International Survey of Jewish Monuments

From the Brink of Death to Life Overflowing
by JULIE SALAMON
(The New York Times 30/03/05)

I'd be careful how you use that word 'museum,' " warned Roberta Brandes Gratz, founder of the Eldridge Street Project, housed in an 118-year-old synagogue at the nexus of Chinatown and the Lower East Side in Manhattan.

"It's a little bit of a delicate point," agreed Amy Waterman, executive director, in a separate interview. "Some of our board members would say, 'Don't call it a museum. It sounds like it's over, like it has ossified.' "

Her own feelings about that word? "To me, 'museum' means my favorite places," she said, confessing further: "We are a member of the American Association of Museums."

Definitions can be problematic. Especially in a multitasking institution like this, which is also known as the Eldridge Street Synagogue (and remains a working house of worship) as well as a National Historic Landmark, a performance space and - indisputably - a museum. The Eldridge Street Project still carries its amorphous name partly because such distinctions are not academic for an organization that still needs $4 million to complete a $12 million renovation that has been going on for almost 20 years. In 2000, the City Council sidestepped the church-state divide to provide $1 million to help rehabilitate the physical plant by emphasizing that only one of Eldridge Street's hats is a skullcap.

For many of its Jewish visitors, the building's timeworn artifacts and faded, but still evocative, grandeur offer a perfect setting to channel ghosts from the past of the Lower East Side. "I just got goose bumps when I first walked in 20 years ago," said Ms. Gratz, an author and a member of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.

When the synagogue was built, in 1887, it stood at the center of Eastern European Jewish immigration to the United States. There was a synagogue on almost every block, many in converted churches and tiny storefronts. Even then the Eldridge Street Synagogue tried to fulfill more than one kind of yearning. With its 70-foot ceilings, a velvet-lined ark grand enough to store 24 Torah scrolls, trompe l'oeil mural and marvelous stained-glass windows and sky lights, this grand (and grandiose) place of worship aimed to signal the promise of prosperity associated with German, or uptown, Jews.

The neighborhood remains dominated by immigrants, but they are mainly Chinese. So, for the last five years, on the first Sunday in June, the Eldridge Street Project sponsors an "Egg Rolls and Egg Creams Block Party." Torah scribes and Chinese calligraphers compare techniques, via translators, and Jewish and Chinese mah-jongg players offer instruction. Entertainment can include a Peking opera troupe and a klezmer band.

"People in the neighborhood look at it as a place to go to for cultural events," said Ken Lo, director of the China Arts Council. Mr. Lo, 52, who grew up on the Lower East Side, is old enough to remember when a Jewish presence was evident on the streets, not just in institutions like the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and the Eldridge Street Project. "If there weren't any of these events at the synagogue, it would just be this strange building they don't know anything about."

This institution-in-progress has also become a perpetual construction site. An elevator is scheduled to be installed this summer, but most of the 65 stained-glass windows are still in crates inside, waiting to be cleaned and restored. In February, scaffolding went up in the upper balcony of the main sanctuary, where women used to sit for services, back in the days when 800 families belonged to the synagogue (compared with the two dozen or so stalwart worshippers who come regularly today). The scaffolding will protect the synagogue's antique wooden benches while allowing workers to climb to hard-to-reach spaces up in the domes, and to remove peeling paint throughout the arches and coffers and prepare the surfaces for historically accurate paint finishes.

In this evolving museum, the renovation itself is part of the process of educating, preserving and memorializing. The project acquired a lot next door for a staging area for construction, only to uncover an archaeological find: a mikvah, a ritual bathing pool for Orthodox women, and two other baths. They have been covered up again, so workers can park construction equipment and a trailer on the lot. But, Ms. Waterman, ever ambitious for the project, revealed more plans for the future. "We fantasize about a mikvah-cafe arrangement," she said, "like the Roman baths in Bath, England."

Meanwhile, the Eldridge Street Project offers a guided tour called "From Bottom to Top," which allows visitors to witness historical reclamation and contemporary refitting as it happens. The tour begins in the spiritual glory of the sanctuary and continues into the subcellar, dug 15 to 20 feet below the original basement with hand shovels to protect the fragile structure. On a recent private tour, Ms. Waterman pointed out the glories of the subcellar: a brand-new heating system, kitchen, restrooms and a water fountain.

"Here's what makes us a museum," she said. "We have a water fountain."

Her delight in this small amenity is understandable. The entire sanctuary was beginning to resemble a water fountain when Ms. Gratz, who was working on a book about urban renewal, was invited by a friend to visit in the 1980's. "There was water pouring through the roof, and I could see we would lose it," she said. The upstairs had been nailed shut in the 1950's, when the congregation moved to a small sanctuary in the basement. The ancient heating system barely managed to warm part of the downstairs and was turned on only for the Sabbath.

Bit by bit, Ms. Gratz and an initial group of enthusiasts found grant money to stop the deterioration and then to think about renovation. It wasn't easy; again, what was this place, exactly? "We were like a fish out of water," Ms. Gratz said. "We fell into nobody's real category so people would say we don't have a category for you."

By 1991, the founders were willing to take the plunge - or dip their toes, at least - into the museum world. The Eldridge Street Project officially became a museum and joined the American Association of Museums. Ms. Waterman came on board that year and began a series of programs that has evolved into an inventive assortment of lectures, concerts and very 21st-century art exhibitions. The museum even has had traveling exhibitions. Last year, Christie's displayed artifacts from the Eldridge Street shul, which included ceramic spittoons, an ornate spice box and a small glass container holding the ashes of the synagogue's mortgage.

Now there is a staff of six, including people in charge of education, development and public relations. About 18,000 to 20,000 visitors come every year, including schoolchildren from the neighborhood. Recently, a group of second graders from Public School 1 took a tour with Annie Polland, the museum's educator and historian.

They talked about the meaning of words like history and immigrant and what those words meant on the Lower East Side. Ms. Polland then asked the children to draw a part of the synagogue they found beautiful and another part they felt needed work. When they finished, she said, "They almost exploded with questions." The session concluded with rugelach and pickles and a promise that this class - made up primarily of children of Chinese immigrants - would return in April to learn about Passover.

Others bring their own histories for reinterpretation. "There was one fellow who would just come and cry at the bimah" (the platform that holds the Torah when it is read), Ms. Waterman said.

The complexity of the building and its various meanings is not lost on the artists who perform there. Last September, the Gerard Edery Ensemble performed Sephardic and Ashkenazic cantorial melodies on traditional instruments with the cantor Alberto Mizrahi.

Mr. Edery, in an interview, described the circumstances. It was hot and humid, and there was no air-conditioning. The noise of the nearby subway made it impossible to keep the doors open. The house was packed with people fanning themselves with their programs. The bimah was crowded with musicians.

But Mr. Edery said he wasn't worried, and not just because during the sound check he realized the acoustics were almost perfect - no microphones needed. "Every instrument, every voice sounded so pristine and true to itself," he said. "Without being sentimental, I felt that place was like an object that has been ritualized and absorbed the power of that ritual. As uncomfortable and sweaty as we all were, we were totally inspired."

In the 20 years that have passed since Ms. Gratz watched in horror as water poured into the synagogue, she has become more comfortable calling the Eldridge Street Project a museum.

"The concept of museum has changed," she said. "It doesn't have the connotation of a place that is only about the past. That's why Eldridge can be comfortably put in that category, because we are not only about the past."