When the building of the former Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue was sold this past summer, the church that bought it, Christian Life Center, was faced with several problems.
One was the Holocaust memorial that had been left behind — four urn-shaped sculptures mounted on heavy marble pedestals that were fastened to the floor and had to be removed.
Another was the ark in the main sanctuary, which would have to be dismantled.
But what to do with these items after that? It was possible that they might have to be destroyed.
Rabbi Gil-Ezer Lerer, spiritual leader of Temple Menorah, plus some former Beth-El members who joined Menorah felt they could not live with that possibility, as Lerer told The Chronicle in a telephone interview Oct. 15.
So Lerer, some Menorah congregants and others took action. “We wanted them to go into our building,” Lerer said, and, to an extent, they have.
They couldn’t rescue the whole ark, but were able to remove and preserve the ark’s two doors, which Lerer said had been designed by Beth-El’s long-time Cantor Norton Siegel.
Lerer said that Mark Brick, president of B&E General Contractors, supervised the removal of the doors; and that one of Siegel’s children, Sandi Siegel of Milwaukee, is a professional shipper (executive vice president of M. E. Dey & Co.) who had the doors moved to Menorah.
The doors are now “propped in the main sanctuary” and the synagogue’s officials hope at some point to use them for its own ark, Lerer said.
The Holocaust memorial was a harder problem and took more effort. Lerer said that Big Red Machinery Movers (Dawn Kochanik, president) had to break the sculptures out of the floor to move them.
Then, said Lerer, Lakeside Granite, owned by Jim Swernoff, volunteered his firm’s time to sand down the bases of the pedestals so they could be stood up; and Peter Bokotey of Art In Stone Monument cleaned and reassembled the items, which now stand in front of Menorah’s own Holocaust memorial.
Lerer said Bokotey also added something to the memorial, engraving into the pedestals images of flames and the Hebrew letters for the word zachor (remember).
Unfortunately, said Lerer, the team couldn’t save the whole ark, which has been disassembled, or the mosaic on the wall behind the four sculptures, which had to be covered up.
Moreover, Lerer said, while he was able to raise some money to finance all this work, it is not fully paid for yet.
Nevertheless, Lerer said “this team effort” was successful and “made everybody feel good.”
Leon Cohen
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