The Spirituality of the Designed Space

For Der Nister's website, I thought it wise to include a few paragraphs on the essential philosophy of this project. After pondering whether there was one, and whether it was articulable, Henry and I switched gears to write about the Der Nister Experience. If you come to Spring St., go up the elevator, walk down the hall, and enter the room, what is happening, and what happens to you?

A philosophy, or a worldview of any kind, is an explanation that contains a person's view of the universe or human nature, but it has its limitations. It is a description of reality, but not reality itself, which is more sublime than the intellect can process. A higher form than philosophy in that sense is poetry, which describes a state of emotional being that is more nuanced and powerful than what the mind can hold, though less comprehensive in scope than philosophy generally is. Higher than that, we turn to the spiritual world, where we interact with higher things, with sacred music or art, through meditation and prayer, to move ourselves less into a description and more into an internal reality of all things.

I love sacred music very much as a means of transcendence. I used to host a radio show in college called the Renaissance Radio Hour, where I played only Renaissance music and lay down on the floor of the studio in the darkness, in the middle of the night, to be held and transported by the polyphony and divine mathematics. I sing khazzanus in order to feel the complexity of rhythm and melody that enraptures the soul into the beautiful feeling of ultimate humility. (As the old joke goes, the khazzan stands before the ark crying, "I am nothing!" A newcomer goes up, moved and exclaims louder, "I am nothing!" And the khazzan whispers to the rabbi, "who's this guy who thinks he's nothing?") But these are self-induced experiences that take place in specific allotments of time, to achieve a higher consciousness through means when self-induced consciousness is not wanted or not possible, like in a group setting.

I think that these have limitations:  specific time is a limitation. Space is always with us; it is the guide and contour of reality which we are never aware of. Who sees the fabric of space-time rippling beneath their feet? We say Barukh HaMakom, blessed is God, the Place (Makom means place), which is etymologically related to l'haqim, "to cause to arise." Is HaMakom really the one who causes space-time to exist? That is a sacred name of God, who we stand in unknowingly, and find it so hard to be grateful for because how can the imagination sense non-existence?

Space is unthinkable because it is everything around us. And it too creates encounters with the divine — it too creates encounters with banality.

Architecture, interior design, lighting and guideways are the unspectacular arts that are elevated because of their permanence and subtlety. An IKEA store is a designed experience, using all of these tools to make you feel something: lost in a world of interior worlds, capable of being inspired by completed forms that you can take home, with no mind to your own home and its dimensions. Any grocery store is wise to place the milk in the back, to ensure you have the experience of seeing the shelves neatly lined and in vast array, inspiring new cuisine ideas and curiosity that a few dollars can give you access to, on the way to the necessity — yes, the milk.

I am fascinated by the banality of the modern American synagogue, which makes the choices to design its space as spaceless; that there is no spiritual reality except for Torah and ourselves, and ideology of the Protestant ideal that the true nature of God is the One who dwells within us. When I explored other places of worship, including other synagogues, I saw that this fanaticism for the self and its edification through time-bound processes that lacked grace and even art, spiteful of culture, were not present. There was a curated experience brought by a building's colorful stained glass, dark passages, gilded edges and high ceilings. The smell of old books, the scent of history uninterrupted in Novi Sad, Serbia, the full illustrations of every aspect of Torah in Acre, Israel. This was normal, and how I noticed it because I felt starved for space that moved me, rather than me needing to make myself moved in it. Places with tradition give me a sense of deep anchoring in myself, and everything things I see and I everywhere I walk is designed to do that.

The holiest people in history, who were not prophets through speech, were architects: prophets of space — prophets of designed experience. Look only to Torah and see how Betzalel, who was commissioned by God to build the Mishkan, the Tabernacle of the desert, was endowed with the "spirit of God:"

  (Exodus 35:30) וַיְמַלֵּ֥א אֹת֖וֹ ר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֑ים בְּחכְמָ֛ה בִּתְבוּנָ֥ה וּבְדַ֖עַת וּבְכל־מְלָאכָֽה׃

And Betzalel was filled with the Spirit of God, with Wisdom, Understanding, and Knowledge of all Creative Work. 

If Betzalel is described as a craftsman, what does he need wisdom for?

The same reason that Imhotep, the fabled architect of the pyramids, was worshipped as a god in ancient Egypt, or Mimar Sinan, who advanced the design of mosques in the Ottoman Empire and is considered to be a national hero of the Turkish people.

The experience that they design lifts all who walk in: now, yesterday or forever. Architecture is not a monument to a people's lives, but to their spirits and how they were moved to mold space into a spiritual experience of a specific dimension for all who walk in.

And a designed experience of space is essential in Jewish life. We walk backwards from the Western Wall, never turning our back to Solomon's Temple. Solomon himself was considered wise in his building, so much so that the Freemasons built their entire cultic practice out of Solomon and sacred architecture.

God gives the most specific instructions to architecture. They stand out in a corpus of laws and sacrifices and stories as odd and pointless: but every detail is creating the world, the Temple or the Mishkan, that is supposed to be the world in miniature: the naval of the world, standing on the birthplace of the world. God had to rest from doing exactly what Betzalel did, God rested from building because God's building is not complete without experiencing what was built.

The designed experience of space is more than one room. It is the experience of making the pilgrimage to the Temple, walking up the ramp, circumambulating in the courtyard, bringing a sacrifice in a sanctum, hearing the Levites sing and play music. It is a design of going from one place to another, in one place. Why do we mourn the Temple so? Isn't God everywhere?

The Temple is a specific experience of space, whose divinity in its contours defined the pilgrimage, and therefore spiritual lifeblood of the Jewish people. The Hajj follows a similar course: it is not just the circling of the Kaaba, it is the journey from Medina to Mecca: there are so many steps, so many experiences. Lying on the ground, being given water to strangers, throwing a rock at a demonic spirit: it is a chain of experiences guided by space, designed by humans with the help of God.

I often think of Culver City's Museum of Jurassic Technology. It is an ordinary looking building on Venice Blvd. Entrance to it plunges you into the dark, with strange curiosities that you can't really tell are real or not. Luminscent biotissue, art carved on the heads of pins — all while walking through narrow corridors after watching a video that is both false in content but deeply grounded in theosophy, the Western movement to spiritual contemplation. The second floor is calmer, bringing to a shrine of a Russian scientist who inspired the cosmonauts, and his wild designs, and then into a 3D movie theater that plays soothing, almost one-shot films that are meant to put you to sleep (but absolutely do not fall asleep!) The third floor is a Russian tea house, on a roof candles lit aflame, tea served, pigeons flying around, and the sounds of violin-dulcimer instrument played live. What has happened to you? The peace, the peace of being blinded by absurdity giving you a blank state of wonder, the dull glow of a movie that lifted you away, the nirvana on earth that exists on the roof. It gave you peace and transcendence; you worked for it by simply walking in its contours, designed for you.

There is something related in going through Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, where you enter into darkness, and emerge into a great light, seeing a panorama of Jerusalem after seeing so many dark and haunting images of the Holocaust. Or really any museum. Museums are cast aside as dull places, but we are dulled to what they do to us, how they make us feel, where they take us. What conclusions do we draw from them, unconscious that they were designed to draw us certain conclusions?

I think very often and as deeply as possible on the space of Der Nister because it is an experience that we are designing and is being designed. It's complete explanation you will see on the new website, but I don't think there is anything more sacred that I can do other than help stimulate the deep anchoring to history I saw in Jewish spaces around the world, and a process to achieve peace and openness like I see at the Museum of Jurassic Technology through a designed experience.