Content area
Full Text
Mt. Sinai in the Suburbs: Frank Lloyd Wright's only "Jewish" building turns 40.
In March, 1954, Frank Lloyd Wright sent the drawings for the nascent Beth Sholom Congregation to Its rabbi, Mortimer Cohen. He attached a note: "Herewith the promised `hosanna' -- a temple that is truly a religious tribute to the living God." Rabbi Cohen replied, "You have taken the supreme moment of Jewish history -- the revelation of God to Israel through Moses at Mt. Sinai -- and you have translated that moment with all it signifies into a design of beauty, and reverence. In a word, your building is Mt. Sinai." The synagogue was dedicated on Sept. 20, 1959, four months after Wright's death. Cohen, the Judaic scholar, and Wright, the master of design symbolism, together had created a mountain of light for Jews in the desert of suburbia.
Located in Philadelphia's Logan section, Beth Sholom had been led since its inception in 1909 by Mortimer Cohen. A hands-on leader intent on seeing his congregation survive and thrive, the rabbi was always seeking new ways to increase membership. In the years following World War II, he could read the writing on the wall: Future generations of worshipers were moving to the new frontiers of Abington, Cheltenham and other farflung destinations. Faced with the prospect of presiding over a dwindling congregation, Cohen made the unprecedented decision to take Beth Sholom to the suburbs. Not a politically correct move in hindsight, but correct nonetheless: The congregation had 400 families in Logan in the 1950s; it boasts 1,300 today.
The synagogue board purchased the Breyer (of Breyer's Ice Cream) estate on Old York Road in Cheltenham Township. But before a spade could dislodge any earth, the township cited eminent domain -- the parcel was slated for municipal development. The board would have to sell it back to the township. As it turned out, the tract of undeveloped land opposite the Breyer estate came on the market, and so, for a quick profit of $75,000 (plus the Breyer family organ), the congregation had a new location.
The 75k would come in handy: There was no building fund to speak of, and construction costs for the new synagogue ballooned from an estimated $750,000 in 1954 to...