Obj. ID: 56040
Memorials Mural to victims of the Holocaust in B'nai Yosef Synagogue in Brooklyn, NY, USA
To the main object: B'nei Yosef Synagogue (The Painted Shul) in Brooklyn, New York, NY, USA
Name of Monument
No official name
What/Who is commemorated?
Victims of the Holocaust (and all Jewish martyrs)
Description
The memorial consists of two wall segments painted in memory of Jewish martyrs as part of extensive mural program that covers the entire synagogue interior – nearly 8000 square feet (723 square meters. The decorative program covers a wide range of Jewish themes. The Holocaust/martyrs memorial is located inside the sanctuary, on the west (entrance) wall, beneath the women’s gallery. It consists of two dark scorched copper-colored panels with scratched abstract designs, which according to art historian Matthew Baigell, symbolize the deaths of the six million. While abstract, the viewer can - with familiarity of other well-known images from the Holocaust, including photographs of corpses at Concentration and Death camps – easily imagine the forms of emaciated bodies or of flames hidden in the ostensibly non-representational panels.
Into one panel is set an inscription adapted from the Avinu Malkeinu prayer recited on fast days and especially during the ten days of repentance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
Inscriptions
עשה למען הרוגים
ושרופים על יחוד
קדשת שמך
Translation: Do this for the sake of those who were killed and burned for the unification of Your sacred name.
Commissioned by
Anonymous donor [Eddie M. Sitt]
sub-set tree: 
| 1616 Ocean Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11223
B’nai Yosef synagogue is located at the corner of Ocean Parkway and Avenue P in Brooklyn in the heart of the Syrian Jewish neighborhood. It was built in the 1970s, and funded by an anonymous donor who we now know was the late Eddie Sitt (1930-2024). He founded the synagogue in memory of his father Joseph Sitt and his son Joey Sitt. Mt Sitt commissioned young artist Archie Rand to painted the Ark wall which Rand did in an evocation of the Kotel in Jerusalem. The donor liked the work and engaged Rand to continue with decoration of the entire synagogue interior. Despite some disputes and controversies with strict adherents of the Second Commandment, the work proceeded with highly original and thought-provoking paintings the drew on a wide array of Jewish texts and traditions. Leading rabbis affirmed the appropriateness of Rand’s work in the synagogue, and over time the many who use the synagogue have either embraced or ignored the declaration. Fifty years after the first murals were made, the synagogue – now long knowns as “the painted shul” – is considered a landmark in 20th-century Jewish art. Archie Rand has continued to be a leading contemporary Jewish artist making art about Judaism.
Baigell, Matthew, Jewish Identity in American Art: A Golden Age Since the 1970s (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2020), p. 156.
McBee, Richard, “The Painted Shul: Archie Rand and the B’nai Yosef Murals Part I,” The Jewish Press, April 8, 2002, http://richardmcbee.com/paintedshul.htm
McBee, Richard, “The Painted Shul: Archie Rand and the B’nai Yosef Murals Part 2,” The Jewish Press, April 16, 2002, https://richardmcbee.com/writings/archie-rand-and-the-b-nai-yosef-murals-part-2/?highlight=Archie%20Rand
McBee, Richard, “The Painted Shul: Archie Rand and the B’nai Yosef Murals Part 3,” The Jewish Press, April 22, 2002, https://richardmcbee.com/writings/archie-rand-and-the-b-nai-yosef-murals-part-3/