Living Our Values: Sanctuary Redesign at BEKI

Our mission: to design a sanctuary that is inspirational, warm, inclusive, accessible, and feasible.

Project Overview Video: Why Redesign the Sanctuary? (Call office for password)

Rabbi Eric Woodward asks:

What would it look like if our spiritual space were designed to express our values? At BEKI, there is no front or back, but rather bonds of equality and love. At BEKI, we value all the voices in our diverse congregation. What would it be like to pray in a space that reflected our religious priorities?

A sanctuary redesign means rethinking how we use BEKI’s sanctuary.

The room was designed in the late 1950s for a formal, hierarchical style of worship. The rabbi and cantor led services on a high stage, like performers, with congregants seated like a passive audience.

A redesign means creating a sanctuary that reflects our 21st-century values of warmth and inclusiveness, egalitarianism and engagement. It means enhancing our volunteer-led services, in which we are all participants, not audience members. It means a design that expresses our BEKI values and helps us live those values more fully.

The overarching goals involve making our sanctuary:

accessible for everyone;
more intimate and participatory in scale and layout;
inviting to everyone;
physically comfortable (which includes heating, cooling, ventilation, and seating);
more environmentally sustainable.

For more about the thinking behind the redesign, please see the messages from Rabbi Eric Woodward and Immediate Past President Yaron Lew.