Across time, across civilization, from Asia to the Americas, the best architecture, over and over and over again is architecture devoted to something spiritual, call it religion, call it whatever you want to call it, but it's something bigger than the self, bigger than a person, bigger than even a particular culture.

Architecture really arose out of creating places for the spirit.

You think of the oldest structures on earth, and they are sacred places, this sort of spiritual dimension, and it's something that everybody longs for in one way or the other.

And I think people find solace, they find connection and they find direction by being in sacred space.

Ours is a nation of immigrants.

We're a tapestry of endless hues of diverse peoples from all over the planet who have come here often fleeing the floods of prejudice and persecution.

Every seventh person in America was born in another country, and just about every country in the world is represented in our population.

Immigrants coming to the United States, bring with them their religion, their languages, their traditions, their cultures, and their sacred architecture.

We're a Noah's ark of religious freedom and vernaculars.

Welcome back to A Sacred Piece of Home.

I'm your host, Ori Z. Soltes.

In the last episode, we saw how 16th Street changed over the last two centuries.

Nor was change limited to the 16th Street corridor.

Adas Israel congregation moved from the Sixth and I building out to Cleveland Park in the early 1950s.

The congregation's new huge structure offered the Menorah, a seven branched candelabrum, as the only relief decorated element on the monolithic front facade.

The seven branched candelabrum, which in its sevenness, alludes to the commandment to keep the seventh day sacred.

And that in turn is connected to the idea that God, after spending six days creating the physical universe, rested on the seventh.

The Hebrew verb rested is Shavat, which becomes the noun Shabbat or an English Sabbath is connected to the idea of the sevenness of the Menorah.

So it's attached to the idea of covenant, its responsibilities, its promises, just as it is also in a narrower sense, connected to the idea of the temple that once stood in Jerusalem, in which the primary implement was a seven-branched candelabrum.

That in turn, was the descendant of that same implement that was contained in the tabernacle in the wilderness, described at the end of the book of Exodus.

Adas Israel has hosted prime ministers and presidents.

The congregational membership includes members of Congress, cabinet officials, and ambassadors.

The interior is a vast 1500 seat sanctuary at the head of which one finds the Holy Ark, the Aron HaKodesh made of Jerusalem stone.

After the state of Israel was founded in 1948, many American synagogues began incorporating Jerusalem stone into their synagogue structures, reflecting the desire to embed material from the Jewish spiritual homeland as part of shaping a sacred piece of home.

Before the Holy Ark, where the Torah, the five books of Moses are kept is a curtain called the parokhet.

It's the same word used in the Bible to refer to the curtain before the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem.

The parokhet at Adas Israel was designed by Laurie Gross and received architectural awards in 2014.

The congregation rises to its feet when the Torah is taken out of the Ark and does not sit again until the Torah is resting on the lectern.

Rising from the pulpit, the bema, the reading stand or lectern, is where the Torah scrolls are read, the sermon is delivered, and any announcements are made.

20 years after Adas Israel built its structure on Quebec Street, the original home of the synagogue, that little brick building at 6th & G Streets NW, was at the edge of demolition because of Metro construction.

So, the Jewish community purchased the little building, they put it on rollers and they moved it 3 blocks away to 3rd and G streets NW.

It became the Lillian and Albert Small Museum and was placed on the National Register of Historic places.

Later on In 2019, this city's oldest synagogue building was moved again, one block, further to F Street where it is now part of the Capital Jewish Museum.

But after Adas Israel moved up to Quebec street, the domed synagogue at Sixth and I had become the home of the Turner Memorial AME Church as we've earlier noted.

But then in 2002, the church moved out to Prince George's County, and developer Sheldon Zuckerman and a couple of his friends, Abe Pollin and Doug Jamal, decided to buy the building and to try and renovate it to bring it back to what it had looked like in 1908.

While the exterior was not a problem, there was no evidence of what it had looked like in detail on the interior.

Stanley Warsaw called me and he said "I have a gift for you" and he gave me an eight by ten photo of his wedding here in 1949, taken from the balcony, so you had a full view of what the bema and everything looked like, And that's what we used as a model to bring the bema back to the way it was in 1949.

So the next big issue that we had to deal with was the dome.

And I went home and talked to my wife And she has a cousin who is an extremely well-known faux artist.

Two days later, he is up in the ceiling, painting the Jewish star, but with the circle through it, which means togetherness.

The other thing we had to take care of were the stained-glass windows.

The center window on the balcony has a star of David.

The church took that out and put in a cross, and then we went back, and we put the star of David back in.

George W. Bush was President and he wanted to come by, and I gave him a quick tour.

One of the things that we wanted to be sure of was that everybody felt welcome.

So, we are nondenominational.

And people in the Jewish community come out of the woodwork.

I mean, people who never identified themselves as Jewish, come here In fact, in 2004, 6th and I began an annual tradition of partnering with Turner Memorial Baptist Church to celebrate Martin Luther King's birthday on the sabbath eve of MLK weekend.

We also wanted to attract the most difficult audience that there is to attract that's the 20- and 30-years old group.

Every faith-based community has the same problem - attracting young people.

Back around the same time as Adas Israel's building was being built, up on Quebec Street, the Islamic Center was established between 1949 and 1954.

The impetus to create it was the death of the Turkish ambassador, and the realization that there was no appropriate location in Washington for a Muslim funeral.

So, with Egypt and Turkey in the lead, a range of different Muslim countries contributed both finances and artistic elements to what became and really has remained the center of the Islamic world of Washington D.C.

Interestingly, the structure was actually designed by an Italian, Mario Rossi, because he had done mosques in Egypt.

and his preferred style is what we would call a neomameluk style.

The mameluks dominating Egypt between 1250 and 1517.

One enters into the compound by a series of five horseshoe arches the number five offering a symbolism in Muslim thinking for the five pillars of Islam, the pillars of belief, of prayer, of charity, of fasting, and of pilgrimage.

One notices that this monumental structure is overrun with minutely detailed décor.

So, a dialogue between the monumental and the minute suggests the dialogue between God who is monumental and ourselves, who are minute.

These are tiles done in Turkey in the Ottoman style, with calligraphy, and vegetal, floral, and geometric forms.

As with Judaism, Islam rarely makes use of figurative decoration, because for both faiths, God is understood to be absolutely without visual form.

And the interior space of every mosque is directed toward the niche which is known as the mihrab, which orients those praying toward Mecca.

So the mihrab is located in the wall, the qibla, the direction wall that faces Mecca.

Initially, it was towards Jerusalem.

The prophet had very close friends and associates who were Jewish.

Over time, they switched from Jerusalem to Mecca.

If you're down on Mass Avenue, and you look at the Islamic Center, you see the facade related to Massachusetts Avenue, but then the mosque is turned because it's facing Mecca.

Further up Massachusetts Avenue... is the Greek Orthodox Cathedral, known as Saint Sophia, which was also built in the early 1950s, and is modeled in a very Byzantine style.

not just vaguely as a Byzantine structure, but truly as the consummate version of Byzantine, the Saint Sophia, the Hagia Sophia, the great church in what is now Istanbul, that was built in the sixth century by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, with its rather flattish dome, and the walls leading up to the dome, that are supported by a series of windows that present themselves as a kind of infinitizing progression because you can't count them.

And in the interior, the light of God enters through infinite sources, because God itself is understood to be infinite.

St.

Sophia was the original Greek Orthodox Church in Washington D.C.

The community formed in 1904 started meeting in a synagogue that they borrowed on Sundays for Greek Orthodox services.

My parents attended that church for a few years.

In 1924, the Greek immigrants built a church at 8th and L streets, NW.

By then the Greek American population had expanded significantly in D.C.

Due to the Balkan Wars and WWI, about half a million Greeks arrived into the U.S.

by the first two decades of the 20th century.

Shortly after World War II ended, and the Greek civil war began, which was a very difficult time for all Greeks living in the country at the time, many of whom had to leave the country, out of fear for their lives.

But another 200,000 arrived after WWII, The community in Washington was ready for a substantial structure in a larger space as a new sacred piece of home.

I was two years old at the time, my earliest memories of church are of St.

Sophia Cathedral .

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the final touches, a variety of things like windows and so forth were completed in the late 1970s.

The plan for St.

Sophia Cathedral was developed in collaboration with Dumbarton Oaks, which is a renowned center of Byzantine study.

The first thing that we notice when we walk into the nave if our eyes go upward, is the dome.

In the dome, we have the seated figure of Christ Pantocrator, which simply means Christ All Powerful.

That is done totally in mosaics.

There are just under 1 million pieces of mosaic.

It's the largest mosaic depiction of Christ in the dome in the Orthodox world that we are aware of.

I remember it well, the day that the dome was unveiled.

There was a big black covering, and it was pulled back and the sense of awe and love in the cathedral was palpable.

Moving down from the dome, you see the four evangelists.

Each is depicted in the act of writing his gospel.

It's interesting that these four pendentives hold up the dome architecturally, structurally, and also support the Scripture and the tradition and the theology of the church with the four Gospels.

The fact that the saints are set between the congregants on the floor, and the ceiling reminds you that the saints are intermediaries between us and our earthly lives and Christ.

The next significant architectural feature is what we call the apse where you see the full figure of Mary the mother of God: Theotokos.

And the letters that you see to the left and right of her Halo are the Greek letters for Mother of God.

The next part of the church is the sanctuary, and the sanctuary represents heaven.

That's where the altar is.

In 2015, a consecration ceremony was held to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the church at this location.

During the elaborate ceremony, holy relics of 3 saints martyred 2 millennia ago were interred and sealed in the altar after a procession.

Relics - physical objects, from a strand of hair to a fragment of cloth, associated with a saint, or even with Jesus himself have a long history in Christianity of connecting the devotee to the realm of the sacred.

Separating the sanctuary from the nave is what we call the iconostasis or simply an icon screen.

The Orthodox churches are unique in physically and visually separating the congregation in the nave from the Holy of Holies by means of the iconostasis.

For an Orthodox Christian, an icon is a holy portrait.

It's a window onto heaven.

An icon is an object of reverence and not worship.

They're highly stylized and have been for well over 1000 years.

And the reason is, because no attempt is being made to try and portray the person as he or she may have looked in their earthly life.

In every Orthodox Church, there are three icons that are standard.

To the right of the doors, there will always be an icon of Christ.

To the left of the doors, there will always be an icon of Mary.

The second one to the right of Christ is always an icon of John the Baptist.

The green columns are marble from the Greek island of Tinos.

So, we have that Greek connection there.

The chandeliers that you see are also modeled after the eighth and ninth century Byzantine churches.

They too come from Greece.

We can observe once more how immigrant communities sometimes bring not just architectural ideas or decorative concepts, but physical materials from the home country to connect past to present in their sacred structures.

And another half block down Massachusetts Avenue from St.

Sophia is the St.

Nicholas Orthodox Cathedral, based on the Cathedral of St.

Dimitry in Vladimir, Russia.

This one was founded here in 1930 to honor Russians who gave their lives for their country during World War I and during the Russian revolution, which of course also fueled immigration to America.

Just five years earlier, the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St.

John the Baptist was built on 17th Street in the 17th century Muscovite Yaroslav style.

The Arch priest, Victor Potopov, who had a Russian father and a Ukrainian mother, came to the U.S.

when he was two years old after the second World War another calamity of course, that drove people out of their homes to America.

The community was founded by St.

John of Shanghai.

He was the bishop who served the large Russian community in Shanghai.

There were many, many Russians in China.

Many of them were there, before the Russian Revolution, because of the Trans-Siberian railroad.

It was a community of Russians who were staunchly anti-communist.

They were the white Russians, who fled the Bolsheviks in 1917 and ended up in Washington.

Others migrated to the U.S.

after World War II or, having worked on the railroad in China, fled the new Communist regime there in 1949.

They met in private homes at first and then the National Cathedral allowed the community to meet in one of the crypts.

And then in 1958, we bought a parcel of land on the corner of 17th and Shepherd Street.

The onion dome is an iconic feature of Russian churches.

And the onion dome is topped off with the cross always.

And often the cross has three horizontal bars, except the bottommost is at an angle to symbolize the upgrade of the Mount of Golgotha, where the crucifixion took place.

It's called onion dome because it resembles an onion.

But what it represents is a candle.

The flame, the light of Christ, eventually it disappears.

And the candle represents us human beings who are temporarily here on Earth.

Mortal.

When you come into the church, every single square inch is filled with paintings.

You look up and you see Christ.

And it's otherworldly.

It's heaven on earth.

We call icons “theology in color.” 60% of the people who make up my parish are mostly from the former Soviet Union.

And the vast majority of the people came in the 90s and the beginning of this century.

And a lot of them discovered their religious roots here in this country.

When they came here, you know, they took it more seriously, because I think this was a foreign country, and they needed spiritual nourishment.

I think there was this need for fellowship with other Russians.

People come to services and then we have meals after the services and they meet and they talk.

We also support a children's summer camp and we have a folk dancing group.

The church is still a place where they can be reminded of their old country.

The children of the first wave of immigration don't speak Russian well.

We do separate services in English on Sundays, at eight o'clock, and at 10 o'clock, we do the Russian service.

The congregation of 500 or so, is majority Russian, with some who have relatives even in the Russian army.

But at least one third are Ukrainian, which is why they steer away from discussing politics, while expending a great deal of energy fundraising for victims of the war.

In 1965, under President Lyndon B. Johnson, the Immigration and Nationality Act removed barriers to the entry of non-Europeans into the U.S.

that had been largely in place since the late 19th century.

Many highly skilled and well-educated immigrants, particularly doctors and engineers, arrived from non-European countries.

We must also lift by legislation the bars of discrimination against those who seek entry into our country, particularly those who have much needed skills and those joining their families.

In establishing preferences, a nation that was built by the immigrants of all lands can ask those who now seek admission “What can you do for our country?” But we should not be asking “In what country were you born?” By the 1970s, therefore, enormous numbers of sacred structures from increasingly diverse ethnicities and nationalities were being built or transformed across the regional landscape.

Among these, Hindu temples offer an important institution in society and community for most Hindus here in America, just as they did back in India.

Dr.

Subramaniam, a pediatrician, arrived in the U.S.

in the 1970s, and he was one of the founding members of the Hindu Temple in Lanham, Maryland.

As a pediatrician, he was convinced of the need for a Hindu temple in America to help children of Indian origin become grounded in their own traditions, even as they took shape as Americans.

How do we make sure that they have strong roots, and so it is not like they are starting afresh, are adrift or alone?

India has centuries old complexes with distinctly regional architectural features.

South Indian temple complexes offer concentric enclosures, guarded by massive gateways called gopurams that gradually increase in size toward the outer periphery.

All exterior surfaces of the gopurams are carved with brightly colored figures of Gods and guardian demons and heroes.

Dr.

Subramaniam and his colleagues brought in Ganapathi Sthapati, a temple architect from Tamil Nadu.

He came from a lineage of architects who had created many famous temples, including the Brihadeshvara Temple a millennium ago.

The committee looked for land in the D.C.

area, which would follow the prescriptions of the ancient shastras or temple-building manuals.

Most Hindu temples are dedicated to a particular manifestation of a singular divine reality.

But some 200 families in the D.C.

area decided to pool their resources and build one temple for all such divine expressions by creating several shrines under one roof.

Since the people come from different places, we said, let us bring and represent the many of the sacred deities that are unique to those places.

In its way this recalls the shaping of the Catholic Basilica with its 80 chapels and oratories honoring different versions of the Virgin from different countries.

The primary rite of worship in Temple Hinduism is the reciprocal exchange of gaze between the deity and the devotee.

To a Hindu, the statue—Murti—of the deity is not merely a stone image or idol.

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It contains an expression of the divine essence.

The images are clothed in silk, decorated with jewelry and flower garlands by the priests.

Ornamentation is vital.

A God without clothes and jewelry would be considered naked, inconceivable in a Hindu context.

The devotee performs puja by offering food, light, and incense.

Usually, these objects are placed in a platter and waved in a circular movement as the priest chants words of praise in Sanskrit for the deity.

With both hands, worshippers take the light of the lamp from the priest's platter into their eyes.

When worship is concluded, the priest will put a tilak of red powder on the forehead of the devotee and give to the devotee some of the food that he or she has brought, which has now been blessed by the God.

Washington has continued to expand, as a home for an ever-increasing number of people arriving from west, east, north and south.

Its range of religious architecture has exploded in an endless array of conceptual and visual directions, embedding elements of old worlds into the new.