Item: Model of a Synagogue

Title:	Model of a Synagogue
Authors:	Barnett Newman
Keywords:	Judaism Kabbalah Contemporary Art Barnett Newman Baseball Synagogue
Issue Date:	8-Apr-2005
Description:	Newman based his steel sculpture Zim Zum I (1969) on the windows of his synagogue model, first presented at The Jewish Museum in the 1963 exhibition Recent American Synagogue Architecture. The design is an eclectic fusion of modern architecture, Jewish mysticism, and baseball - arguably the most popular form of secular 'religion' in American culture. The congregation is seated in dugouts. Newman replaces the traditional bimah (pulpit) with a pitcher’s mound in the center of the sanctuary. In his statement, Newman refers to makom (“the dwelling place” - a mystical term for God) and zimzum: “The synagogue is more than just a House of Prayer. It is a place, Makom, where each man can be called up to stand before the Torah to read his portion…Here in this synagogue, each man sits, private and secluded in the dugouts, waiting to be called, not to ascend a stage, but to go up on the mound where, under the tension of that 'Tzim-Tzum' that created light and the world, he can experience a total sense of his own personality before the Torah and His Name.”
URI:	http://hdl.handle.net/1964/475
Appears in Collections:	1. Kabbalah and Contemporary Art

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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1964/475

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