Deuteronomy. A Torah scroll in the top ring unravels to the bottom. The names of the holidays and the daily prayer services spiral down the window. In the bottom panel are words from Deuteronomy calling Israel “A land flowing with milk and honey,” and declaring, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.  You shall love [the Lord your God]” (Deut. 6:3-4).

Numbers. The upper ring shows a tent, representing the Israelites’ journey in the wilderness. It is connected by a ribbon to our own temple building in the bottom panel.  The texts speak of the sanctity of the synagogue: "How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings O Israel" (Num. 24:5), and, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people” (Isaiah 56:7).

Leviticus. This book contains many of the laws that define our relationships to others and to God. The bottom quotation is, "Be holy for I the Lord your God am holy" (Lev. 19:2).  The middle panel contains the Thirteen Attributes of God's Mercy that are sung during the Torah service on the High Holy Days and on festivals.

Exodus. The upper ring shows Mount Sinai as a mountain pierced by lightening with an Egyptian pyramid in the background. The names of the Tribes of Israel–the twelve sons of Jacob—flow from a river. At the bottom, the tablets of the Ten Commandments appear with the words, "God said to Moses, 'I Am What I Am." (Ex. 3:14).

Genesis. The upper ring is an abstraction representing the chaos and order of creation. The names of the patriarchs and matriarchs Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob, Rachel, and Leah—are on the ribbon that flows down the window. In the bottom panel, a quotation from Genesis reads, “No longer will your name be called Jacob, but rather Israel” (Gen. 32:29).

The Sandra Frey Rich Memorial Chapel – early in the design process, it was Rabbi Kendall’s belief that we needed some extra "sacred space" in our congregation. Having served in synagogues where memorial plaques were in the main sanctuary, the Rabbi urged that we create a memorial room in which families might gather in quiet meditation, and so this chapel was born. There are five windows in our sanctuary for the Five Books of Moses; there are six windows in the Memorial Chapel to represent the six million lost in the Shoah. Conceptualized and designed by our Rabbi, you will find a considerable amount of Shoah imagery. The upper panels – again read from right to left as is Hebrew – begin with glass that is shattered and – a Star of David that is terribly fragmented. This certainly could be an emblem of Kristallnacht, that frightening and portentious night of November 9th, 1938, in which a state sponsored pogrom destroyed many of the synagogues in Germany and Austria and set in motion the wheels which led to the "final solution." As you from right to left, you will see that the star comes together, and the shattered glass begins to disappear until we finally reach the final panel where the star is whole and the glass is not shattered. This symbolizes two sensitive and observations: The first is that the Holocaust took away an entire culture and civilization; nonetheless the Jewish people survived – tattered, bruised, beaten, and terribly diminished, but nonetheless, survivors still. Since this is a memorial chapel designed not only to commemorate the Holocaust but also to serve as a place for people to mourn their individual losses, these upper panels might also underscore the passage of time. With time, it is not that we miss anyone any less or are less mournful, but time does allow us the opportunity to place a life into some kind of perspective so that we can focus on not just what we have lost but also on what we have had.

The lower panels depict a Torah scroll. This is a Torah scroll that has been torn and pierced, and it does not contain any of the classical Jewish writings that one finds in the Five Books of Moses. Instead, it contains a prayer for the martyrs of our people. You will see in the second panel a yellow star with the word "yizkor," the word that is traditionally used to designate remembrance but also in this particular instance, we remember the yellow stars which our people were forced to wear during the Shoah. The Torah almost has a bloody character to it. The deep reds come very close to suggest that the Torah is bleeding from the abuse that it is receiving from the hands of those who are "haters of Israel." The Torah is also punctured by barbed wire, certainly reminiscent of the fences which surrounded the camps. At the bottom of the first five panels, you will see smoke stacks. They were inspired by Nellie Sachs, the Nobel prize-winning author and poet whose work, "O the Chimneys," captured the despair and the loss of our people. The names of the camps where the machinery of death ran day and night, attempting to extinguish all that God cherished, can be found in the lower panels. If you look to the sixth and last panel, you will not only see a whole and complete Star of David that sits in glass that is not shattered, you will also see a Torah scroll that is no longer pierced and bloody but complete again. You will also see that the barbed wire has morphed into a living vine. Nothing would capture more eloquently the survival of our people than this vine, which trails off beyond our line of vision and this Torah, which in spite of the predations of so many implacable foes, nonetheless remains whole and complete and carries us into the future.