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October 17, 2003/Tishri 21 5764, Vol. 56, No. 4
World's largest chuppah?
LEISAH NAMM
Managing Editor
This new canopy at Temple Kol Ami provides the synagogue with shaded space for outdoor programming.
Photo courtesy of Ted Anderson
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If somebody were to drive by the Scottsdale synagogue on 64th Street near Greenway Road, it may look like a giant wedding was about to occur. But the 2,500 square-foot canopy is actually a new addition to Temple Kol Ami.
The light beige fire- and UV-resistant canopy, 20 feet tall at its highest point, is designed to provide some shade for outdoor programs and to add to the synagogue's new social hall and patio.
"We keep joking that it's the world's largest chuppah," says Arlen Solochek, a Temple Kol Ami member who led the project. "You can get a really good size wedding party and probably the whole wedding underneath it."
The proposed space covering for the synagogue's new outdoor area was originally envisioned to be a solid patio cover, but Solochek, an architect, pictured something "a little more open and airy than a solid cover was going to be."
"Something that was a little bit more visually fluid - to use an architectural term."
He had seen the work of Scottsdale artist Geoffrey Bruce of G.H. Bruce LLC, who works in the mediums of canvas and steel, and thought "it fit in really, really well with the kind of feel that we had with the building."
The tensile sculpture is two overlapping canvases, made from the synthetic fabric polyethylene, stretched tight and tied to curved and straight steel poles that range from 8 to 20 feet high. The material blocks out about 90 percent of the sun.
The artist titled the piece "Reshimu," which Solochek defines as "the residual impression of the light or spirit that God drew out from creation."
"(The name) struck me as just perfect," Solochek says. Reshimu is also "compared to the fragrance of the wine which remains in the glass after it's been poured out of it," he notes.
The project's design started about a year ago and the canopy was finished last month, after a few months delay due to City of Phoenix regulations.
"The city wasn't used to dealing with a big canvas patio cover so they originally had all kinds of zoning requirements and building code requirements that we eventually were able to compromise or get waived," Solochek says. "The canopy went in very much as Geoffrey originally designed it, but that probably dropped three or four more months into the process."
Part of the project was finished in August, when a windstorm struck. "It was a big hammock instead of a big tent when one of the poles turned," Solochek recalls.
But now the installation is complete and the synagogue has held its first function under the canopy - a Shabbat/Sukkot family program on Oct. 10. Hundreds of people had dinner at the 35 tables set up underneath it, says Rabbi B. Charles Herring.
The canopies are "extraordinarily beautiful," says Herring. "When you see them, it just takes your breath away."
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