AA alum Nili Portugali writes on Spiritual Exaltation in Timeless Places of Worship for the Journal of Traditional Building, Architecture and Urbanism.

The essay discusses the emotions that are experienced in places of worship from the patterns of space and the buildings themselves. Nili writes:
In designing The Maimonides Central Sephardi Synagogue I endeavored to captivate the timeless spiritual exaltation that we experience in places of worship where Maimonides prayed: such as the Iben Denan Synagogue in Fez, Morocco, the Ben-Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, Egypt and revive the traditional patterns based on the Maimonides’ halachic rulings - the laws he set down in his book Hayad Hahazaka as it was passed on to me by the collectors of the synagogues in Tzfat – the holly Kabbala Galilee city – the birthplace of Judaism’s mystical stream and the birthplace of my family since the early 19th century.

Click here to read the full article.

Image: Central Sephardic Synagogue. Photo credit: Nili Portugali.