Susan Solomon joins us to tell the story of the evolution of the postwar American synagogue through the lens of the plans for Louis Kahn's unbuilt Mikveh Israel.

In 1961, famed architect Louis I. Kahn received a commission to design a synagogue. His client was one of the oldest Sephardic Orthodox congregations in the United States: Philadelphia's Mikveh Israel. Due to the loss of financial backing, Kahn's plans were never realized. Nevertheless, the haunting and imaginative schemes for Mikveh Israel remain among Kahn's most revered designs.

Solomon uses Kahn's designs for Mikveh Israel as a prism through which to examine the transformation of the American synagogue from 1955 to 1970. She shows how Kahn wrestled with issues that challenged postwar Jewish institutions and evaluates his creative attempts to bridge modernism and Judaism. She argues that Kahn provides a fresh paradigm for synagogues, one that offered innovations in planning, decoration and the incorporation of light and nature into building design.

"This book tells a compelling story of how his extraordinary mind struggled to come to terms with Judaism as a religion he did not practice but, in this project, one that he tried to reconcile with his own profoundly spiritual aims for his style of modern architecture." -- Joseph Siry, Wesleyan University

Susan G. Solomon is the author of American Playgrounds: Revitalizing Community Space and Louis Kahn's Trenton Jewish Community Center. She heads her own research firm, Curatorial Resources & Research in Princeton.