Chibas Jerusalem Synagogue. Glenville, Cleveland 1926-1952.
I have recently come across the term 'photographers of abandoned places'. There is something interesting in ruins. Things were built to be used. Sometimes, places fall out of use. Nature reclaims. Physics, biology, and geology will transform. Before all that passes, history and archaeology can describe.
On the east side of Cleveland, many Jewish congregations moved their worship sites to new buildings in the suburbs. The big share was in the 1950s. I read that of some twenty that became Black Protestant churches, the former Chibas Jerusalem is the only one abandoned. Their congregation left the building in 1952 to merge with another Glenville synagogue that moved to the Heights in '49. The fenced property now says 'Pentecostal Apartments'.
I was sent a photograph of one of these triple windows surrounded by flaming, autumnal, vine foliage. I had not travelled this street before, and came just to use the camera. One window made its way to the new museum of Judaica in Beachwood.
Driving through Black neighborhoods one can recognise the Star of Davids. The wheel some associate with Hinduism, but here it may refer to Ezekiel's chariot wheels. There is much esoteric folklore, mysticism, and kabbalistic references to the wheel. It is beyond me.
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postscriptum: building is gone
Nov 7, 2013 part of the building collapsed.
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