Instead of music and prayers, the worship wing inside of Beth-El Congregation was filled with the sounds of machines as two workmen on ladders installed 75-year-old Jewish stained glass medallions into the Reform synagogue on July 12.
What wasn’t heard was archivists and glass artists holding their breaths watching their yearslong journey come to an end. For Hollace Weiner, director of the Fort Worth Jewish Archives, the installation ends a 23-year “metaphorical tug-of-war” between the congregation’s preservationists and the building committee over whether to salvage the historic stained glass, Weiner said.
The 1948 hand-painted, enameled, kiln-fired medallions measure up to 12 to 18 inches in diameter. A Hanukkah menorah, a spice box and other Jewish ceremonial objects center the stained glass panes made in muted shades of yellow and blue. Beth-El Congregation’s previous temple was originally built in the 1920s, but the medallions were added after the temple was refurbished after a fire that “gutted the interior,” according to The Portal to Texas History, a digital archive made by the University of North Texas.
In 2000, Beth-El sold its building on 207 W. Broadway Ave. to construct an $11 million synagogue located in Southwest Fort Worth on 4900 Briarhaven Road. The new sanctuary brought a contemporary feel to worship with its limestone walls and its abstract, brightly stained glass windows. Decisions on how much money to spend preserving elements of the old building or funding for the new temple made the antique stained glass medallions “a point of contention” between Beth-El’s preservationists and building committee, Weiner wrote in her column for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
“Let me tell you it was a real tug-of-war. The preservationists were saying, ‘Yeah save everything,’ and the others were saying, ‘No, we need all the money we can raise to go into this new building,’ ” Weiner said.
Several items from the 1920s building made it to the new one: a frieze, which is a decorative stone panel, this one complete with an engraved Psalms quote, two granite cornerstones, 17 ornamental light fixtures, a pair of eight-foot limestone menorahs and several others, Weiner wrote.
“As an archivist, I’m saving as many things as we could,” Weiner said, “But the building committee said, ‘Well, there’s some stuff that doesn’t fit in the contemporary building. It’s a different style.”
Weiner and other archivists wrestled with the committee on how to remove the stained-glass panes from the old building and preserve them, which can be a pricy task according to Don Young, a Fort Worth glass artist.
“When you’re up in the air on a ladder and you’re messing with something that’s delicate,” Young said, “you can charge a premium for that kind of work.”
The cost to remove the antique stained glass was $7,000, Weiner said. After some back and forth between the presversionationists and the building committee, an agreement to accept donations to fund the project and get the 36 medallions removed from the old building and stored in plywood crates.
Judy Cohen, a member of the temple’s building committee donated the funds in 2022 so that the medallions could be adaptively reused inside the contemporary temple, Weiner said.
The architect for the new building “allowed for a dozen of the antique medallions to fill windows in the new temple’s Hall of Remembrance, a mini-museum that pays homage to Beth-El’s history,” Weiner wrote. The medallions symbolize the Twelve Tribes of Israel, which are “the traditional divisions of the ancient Jewish people,” according to Jewish Virtual Library.
The other medallions are showcased in two different parts of the temple. Four of them are on display in the Hall of Remembrance, while nine of them are encased near the entrance of the new temple.
“This showcase was rewired and backlit so the medallions can be dramatically lit with the flick of a switch. It feels very spiritual at night,” Weiner said.
Weiner provided a home to 25 out of the 36 medallions into the contemporary temple, but her quest wasn’t done yet. She still had 11 remaining medallions stored in plywood boxes that she wanted to incorporate into Beth-El.
Young and his wife, Debora, own a glass studio and were hired with the task to recreate the original yellow-and-blue stained glass that originally surrounded the 11 medallions and find the best place for them.
“That was the biggest challenge, trying to make them look like a natural fit,” Young said.
After nearly two hours of installation, Weiner watched her 23-year journey of bringing pieces of Beth-El’s history all in one place. The remaining medallions are now installed at the top of the doors to the small worship room where the light inside the sanctuary illuminates the medallions in their shades of yellows and blues.
“I’m overjoyed. Everything blends together better than I thought,” Weiner said. “They found a home.”
Marissa Greene is a Report for America corps member, covering faith for the Fort Worth Report. You can contact her at marissa.greene@fortworthreport.org or on Twitter at @marissaygreene.
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