One Jew’s many ‘pilgrimages’

Despite the importance of such holidays as Sukkot, Pesach and Shavuot, which hearkened Jews to the Temple, we seem reluctant to use the term “pilgrimage.” The word has probably acquired too many Christological connotations.

Nevertheless, for many years before moving to Rhode Island in 1987, I was curious to visit Touro Synagogue.  Aware of its historical and architectural importance, I wanted to experience this shrine personally.  I also wanted to take many photographs so that the place and atmosphere would become embedded in my memory.

My wife, Betsey, who grew up north of Boston, first visited Touro with her Confirmation class.  She and I made the journey together in June of 1983, only a few days before our engagement.

Given my fascination with religious architecture, I should not have been surprised by how much I enjoyed that first visit to Newport.  Beyond the gorgeous weather, so much spoke to me.  Even from its exterior, Trinity (Episcopal) Church, for instance, seemed to exemplify early 18th-century architecture.  But I also marveled at the weathered tombstones scattered in its graveyard.

I don’t recall if Betsey and I spent much time examining Newport’s Jewish burial ground, but a few decades later, I felt that I had made a contribution to American Jewish history by writing a lengthy article about its Egyptian-style gateway for the journal of the Rhode Island Historical Society.

Betsey and I were not aware of Temple Beth-El’s history or its architectural stature before moving to Providence.  We sought to affiliate with a Reform synagogue, and Beth-El quickly became our spiritual home.  And, once again, I was fortunate to publish an article, about its embrace of modernism, this time in the journal of the American Jewish Archives.  Another article, about Woonsocket’s handsome B’nai Israel, would follow.

Perhaps my fascination with synagogue architecture was inevitable, for I had grown up at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, in Los Angeles.  A distant cousin of Providence’s Temple Emanu-El, it was, and remains, one of the finest examples of a historical revival synagogue of the 1920s.  Wilshire Boulevard’s choral and organ music also spoke to me, and the sanctuary’s figurative mural, portraying epochs of Jewish history, is both spellbinding and unique.

My childhood temple was surely a factor in my decision to study art history at the undergraduate and graduate levels.  Eventually, I became familiar with many of Christendom’s major and minor sanctuaries – in Rome, Assisi, Chartres, Ronchamp and Santiago de Compostela, for example.

I have also visited several European synagogues, as well as ghettos and Holocaust museums and memorials.  I have been to Israel three times.  Curiously, my first trip there, organized by the Los Angeles Federation, was considered a “mission” rather than a “pilgrimage.”

Once modernism became central to my architectural understanding, I was also fortunate to visit numerous American houses of worship.  These were designed by such Jewish and gentile masters as Max Abramovitz, Marcel Breuer, Philip Johnson, Louis Kahn, Eero Saarinen, Frank Lloyd Wright and Minoru Yamasaki.

Before moving to Providence, Betsey and I lived for a few years in St. Paul, Minnesota, where Mt. Zion Temple, our Reform congregation, had been designed by Erich Mendelsohn, the distinguished German-Jewish émigré.  He had been interviewed for the design of Providence’s Beth-El, but Mt. Zion was the last of his four American synagogues.  To honor the centenary of his birth, I organized an exhibition and symposium.

Perhaps blessed by the spirit of Roger Williams, I enjoy seeing, visiting and photographing Providence’s myriad houses of worship.  Indeed, my daily walks often take me past the Quaker Meetinghouse, whose simplicity and silence say much to me.  I tend to dismiss the nearby Chabad House, although Rabbi Yehoshua Laufer has summoned me to help complete his minyan for nearly 25 years.

So how do I explain my unending fascination with Portsmouth Abbey and School, which was founded by the Congregation of English Benedictines in 1918?   Enchanted by the community’s rural yet stately setting, I often stop there on my journeys to or from Newport.

Unlike the late Rabbi William G. Braude or his late son, Rabbi Joel, I do not know anybody at the abbey or school, but I am familiar with the career of the distinguished Italian-born architect Pietro Belluschi (1899-1994), who lent his talents to the “upper campus” beginning in 1952, while dean of architecture at MIT.

A prolific designer of Catholic and Protestant churches, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, where he once resided, Belluschi also designed five synagogues.  I have visited his splendid Temple B’rith Kodesh, in Rochester, New York, and his lesser Temple Israel, in Swampscott, Massachusetts.

Beyond its peaceful and verdant ambience, why do I feel so drawn to the Portsmouth campus?   One key is its sense of order, both physical and metaphysical, such that the church of St. Gregory the Great, crowned by a graceful spire, is clearly the focal point.

Although this octagonal structure – derived from medieval prototypes – rises above the neighboring fields, valleys and dwellings, it is also, surprisingly, a modest building.  The church’s exterior decoration consists primarily of fieldstone quarried from the site, and gentle redwood beams help define the upper-level cupola.  Even to a Jew, I dare say, the church feels more welcoming than commanding.

This also seems true of the church’s interior, which simultaneously unifies and divides clergy and congregants.  While the central pews seat perhaps 500 worshippers, the six surrounding chapels, on a slightly higher level, provide for more personal interaction –  including, for example, the sacrament of confession.  A few hundred worshippers may also be seated in the balcony pews – a large number compared to the coterie of monks sequestered behind the altar.

Candles often provide clues and cues inside houses of worship, but this church offers a quite dramatic interplay of light and darkness.  Vertical bands of stained glass also transmit bright colors.  Above the central altar, a glistening, wiry web supports Christianity’s central image.  Upon exiting the darkened sanctuary, worshippers may also feel uplifted by a sea of brightness.

The Portsmouth church is both a traditional and an innovative building.  As such, it represents a fresh and modest reinterpretation of architectural tradition.  Unlike Wright, Johnson, and perhaps other modernists, Belluschi found a way to balance the past and present, but also to summon younger generations.

Inevitably, I must ask myself, as a Jew, if I am somehow envious of what Belluschi achieved in Portsmouth.  Probably not, because I so enjoy Percival Goodman’s masterful design of Beth-El, for example.  And I can understand and treasure this synagogue in so many ways that I cannot with a church.

Is it fair for me to conclude that my recurring visits to Portsmouth Abbey and School are a pilgrimage?  Indeed, can a pilgrimage be more or less than a religious journey?

Perhaps I reassure myself by believing that my countless visits to art museums, libraries and gardens also represent pilgrimages.  But at what point does an artistic experience become subsumed by a religious one, or vice versa?  Indeed, is one possible without the other?

Perhaps Judaism’s most rewarding architectural experience is a sukkah, which is hardly a building at all.  Even more architecturally problematic may be one’s encounter with, or pilgrimage to, a structure that is merely a fragment of a wall.

GEORGE M. GOODWIN, of Providence, is the editor of Rhode Island Jewish Historical Notes.