so, when his countrymen merely want to rebuild a blown-up synagogue in the historically Jewish quarter of the historic (since the Early Iron Age) Jewish capital—what is a typical Sor-bonne or Oxford or Berkeley professor likely to say...
...On the other hand, who cares...
...Invite the king of Jordan and the president of Egypt to join it...
...Yes of course: Most of the world will be too bigoted to look and listen...
...But a sufficiently good architect can meet any list of design constraints and still produce a distinguished building instead of a mere copy of a structure that isn't worth copying...
...Jerusalemites want something with a dome that looks and feels like a synagogue—fair enough...
...Fat chance—but why not ask, and put the propaganda champions on the defensive for once...
...When the Israelis recovered Jerusalem in the Six Day War of '67, they rebuilt a single arch in the ruins of the Hurva, intending it as a temporary memorial...
...More important, the new synagogue is an opportunity for Israel to speak to the world, and it would be crazy not to take the opportunity...
...Architecture is one of a nation's most important ways of speaking...
...Is it possible for a monumental building to have a dome and be based on traditional local design motives, yet still be strikingly original and beautiful...
...The poster could be an epoch in itself, if it were spare, vivid and strong, not sentimental, not defensive, with not too many words or colors but exactly the right ones...
...Now, at last, they have plans in hand to rebuild the synagogue itself...
...The Israelis are missing a wonderful opportunity to speak to the world about Jewish Jerusalem...
...he is minister of housing and construction, and as good a man as any to point out that bombs can only rip up a nation's body, not its spirit...
...In 1948, when Israel declared independence, the Hurva was the main synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City...
...Is it that Jerusalem needs another synagogue...
...but since we're holding an architectural competition anyway, why not ask for designs and have a look...
...An emerging architectural story in Jerusalem is, in part, wonderful news...
...To copy it is pure tragic timidity...
...An announcement of the competition, showing and explaining the site as it is today—the lone arch amid ruins—ought to be posted in every art and architecture school in the world, and in many other places too, everywhere...
...The Jordanians seized Old Jerusalem in '48, kicked out all the Jews, banned Israelis from entering even to visit or pray, desecrated Jewish cemeteries, vandalized Jewish David Gelernter is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...But the Post quotes Professor Ronnie Ellenblum of Hebrew University, who asks: Why rebuild the Hur-va...
...But the right kind of architectural speaking can make it sound like what it is, the proud patron and loving, dutiful guardian of one of the world's greatest treasures...
...Why settle for mediocrity...
...Why should the world care...
...Telling the world things it doesn't want to hear is one of Israel's oldest, noblest traditions...
...Over the centuries a number of synagogues occupied the site, but the last one—the one the Jordanians destroyed—was built in 1864...
...There has rarely been such an outright need for an open, worldwide architectural competition...
...To get the most beautiful building that can be gotten, of course—but that's only part of it...
...The Jewish Quarter itself, largely rebuilt after 1967, is full of lovely new buildings that are traditional yet original— some by the eminent Israeli architect Moshe Safdie (although, for the Hurva synagogue assignment, there are designers I would prefer...
...Jews and christians are especially entitled to butt in: christians because the Gospels culminate here, Jews because they regard this city as the holiest on earth...
Vol. 8 • October 2002 • No. 4
