Concept film

Film and Model

The concept film walks the route from the garden at dusk to the Finale Hall at morning. Every frame is a concept rendering built from the drawings and typeset Hebrew; no image model ever draws a Hebrew letter. The massing model of the building, generated from the blueprints, is the basis for the walkthrough and for the website.

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The fifteen beats

  • DuskThe building at dusk from the garden walk; the letters rise from the Finale Hall.
  • The DescentDown into the dark, as to the Worms mikvah; a candle; a quill on klaf.
  • ShUMSpeyer, Worms and Mainz: the hand of Ashkenaz is set.
  • Sepharad and the EastToledo, Salonika, Baghdad, Sanaa, Fez: their light and their persecutions, in their own rooms.
  • EastPrague, Krakow, the Council of Four Lands, the printing houses.
  • Tach V’TatThe kinos of 1648; the communities rebuild.
  • The light of ChassidusMedzhybizh, Karlin, Lubavitch; a niggun carries across the gallery.
  • The Chassidus HallA tisch table; the Rebbeim in the Churban; the courts rebuilt.
  • The yeshivosThe Gaon’s kloiz; Volozhin; the Vilna presses; the Grodno beis medrash in the Yeshiva Hall.
  • Russia, all of itThe Pale, Rostov, the Soviet minyan in a hidden room.
  • The last floweringKattowitz, Bais Yaakov, the Daf Yomi, an ordinary Shabbos.
  • The ChurbanThree restrained chambers; a burned scroll; Kaddish; the Chanukah lights of Bergen-Belsen.
  • The Rising PathThe liberators; the Survivors’ Talmud; Lakewood, Ponevezh and Kiryat Sanz; the Siyum HaShas; the climb.
  • The BridgeAcross the Shulhoyf on the Bridge of Rising Letters.
  • The FinaleMorning light from the east clerestory; the sofer writes your letter.
  • The ShulhoyfDown into the court of twelve shuls as minyanim gather.
  • The Shabbos GateOut through the garden; the letters above the building at night.

The massing model

The massing model, generated from the blueprints, will be published here with its viewer.