Ark at B’nai Israel
The ark of Congregation B’nai Israel is made of translucent textile panels that run from floor to ceiling and terminate in a depression in the bema floor that is filled with sand from Israel. The panels of the ark, detailing of the high windows to Land Park and translucent chuppah over the bimah visually and spatially overlap in such a way that the edges of each of the elements are elusive. In this way, a cloud in the sky visually blends with the fabric of the ark evoking the Pillar of Cloud described in the Book of Exodus.
The play of daylight and artificial light within the ark is meant to add to its temporal quality, filling it with and casting upon it an ever-changing light. The torah scrolls inside the ark are seen in silhouette from the sanctuary and appear to hover inside the ark and above the sand. The fabric of the ark also bridges into the congregation as the “Shechinah cloud” and the marriage “chuppah” representing home.
The ark doors represent a “mixing of the waters” of the Sacramento River Delta and the Mediterranean Sea and Israel.
A mapping abstraction ties the adjacent Sacramento River, directly behind the sanctuary, to the greater Sacramento Delta, the San Francisco Bay, the Pacific Ocean, and to the Mediterranean Sea and Israel through a collage of varying scales and layers.
On the left hand door, horizontal hatches represent the rows of crops of the surrounding agricultural lands (the lifeblood of the Delta). On the right door, the Hebrew names of the weekly parshiot cycle from top to bottom. The words bleed together to create a graphic figure of tributaries. The cycles of parshiot is represented as an analog to the cycles of the Delta crops. The “footprint” of the sanctuary and social hall is shown on the right panel as it relates to the river.
The Pacific Ocean morphs into the Mediterranean at the bottom of the right door and over to the left door. The Parshiot float in the Mediterranean Sea. Israel, the Dead Sea and the Kinneret are visible in the bottom right-hand corner of the right door.
