When Glenn Greene was a teenager in Cleveland, Ohio, he needed a new job. His gig as a busboy meant he had to “hitch, walk, or bus” to a far-off restaurant, and he was starting to hate it. His mother suggested he work for a family friend who owned a nearby stained glass studio. This was 47 years ago, and Greene has been a stained glass purveyor of “creations and restorations” ever since.
Greene started out doing menial work at the studio and worked his way up. “I can remember they were like ‘OK, you want to be a stained glass artist, here’s a broom,’” he said. But from there, he started making his own glasswork, and his supervisors encouraged him to create original pieces. His first original piece was an arch-shaped tableau of mountains and rays of sun, adorned with glass of every color. It sold the day he finished it.
He moved to Pittsburgh when organizers of a volunteer project to restore a church on Bellefield Avenue in Oakland reached out to him. “I’ve been in more than my fair share of churches for a Jewish boy,” he remembered.
However, he did create stained glass windows for his mother’s synagogue in Cleveland, as well as for Temple Ohav Shalom in Allison Park. “My mom gets naches points forever,” Greene quipped. The window he created for that synagogue is particularly striking: Interlocking Stars of David hover over the synagogue’s eternal flame.
This article was originally published by the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle. To continue reading, visit jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com.