Artists and Teachers: Marsha and Chick Schwartz and Congregation Beth El

"Discourse" (cast in brass)

Chick and Marsha Schwartz began in 1983 to commute to Beth El from their home just across the border in Canada. They led children into artistic exploration of the symbols and joy of their heritage and encouraged them to build an outdoor structure for Sukkot. Chick’s re-creation of the West Wall of Jerusalem adorns the entire east wall of Beth El’s sanctuary. Marsha taught the children’s Hebrew School [as did Chick from time to time], and filled other leadership roles as needed, including (much later) sharing the presidency. In this, the Schwartzes followed in the footsteps of other couples who’d devoted enthusiastic support to whatever the synagogue needed. (from Congregation Beth El, A History With Recipes of the Jewish Community in St. Johnbury, Vermont)

Sukkah across the Canada border; Marsha Schwartz standing at left within, Chick almost hidden behind her. Rick Schwag toward right with red hat.

Part of the West Wall sculpture at Beth El

"Tightrope Walker" (ceramic 3D sculpture on flat back)

Painting, 2010 (Cedar Key, Florida)

After raising four sons and seeing them married and scattered, raising families of their own -- one to Burlington, Vermont, one to Canada, one to Florida, one to Alabama -- Chick and Marsha began their farewells to the Vermont congregation in 2003. They chose a rural Florida community for the next chapter of their lives, building a home on high, hurricane-resistant and flood-proof piers, in the small town of Cedar Key, Florida. A quiet estuary shields their home from the Gulf of Mexico just beyond -- roughly where Florida's peninsula and panhandle meet.

But that is much shorter than the story needs to be. Chick (Charles) was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and grew up in Nashville, Tennessee; Marsha, in Brooklyn, NY, and grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina. When they first married, Chick's career was in engineering. From this, he gained many of the skills he would need to fix up their snug homestead just across the border in Stanstead, Quebec, and also to begin the sculptures that used more and more of his time -- some small enough to sit on a table, others larger than a truck. Marsha sometimes served as model for the womanly figures Chick often crafted. But also driving his work were scenes of urban life, Jewish or otherwise: the angle from a high city window to a line of laundry, or the unforgettable vision of people at Jerusalem's Western Wall -- men in Orthodox garments of somber hue, women wrapped in bright cloth, heads covered. Chick's artwork fills the entire West Wall of Beth El's sanctuary, a modern and thought-provoking backdrop to the bimah. His work also became an expected feature of major art shows in Canada and down the East Coast.

Marsha's brightly painted wooden furniture projects blossomed even more brightly as she added mosaics to their surfaces. Smashed china or other dishes became valued raw materials. More reserved than Chick about showing her artwork, she rarely exhibited or gave her pieces away during her Vermont years. But at Beth El, she undertook endless assignments, from newsletter production (for years!) to sharing the congregation presidency with Jay Abramson. Marsha and Chick also had a year of being co-presidents together.

Among the many programs they arranged for members of the congregation was a visit from speaker Curtis Whiteway, an American soldier who took part in the liberation of the Daschau concentration camp; and a joyous trip across the Canada border to Montreal for Beth El members to visit Spanish and Portuguese synagogues, see where immigrants in Montreal had traveled and lived, and savor the offerings of the city's delicatessens.

Leaving the Beth El community after so many years of investing themselves took courage and determination, but the couple knew the warm Gulf climate was their goal, and they chose a town with an existing art community, where they have collaborated in gallery shows, community fundraising, library support, and networking.

The two mosaic pieces shown here are Marsha's, from a November 2011 show in Cedar Key, Florida; Chick's work now includes many paintings incorporating boats and water and sky, or trees and sunsets and open space, as well as new forms of multimedia sculpture that can be seen at http://www.chickschwartz.com.

If your children participated in Beth El's classes with Marsha and Chick, or learned to play the shofar with Chick or one of their sons, or you have vivid memories of Marsha's careful co-leadership, especially as Beth El wrangled with the congregational issue of recognizing Jewish patrilineal descent in 1998, please do add comments to this post.

When people participate as whole-heartedly in a community as the Schwartzes, for a generation, their move to a warm-climate home can't take away their lasting effects here in the north country.

Marsha's mosaic work

Mosaic on vase, by Marsha Schwartz