After a final week of some intensive inpainting, we are proud to present the final result! More soon on the treatment and future plans...
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Welcome to the Stanton Street Shul Conservation Project blog! We've created this blog to provide a place for feedback from the congregation and the larger community about the conservation work on the synagogue's wall paintings this summer. We'll be posting some information about the history of the building, the paintings, and of course plenty of pictures as the work progresses. Please feel free to ask questions, make comments and enjoy! Also, become a fan of the shul on Facebook!
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The painting we'll be treating:
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Elul panel before treatment
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.
ReplyDeleteThe 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.