Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on August 7, 2021

In recent years as Green Road Synagogue was using its original building, the lobby and hallways were crammed with strollers. Not anymore.

The new synagogue, which was recently completed for $12.5 million, features a dedicated space for strollers and wheelchairs. The two stroller corrals are tucked outside the main entrance.

Everybodys walking on any given Shabbat morning, synagogue president Adena Klineman told the Cleveland Jewish News during a July tour of the building. And those stroller corrals? Full. Full already.

The 38,500-square-foot building also has a beit midrash, a room that functions as a second sanctuary and study hall. More heavily used than the buildings main sanctuary of 450 seats, the beit midrash has services on a daily basis. It also is used as a space for community gatherings. It features a wall of books, several editions of the Talmud, some with English translation, all donated within the last five years. The built-in shelving in that room already shows signs of personal use. Members have claimed shelves to keep their religious texts.

Its very interesting how people or members really make things their own, Klineman said. It tells you though how homey it is, the desire to have their stuff here.

The building was two years in the construction phase, with $11.65 million raised among congregants at the growing synagogue.

In designing the new building, the congregation kept elements of the original design and artifacts from the 1973 edifice, the congregations most recent building.

One of our primary focuses was on identifying the legacy pieces of our original building and bringing them over into the new building, building chair Steven Soclof told the CJN. So the signage, the menorah on the exterior wall, is a perfect example of that.

Synagogue president Adena Klineman, from left, executive director Sarah Ehrenreich, Rabbi Binyamin Blau and Steven Soclof, building chair, stand in front of a stained-glass installation taken from the original Green Road Synagogue that is showcased in the lobby of the new building.

A colored-glass installation by artist Edward Sloane depicting the 12 tribes of Israel was carefully restored and placed in the new lobby. The main sanctuary features faceted glass panels that were in the old buildings sanctuary. In addition, there are four-stained glass blocks above the lobby depicting Jewish symbols from the old buildings social hall.

A sculptural memorial to victims of the Holocaust has a place in the legacy memorial hall, along with the memorial book listing the names of family members of congregants who perished in the Holocaust. The ner tamid, eternal light, from the original Green Road Synagogue building hangs above it. That space also contains two ceremonial sinks, used by Kohanim and Leviim for hand washing during festival services. And just off it are shelves for tallitot and personal items.

It helps us when we come in we remember our past, and then we move into the sanctuary, which also has the evocative pieces from the former synagogue, Klineman said, referring to the design of the legacy memorial hall.

Rabbi Binyamin Blau shows the ark doors brought from the original building depicting the tree of life.

The ark in the main sanctuary contains the metal tree of life and glass doors came from the former sanctuary. The yizkor boards from the congregations past homes also hang in the sanctuary.

These elements stand out in an otherwise sleek, one-floor, accessible building that contains a brides room, a four-room youth wing, quiet rooms, two social halls, a courtyard with a garden and structure for a sukkah, along with a commercial kitchen that can accommodate both meat and dairy functions due to its back-to-back, double design.

In the past eight years, Green Road Synagogues congregation has doubled to its current 350 membership units. Many of the new members are families with many children, and the synagogues youth wing is already full of minyanim and classes, with more groups than initially planned for.

The main sanctuary by opening movable walls that separate the social halls can accommodate more than 1,000 people for services or events.

Rabbi Binyamin Blau spoke of one of the goals in building the new structure.

Everything weve done with much care to maximize the efficiency and functionality, while at the same time being aesthetically beautiful, he told the CJN.

Designed by Marco Ciccarelli of studio TECHNE Architects of Cleveland, the building was constructed by Green Road Construction, an affiliate of Arbor Construction of Cleveland. The construction schedule was slated for 18 to 20 months. Slowed by the supply-chain issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, construction took two years.

Green Road Synagogues new sanctuary features 18 lights below a skylight.

In the sanctuary, the mechitza the divider between the mens and womens seating includes a waist-high wall and movable Plexiglas dividers that can be raised and lowered to allow for better hearing. The womens section was also designed in one area, with clear sight lines to the bima and Torah table, due partly to the semi-circle seating pattern in the sanctuary.

In the old building, Soclof said, women were separated in two wings.

One of the comments was the women wanted to be together, and we tried to accommodate that, he said.

The congregation that built the 1973 building dates to 1910. The members were from the Marmaresher region of Hungary.

Originally known as the Marmaresher Bnai Jacob Society, the congregations first home was in a rented room on East 26th Street and Woodland Avenue in Cleveland, according to the synagogues website. It moved to a rented building at East 30th Street and Scovill Avenue in 1920 and incorporated as the First Marmaresher Bnai Jacob Congregation in 1922. It hired its first rabbi in that same year.

After World War II, the congregation moved to a building on Lancashire Road in Cleveland Heights, prior to purchasing land and completing the first Green Road Synagogue where the current parking lot is.

The older membership of the synagogue were deeply involved in the construction phase and the construction industry, Soclof said. You talk to some of the families. A lot of them couldnt contribute any money but contributed their skills set whether it was the plumbing or the wiring or the HVAC work or the cement work.

Steven Soclof searches for the memorial page for members of his family in Green Road Synagogues memorial book dedicated to victims of the Holocaust in the memorial legacy hall.

In the early 1970s, members also began to build houses along Beachwood Boulevard and a new section of Wendover Road so they could walk to their new shul. Soclof grew up four houses away from the synagogue in the same house he lives in now.

Green Road Synagogue was the first Orthodox synagogue on the street, which is now dotted with synagogues and study houses, as well as the new Cleveland Community Mikvah and the Cleveland Kosher Food Pantry.

Making the decision to rebuild on the same site was made possible by the foresight of past members, Klineman said.

Were so fortunate that as a congregation that back in the 70s, the early 70s, when they bought this land, they bought a really huge piece of land, Klineman said, referring to the five-acre site. We were really able to have two full buildings on this site.

Adena Klineman stands at the back of the sanctuary, where prayer books are kept for each holiday, and where a yizkor plaque from the congregation hangs.

Still, the decision to demolish rather than expand and renovate was complicated.

That was a real challenging exercise for the congregation to go through, said Soclof, whose family has belonged to the synagogue for generations. I mean, everyone loved that building. There was a lot of emotional attachment to it. And yet I think the importance of having a new building that met the contemporary needs of the synagogue was very clear. And ultimately, we had a congregational vote and the effort to build a new building was supported.

Members voted 134-17 on Aug. 30, 2015 to build a new Green Road Synagogue. As the building underwent construction, members continued to pray at the old one.

Demolition started Oct. 27 on Green Road Synagogue in Beachwood. To read more about the new synagogue, visit cjn.org/beachwood.

Klineman expressed appreciation for the city of Beachwood, which allowed the new building to be used even prior to the finish of landscaping and the parking lot with a temporary occupancy permit. They were also concerned about our safety and wanted us in this building rather than in the former building, Klineman said.

The temporary occupancy permit dates to Oct. 16, 2020. That night, Green Road Synagogue held its first Shabbat service in the new building.

Blau is pleased with the way the synagogue has come together.

I was so overjoyed that we had the ability to provide a beautiful structure to have for the wonderful things we do within, he said. Im excited we have a beautiful, beautiful edifice, but Im more excited about what happens inside and the fact that we can match the two together. That was really so magnificent for me. That was really wonderful.

Go here to see the original:

Green Road Synagogue unveils state-of-the-art shul - Cleveland Jewish News

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