An 1898 stained

Every few years between 1996 and his death in 2019, Sheldon Grosberg would call Jed Boertlein and inquire about a precious jewel that had been placed in Boertlein's care.

"I would tell him, ‘Yes, we still have the window. It's still in the barn,’ " Boertlein said.

The window. The stained-glass window, to be exact: a massive, circular stained-glass window featuring concentric Stars of David that had once adorned the Washington Hebrew Congregation's synagogue, dedicated in 1898 at Eighth and I streets NW.

In 1954, the Washington Hebrew Congregation sold that building to the Greater New Hope Baptist Church and moved to Macomb Street NW. When the Christian church decided in 1996 to replace the window — the wooden frame was crumbling and passersby had often wondered why the Star of David was displayed so prominently — it offered it to the Jewish temple.

Boertlein's family company, Washington Art Glass Studio, in Dunkirk, Md., held onto the many pieces of blue, yellow and red glass — and waited.

Grosberg led the acquisition of 152 acres of land in upper Montgomery County for a Jewish cemetery called the Garden of Remembrance, which opened in 2000. Everyone agreed it was the perfect place for the window, but raising money for the proper setting proved difficult. Grosberg died in 2019. Boertlein's father had passed away two years earlier.

"It was always the intention that somehow we would incorporate this beautiful window into a new memorial chapel," said Glenn Easton, executive director of Garden of Remembrance.

Said Boertlein: "They told us they were going to be building this [chapel]. We had no idea it was going to take 25 years to actually happen."

Happen it finally did. On Nov. 13 — 124 years after the original synagogue at Eighth and I was dedicated — the chapel was dedicated. The window is the centerpiece. It's set in an interior wall between the lobby and the area where mourners sit.

Boertlein said one of the restoration's biggest challenges was creating the rather complex frame the glass sits in. The two concentric six-pointed stars were originally made of wood and weighed, Boertlein estimated, close to 1,000 pounds. By the time he and his father removed it, the bottom portion was completely rotted out, endangering pedestrians below.

The new aluminum frame was fabricated in Pittsburgh by the CAFF Company. It weighs half as much as the old one.

Boertlein said about 25 percent of the window's panes were broken and in need of replacement. He can tell which ones are new, but most people probably can't. And anyway, they aren't actually "new." His late grandfather Leonard Boertlein — who founded Washington Art Glass Studio in 1924 — saw to that.

"My grandfather had the foresight of saving a lot of new old stock," he said. "We were able to pull from that new old stock and match a lot of that glass."

The panes inside the frame are held together in time-honored fashion, with solder and what's called lead came.

"[The chapel] was really designed with the window in mind," Easton said. "We wanted to link our past, present and future."

I spoke with both men on the phone, then went to visit the cemetery, which was created by 29 Washington-area synagogues that banded together when burial space in the District started becoming practically nonexistent.

I turned off Comus Road and into the cemetery, past the upright stone grave markers, themselves adorned with smooth round rocks stacked by mourners. The chapel was empty. The window is large — 12 feet across! — and you can get a lot closer to it now than you could when it was 40 feet above the ground in the old synagogue.

I’d asked Easton what he hoped the window would represent for visitors to the cemetery.

"For some it will be a historic connection to their families in the past," he said. "For others it will be a beautiful setting for remembering their loved ones and comforting the bereaved."

It's hard to look at the window and not think of the passing of time. That same collapsing of time — of generations coming together in one place, if only metaphorically — is imbued in the window itself. When Jed Boertlein looks at it, he sees his father, who stood with him on that scaffolding 26 years ago. He also sees his son and son-in-law, both of whom work at the 98-year-old family business.

He loves stained glass, of course.

"It just adds sparkle to any space," he said. Even the space between this world and the next.

We’re a week into this year's Washington Post Helping Hand fundraising drive. You can learn about the three Washington charities we’re raising money for — Bread for the City, Friendship Place and Miriam's Kitchen — by visiting posthelpinghand.com. We’ve made it easy for you to give. Just click where it says "Donate."