“Susan Solomon’s book, with its climax in a study of Kahn’s plans for a venerable congregation in Philadelphia, treats these plans within the broader context of the mid-century synagogue and as part of American modern architecture. Her level-headed and scholarly text sets the building in context; unlike some publications about Kahn, it is neither worshipful nor polemical. This book can be read with pleasure and intellectual profit by lay readers as well as scholars. Dr. Solomon also addresses synagogues by Philip Johnson, William Wurster, and others, and offers approaches to modern synagogues based on her own previous writings on Kahn and Jewish-sponsored architecture. Her book will be welcomed by researchers who deal with the architect, the building type, and American Jewish history.”

“Susan Solomon’s engaging study of Louis Kahn’s unbuilt designs for the Mikveh Israel synagogue in Philadelphia shows how this project, which extended over a decade through Kahn’s mature career, was part of a broad pattern of American Jewish congregational patronage of modern architecture and visual art. Kahn’s designs for Mikveh Israel represented his critical response to the conventions of modernism in postwar American synagogues. Solomon shows how the Mikveh Israel project’s evolution marked the convergence of Kahn’s search for transcendence in his art with the client’s effort to define its identity and renew its role in the heart of Philadelphia through the 1960s. 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."