May 28, 2011

Elder and Sister Blattman’s Missionary Weekly Journal
May 28, 2011

After working at the library we walked on down the road past our apartment building to the Beth Shalom Synagogue. The admission was $10 each but, hey! you only live once! So, after watching a film that we were told that everyone wants a copy of after viewing we were taken on a fascinating tour of the only synagogue designed by Frank Loyd Wright. The building is an amazing combination of triangles built over a floor that simulates great cupping hands holding the congregation of about 1000. We were told that one could also imagine a great tent over gently sloping sand dunes. The sand colored carpet gives an additional effect of the Tabernacle carried by the Children of Israel in the Sinai Desert.

When Dan & Kim were here we looked through the window and wondered at the red lights. Those red lights are the perpetual flames over the ark of the covenants (center of photo on right) where their Torah scrolls are stored. At the end of our tour conducted by one of the rabbis we got to see and even touch a Torah scroll. The velum that the Torah was written on was bright white and soft like thick paper The lettering, all hand done, was perfect. They were each wrapped in velvet and covered with a silver breastplate. We were as impressed with the Torah scrolls as with the building.
Saturday evening we went to see The Damnation of Faust, by Hector Berlioz in Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center in downtown Philly. Thanks Joe & Negin for the tickets. It was really something. The music was beautiful. In addition to the Philadelphia Orchestra there was a big choir and at the end even a boys choir that filed in to sing the finale. As you may have guessed, we borrowed both the photos of the Beth Shalom Synagogue and the Kimmel Center from the internet.
Just before the program started a short and plump little man came rushing in and sat beside us. He threw his cane down across two seats and tossed his canvas purse onto one of them and plopped his ample backside into the other. Starting from his feet, he was wearing tan and red saddle shoes, stripped stockings the color of Neapolitan ice cream, bright blue and white striped trousers, a black vest, pink shirt, and purple tie. The conductor (a rather odd man himself) turned to him and smiled before the performance. Nancy thought he might have been a music critic. If so, I hope his taste in music is more discriminating than his taste in clothing.

And today, (you all probably are thinking that we goofing around all the time and aren’t doing any missionary work), our director took us to the museum of the Academy of Fine Arts. Our director did his graduate work there and taught classes so he was still on the faculty there and he got us in free. It was a treat to go to a great museum of fine art with an art history professor as a guide. A fair amount of it went right over our heads but we did get to appreciate some beautiful paintings. Again, thanks to Google, I’ve clipped a couple some the great works there that we saw. I thought these were interesting because I’ve seen some of them in history books. The first is Walt Whitman, the second is called Hailing a Ferry, and then Ben Franklin and George Washington.