The Shul - Jack & Miriam Shenkman Building

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The Shul stands in a forest, nestled in woodland, and rising above it. It is built on the highest point on the hill, the highest point of the Campus. According to Jewish Law, a Shul must be the highest building in a town, to show its stature and the honor it deserves. Our mission is represented in that. Wherever you look out you are surrounded by the forest, by trees.

The Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chassidus, used to pray and study in the forest, surrounded by nature, communing with G‑d there in the beauty of nature, far from the noise of the city. We are surrounded by nature, by the forest outside, and by the natural wood beams and trusses inside that define the building. You are in a peaceful space, in the quiet of nature, in a place in which one can focus on prayer, on study, and on communal experience. The Shul is almost entirely transparent and open to the outside and to others.

The building is physically defined by the rising Menorah that defines its shape and inner form. It is not a motif but the form of the building itself, the definition of its inner space. (This Menorah was copied from a 12-century manuscript, from Maimonides’ hand drawing of his tradition of the form of the Jerusalem Temple’s Menorah, in his magnum opus .)

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