At Last, a New Lincoln Square Synagogue

The Torah scrolls had only 250 feet to travel from the old Lincoln Square Synagogue to the new Lincoln Square Synagogue.

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times Detail of the facade.

The journey took seven years.

A protracted redevelopment process reached a welcome milestone on Jan. 13 when the scrolls were transferred and the new sanctuary at 180 Amsterdam Avenue, between West 68th and West 69th Streets, was at last open for worship. It has already had its first bar mitzvah. (No small thing at Lincoln Square, an Orthodox congregation, which can claim that its fist formal bat mitzvah was that of Justice Elena Kagan of the Supreme Court.)

By 2006, the synagogue had outgrown its original building, 200 Amsterdam Avenue, at West 69th Street. It struck a deal with American Continental Properties, a development company. They agreed to a land swap â€" 180 Amsterdam for 200 Amsterdam â€" under which the synagogue would gain a site for a new building, designed by CetraRuddy, and about $20 million to help finance the project. The developer would gain a site for a new apartment tower that would replace the old synagogue.

In 2010, however, construction came to a halt. “Simply put, there is not enough money to proceed,” Joy Resmovits reported in The Jewish Daily Forward in October. The article said some members feared that the financing crisis might undermine the entire synagogue, t! hough the senior rabbi, Shaul Robinson, was quoted as saying, “I have no doubt that it will continue to exist.”

City Room caught up with Rabbi Robinson last week in the sanctuary at 180 Amsterdam Avenue, where workers were putting finishing touches on the ark. The place still had that new synagogue smell. He was looking quite happy.

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times The main sanctuary of the new synagogue has as many ceiling lights â€" 613 â€" as there are commandments in the Torah.

“It’s really a godsend,” Rabbi Robinson said, standing under a ceiling with 613 lighs, corresponding to the number of commandments in the Torah. “It’s light, airy, welcoming. It’s full of the facilities that we need to re-engergize.” These include a ballroom and banquet hall, a study hall (beit midrash), an ample lobby, classrooms, an outdoor terrace and rental space.

Rabbi Robinson explained that the critical gap between the $50 million development cost and the $30 million in hand from American Continental Properties and hundreds of congregation members was made up by a single gift of more than $20 million from “one very generous but anonymous donor whose identity is known but to me.”

The synagogue posed a challenge to the architects, John Cetra and Theresa M. Genovese, of CetraRuddy. The original sanctuary, designed by Hausman & Rosenberg and built in 1970, had tiered seating in the round, like a Greek amphitheater. The arrangement underscored the communal nature of the congregation. “This space had become part of their iconography,” Mr. Cetra said. But! it did n! ot â€" in the eyes of some members â€" provide sufficient visual separation of the sexes, even though the seating itself was divided by a partition known as a mechitza, as is common in Orthodox synagogues.

While keeping the general form of a circle, or horse shoe, the new sanctuary replaced the high tiers with a much more gentle rake and deflected worshipers’ direct views of one another by focusing them more toward the ark.

Apart from the mechitza around the women’s half of the sanctuary, Rabbi Robinson said, the seating arrangement was identical. The goal, he said, was that all members of the congregation feel equally important and equally able to participate. The layout still preserves the sense that one ought to be thinking of others while praying, he added.

David W. Dunlap/”From Abyssinian to Zion” The old synagogue at 200 Amsterdam Avenue was constructed in 1970. It has been deconsecrated and is to be replaced by an apartment tower.

Some of the new building’s gestures to Jewish tradition have yielded untraditional results. For instance, the facade is composed of five distinct ribbons of undulating glass, intended to symbolize the five books of the Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. (By coincidence, in its journey from old site to new, the Lincoln Square Synagogue leapfrogged over a former public library branch at 190 Amsterdam Avenue that is now the West End Synagogue, a Reconstructionist congregation.)

The glass almost appears woven because there is a thin layer of bronze-colored fabric laminated within. This is meant ! to evoke ! the parchment of the Torah scrolls, as well as the fabric of prayer shawls. On his first visit to the old synagogue, Mr. Cetra said, he was deeply impressed by the sight of worshipers donning their shawls and praying, and of greeting one another fondly and respectfully. “There was so much excitement and animation,” he said, qualities he attempted to incorporate in his design.

Rabbi Robinson has little time for nostalgia on behalf of the old synagogue, which he said is still destined to be replaced by an apartment tower.

“For the Jewish community,” he said, “nothing in our experience is truly permanent, even a synagogue. This is a chapter, as opposed to a final destination. Jews are always on the march.” Even when it takes seven years to travel 250 feet.