Studies of Jewish Architecture Torun-2010 02

8/12/2019 Studies of Jewish Architecture Torun-2010 02

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Studies of Jewish Architecture in CentralEastern Europe

in Historical Perspective

Sergey R. Kravtsov,

Center for Jewish Art,

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

To the best of my knowledge, the discussion about Jewish architecture in Central-

Eastern Europe made its first appearance in 1833, in the fourth chapter of Pan Tadeusz, by

Adam Mickiewicz. He described a synagogue in the following words:

Tyrian carpenters' pattern, it is now well known,

Which the Jews had adopted and took for their own:

A style of architecture they through the world carried,

Abroad quite unknown; we from the Jews it inherit.

The rear built in a different and temple-like style,

Its appearance recalling that Solomons pile,

Which those earliest trainees in the carpenter's trade,

King Hiram's skilful craftsmen, on Mount Zion made.

Jews it follow today still when building their schools,

And their taverns and barns are built to the same rules.1

Thus the scope of the discourse was established from its very beginning: the Polish-

Lithuanian Commonwealth as the geographical frame, the sacred history and its Polish

national offshoot as the chronological scaffolding, and the entire reading public as the

audience. This lecture will loosely follow these historical guidelines.

The earliest interest in the synagogues as picturesque elements of the townscape

resulted in drawings of questionable accuracy, produced from the late eighteenth century by

Franciszek Smuglewicz, Zygmunt Vogiel, Napoleon Orda, Wincenty Kielisiski, Stanisaw

Putiatycki, Jan Matejko, and others. The early attempts at a more careful examination of

Jewish art were undertaken by architects and engineers in Galicia. Two graduates of the

Vienna Polytechnic, Julian Zachariewicz and Ludwik Wierzbicki, working on the railway

projects in the south-east, started collecting and documenting Jewish folk art and architecture

believably from 1860s. It is most probable that their objective was to formulate the Jewish

1English translation by Marcel Weyland.


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design language in Romantic historicist architecture, as did their colleagueJosef Hlvka,who

exploited the Romanian architecture to infuse the Orthodox Metropolitan Church with some

local folk flavor. As he explained in 1882, Zachariewicz was looking for unique Jewish

features to differentiate between his Temple Synagogue in Czernowitz and Christian

structures. In the 1880s, the archaeological excavations in Halicz ignited the Byzantine-

Romanesque dispute as part of the argument about Polish or Ruthenian historical priority in

the region. Zachariewicz, who was deeply involved in this discussion, proposed a

reconciliation theory which defined Ruthenia as the eastern porch of Polish, and thus of

European culture. However, in his design of the Temple Synagogue of Lwow, Zachariewicz

avoided this quandary, proposing instead an exotic Egyptian-Assyrian design language

derived from Middle Eastern archaeology. The available information on local synagogue

architecture, already supplied by his own expeditions and those of Wadysaw uszczkiewicz

and his students from the Academy of Arts in Krakow, was worthless for Zachariewiczs

ends. He was working for a Progressive congregation, whose choice between German and

Polish identities was still uncertain.

The quest for original Jewish features was met by Karol Maszkowskia student of

Marjan Sokoowski and Wadysaw uszczkiewiczthe first researcher of the Gwodziec

Synagogue. Maszkowski suggested in 1890 that the style of local murals resulted from

cultural isolation of the Jewish artists, and were close to Persian patterns published by Owen

Jones. Maszkowski not only proposed hypotheses; he also produced drawings that provided a

first-hand visual record. His work was continued by a Polish historian of Jewish origin,

Mathias Bersohn, who in the years 18951903 documented and published the first series of

wooden synagogues in the Commonwealth. Bersohn cautiously evaluated this material as

original and pleasant to the eyes, though scarcely bearing any style, but rather

subordinate to some typological tradition. In his hypothesis, certain construction features

were borrowed, for the needs of Jewish sacred space, from the Catholic Church architecture

of German Silesia since the Ashkenazim had entered Poland from the west. These statements

were opposed by Kazimierz Mokowski, an architect and Social Democrat, who devoted a

portion of his energy to the study of folk art and architecture in the Commonwealth.

According to Mokowski, wooden synagogues, the log structures featuring multi-tier roofs

and corner pavilions were nothing but a surrogate for the Polish noblemens manor, and the


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local synagogue architecture did not follow any foreign patterns. Accordingly, Mokowski

dismissed Adam Mickiewiczs romantic view of the Biblical Hiramic tradition allegedly

surviving in Polish vernacular architecture. At this point the antiquarian and Romanticist

theory of a Divine development of architecturepassed from God to Adam, and then to the

Babylonians, Phoenicians, Jews, Greeks, Romans, and other European nations including the

Polesthe theory still legible behind Zachariewiczs works, was replaced by a new,

Romantic nationalist, secular paradigm.

Mokowskis challenging conclusions promoted interest across the partition borders

of the Commonwealth. They were discussed and largely accepted by the Ukrainian Hryhorii

Pavlutsky in 1911, who characterized the wooden synagogues as most conservativesecular

structures in Ukraine, and later, by the Lithuanian Paulius Galaunas well. The emerging

Jewish intelligentsia was also interested in the subject. The synagogue architecture of the

SouthwesternKraiwas documented in photographs by An-skis expeditions of 191213, the

photographer being Solomon Yudovin. The preserved texts show the perplexity of the

expedition members their difficulty in formulating any sort of attitude to the edifices

besides recognition of their historical meaning. An-ski achieved very little insight during his

Galician relief mission of 191516. Another disoriented researcher travelling through the

same places almost parallel to An-ski was George Loukomski. His evaluations oscillated

between spirit of Polish renaissance, leak of national stylistic features, and curiosity.

That same year, 1916, ethical and artistic goals inspired the survey by Lazar Lissitzky and

Issachar Baer Rybak, who were seeking their self-identities as Jewish artists. All these

researchers collected significant visual records of the monuments. It is also important that

An-skys expedition collected thepinkasim, ritual objects, and Jewish folklore related to the

sacred structures, thus providing the folk context of the synagogues for future research.

An-skis research goals, though formulated vaguely, were related to the historicist

ideas of Vladimir Stasov, which partially matched those of Zachariewich. By the time of An-

skis expeditions, this approach has already been largely abandoned by Russian, German, and

Austrian architects. In the circle of Jzef Awin, a rising architect and theoretician from

Lwow, the Jewish artistic past was creatively rethought as part of the Polish cultural

landscape. The emphasis was on the conveying of what was subconsciously felt as Jewish,

using modernized means, while any slavish copying of historical patterns was criticized. This


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shift of 190910 was visible in design works by the Jewish Awin and the Polish Oskar

Sosnowski alike, and was mentioned by Witold Minkewicz in his review of 1910. This

development separated the aims of synagogue documentation and design, though in coming

decades the same personalities would work in both fields, and historicist design would

feature some synagogues well into 1920s. In yet another field, that of conservation,

significant contributions to the study of monuments were made by Zygmund Hendel,

Tadeusz Mokowski, Jan Sas-Zubrzycki, and others. Synagogue architecture penetrated

academic curricula: Professor Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz involved students of the Lwow

Polytechnic School in the study of Nachmanowicz Synagogue.

Synagogue style, once crucial for historicist designers, steadily vanished from the

focus of researchers interests; they concentrated on the object as such, and on the issues of

architectural typology. The Silesian architect Alfred Grotte, interested mainly in masonry

synagogues, and the Viennese Alois Breyer, the researcher of wooden architecture, led the

work in this direction. Grottes monograph of 1915Deutsche, bchmische und polnische

Synagogentypen became a standard text formulating main types of synagogue spatial

organization, and was further developed in the 1920s by Richard Krautheimer and others.

Breyers research, the first doctorate in the field, begun on the eve of the First World War,

set the standards for the analysis of wooden synagogues. The abundance of photographs and

measured drawings, today stored at the Tel Aviv Art Museum, provided the basis for further

studies.

In the interwar period, the fragility of the synagogue architecture, especially in the

case of the wooden constructions, encouraged the organization of more survey groups. In

1927, Szyszko-Bohusz published studies, based on survey by his Krakow students. The most

systematic work and the most important results were achieved by the Institute for Polish

Architecture at the Warsaw Polytechnic, under Oskar Sosnowskis guidance. From 1923

onwards, more than 30 synagogues were measured and drafted. While most of these

drawings are preserved in Warsaw, some have been discovered recently at other locations.

Other important collections of field documentation in the Second Republic were accumulated

at the subdivisions of the Ministry of Culture and Art: by the provincial Conservation

Authorities, and at the Central Bureau for the Survey of Monuments (now at the IS PAN).

Jewish self-governing bodies were also active in this endeavor. The Kuratorium,as the


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Lwow Jewish Community Commission for the Preservation of Jewish Monuments is known,

has documented a number of important objects. This work was carried out by architects Jzef

Awin, Zygmunt Sperber, Bernard Teitelboim, and others. Continuing the prewar practice, a

survey was also carried out by the students of the Lwow Polytechnic. Synagogue architecture

interested Ukrainian researchers as well, among them Volodymyr Sichynsky. For many

artists, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, depicting synagogues became a personal goal. Theories

and practical conclusions derived from those records were varied. For instance, Jan Sas-

Zubrzycki advanced his original theory of the genuine Polish two-partite composition

based on the example of the Nachmanowicz Synagogue; Szyszko-Bohusz emphasized

Baroque stylistics to contextualize Polish synagogues; the historian Majer Baaban further

developed the narrative of so-called fortress synagogue to promote the image of Jewish

communities as traditionally loyal and useful members of the society; he also pursued a

reconciliation theory encompassing both eastern and western features of synagogue

architecture in Poland; inspector Zbigniew Hornung formulated his conservation policies;

Jzef Awin introduced very modern methods of conservation to differentiate the authentic

and new parts of the reconstructed synagogue; Szymon Zajczyk advanced his typological

study of Jewish sacred architecture.

The study of synagogue architecture continued also in Lithuania. The students of

Paulius Galaunat the Vytautas Magnus University described the synagogues and recorded

the local narratives in their seminar papers. The Ministry of Culture commissioned

documentation of some important monuments. Thus, a series of photographs by the director

of the Aura Museum, Stasys Vaitkus, and linguist Chackelis Lemchenas documented the

unique synagogue of Pakruojis. This activity was probably inspired by heated discussions at

the time over what should be regarded as national art in Lithuania. As a result, wooden

synagogues were recognized as part of Lithuanias folk-art heritage. Many edifices were

photographed by the Hebrew poet David Kamzon, who came from Palestine for a visit. He

could not have foreseen the destruction of the Holocaust, but he wished to preserve the image

of the traditional Jewish-Lithuanian world, which in the late 1930s was already gradually

vanishing. Beside these, many artists produced visual records of synagogues in Lithuania.

Research of Jewish monuments went on in the Soviet Ukraine. Ukrainian art

historians and ethnographers included it in the curricula of the1920s. Great efforts were


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undertaken by Danylo Shcherbakivsky, the museum curator and a professor at the Academy

of Arts in Kiev, who organized student expeditions to Podolia and Volhynia. Shcherbakivsky

tended to construct the art history of Ukraine along the lines of that of other European state

nations, and thus his attitude to Jewish monuments was inclusive. Impeded in his many

initiatives by the Commissars, he committed suicide in public in 1927; his name was blotted

out of the Soviet curricula. Other great Ukrainian figures were a museum curator, Stefan

Taranushenko, and his assistant Pavlo Zholtovsky. By 1930, their documentation of Podolian

synagogues in Minkivtsi, Mykhalpil, Smotrych, and Yaryshiv had expanded knowledge

about the wooden synagogues, documented in previous decades. However, the stifling

atmosphere of the Soviet Ukraine barred any possibility of a comprehensive study of these

monuments. Taranushenko was arrested as a member of the so-called Russian-Ukrainian

Fascist Block in 1933, and he was able to return to Ukraine only in 1953. Zholtovsky was

imprisoned in 1933, returning to Ukraine in 1946, and then he had further opportunity and

the courage to study Jewish art in Lwow. Karl Richard Hagenmeister, the director of the Art

School in Kamyanets Podilsky, and his colleague Konstanty Krzemiski, who together with

their students documented the wooden synagogue in Smotrych and prepared a lithograph

publication, suffered a more tragic fate. They lost their lives in the Stalinist persecutions, and

their work was destroyed. Fortunately, the collections of Schcherbakivsky and Taranushenko

are preserved; they are presently being studied and prepared for academic publication.

Separate mention should be made of drawings by two Jewish art studentsUsher Hiter and

Eliakim Malz who in 1927 used their summer vacation to depict synagogues.

The Holocaust wiped out living communities, monuments of architecture, and many

researchers, among them Awin, Baaban, and Zajczyk. Only a few individual researchers,

like Janusz Witwicki, continued their work during the war. The few post-war attempts to

restore the ruins failed. Later decades witnessed destruction, purposeful neglect and the

oblivion of Jewish monuments. The work of Maria and the late Kazimierz Piechotka,

published in 1957 and 1959, was a tremendous breakthrough. They managed to collect,

process, reconsider, and publish the bulk of preserved material that had been accumulated

before the war. We can appreciate their significance when we see the new generation of

researchers, collectors, and curators around the world who owe the Piechotkas their emerging

interest in Jewish art. Their further four books of 19962008 constitute a timeless monument


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to what once existed and had been photographed, measured, and drafted in its time. These

books also heralded a new period in the research of synagogue architecture, when the Eastern

Bloc and the iron curtain collapsed, and we found ourselves in a single world.

The latest wave of research started about 1990, and it is represented by my dear

colleagues, whom I will not name in order not to miss anybody. In the globalized world, the

research projects have become international. The literature and methodology developed in

the West, for instance, by Rachel Wischnitzer and Carol Krinsky, was attentively read in the

East; writings by the easterners became publishable in the west. Documentation projects

were initiated by the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem jointly

with colleagues from Belorussia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Russia, and hundreds of

surviving monuments were surveyed. The latest project is our catalogue of synagogues in

Lithuania, produced by Israeli and Lithuanian academies. It includes 59 geographical entries,

and 96 extant synagogues, 17 of them constructed of wood, out of about 1,000 Jewish sacred

buildings once existent within the boundaries of the Lithuanian Republic. The mutual

understanding emerged from the interpretation of culture as the realm of meanings, in

accordance with Clifford Geertz, and thus implemented the thick descriptions as the first

duty of a scholar. The discovery of meanings was possible through interpretation of Hebrew

inscriptions, iconographical analyses of synagogue paintings and other decorative means,

synagogue layouts, composition of masses, and architectural design as pertinent to both the

Jewish ritual and social space, and the townscape of the Old Commonwealth, Russian

Empire, and Lithuania. Our work on an even better catalogue of synagogues in Latvia is

underway.

The approaches to Jewish architecture have changed over the last century, and

especially in recent decades. Many colleagues, who started their work as a mere continuation

of the previous research, have revised and refined their methodologies. Teleological theories

bound by political agendas are successfully deconstructed; stylistic periods are abandoned as

pertinent to the notion of Zeitgeist; Structuralist concepts are dismissed because of their static

nature. What the researcher is left with is the object, the story of its construction, its

decoration, its destructions and reconstructions, the personality of the architect, the client, the

meaning of their work, and its varied significations throughout history. All of these are

studied through authentic evidence and set in proper context. From this routine list, I will


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now choose an example of a structure and its visual record, to show the bonds connecting the

object, its numerous depictions produced with diverse intentions, the researcher, and the

signification of the edifice.

Isidor Kaufmann is renowned as a perfect documentary painter; this reputation is

supported by his interior view of the New Synagogue in Brody. However, his Sabbath

Evening in Brodybelongs to another sort of art. While the tripartite faade and a Polish

parapet are realistically depicted, the synagogue is retained by buttresses, which are not

features of Brody, but of the Sobieski Shulin Zhovkva. Thus we are dealing with a collective

representation of a synagogue in a Galician town. The most striking detail is the synagogues

onion dome, which never existed in fact. Perhaps it was a representation of the actual interior

dome, and only those who ever entered the synagogue would have been aware of it. In terms

of its meaning, it is an iconic vestige of the Messianic Temple; actually it is the Dome of the

Rock, interpreted as the Temple in Jewish iconography. Thus we are invited to see the

synagogue through the eyes of a religious Jew, a messianic believer, who beholds things

beyond the immediately visible. Does this insight bring us to the meaning with which the

architect and community imbued their synagogue in 1742, when it was constructed? We do

not know the answer. We are only a nexus in a chain of study, trying to re-construct meaning

in what we find, as were Mickiewicz, Mokowski, Kaufmann, and many others of our

counterparts.

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Studies of Jewish Architecture Torun-2010 02