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Did you hear the one about the rabbi and the architect?

Few people have. Which is why the members of Beth Sholom Congregation — who worship in the only synagogue designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright — are stepping forward to tell the story of how their landmark spiritual home in Elkins Park, Pa. was built.

Described as a symbolic Mount Sinai made of concrete, steel and glass, the synagogue somehow never received the attention of Wright designs such as Fallingwater, the iconic house in Pennsylvania, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. But new public visiting hours might change that.

“It should be better known,” said Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for the New Yorker magazine. “The space itself is just magnificent. It’s exhilarating. Everything just soars.”

The interior of of Beth Sholom synagogue features a six-sided sanctuary and a multicolored Plexiglas chandelier.

The synagogue near Philadelphia marked its 50th anniversary last year by establishing a visitors center now open three days a week. Appointments are required for tours, although walk-ins sometimes get impromptu tours if a guide happened to be in the building.

From the outside, the pyramidlike roof rises more than 100 feet above the sanctuary. The “shingles” are panels of corrugated wire glass and fiberglass that filter natural light into the building during the day. At night, the illuminated structure is an ethereal, almost otherworldly sight for motorists driving by.

The six-sided sanctuary represents the cupped hands of God. A multicolored Plexiglas chandelier — Wright called it a “light basket” — is suspended above the nearly 1,100 seats, most of them original. Wright also designed the eternal light over the ark.

“The Synagogue lives and breathes; it moves with quiet grace and charm; its lights and shadows continually change with the coming of the sun and the passing of a cloud,” wrote Mortimer J. Cohen, the rabbi who commissioned the building.

Cohen sought out Wright in 1953 as members of his North Philadelphia congregation increasingly joined the white exodus from the city and began settling around the leafy suburb of Elkins Park.

The unique synagogue design emerged from a combination of Cohen’s sketches and a long-shelved Wright design for a “steel cathedral.” But construction and financial problems — mostly stemming from the unorthodox design — plagued the project, at times driving Cohen to despair.

It was finally finished in 1959, a few months after Wright’s death at age 91. Cohen died in 1972.

The Conservative congregation never sought to promote the building, perhaps because it is an active house of worship and not a museum, said past President Herbert Sachs. But a few years ago, as the synagogue sought National Historic Landmark status, Sachs began to grasp the growing need for regular upkeep and realized the congregation might one day need public help.

Beth Sholom Congregation is in Elkins Park, Pa. The visitor center is open Wednesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. For tours, call Patty at (215) 887-1342 ext. 157.