Centennial Celebration:

New York Times Article from December 1, 1968

Featuring Beth El’s Main Sanctuary

In reviewing archival material for our exhibitions celebrating Beth El’s Centennial, the Archive Committee recently uncovered a December 1, 1968 New York Times article featuring our main sanctuary.

“In Expanding, a New Rochelle Synagogue Looks Homeward” describes several of the sanctuary’s design features inspired by ancient Israeli art and reports on New York architect Edgar Tafel’s search for the perfect materials. For the sanctuary’s eastern wall behind the ark, Rabbi Golovensky envisioned stone facing reminiscent of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Traveling to Israel, Mr. Tafel gathered stone samples from a quarry located somewhere between Tel Aviv and Bethlehem and brought them home in a suitcase for the building committee to review. While there, Mr. Tafel also enlisted the help of a ceramics artist, Mrs. Gdula Ogen, whose unusual tile work he had admired at a Tel Aviv museum. He located Mrs. Ogen in Jerusalem and also brought home some of her tiles for the committee to see. Although she had never before taken on a synagogue project, Mrs. Ogen eventually agreed to design, craft, and install ten panels depicting Jewish holidays for the interior walls of the sanctuary. Each panel would be comprised of forty-five tiles. Mrs. Ogen agreed to work at a reduced fee if she were given sufficient time to complete the project, since the kiln in her kitchen had the capacity to bake only five tiles at a time.

In addition, the article describes Mr. Tafel’s design of the seats for dignitaries on the bimah, which were modeled after the Seat of Moses from the Synagogue at Chorazin.

Mention is also made of our esteemed member, Mr. Stanley Batkin, who, as Beth El’s Building Committee chairman, worked closely with Mr. Tafel and visited museums all over the United States and Europe to initiate an art program for our beautiful synagogue.

For more fascinating information about the planning and design features of our synagogue and the many magnificent art objects housed within, we refer you to Mr. Stanley Batkin’s own book about the design and construction process: Let Them Make Me a Sanctuary. Copies are available in the Beth El Library.