The translucent panels that surround the sanctuary can easily be moved to open or enclose the space. “Clouds” hang suspended from a black sky ceiling. The seats face a brilliantly blue stained-glass window that allows beams of light to warm the congregation on crisp fall days.
The dramatic design at Emanuel Congregation on Chicago’s North Side is unlike any other synagogue, earning its architect an award and winning over a congregation.
Despite the modern elements of the design, it is meant to depict the first place of worship described in the Bible–the “Tent of Meeting” described in the Old Testament’s Book of Exodus.
“On the High Holidays, you get the sense you’re looking at the desert, the sense you’re there with Moses,” said Roger Passman, a college professor who began attending services at the Reform temple two years ago.
“You get the sand-colored carpet with the feeling of a tent with movable walls,” he said. “It’s a brilliant design.”
The temple, built nearly 50 years ago along the lakefront at 5959 N. Sheridan Rd., was modernized to meet the congregation’s needs for intimacy and flexibility, Rabbi David Sofian said. The work also came at an affordable cost, about $750,000 total, he said.
“Their ability to visualize space was remarkable,” said Sofian, who said response from members has been almost unanimously positive. “It took an incredibly courageous group of lay leaders to accept the plan and work with it, because it was so different.”
Nearly every bit of the project was custom-made, including panels that were cut from the same type of spinnaker cloth used for boat sails. They hang between poles on a metal framework that supports a ceiling canopy. Behind the ark–the cabinet that holds the Torah scrolls–sits a wall of stone imported from Jerusalem.
Portable furniture, including the seating and the wooden platform called the bema, allows for flexibility and contributes to a nomadic theme. The theme is based on the period when Jews wandered the desert after leaving Egypt, setting up and taking down the tent every time they moved.
Architects took advantage of the stained-glass window that was already there by simply turning chairs around, so that, for the first time, the congregation faced the window.
“It’s a lot different from any other synagogues,” said Les Jacobs, a congregation member and associate architect on the project. “We didn’t copy anything except the Bible, which, if you’re going to copy anything, is a good thing to copy.”
Today, the cavernous sanctuary can still seat more than 750 people during holiday functions, but the new design allows leaders to divide the room and create a smaller, more casual space for regular services.
The congregation’s membership of about 400 families is easily half the size that it was in the 1950s, before many Chicago Jews began moving to the suburbs, he said.
“If 150 people attended service, they were lost in the sanctuary,” Sofian said of the former layout.
Last month, the American Institute of Architects Chicago recognized the redesign by presenting Ross Barney + Jankowski Architects with its 2002 interior architecture award. Principal designer Carol Ross Barney, whose firm had never designed a synagogue before, shared the honor with Jacobs, who came up with the concept of the Tent of Worship.
“I always think that the best projects I do sometimes are the ones where it’s the first time I’ve done that building type,” Ross Barney said. “It makes you think. You don’t have any preconceived notion.”
The real surprise, Sofian said, was that the sanctuary could look so different for a relatively modest cost.
He purposely kept the original ark the same, for continuity. The ark features a modernistic painting of the Tree of Life, something that Sofian speculated was pretty radical for its time, in the 1950s.
“That may be part of the culture of the congregation, to be willing to try something new,” he said.
