The most Jewish part of Beacon Hill is the Vilna Shul, the cultural center housed in an immigrant-era synagogue on Phillips Street. The rest of Beacon Hill doesn’t feel Jewish—not Beacon Hill, the neighborhood, and not Beacon Hill, the locus of state power—but we Jews have left artifacts there if you know where to look.
From Mount Sinai to Beacon Hill
Beacon Hill is the location of not one, but two depictions of Moses. One is in a courthouse; one is on a courthouse.
A head-to-toe portrayal of Moses stands in the John Adams Courthouse. The courthouse’s Great Hall has 16 statues personifying virtues and concepts involving or relevant to law. Each is identified with a small bronze plaque. One of the statues is “Legislation,” but it might as well be labeled “Moses.” “Legislation” is bearded and wears a tallit over his head and shoulders. The tallit is heavily fringed and has Roman numerals I through X on it. With one hand, Moses holds an unrolled scroll, even though the Torah describes the original Ten Commandments as written on stone tablets. He touches the scroll with his other hand.
The tradition of depicting Moses with a parchment scroll, rather than the tablets of the law, apparently originated in Byzantine; it eventually reached Europe and Rome. The tradition comprises examples from the fifth through 14th centuries. In depicting Moses with a scroll, the sculptor Domingo Mora did not break the tradition of depicting him with tablets so much as invoke a less prominent tradition involving a scroll.
The John Adams Courthouse opened sometime in the end of 1893. (It had a different name then.) Mora, an American born in Spain, sculpted the statues in granite or limestone. Mora’s papers, which could have revealed his thinking, are not extant, but this is clearly Moses. Moses is often depicted on and in courthouses because he was a lawgiver.
The other of the two Moseses is right next door. Above the entrance to the Suffolk County Courthouse are three bas-relief figures from the waist up. (They kind of melt away below their waists.) That’s Lady Justice in the middle with two swords and a set of scales; on the left, a figure probably representing government authority; and Moses on the right, bearded and with his left hand awkwardly touching, not really holding, two tablets with Roman numerals, I through X.
The three figures are bookended by American eagles facing away from them. Moses’s tablets of the law rest on one eagle’s wings. It’s a striking tableau, Jewish and American symbols together.
The Suffolk County Courthouse opened in 1937 during the Art Deco era. John Paramino was the sculptor who rendered Moses in granite—and in Art Deco.
Elected Members of the People of the Book
The State House, which crowns Beacon Hill, contains a plaque to the first Jewish statewide office holder. George Fingold (1908-1958) was the Massachusetts attorney general from 1953 to 1958. He died in office while running for the Republican nomination for governor.
The plaque is outside what is officially the George Fingold Memorial Library but which most people call the State Library. (I’ve never heard it called the Fingold Library. Even the library calls itself “the State Library.”) “Dedicated to Public Service / Dauntless in the Pursuit of Truth / Devoted to the Cause of Justice,” the plaque declares about Fingold.
How appropriate for a member of the People of the Book to have a library named for him.
Massachusetts has had only two other Jewish statewide office holders, both treasurers. Steven Grossman served from 2011 to 2015. He was succeeded by Deborah Goldberg, who still serves, as of this writing. Her office is centrally located in the State House.
Initial Impressions
Within sight of the John Adams Courthouse and the State House, the second most important state office building is One Ashburton Place, also called the John W. McCormack State Office Building. In the lobby is a massive bronze screen with oval plaques and other items that represent Massachusetts heritage, including a Hebrew letter and initials of Jewish luminaries. The artwork is “The Massachusetts Artifact” by Alfred Duca, who installed it in 1975.
Among the artifacts in “The Massachusetts Artifact” is a tav, the last letter in the alef-bet. It is unknown why the Italian-American sculptor chose this letter, although he presumably did so to represent Jews’ presence in and contributions to Massachusetts.
A second possible Jewish artifact appears in “The Massachusetts Artifact”: what the sculptor called the “Lion of Judea.” The lion was the symbol of the Israelite tribe of Judah, and Judea was one of the Jewish kingdoms in ancient Israel. There really isn’t such a thing as the Lion of Judea. The sculptor’s notes do not indicate whether he intended this to be a Jewish or Rastafarian symbol; the Lion of Judah is significant to Rastafarians. If he intended a Jewish symbol, then he included two Jewish symbols in his sculpture. If he intended a Rastafarian symbol, then he paid tribute to a religion without many adherents in Massachusetts.
The sculpture honors Massachusetts luminaries (usually by their initials), including three Jews. The initials “LF” are for Lincoln Filene (1865-1957), who was born Abraham Lincoln Filene to German Jewish immigrant parents in Boston. He became a businessperson and philanthropist. With his brother, he built his family’s business into the iconic Boston department store Filene’s. (After a chain bought Filene’s, most of its stores became Macy’s in 2006. A spinoff company, Filene’s Basement, lasted until 2011. Lincoln Filene is also honored with a plaque on Boston Common.)
The initials “NW” are for Norbert Wiener (1894-1964), a distinguished mathematician and philosopher who taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was related to Maimonides. The sculptor’s notes for this artifact read in their entirety: “Symbol, A Riddle & Prof. Norbert Weiner [sic].”
If the riddle has anything to do with Wiener’s mathematical work, no one with a math background whom I have asked has been able to discern a mathematical riddle. This artifact might depict a chicken and, on top of it, an egg. The sculptor may have been referring to the philosophical riddle: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? If the bird is a chicken and the three squiggles below it represent a road, then the sculptor may have been referring to the most famous riddle: Why did the chicken cross the road? (If you can figure out what riddle is depicted, contact me.)
The initials “LDB” are for Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1856-1941), the first Jewish U.S. Supreme Court justice. He lived and practiced law in Boston before his appointment to the bench.
As a matter of fact, Brandeis lived on Beacon Hill in three different homes at various times, within walking distance of the plaque that honors him. Which leads us to…
Pursuing the House of Justice
Brandeis became a Bostonian at heart but he wasn’t a native. For a non-native (he was born in Louisville, Kentucky), he lived in a number of places in Massachusetts (including a summer home in Chatham).
In summer 1879, Brandeis, a Harvard Law School graduate, moved from St. Louis, where he had been living, to 21 Joy St. on Beacon Hill. A Mrs. Smith owned the house, where Brandeis and three former Harvard classmates paid for room and board.
After Brandeis married Alice Goldmark, they owned and lived at 114 Mount Vernon St. A plaque marks their former home.
After Louis and Alice Brandeis sold that home, they rented 6 Otis Place, which is on the foot of Beacon Hill closer to the Charles River.
Justice, justice, you shall pursue, Deuteronomy 16:20 teaches us. If you plan to seek Justice Brandeis’s homes after seeing the other sights on Beacon Hill, I recommend seeing them in the order that he lived in them: 21 Joy St., 114 Mount Vernon St., and 6 Otis Place. They are private homes, not open to the public. And the John Adams Courthouse, the State House, and One Ashburton Place are open only during weekdays. Any tour that you give yourself of the Jewish presence on Beacon Hill has to be during a weekday.
Ken Bresler’s book, “Poetry Made Visible: Boston Sites for Poetry Lovers, Art Lovers & Lovers,” contains the only extensive discussion of “The Massachusetts Artifact.” He can be reached at ken@bresler.us.
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