Wooden Synagogues of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: between Polish and Jewish Narratives. Lecture at the symposium Stella, Abstract Art, and Synagogues, Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw, May 12, 2016

World War II and the subsequent period of communist rule severely diminished the amount of historic Jewish architecture in Poland. It is estimated that in the mid-1990s there were about 321 synagogues and prayer houses in the country, all in various states of preservation. This article examines two case studies of synagogues that were salvaged by being transformed into Judaica museums. The first of these is the synagogue in Łańcut and the second concerns the complex of two synagogues and one prayer house in Włodawa. The article contains an analysis of both examples from the perspective of the following factors: the circumstances under which the institution was established, the place that the history and culture of Jews took in the Museum’s activity, the way that Judaica collections and exhibitions were constructed, the substantive, educational, and research activities that were undertaken, as well as the issue of what place these monuments occupy in the town’s landscape.

This article explores Jews’ role in mediating artistic exchange between Italy and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the eighteenth century, through a case study examining the cultural and historical context surrounding the construction of the Druja synagogue (ca. 1765–1766) by the Paracca family of immigrant Italian architects and masons, for the burgeoning Jewish community affiliated with the region’s reigning noble families. The article explores the circumstances surrounding the Druja synagogue as a manifestation of the so-called “Vilnius Baroque” school of late Baroque–Rococo architecture in the Grand Duchy. The synagogue design reanimated the grandeur of the past and represented notions of Italy in honor of Baltic Catholic patrons and Jewish clients. Jews emerge as scions and mediators of the geopolitical, spiritual and cultural crossroads at Druja, a historical inflection point when emerging divisions of conceptual geography gave rise to the notion of an “eastern Europe.”

Egyptomania is a specific strategy related to the reception of the heritage of ancient Egypt and incorporation of Egyptian elements into various aspects of modern culture, such as art, crafts, literature, intellectual speculation, and others. This phenomenon manifested itself in architecture, too, especially in the 19th century. We can also point out various Egyptian (or rather, "quasi-Egyptian") motifs and details in the design and construction of some synagogue buildings around the world. In the 1879s, a Polish architect, Stanisław Adamczewski, proposed the idea of a monumental synagogue in Warsaw, incorporating interesting elements reminiscent of ancient Egyptian buildings. He also planned other Egyptian-styled structures in Warsaw, but none of them, like the synagogue itself, were ever constructed.

In this article I shall examine Oriental-style synagogues built in Austria-Hungary during the second half of the nineteenth century in the context of the architectural and cultural history of Habsburg lands, putting forward three theses: (1) Oriental styles fitinwellwithaniconic,anti-material concepts in Judaism; (2) Oriental modes also neatly match with certain ideas about Hungarian national identity – a common denominator between Hungarian and Jewish identity; (3) there is an important correlation between the idea of light cladding of the surface in some Moorish-style synagogues and the subsequent output of the Sezession.

Sacred wooden architecture in Poland is a huge and still unrecognised research problem. It covers a number of issues of interdisciplinary character: from the properties of building materials and carpentry techniques, through construction and architectural-spatial solutions, to cultural and natural conditions. Hence, the best way to study this problem is interdisciplinary research. The necessity of cooperation of representatives of various scientific disciplines became the basis for creating a team to study the wooden church of St Michael the Archangel in Domachowo, so far dated to 1568. As researchers representing various disciplines (including archaeology, history, art history, history of architecture, architecture, architectural conservation), we cite sources and research that allow us to formulate a thesis that the past of the Domachowo church dates back to the 14 th century. Moreover, we present the research and methodological problems inscribed in the aforementioned church building, understood as a whole. Such a multifaceted approach allows us to redefine the current knowledge about the church in Domachowo.

The article aims to describe the semiotic aspect of synagogue architecture in the context of liturgical texts and show the direct relationship between synagogues’ dimensions and the individual verses of prayers. The work’s subject was a synagogue in Siemiatycze, built at the end of the 18th century. The example of prayer was Tikkun Chatzot, the midnight service that emerged under the influence of Kabbalistic movements in Safed. Under the influence of 17th and 18th-century mystical movements, it became part of the synagogue liturgy in Europe. The article presents a metrological analysis of the synagogue’s dimensions in Siemiatycze based on in situ research and the related Tikkun Chatzot prayer text’s gematric analysis. Gematria is a special kind of mysticism of the letters and is rooted in a particular way in the Hebrew language. It consists of converting the letters of words into numbers. This method assumes that letters in a word are understood as graphic signs of numbers. During the research, methods of logical argumentation, historical and analytical, and quantitative and statistical, were used. During the research, it was possible to indicate the relationship between the Tikkun Chatzot prayer fragments and the synagogue’s dimensions in Siemiatycze. It applies to external and internal dimensions. We find expressions relating to exile and nostalgia for the temple and Jerusalem more often in the external dimensions, whereas in interior dimensions we encounter expressions praising God. At the same time, it was indicated that this relationship represents the linguistically binary character of the synagogue architecture rooted in the exterior–interior opposition.

The present essay was inspired by the research on wall paintings of two synagogues located on different sides of the Atlantic but which share the same tradition with Eastern European roots. One of them is the Cori Gilod (Ẓori Gilead) Synagogue built in 1924 in Lviv, the center of East Galicia, which was painted in the second half of the 1930s and implies the late period of the flourishing of synagogue decoration before it was terminated by the Holocaust. These wall paintings were preserved after the Nazi occupation and were renovated in 2007 during the restoration works in the synagogue. Unfortunately, the original painting was lost at that stage. Another synagogue was founded by Jewish immigrants from Białystok (Bialystoker Shul) in 1905 in New York, in the Lower East Side, in a building of a former Protestant church. These murals also date to the 1930s. These were made during the Great Depression for the “moral support of US Jews to commemorate their heritage.” Like in Lviv, the wall paintings of this synagogue have been preserved, though for another reason. In contrast to the many immigrants’ synagogues that were later modernized, closed, or sold to become churches, the community has never abandoned the building that was fully renovated in 1988. Comparative analysis of these renewed synagogues that still keep their original features in their decoration programs, subjects and iconography of the wall paintings highlights a more general phenomenon, namely peculiarities of transferring the Eastern European Jewish traditions, particularly in synagogue murals, to the USA. This phenomenon could be illustrated by New York, especially in the Lower East Side, a center of Jewish immigration at its peak time between 1880 and 1914.

Delivered at “Synagogue Wall Paintings: Research, Preservation, Presentation,” International Workshop, The Center for Jewish Art, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, September 13–14, 2016