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 CentralEastern 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 PolishLithuanian 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
1

English translation by Marcel Weyland.

design language in Romantic historicist architecture, as did their colleague Josef 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 ByzantineRomanesque 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

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 conservative secular structures in Ukraine, and later, by the Lithuanian Paulius Galaun as well. The emerging Jewish intelligentsia was also interested in the subject. The synagogue architecture of the Southwestern Krai was 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 the pinkasim, 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 Anskis 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

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

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 SasZubrzycki 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 Galaun at 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

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

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

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 Brody belongs 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 Shul in 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.