Deborah Golden
The meaning of the stained-glass windows in Har Zion Temple’s Dogole Chapel is obscure. To begin deciphering them, I asked several Har Zion staff members what the abstract images in the windows depict, and no one I approached had an idea.
We had just read Parshat Vayahel about the decoration of the Mishkan. Services were in the chapel, and I noticed that the colors described in the Torah for the Tent of Meeting were the same colors as the chapel, including the windows. I remembered that the original chairs for congregants had been purple (but were replaced with blue chairs in a renovation).
Noticing the colors, I saw that they represented an equivalency between the Mishkan and our chapel going beyond the familiar analogy drawn between the bimah features, in particular the ark, and the design of the Tent of Meeting. Now I see that the windows invite worshipers to take a mystical journey, accompanying the Israelites in the desert as they meet God in his home.
The Dogole Chapel of Har Zion Temple is part of the campus for the suburban synagogue constructed during Rabbi Gerald Wolpe’s tenure in the mid-1970s.
The artist who created the stained-glass windows in the chapel, Tony Mako, spoke with Wolpe to discuss the rabbi’s thematic ideas for the sanctuary and chapel windows before Mako began to create a design for them. Mako took sketchy notes of these conversations and, recently, Har Zion obtained copies of those handwritten notes that confirm this analysis of these windows.
The windows are installed on each side of the bimah and are near mirror images. The repetition on each side has the effect of immersing the viewer in the depicted scene. Their style is quasi-cubist. Like cubist work, they depict a realistic subject matter, but the subject is simplified, broken and diffused. This abstraction creates a sense of dreaminess but, within this vagueness, is a depiction of a priest at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting standing at an altar, perhaps making a sacrifice.
The Tent of Meeting, also referred to as the Tabernacle and, in Hebrew, the Mishkan, is a portable tent described in the Torah as having been built to house both God’s presence and the Holy Ark containing the Tablets of Law as the Israelites trekked through the wilderness. Though the subject matter of the windows is not easily discerned, there are many visual clues. To begin, reading the central figure as a person is consistent with the way Mako depicted human figures in the Har Zion sanctuary windows. It is also supported by Mako’s notes.
Mako and Wolpe are both deceased, but Mako’s notes of his conversations with Wolpe provide insight into the meaning of the windows. In one place, the notes say: “Leviticus 4 – 6,” which describes sacrificial rituals performed by the priest at the altar at the entrance of the tent. Another typical excerpt from the notes says: “instructions to Priest … sacrifices … menorah … altar … focus on Tabernacle (tent).” These notes and the visual clues in the abstract windows make it clear that the subject of the windows is the priest at the altar at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting with the presence in the cloud.
Both compositions appear across three windows on opposite sides of the bimah as if the three windows comprised one, single canvas. The theme of the priest offering a sacrifice at an altar at the entrance to the Mishkan reflects the purpose of the chapel as a place of prayer because sacrifice was replaced with prayer. Prayer and sacrifice have an equivalence as a process by which we communicate with God and the chapel windows are meant to underline that correspondence.
The architecture of bimahs in synagogues is designed to evoke the Mishkan and this equivalence. But the Dogole Chapel windows take this conceit beyond that reference to another space that can be metaphorically entered by worshipers.
Here, priest and altar are framed on one side by drapery in the form of a gold swag sweeping across the inner top portion of the composition, with the vertical tail of the swag framing the main subject, which is the priest at the altar. This part of the composition, the draping swag off to one side creates elegance and drama, the illusion of depth on the two-dimensional surface of the picture and highlights the main subject matter.
Swagged drapery enclosing the main subject is a trope used again and again in the history of art. In this glass picture, the drapery is the opening of the Mishkan. Conventionally, the main subject of a visual composition is in its center, as is the case here. A white cloud appears through openings in the drapery. This is the cloud in which God resided at the Mishkan. (“When Moses had finished the work, the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the Presence of יהוה filled the Tabernacle.” Exodus 40:33-34.)
From the artist’s notes, it is evident that Wolpe chose the colors for the décor of the chapel, which were mainly purple and blue with some red and gold. The Mishkan décor, as described in the Torah was red, purple, blue and gold. The notes show that the composition evolved.
Originally, the rabbi suggested that the windows depict Moses with the tablets, but this subject was dropped at some point in the process. Wolpe told Mako that the chairs in the chapel were going to be “plum” and, indeed, the original congregant chairs of the chapel were a rich purple that the manufacturer might have called plum.
In addition to the colors, Mako’s notes refer to The Tabernacle several times. Three examples, among others, are, “Tabernacle + cult of sacrifice,” “focus on Tabernacle” and “Tabernacle (i.e. tent).” Significantly, the notes clearly contain the word “cloud,” which is a reference to the cloud in which God resided when it settled on the Mishkan. Other repeated words are: “trek thru the desert,” “sacrifice,” “altar” and “menorah.”
These words describe the portable Mishkan at which a priest stood at an altar to offer sacrifices to God, as detailed in the Torah, and they confirm that the Mishkan, cloud and priest at the altar are the subject matter of the windows. There is a priest at the open entrance to the tabernacle before the altar, perhaps preparing to make a sacrifice.
The windows depict where the Israelites thanked God, drew close to God, atoned and celebrated in the space where we do the same. Contemplate the windows and drift back to that place.
Deborah Golden is a retired lawyer.