Wednesday, August 26, 2009

The finished product!



















After a final week of some intensive inpainting, we are proud to present the final result! More soon on the treatment and future plans...

1 comment:

  1. The month of Elul announces the New Year. The restoration of its mazel simultaneously points to the future and the past. The future, inasmuch as it is an 'auspicious' sign that the water damage from years of neglect has been 'erased'. The past, inasmuch as the restortation of this mazel points us to the immigrant generation's desire to have what they considered to be a necessary ingredient of what a shul should look like. Immigrants from Galitzcia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe who formed congregations like Stanton Street's (whose founders came from the towns of Brezjan, Riminov, Blujhev, and Lancet), often did not have that much control over the exterior of their Lower East Side shul buildings. Older buildings were reused, and in the Lower East Side, few shuls ever faced East. Even when the exterior was being designed, often the materials and construction codes, as well as the small size of many of the lots, meant that the exterior would not look Eastern European.

    The interiors became the focus of making a shul building look like those from the Old Country, and the mazelos, with their view of nature and human nature as being tied to the heavens, were intrinsic to that. So as these mazelos are restored and as we move towards Rosh HaShana, we are also connecting the shul and ourselves back to those original immigrants and their shuls in Eastern Europe.

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