The Butterfly Memorial Gate

Installed November 2025 at the entrance to the Memorial Garden of Keneseth Israel

Gift of the Glassman Family

Artist: Douglas Heath

I hope that my creation fills the purpose it is dedicated to and that it is always seen as a symbol of peace. It was an honor and privilege to create the gate that now adorns the Keneseth Isarael Memorial Garden. The concept began as a drawing on paper and evolved with cast molten aluminum using the lost wax method.  This project would not have been possible without Bruce Lindsay from Integral Sculpture works, the foundry were the gates were cast. Or without Irinia Bakis, my wife, for providing the finishing curves to my original drawing.  It has taken several years to complete this project. Over time it has changed and evolved. The result of much hard work and effort is what stands at the entrance to the garden now. 

Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel – Rabbi Benjamin David:

This gate is a symbol of memory and remembrance; the butterfly is one of the preeminent symbols of the Holocaust of course. It’s light and free, living and colorful. You know the poem: “… the last, the very last, so richly brightly, dazzling yellow… that butterfly was the last one, butterflies don’t live inside of here.’ Pavel Friedman wrote those words from Theresienstadt in 1942, just before he would be deported to Auschwitz and murdered. 

‘I have found my people here,’ he wrote. ‘The dandelions call to me and the white chestnut candles in the court, only I never saw another butterfly.’ 

I want to thank our incredible artist Doug Heath and the amazing Judi Metz and Joel Glassman for making this project a reality. I pray that this special gate and all that it represents will have us look back with reverence, remember what was, honor those who were and thank God that we have the great honor to live Jewish lives, even when being a Jew can be very hard, which it so often is. Their lives are within us, always.           

Temple Judea Museum Director/Curator: Rita Rosen Poley

Doug’s use of Brutalist-inspired cast aluminum for the gate accentuates its meaning. The delicacy of the butterfly is realized through the rough finish of the medium. It speaks to the horrors endured and the hopes unrealized.