The ark that holds Congregation Or Hadash’s sacred torahs is on wheels, which is unusual yet somehow fitting for this eternally wandering Conservative Jewish synagogue in Sandy Springs.
Or Hadash has been a shul (or synagogue) on the move from its very founding a decade ago. It has held services and classes and married congregants in multiple homes, the basement of Sandy Springs United Methodist Church and, for the last seven years, a windowless hall at the Jewish academy Weber School.
Yet that has not stopped it from growing, from 56 founding families to 403 families today. And Monday on Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the Jewish High Holy Days when even casual Jews heed a call to faith, more than 1,000 adults and 300 children are expected to attend the shul’s services in the Marcus Jewish Community Center’s gymnasium.
Or Hadash’s ark-on-wheels, of course, will be there. Yet despite efforts to warm up the gym with curtains and lighting, the scoreboard and hoops will be in plain sight. This does not particularly bother Or Hadash’s members or their charismatic married rabbis from Argentina, Mario Karpuj and Dr. Analia Bortz.
In fact, they speak pridefully of being “gypsies” and “nomads,” relating in a small way to the ancient Israelites who wandered the Sinai desert for 40 years. They believe that all the movement has served to build the congregation’s character as a “family,” in this case a particularly fruitful one.
Yet soon this extended family finally will have a permanent home in the converted former paint and body shop of the now-defunct Tom Jumper Chevrolet on Trowbridge Road, just off Roswell Road. The 24,000-square-foot, industrial-style space is undergoing a thorough transformation under the direction of the Atlanta architecture firm bldgs.
Touring the raw construction site recently, Bortz talked about how part of the congregation’s challenge to architects David Yocum and Brian Bell was to make the space into an open welcoming tent.
She referenced the familiar Hebrew prayer “Ma Tovu,” which in translation begins, “How lovely are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel!”
As part of the renovation, expected to be completed by December or early next year, numerous windows and skylights have been cut into the concrete walls and roof to flood the structure with sunlight, befitting a congregation whose Hebrew name translates as “A New Light.”
An expansive courtyard, where services, receptions and programs will be held, is just off the main entry. And the classrooms for the congregation’s Hebrew school, which started with nine children in 2003 and now educates more than 90, open onto yet another courtyard.
Open is the operative word for the design. Sliding glass doors can be opened to knit together the 360-seat sanctuary (with individual chairs that can be removed or reconfigured, depending on the occasion) with the 400-capacity social hall.
The size of the sanctuary was a topic of much early discussion for the 18-member building committee. They could create a space big enough to accommodate throngs for Jewish new year services or spread their money — the project has a $4.5 million budget — more equitably on the overall space.
“We decided early on that we wanted to build a building for 362 days. We didn’t want to build a huge amount of space just to be used three days a year,” said Karpuj, referring to the two main Rosh Hashanah and one Yom Kippur services. “We wanted to maximize the space that we use every week. We’ll be using it constantly, in a very interactive way.”
In other words, Or Hadash, even after settling into its new home, may have to return to the gym or some other super-sized rental facility for future High Holy Days. Leaders say they want to live in the space for a while, to see just how flexible it can be, before making that determination.
Or Hadash’s “functional” facilities will be “simple and elegant,” shul president Betsy Edelman said. “There is not going to be gold leaf on the doors.”
That would seem appropriate to the style of a congregation. Some 20 percent of the families have internationally born members and multiple foreign languages are spoken. The synagogue’s Friday night service, in fact, is called Servicio de Shabbat and frequently swings to sunny, Latin-flavored rhythms.
“People come and feel they’ve found a family,” Karpuj said, noting that his many of his congregants hail from outside Atlanta, detached from their true families. “We usually say that we find at Or Hadash the family that we choose to have.”
But can that family, with an identity defined by an intimacy fed by transience, find contentment in a permanent home where it is sure to continue growing? And can Bortz continue to memorize all the congregants’ names, many of their cell phone numbers and the birthdates of their children?
“The big challenge is how do we manage to grow while keeping this less formal and intimate feeling?” Karpuj acknowledged. “It’s a balance we’re trying to find.”
Edelman, the president, said the congregation, whose first Bar Mitzvah invitations vaguely listed “to be determined” under location, is ready. Its members feel it’s especially important for students of its Hebrew school, which teaches Jewish literacy via unorthodox methods such as building with Legos or stretching with yoga, to inherit a space of their own, she said.
“This has been a pregnancy that instead of nine months has been nine years, generated with lots of anxieties and a lot of ambitions as well as all these wonderful dreams,” Bortz said. “Hopefully at the end of that, there’s the sense that we have blossomed together.
“But we don’t want the building to be the only reason for people to belong to our synagogue,” the rabbi added. “The real essence of Or Hadash is the content and not the context.”
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