How Beautiful Are Your Dwelling Places, Jacob

Transforming a site of perdition into a place of benediction: the new synagogue at Babyn Yar in Kiev

On September 29 and 30, 1941, more than 33,000 Jewish men, women, and children were murdered in Babyn Yar, a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev. This event constituted the largest single massacre perpetrated by German troops against Jews during World War II. In commemoration, and as an affirmation of a Jewish future, a synagogue designed in the shape of an oversized Jewish prayer book was inaugurated on the same site in May 2021. When opened, the book building's inner space and its furnishings unfold. This impressive movable structure was conceived by architect Manuel Herz and is decorated with murals by Ukrainian artist Galina Andrusenko.

The Babyn Yar synagogue's design is rooted in a meditation on Judaism's 3000-year old history. The leitmotif of this consideration, undertaken by historian Robert Jan van Pelt and artist Mark Podwal, is the concept of Jewish Space understood in its territorial, architectural, psychological, theological, intellectual dimensions. It traverses a historical landscape that includes great heights of spiritual aspiration and profound depths of despair, caused by antisemitism and the persecution, massacres, and genocide that resulted from it.

The first volume of this lavishly illustrated and thought-provoking book, An Atlas of Jewish Space, offers 134 brief and engaging texts by Robert Jan van Pelt, each of which is illuminated with a drawing by Mark Podwal. The second volume, A Synagogue for Babyn Yar, documents the new building through photographs by celebrated architectural photographer Iwan Baan, as well as through plans and model photos. The images are supplemented with texts by Manuel Herz, Galina Andrusenko, Jean-Louis Cohen, and Marina Otero Verzier and Nick Axel.

• A history of space and the concept of space in Jewish culture
• Offers insightful brief texts on 135 aspects of the Jewish concept of space from the Old Testament to the present, illustrated with drawings and watercolors, many especially made for this volume
• First book on the new synagogue of Babyn Yar near Kiev, offering plans and model photos

• Features previously unpublished images of the Babyn Yar synagogue by celebrated architectural photographer Ivan Baan

  Autorentext

Robert Jan van Pelt ist einer der weltweit führenden Holocaust-Forscher. Berühmt wurde er durch seine Forschungsarbeiten zur Architektur von Auschwitz-Birkenau. Er hat u.a. zur Architektur der jüdischen Diaspora geforscht, lehrt als Professor an der University of Waterloo in Kanada und ist autor zahlreicher Bücher.

Mark Podwal hat als Künstler viele Bücher Elie Wiesels illustriert und mehrere eigene Bücher veröffentlicht. Seine Zeichnungen und Aquarelle sind Bestandteil wichtiger Sammlungen, unter anderem der des Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Manuel Herz ist ein deutscher Architekt mit Büros in Basel und Köln und lehrt als Assistenzprofessor an der Universität Basel. Bekannt geworden ist er mit dem Bau der Neuen Synagoge in Mainz. Das von ihm herausgegebene Buch «African Modernism» (Park Books, 2015) stiess auf breite Resonanz.