Mark Adams wasn’t Jewish, but he did attend services on High Holy Days. Perhaps more than anyone else in Congregation Emanu-El’s massive sanctuary, he was concerned with the lighting.
Adams, the prolific San Francisco artist who created Emanu-El’s massive stained glass windows “Fire” and “Water,” died Tuesday, Jan. 24. He was 80.
Lay and clergy members approached Adams in the early 1970s to talk about replacing the San Francisco Reform congregation’s original windows, which were amber colored and, most objectionably, falling out amidst the congregants below.
Adams designed the circular, honeycomb-like windows, each of which is comprised of more than 8,000 shards of European-made glass as colorful as the previous windows were plain. His creation was put in place by George McKeever between 1972 and 1975.
Adams’ windows create dazzling light shows on the pavement of streets near the temple, with different locales benefiting during different times of year. The artist hadn’t anticipated this, and it thrilled him.
“I must say, [Yom Kippur] is quite a moving service,” he told the Jewish Bulletin in 2001. “It’s all about self-examination, which is not an easy job. And I just like the feeling it has about a man’s relation to God.”
A memorial service for Adams is scheduled for 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 29 at Emanu-El, 2 Lake St., S.F.