Art: Jerusalem’s New Temple

Should a house of prayer be designed by a man who prays? Not necessarily, says Architect Heinz Rau, a German Jew raised in an orthodox family, and now (at 61) an outspoken atheist. Says he: “What is needed in a house of prayer is harmonious proportion and serene atmosphere. Whether an architect succeeds in creating these is a measure of the architect’s professional capabilities, and not of his religious beliefs. After all, there isn’t much difference in atmosphere between St. Mark’s in Venice and a synagogue.”

There is a marked difference between most places of worship and a new synagogue designed by Architect Rau and dedicated fortnight ago at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. Rau’s austere approach to his task conformed with a striking text in the Jewish Prayer Book: “He who is walking by the way and rehearses what he has learnt, and breaks off from his rehearsing and says, ‘How fine is that tree, how fine is that field,’ him the Scripture regards as if he were guilty against himself.” Rau decided against all distractions.

The temple exterior is a concrete hemisphere carried on eight squat arches. Within the arches is a platform supported on columns. This raised platform, standing free of the walls, is the temple floor. The whitewashed, hemispherical interior is bare of ornament, yet in a sense is adorned by light, which ripples up from below on all sides. There are no windows.

Some of the people who poured into the synagogue for its dedication thought the building looked like a broken egg. But Manhattan Rabbi Israel Goldstein, whose own synagogue is richly ornamented, attended the dedication and took Rau’s side. He found the temple “very conducive to prayer. I believe it will be imitated. It is simply beautiful—using the words literally—and its modesty is right, in a country which is both modest and austere.”