The West Point Jewish Chapel has received a significant honor, the United States Department of Defense’s “1986 Award for Design Excellence.”
The Chapel’s architect, Max Abramovitz, internationally acclaimed for such buildings as the United Nations and Lincoln Center, accepted the award from William Howard Taft IV, the Assistant Secretary of Defense.
Also accepting the award last month was Rabbi Marc Abramowitz, rabbi of the Chapel, the first Jewish military chaplain ever assigned to West Point, and Stanley Fafinski, chief, engineering division of the New York District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
A panel of architects from the American Institute of Architects, engineers from the American Consulting Engineers Council and landscape architects from the American Society of Landscape Architects selected the $7.5 million Chapel for this highly distinguished honor.
The Chapel is faced with rough-hewn granite, providing a powerful, monumental presence, while also in keeping with the traditional military Gothic architecture of West Point.
The building also provides a clear religious presence. The Tablets, made of bronze and etched with the symbols of the Twelve Tribes, adorn the facade of the towering sanctuary. With more than three million visitors to West Point annually, the Jewish Chapel is becoming one of the nation’s highest attended Jewish sites.
The 15,000-square-foot Chapel was designed to serve a multiple of functions. Foremost, the 250-seat sanctuary provides a place of worship for the Jewish cadets, officers and other members of the West Point community.
The Chapel also contains a gallery-museum which is presenting an ongoing series of exhibitions employing both art and artifacts that portray Jewish participation and contributions to America.
The Chapel’s library and classrooms, kitchen, hall and administrative offices are also incorporated into one functional, inspired building. Today, an enormous number of activities are held in the building that were previously unfeasible and thus unavailable.
The construction of the Chapel was financed by private contributions from thousands of individuals of all faiths throughout the nation.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
