Woonsocket’s B’nai Israel
Founded in 1889 as an Orthodox congregation and later affiliated with the Conservative movement, B’nai Israel had only one previous home, a former Presbyterian church at Greene and Bernon Streets, which it purchased and renovated in 1904. Planning for a new structure began in 1944, but it was deferred because of immediate Jewish needs in Europe and Israel. By the late 1950s, synagogue leaders sought a building that would not only reflect their own self-esteem but perhaps impress their gentile neighbors. Indeed, when completed, the new B’nai Israel could have distinguished almost any community.
Arthur Darman, who had served as B’nai Israel’s president since 1919, was most responsible for envisioning and funding the new edifice. Though an immigrant with little schooling, he became one of Woonsocket’s most successful textile and real estate magnates as well as a notable bon vivant and epicurean. B’nai Israel also enjoyed the leadership and generosity of two brothers, Samuel and Israel Medoff, both successful businessmen.
Having been impressed by Beth-El’s understated elegance, Woonsocket leaders interviewed Percival Goodman for their commission. Hoping to establish a separate identity and perhaps build something even more sensational, they selected Samuel Glaser, a Boston architect and a Conservative Jew, who had recently designed Newton’s Temple Shalom. Its brightly colored windows, designed by a Boston artist, were especially enchanting.
Though trained as a traditionalist at M.I.T., Glaser became a fervent modernist. As an art collector and a Francophile, moreover, he was highly knowledgeable about avant-garde painters and sculptors. He shared this enthusiasm with his younger sister, Vera (later the donor, with her husband Albert, of Brown’s List Art Building). No doubt Glaser quickly sensed that the B’nai Israel commission represented an extraordinary professional and personal opportunity.
Designed to seat 260 in the main sanctuary, up to 400 more worshippers on folding chairs in the social hall and about 100 in the nearby chapel, the new B’nai Israel, configured around a garden courtyard, was so expansive that it could have easily accommodated a much larger congregation. By the time of its dedication, however, B’nai Israel’s membership had already reached its peak – about 200 families.
A highly sculptural form made of reinforced concrete, brick, wood and marble, B’nai Israel feels both imposing and inviting. Its most striking feature is a constellation of 30 stained-glass windows, the tallest of which soar 22 feet. Although congregants, standing on Prospect Street, may think that eight triangular-shaped windows resemble a hanukkiah, they are intended in a much broader sense to represent creation. Such gorgeously colored blobs and shards have no identifiable imagery. By contrast, a group of 12 windows, each graced with a Hebrew letter, represent Israel’s tribes.
Percival Goodman had urged Beth-El leaders to commission Marc Chagall to design sanctuary tapestries. Samuel Glaser, too, must have been inspired by Chagall’s ravishing windows for Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital, but he recruited the little-known Israeli painter Avigdor Arikha, then living in Paris, for B’nai Israel’s ornamentation.
One of Arikha’s early patrons, Baroness Alix de Rothschild, journeyed from Paris for the synagogue’s dedication. Yet most Rhode Islanders have never made the drive.
Glaser’s sumptuous taste is displayed throughout his Woonsocket landmark. For example, Anni Albers, a German-born Jew trained at the legendary Bauhaus, received commissions for two magnificent sanctuary weavings. The first, a shimmering parochet (curtain) measuring about five feet high by seven feet wide, is attached to the ark’s doors. Her second weaving, a long, diaphanous parochet, hangs over the ark.
Glaser also thought of commissioning Louise Nevelson, an acclaimed Jewish sculptor, to build a tableau of dark, wooden abstract forms to surround the ark. The cost would have been prohibitive, so he turned instead to one of his associates, who imitated her brooding and haunting compositions. In some sense, this was a Holocaust memorial without a name.
His imagination not yet exhausted, Glaser turned to another leading Jewish artist, Ludwig Wolpert, an Israeli metalsmith living in New York. He crafted a Ner Tamid and Ten Commandments, with flowing Hebrew calligraphy, to preside above the chapel ark. Wolpert’s yahrzeit (memorial) lamp hangs in an adjacent alcove. His most magical sculpture may be the sanctuary’s Ner Tamid – nothing more than a silver ring supporting a crystal.
Needless to say, B’nai Israel’s magnificent adornments were of museum quality. This was not ironic, for a lower-level lounge included exhibition cases for the display of liturgical objects.
Unfortunately, Glaser did not receive another synagogue commission. Through the Lists’ patronage, however, he was able to build a new entrance and wing for New York City’s Jewish Museum in 1963. Regrettably, it has been demolished, but B’nai Israel still quietly beckons.
GEORGE GOODWIN was co-editor of “The Jews of Rhode Island” (Brandeis University Press, 2004) and has edited the Rhode Island Jewish Historical Notes for a decade. He is a member of Temple Beth-El.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is part of a series about Hiddur Mitzvah (enhancement or beautification of the divine commandment). In appreciation of Hiddur Mitzvah, The Jewish Voice will highlight Judaica collections in our synagogues and museums throughout our coverage area.
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