{"id":37450,"date":"2026-05-26T10:46:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T14:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/?p=37450"},"modified":"2026-05-26T10:46:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T14:46:17","slug":"the-ukrainian-jewish-encounter-cultural-dimensions-part-5-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/en\/the-ukrainian-jewish-encounter-cultural-dimensions-part-5-2\/","title":{"rendered":"\"The Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter: Cultural Dimensions\": Part 5.2"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Ukrainian Jewish Encounter was founded in 2008 with the goal of building stronger relations between Ukrainians and Jews, two peoples who, for centuries, lived side by side on the territory of what is modern-day Ukraine. Since then, in keeping with its motto, \"Our stories are incomplete without each other,\" UJE has sponsored conferences, round-table discussions and research, as well as translations and publication of works the organization anticipates will promote a deeper understanding between the two peoples and an appreciation of their respective cultures.<\/p>\n

We offer for the first time the book\u00a0The Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter: Cultural Dimensions\u00a0<\/em>in an eBook format.<\/p>\n

The book is a collection of essays that examine the interaction between the Ukrainian and Jewish cultures from the seventeenth century onwards. Written by leading experts from Ukraine, Israel, and other countries, the book presents a broad perspective on parallels and cross-cultural influences in various domains \u2014 including the visual arts, folklore, music, literature, and language. Several essays also focus on mutual representation \u2014 for example, perceptions of the \"Other\" as expressed in literary works or art history.<\/p>\n

The richly illustrated volume contains a wealth of new information on these little-explored topics. The book appears as volume 25 in the series\u00a0Jews and Slavs,<\/em>\u00a0published by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 1993. In several previous volumes, considerable attention is given to the defining role of the Old Testament in Ukrainian literature and art and to the depiction of Jewish life in Ukraine in the works of Nikolai Gogol, Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, Lesia Ukrainka, Vladimir Korolenko, and other writers.<\/p>\n

This collection of essays was co-edited by Wolf Moskovich, Professor Emeritus, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Alti Rodal, Co-Director of the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, who also wrote the introduction to the volume. It was published in 2016 by Hebrew University of Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

5.2<\/span><\/h1>\n

Click\u00a0here for a pdf\u00a0<\/a>of the entire book.<\/p>\n

Traditional Jewish Art and Ukrainian Art Historians: Collection, preservation, and research in the Czarist, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Periods<\/h2>\n

Benyamin Lukin (Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem)<\/span>
\n<\/em><\/strong>The purpose of this essay is to outline the main stages of the exploration of traditional Jewish art by Ukrainian art historians. [1]<\/a> My interest in this subject arose in the late 1980s, when I participated in a field survey of Jewish monuments in Ukraine, and together with my colleagues discovered a world of Jewish folk art previously unknown to us. We had questions, for which our predecessors, among them Ukrainian researchers of the 1920s and 1930s, sought answers. [2]<\/a> The documentation on Jewish monuments that they assembled provides a valuable record of the world of Jewish creativity on the eve of its total destruction. It is difficult to imagine today any serious research on Jewish material culture in Ukraine without reference to the documents assembled by Ukrainian researchers, and there is continued merit in considering their conclusions and observations. [3]<\/a><\/p>\n

The exploration of Jewish folk art by Ukrainian art historians began about one hundred years ago. In 1910, Hryhorii Pavlutsky (1861\u20131924), the most outstanding researcher of wooden architecture in Ukraine, published the article \"Ancient Wooden Synagogues in Little Russia\" in a prestigious edition of the History of Russian Art<\/em>. [4]<\/a> In this article, he described two positions that for decades have defined the main directions for research conducted by Ukrainian art historians in the field of Judaica.<\/p>\n

The first position represented \"the search for an oriental perspective.\" According to the scholarly paradigm of the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Jews belonged to the oriental peoples, and therefore their original art and architecture should be considered rooted in the artistic traditions of the ancient Near East. An ardent supporter of this position in Russia was the prominent art critic Vladimir Stasov, who insisted that the \"Arab-Moorish style\" of synagogue buildings in particular has, to a great degree, inherited traits of the original Jewish architecture of ancient Judea. [5]<\/a> Pavlutsky argued against considering wooden synagogues from this \"oriental perspective\" and not finding any connection with eastern traditions in their design or construction techniques. He denied that wooden synagogues were an original Jewish creation and supported his conclusion with the statement that \"Jews could not have brought with them traditions of wooden architecture from Judea simply because there were no forests there.\" [6]<\/a><\/p>\n

Pavlutsky supported the second position of Ukrainian art studies in relation to the folk art of Jews when he asserted that the origins of the architecture of wooden synagogues derived from the traditions of Ukrainian architecture rather than from original Jewish sources. In his opinion, \"the most beautiful secular building was taken to be a model for a synagogue; this building was a \"szlachta <\/em>[gentry] house\u2026with a high roof in the style of the Baroque.\" Moreover, the wooden synagogues \"represent a no longer existing wooden 'szlachta mansion' and as such they are very important for the history of Ukrainian art, as they seem to be the last\u2026 examples of secular wooden architecture in Little Russia.\"<\/p>\n

The position that wooden synagogues were inspired by Ukrainian architectural traditions was shaped in the context of nineteenth century art criticism with respect to monuments of Ashkenazi Jewish art and based on the search for elements of oriental traditions (stylistic features, shapes, motifs, techniques). As pointed out above, the presence of these elements determined opinions regarding the originality of the studied monuments. Those researchers who found no oriental influences in the architecture of synagogues denied their distinctive character, and those intent on emphasizing the originality of the architectural design of the synagogue buildings pointed to its links with the oriental tradition. Among the first group was the architectural historian George Loukomsky (1884\u20121952), who did not recognize any unique features in the synagogues of Galicia and Volhynia in his early works in 1913\u201315. [7]<\/a> Among the second was a connoisseur of earlier periods in Podolia, Victor Guldman, who perceived the Sharhorod synagogue as \"a gorgeous building in a Moorish style,\" [8]<\/a> and the contemporary Kyiv researcher of local lore Dmitrii Malakov, to whom the architecture of the synagogue in Sharhorod also \"somehow appears Moorish.\" [9]<\/a><\/p>\n

Pavlutsky's views on the Ukrainian origin of wooden synagogue architecture were shared by other Ukrainian art historians \u2014 among them, the well-known art historian, Kostiantyn Shyrotsky (1886\u20121919), who in his Essays on the History of Decorative Art of Ukraine <\/em>(1914) extended Pavlutsky's view to apply to all synagogue architecture and folk art: \"Decorative arts of the Jews who lived among the Ukrainian tribes in ancient times were closely connected with Ukrainian art. Thanks to this fact, we have in their synagogues (of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) examples of secular Ukrainian architecture and paintings, which, according to Professor Pavlutsky, replicated the decoration of ceilings and walls of Christian houses.\" [10]<\/a><\/p>\n

A new stage in Ukrainian art studies in general, and on \"the Jewish street\" in particular, emerged in the 1920s and 1930s with the spread of the Ukrainian movement for advancing local studies. This movement was supported in the first years by the Soviet authorities, whose policy of Ukrainianization aimed, in particular, at \"building a new Ukrainian culture.\" Societies of local studies, conferences, publications, folk art and way of life museums, and expeditions (or as they were called \"excursions\") to Ukrainian villages and towns harnessed the energy of numerous representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, including art historians, museum professionals, and local antique experts. By the mid-1930s, this \"renaissance\" of national culture was stifled by the Soviet authorities, and its most active leaders were persecuted. However, the artefacts rescued by the Ukrainian researchers from destruction and the material recorded in their field studies have immeasurably expanded the base of Ukrainian art research, including the field of Judaica.<\/p>\n

Among those who managed to keep images of the Jewish monuments (subsequently destroyed) was the Podolian art critic and director of the Kamianets-Podilskyi Art-Industrial School, Vladimir Gagenmeister (Volodymyr Hahenmeister) (1887\u20121938). In a lithographic workshop of the school, Gagenmeister, along with his colleague, the graphic artist Kostiantyn Krzheminsky (1893\u20131937), released more than one hundred small-circulation art publications, including albums of Monuments of the Jewish Art of Podolia<\/em>, with lithographs of the old Kamianets-Podilskyi Jewish cemetery tombstones, murals of the wooden synagogue in Smotrych, and other content. [11]<\/a> Both artists were subjected to repression and executed in the second half of 1930s, and their publications were destroyed.<\/p>\n

During the same years, in the eastern part of Podolia, Gustav Briling (1867\u20131942), a historian of local lore and founder of the Vinnytsia Regional Museum (in 1919), gathered collections of illuminated Jewish manuscripts, synagogue textiles, wooden stamps for baking cakes for the festival of Purim (Purim<\/em>-bretlech<\/em>; sing., Purim-bretl<\/em>), as well as photo collections of carved stone tombs and a housing estate of the Jewish quarter of Vinnytsia \u2014 \"Yerusalimka.\" It is not surprising that in the Vinnytsia Museum there were no synagogue collections of items made from silver or other nonferrous metals. Everything that the communities managed to save during the Civil War pogroms was confiscated in the early 1920s by the state.<\/p>\n

Inspired by the idea of bringing the collections to the world of research, Briling intended to publish an album entitled Jewish Antiquity<\/em>, in cooperation with the Jewish Museum in Odessa. However, these plans were not realized because the material was deemed \"socially alien,\" as defined in numerous denunciations. Briling was first arrested in 1933 on charges of spying for Germany, and executed in 1942. It is possible to assess his attitude to traditional Jewish art, indirectly, through the exhibits that survived in the Vinnytsia museum, as well as the memoirs of his eldest son George.<\/p>\n

Gustav Briling's son Georgii Briling was engaged in an expedition for the Vinnytsia museum and photographed carved tombstones in the old Jewish cemetery of Nemyriv, subsequently destroyed. He aspired to find ancient oriental prototypes of the pictorial motifs of traditional Jewish art, as described in the following: \"There are traditional grapes, as a reminder of the golden bunches of grapes hanging in Solomon's Temple; lions, as symbols of power and strength; plants with spread out branches as a sign of abundance; two hands in the cuffs, as a sign that here a noble person is buried. There are many purely oriental elements, perhaps even of Assyrian-Babylonian provenance, depicted in the rich and elaborate Baroque style of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There is a scene of combat of a lion with a unicorn, a deer scratching its head with a hind leg, lions holding the ends of their own tails in their mouths, four-legged beasts with heads and wings of birds, a bird feeding chicks, foxes with prey in their teeth \u2014 in a word, fabulous manifestations of the oriental imagination in Nemirov, which survived through the centuries and millennia.\" [12]<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the most distinguished Ukrainian art critics of the first third of the twentieth century, Professor Danylo Shcherbakivsky (1877\u20131927) of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts, examined the carvings of Jewish tombstones from the same \"oriental perspective\": \"The primary source of the Jewish gravestone could probably be found in the ancient Egyptian stela: the images \u2014 basically similar \u2014 reflect obvious traces of the East, mainly in the Romanesque style. These include lions with tails topped with flowers, birds with flowers in their beaks, griffins, and deer in heraldic poses. With dynamics and treatment that are reminiscent of the flat Romanesque carving, these biblical lions, deer, and birds express the Romanesque style through the language of artistic forms.\" [13]<\/a><\/p>\n

These descriptions suggest a certain development in the \"oriental perspective.\" From now on researchers were not limited to questions of style or artistic techniques, but their search extended also into the area of interpretation of the iconography of symbolic images. Shcherbakivsky's research possibilities were narrowed by his lack of knowledge of Jewish languages and the Jewish cultural context. In order to enrich the arsenal of classical art criticism and to understand the figurative language of Jewish masters, Shcherbakivsky interviewed local Jews during his expeditions. He also tried to discover Ukrainian influences on Jewish artistic creativity. Images that he mentioned, such as \"cranes and a crane with a snake in its beak\" in the paintings of a stone synagogue in Ozaryntsi, and doors \"covered with Ukrainian carving\" in a wooden synagogue in Yaryshiv hardly convinced him of the importance of these influences. [14]<\/a> At the same time, in the description of the menorah <\/em>in the Slavuta synagogue, which according to Shcherbakivsky was created in the \"traditional Jewish style,\" it is possible to see Shcherbakivsky's approach to the generalized vision of original Jewish art traditions.<\/p>\n

Shcherbakivsky devoted his expedition of 1926 to towns in Podolia and Volhynia \"to conduct research on house building in the small Jewish town (shtetl<\/em>)\u2026 and monuments of Jewish art which are so inextricably linked to the shtetl<\/em>.\" Shcherbakivsky's research findings were significant, especially with respect to house building. He noted that the shtetl <\/em>differed immensely from \"villages with their huts and courtyard buildings,\" \"preserving the ancient traditions and remnants of a pre-Slavic epoch.\" His conclusions \u2014 that \"all various types of shtetl <\/em>buildings clearly reflect an influence of West European culture,\" and that \"the house-building characteristic of the right-bank represents the influence of a German city\" [15]<\/a> \u2014 manifest an important step in the development of Ukrainian research of architectural and urban trends in the shtetl<\/em>. Beginning in the mid-1920s, the study of Jewish folk art became particularly intensive in Shcherbakivsky's research agenda. The plans for an expedition in 1927 to Yaryshiv included measurements and the copying of paintings in a wooden synagogue. However, his premature death interrupted the research he initiated.<\/p>\n

Further development in Ukrainian studies of the Jewish artistic heritage continued in the scholarly work of the famous Ukrainian art critic of the Soviet epoch, Pavlo Zholtovsky (1904\u201286). Since his childhood near Iziaslav, Zholtovsky was acquainted with and fascinated by the world of traditional Jewry. He retained this feeling from his childhood and expressed it in his memoirs. [16]<\/a><\/p>\n

Zholtovsky returned to the region of his childhood in 1926 as a member of the Museum of Ukrainian Art in Kharkiv. He was the leading expert in the annual expeditions in 1926\u201333 organized by the museum's director, Stepan Taranushenko (1889\u20131976). He photographed and sketched hundreds of shtetl <\/em>houses, synagogues and their interiors, cemeteries, and carved gravestones in the towns of Volhynia and Podolia. Today these photographic collections are gold mines for all those who study the history and culture of Ukrainian Jewish communities. [17]<\/a><\/p>\n

Zholtovsky was interned in Stalinist labour camps from 1933 to 1936. In 1946, after a term of disenfranchisement, he settled in Lviv where he became an employee, and later director, of the Museum of Ethnography and Art Crafts. In 1966, during the brief period of political liberalization under Khrushchev known as the \"Thaw\" (\"ottepel'\"), Zholtovsky managed to publish his article \"The Monuments of Jewish Art\" in the journal Decorative Arts<\/em>. Twenty-five years later the editors of the journal remembered that this publication \"was so improbable that it was as unnoticeable as a loud sneeze in decent company.\" [18]<\/a> In the history of Ukrainian, and actually the whole of Soviet art criticism, Zholtovsky's article represents a unique phenomenon of human courage as well as integrity in research. I do not know whether this article was in great demand during the period of its publication, but I can testify to its immense value for the revival of Judaica in post-Soviet times.<\/p>\n

Expressing the aspiration to acquaint the reader \"with some features and monuments\" of the art of Jews in Ukraine, Zholtovsky in this article assumes the task of keeping alive the memory of the unique and multifaceted Jewish artistic culture of eastern Europe that was destroyed by the Nazis. On several pages filled with illustrations, he talks about the architecture and painting of wooden synagogues, copper casting and jewelry art, metalwork and woodcarving, the manufacture of painted faience, and about an art that gained mass distribution \u2014 the art of paper cutting of \u00a0\"mizrachs, \" rosettes and so on. Just as his predecessors had done, Zholtovsky, in referring to the paintings of the synagogues from the first half of the 18th century, discussed their oriental \u00a0\"arabesque nature \" and the \u00a0\"flatness of the relative fragmentation of ornaments\u2026associated with the art of the Middle East. \" He also found in these paintings, as well as in the ornaments of craft products, stylistic features and artistic devices similar to Ukrainian decorative art. At the same time, Zholtovsky emphasizes distinctive \u00a0\"national characteristics \" of Jewish folk art that \u00a0\"appear most clearly\u2026in the objects of solely Jewish use rather than in the general goods. \" By claiming that \u00a0\"this formal cult art \" has \u00a0\"a concrete-imaginative, life-affirming character that contributes to universal culture \", Zholtovsky clearly demonstrated his civic stance. [19]<\/a><\/p>\n

Another vivid example of the transformation of research activity into a significant social phenomenon was the presentation of synagogue architecture in Western Europe by George Loukomsky (Georgii Lukomsky). Loukomsky, who emigrated in 1921, also reconsidered views on synagogue architecture in Eastern Europe. On the eve of the Second World War, in 1935\u201336, he held several exhibitions of his watercolours and drawings of Synagogues of Europe <\/em>in London, Paris, Lisbon, and Madrid (where the greater part of his sketches were destroyed during the Civil War).<\/p>\n

Loukomsky published in London in 1947 a monograph entitled Jewish Art in European Synagogues<\/em>, \" in which he observed the \u00a0\"clearly individualized and peculiar artistic taste of the Jewish people, \" and stated: \u00a0\"the Jewish people attained their true individual development when the Jewish architect was able to free himself from prevailing local influences and become an independent creator. \" He claimed in this monograph that \u00a0\"the people themselves, their dress and customs are full of individuality, faithful to tradition, and blended into one picture with their buildings, \" and saw a \u00a0\"naivety and archaism \" in synagogue murals that were \u00a0\"especially full of that peculiar flavour that gives one the right to call it 'the Jewish style.' \" [20]<\/a><\/p>\n

In those early postwar years, Loukomsky raised the question of the urgent necessity to preserve and restore Jewish monuments destroyed during the two World Wars. Loukomsky's book \u2014 which includes some four hundred photographs and drawings of synagogues, their interiors, ritual objects, and tombstones \u2014 remains one of the largest published collections of objects of traditional Jewish art.<\/p>\n

The most significant achievement of Ukrainian art historians and researchers in \u00a0\"the Jewish street \" during the decades examined above would be the preservation of the memory of the material culture of traditional Jewry, such as the numerous objects of Jewish craft and religious ritual, as well as the documentation of Jewish monuments. For more than half a century, nobody ever claimed the collected objects and documents that were forgotten in the storerooms of museums and archives. Their rehabilitation only began in the late 1980s and 1990s.<\/p>\n

The most recent stage in the study of Jewish art in Ukraine is directly connected to global political shifts \u2014 the collapse of the Soviet Union and the formation of an independent Ukraine. To some degree, it reminds one of the heightened interest in Jewish themes in Ukrainian art research during the period of abrupt political changes of the 1920s and 1930s. There is the same \u00a0\"explosion \" of interest in a \u00a0\"new \" area of knowledge among many researchers and pan-regional specialists. Judaica has again been included in the official research nomenclature. There are new museums, educational centers, conferences, and a great number of publications. Contemporary research of Jewish culture has expanded both chronologically and thematically, and now incorporates themes relating to Jewish life in eastern Galicia, Bukovina, and Transcarpathia.<\/p>\n

However, while the object of earlier research was perhaps a decaying but still living folk culture, the new stage of research began half a century after the destruction of eastern Europe's Jewish civilization in the Holocaust and the years of deliberate oblivion under the Soviet regime.<\/p>\n

Among the noteworthy achievements in the last twenty years of Jewish art research in independent Ukraine one should mention the discovery, description, and cataloguing of Jewish monuments, museum exhibits, and collections of Judaica, as well as related archival documents. [21]<\/a><\/p>\n

While descriptions of the objects of Jewish traditional art are perceived as valuable achievements by contemporary Ukrainian researchers, there has also been some criticism of those instances of generalizations, the uncritical repetition of conclusions reached by previous generations of researchers, and the lack of knowledge about Jewish tradition or the relevant context for research. [22]<\/a><\/p>\n

The preservation of Jewish monuments is still an acute problem in independent Ukraine. Ancient synagogues and cemeteries that survived both World Wars are being destroyed before our eyes. We hope that Ukrainian researchers of traditional Jewish art are not indifferent to the fate of Jewish monuments and will find ways to assure their preservation.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> This essay elaborates on a theme the author presented for the first time in August 2001 to participants of a conference on \"Problems of Jewish Plastic Art,\" organized by the Jewish Agency Sokhnut. <\/em>See: Lukin, Veniamin. \"Traditsionnoe evreiskoe iskusstvo glazami ukrainskikh kraevedov\" in Kanon i svoboda. Problemy evreiskogo plasticheskogo iskusstva<\/em>, eds. T. Vaksman, D. Rubina, B. Karafelov (Moscow, 2003): 72\u201284.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> See: Khaimovich B. and Dymshits, V. \"In the Footsteps of An-sky, 1988\u20131993\" in Back to the Shtetl. An-sky and the Jewish Ethnographic Expedition, 1912\u20131914<\/em>. From the Collections of the State Ethnographic Museum in St. Petersburg<\/em>. Exhibition catalogue, ed. R. Gonen (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1994), 121\u201332.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> This paper draws on archival material and art criticism publications kindly given to me over the years by my friends and colleagues, including: Alexander Ivanov, Alexander Kantsedikas, Sergey Kravtsov, Yuli Lifshits, Tatiana Romanovskaia, Alla Sokolova, and Boris Khaimovich. I am also grateful to the latter two for their valuable advice, which has become a reference point for this research.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Pavlutsky, G. \"Starinnye dereviannye sinagogi v Malorossii\" in Istoria russkogo iskusstva, <\/em>ed. I. Grabar (Moscow, 1911), 2:377\u201382. Pavlutsky first offered to include wooden synagogues in the program of the description of monuments of Ukrainian architecture in his preface (\"Wooden and Stone Temples\") to the first issue of Antiquities of Ukraine<\/em>, published in Kyiv in 1905 by the Moscow Archaeological Society and the Nestor-Letopisets (chronicler) Society of the University of Kyiv.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Stasov, V.V. \"Po povodu postroiki sinagogi v Sankt-Peterburge\" in Evreiskaia biblioteka. Istoriko-literaturnyi sbornik<\/em>. (St. Petersburg, 1889), 2:435\u201354.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Here and further: Pavlutsky, the same article.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> See: Lukomskii, G.K. Galicia v ee starine: Ocherki po istorii arkhitektury XII-XVIII vv. <\/em>(Petrograd, 1913) and Volynskaia starina <\/em>(Kiev, 1913). For a detailed account of Loukomsky's relation to the architecture of synagogues in Ukraine and eastern Poland see A. Sokolova, \"'Belyi gospodin' v poiskakh ekzotiki: evreiskie dostoprimechatelnosti v putevykh zapiskakh i iskusstvovedcheskikh ocherkakh (XIX \u2015 nachalo XX veka)\" in Russko-evreiskaia kultura, <\/em>eds. O. Budnitskii, O. Belova, and V. Mochalova (Moscow, 2006).<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Guldman, V.K. Pamiatniki stariny v Podolii <\/em>(Kamianets Podilsky, 1901), 156.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Malakov, D.V. Po vostochnomu Podoliu <\/em>(Moscow, 1988), 95.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Ukrainian Decorative Art <\/em>(Kiev, 1914), 25.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Gagenmeister, V. and Krzheminsky, K. Arkhitektura ta stinni rozpysy synagoga mistechka Smotrych <\/em>(Kamianets-Podilskyi,, 1929); Pamiatky evreis'koho mystetstva na Podilli <\/em>(Kamianets-Podilsky, 1926); Pamiatky evreiskoho mystetstva na Kamianechchyni <\/em>(Kamianets-Podilskyi, 1926).<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Briling, G.G. Istorii Vinnitskogo oblastnogo kraevedcheskogo muzeia. Ocherki (manuscript, 1968), Vinnytsia Region State Archives, Collection R-5257 (Briling G. G), list 1, file 2.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Shcherbakivsky, Danylo. \"Pamiatky mystetstva na Pravoberezhzhi\" in Korotke zvidomlennia Vseukrainskoho arkheologichnoho komitetu za 1926 rik <\/em>(Kyiv, 1927): 206.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> See: Shcherbakovsky, D.M. \"Excursion of 1926 to Volhynia and Podolia\" (a hand-written diary of the expedition), in Archives of the Scientific Research Institute for Archeology of the Ukrainian National Academy for Sciences, F. 9 (Shcherbakovskii), p. 80 and others.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> Shcherbakivsky. Pamiatky mystetstva na Pravoberezhzhi<\/em>, 191\u201393.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> An excerpt of Zholtovsky's memoirs was published for the first time in Lukin, V. and Khaimovich, B. One Hundred Jewish Shtetls of Ukraine. Issue 1. Podolia, <\/em>2d expanded ed. <\/em>(St. Petersburg, 1998), 262\u201363.<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> For the first description of these collections see: Lifshits, Yuli. \"Dve neizvestnye kollektsii po istorii materialnoi kultury evreev Vostochnoi Evropy\" in Istoria evreev na Ukraine i v Belorussii: Expeditsii, Pamiatniki, Nakhodki<\/em>, eds. V. Dymshits, V. Lukin, and B. Khaimovich, Issue 2 (St. Petersburg, 1994): 152\u2013158.<\/p>\n

[18]<\/a> \"From the Editorial Board,\" Decorative Art <\/em>11 (1991): 1.<\/p>\n

[19]<\/a> Zholtovsky, P. \"Pamiatniki evreiskogo iskusstva\" in Dekorativnoe iskusstvo SSSR<\/em>, 9 (1966): 28\u201333. About wall painting in synagogues see Zholtovsky, P.M. Monumentalnyi zhyvopys Ukrainy XVII\u2013XVIII st. <\/em>(Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1988), 20\u201321.<\/p>\n

[20]<\/a> Loukomski, George. Jewish Art in European Synagogues <\/em>(London, 1947), 14, 15.<\/p>\n

[21]<\/a> See, for example: \"Pamiatky ievreis'koi kultury na Ukraini\" in Memorials of museums and national parks <\/em>(in Ukrainian) (Kyiv, n.d.).<\/p>\n

[22]<\/a> See, for example: Dymshits, Valerii. \"Evreiskaia tema v zerkale zhurnalov\" in Narod knigi v mire knig<\/em>, 85 (2010): 7\u20139.<\/p>\n

Annex<\/span><\/h1>\n

Ukrainian art historians commenting on traditional Jewish art and architecture<\/h2>\n

\"\"Hryhorii Pavlutsky <\/em><\/strong>(1861\u20131924), a pioneer in Ukrainian art history, was the first among Ukrainian researchers of folk art and architecture to draw attention to the architecture of wooden synagogues.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Anyone who has been to the small towns of the South-West region and had seen a dark wooden building with a distinctive architectural style that is usually located in a square surrounded by Jewish homes and courtyards, would recognize it as a synagogue. Wooden synagogues are now rare as they are being demolished because of decay, and their authenticity is lost. The Jews in Poland and Little Russia did not have to hide their houses of worship like in some other European countries. Therefore, the synagogues were the best buildings in the towns...In the construction of synagogues Jews maintained links with the old traditions of Christian wooden architecture. It can be argued that some synagogues are reminiscent of the vanished wooden mansions of the gentry...The same features were retained by the synagogues in Zab\u0142ud\u00f3w, Nasielsk, Volpe, Pogrebische, Mihalpole, Khmelnik in the Podolian guberniia, and the most beautiful of them is the Volpe synagogue, which Berzon dates back to the seventeenth century.\"<\/p>\n

[Hryhorii Pavlutsky, \"Ancient Wooden Synagogues in Little Russia,\" in vol, 2, History of Russian Art<\/em>, ed. I. Grabar (Moscow, 1911), 377\u201382 (in Russian).]\n

In his book A History of Ukrainian Artefacts <\/em>(Kyiv, 1922), Pavlutsky compared the aron kodesh <\/em>(the ark in which the Torah scrolls are kept) to the iconostasis, giving as an example the aron kodesh <\/em>in the synagogue in Yaryshev, built in the second half of the 18th century.<\/p>\n

\"\"Kostiantyn Shyrotsky <\/em><\/strong>(1866\u20131919), who worked for Ukraine's Central Rada government in education and arts preservation, published widely on the history of Ukrainian and Russian fine arts, folk art and folklore, architectural preservation, and archaeology. He had an interest in Jewish folk art, especially the decorative paintings and architecture of taverns and wooden synagogues.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Old-timers talk a lot about how buildings were decorated in the nineteenth century, and, among other things, report that on the Right Bank the more popular establishments were the so-called \"painted\"<\/p>\n

taverns, where the walls, doors, and shutters were decorated with various images of military and folksy everyday life to attract visitors. Such taverns or pubs were kept mostly by Jews, who always knew the tastes of the public and had the skills to appeal to them.\"<\/p>\n

\"...the decorative art of the Jews, who lived among Ukrainian tribes in ancient times, was closely linked with Ukrainian art, and thanks to that we have in their synagogues from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries examples of secular Ukrainian architecture and painting which, according to Professor Pavlutsky, was reiterated in paintings on the ceilings and walls of Christian homes. Here you find depicted signs of the zodiac, griffins, unicorns, elephants, deer, bears, lions, views of Jerusalem guarded by a fish curled in a ring, vineyards, etc.\"<\/p>\n

[From the book Essays on the History of Decorative Art of Ukraine <\/em>(Kyiv, 1914), 25 (in Russian)]\n

\"\"Volodymyr Sichynsky <\/em><\/strong>(1894\u20131962), a prominent Ukrainian architect, art critic, and book illustrator, included in his work, \"Ukrainian Architecture\", detailed descriptions of construction techniques and the interiors of stone and wooden synagogues, based on buildings he surveyed in eastern Poland, Galicia, Volhynia, and Podolia<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Jewish synagogues or shrines\u2026 are most of all interesting because they preserve features from urban construction in wood in ancient Ukraine\u2026In Ukraine, the synagogue roofs were not much different from the roofs of other small<\/p>\n

town structures, including former 'homesteads' and palaces of the nobility. The roof usually had four slopes with pediments in the Hutsul [Ukrainian Carpathian mountaineer] style, and the roof itself, as in all baroque buildings, was layered in several tiers (or, as they say, \"girded\")\u2026Sometimes the main hall of the synagogue has an octagonal church-like dome rising to a tent-like gathering at the apex, but the dome is hidden under the roof and not visible from outside. Also, some of the details (windows, etc.) are characteristic of church and secular structures. All this is telling in that the builders of synagogues were the same craftsmen who built churches and town homes\u2026.<\/p>\n

\"Until recently, very interesting synagogues were in the Kolomyia region [Galicia] where craftsmanship in carpentry generally flourished. Of the best examples we note the synagogues in the towns of Yabluniv, Pechenizhyn, and Hvizdets. The most common type \u2014 for being the simplest \u2014 is the synagogue in Hvizdets, and similar to it are those in Rozdil, Zhydachiv, Felshtyn (outside of Khyriv), Khodoriv, Kamianka-Strumylivska and other towns of Galicia. The synagogue in Pechenizhyn has all the same form and details as one of the town houses in Yabluniv in the Kolomyia region. The Yabluniv synagogue (1650\u201370) is interesting not only for its gable fa\u00e7ade, but also for its hand-crafted ornamental wall paintings.\"<\/p>\n

[Ukrainian Architecture: A Typology of Ukrainian Wood Construction and its Historical Development <\/em>(in Ukrainian)]\n

\"\"Danylo Shcherbakivsky <\/em><\/strong>(1877<\/em>\u20121927), Ukrainian ethnographer, archaeologist, art historian, and museum figure, who served as scientific secretary and teacher of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts. Shcherbak<\/em>\u0456vsky organized annual field research expeditions, including in Podolia's shtetlekh (small towns), where he discovered Jewish folk art. He documented his findings in numerous photographs, expedition reports, and unpublished diaries.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Research of any Right Bank town would inevitably lead to researching Jewish art, since Jews represented the main population of the Right Bank towns. The need to intensify such research is caused by the frequent fires that periodically burned out these towns, especially during the tragic events at the end of the [First] World War and the Civil War, when so many old Jewish homes were destroyed.\"<\/p>\n

\"Among the wooden shrines, the most interesting one is in Yaryshiv in the Mohyliv district. It is a beautiful example of restrained baroque architecture with an interesting portico and gallery. The entrance doors are in Ukrainian style. Even more fascinating therein are paintings that cover its dome, ceiling, and walls. Several inscriptions in cartouches on the walls state when and by whose funds the paintings were done. The measuring and copying of these shrine's paintings is the first priority for research in 1927.\"<\/p>\n

\"Jewish tombstones evoke great interest. In the towns of Podolia and Volhynia mostly similar and traditional gravestones are observed; in Slavuta, Shepetivka, Zaslav, Kornytsia, Yampol, Bilhorodka, Ozaryntsi, and Mohyliv, the standing stone plates are, of course, identical in form. However, within this similarity in form one can see an extraordinary diversity in ornamentation.... Lions with their tail tips as flowers, birds with flowers in their beaks, griffins and deer in heraldic poses, all are reminiscent by their movement and interpretation of Romanesque relief carvings.\"<\/p>\n

[D. Shcherbakivsky, A Brief Report of the All-Ukrainian Archaeological Committee for 1926 <\/em>(Kyiv, 1927), from the \"Jewish Art\" chapter. (In Ukrainian)]\n

\"\"Pavlo Zholtovsky <\/em><\/strong>(1904<\/em>\u20121986), Ukrainian art historian and museum figure, who published several monographs on artistic metalwork and mural painting in Ukraine, including material on Jewish folk art. He published his article \"Monuments of Jewish Art\" in 1966, despite the widespread antisemitic tendencies in the USSR at the time.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Artistic masters from the Jewish communities painted the interiors of synagogues (which for centuries were not only houses of prayer, but also places of social gatherings for ghetto inhabitants) and engaged in art casting and stamping, weaving and embroidery of synagogue curtains and ritual coverings, and ornamental paper cutting\u2026The wall paintings in the wooden synagogues are notable for their monumental forms\u2026in Smotrich, Mihalpole, Yarychev, Minkovtsy in Podolia, and in Yabluniv, Hvizdets, Khodoriv in Galicia.\"<\/p>\n

\"The paintings were related to the architectural features of the synagogue's interior, which was usually a quite high elongated hall with complex overlays, often in the form of an octagonal dome resting on walls shaped as triangular sails\u2026The boards along the frame of the ceiling contained a full range of colorful murals. They were executed with glue and tempera paints over a thin chalky coating.\"<\/p>\n

\"The murals are distinguished by their spirit of creativity and popular optimism...In the paintings of the Mikhalpole synagogue\u2026the images are very realistic but not characteristic of the synagogue tradition. Here are sweeping panoramas of the city, gardens and vineyards; a huge cart, loaded with bags and drawn by four horses, representing a typical market fair scene\u2026The distinctive iconography and realistic character of the Smotrich and Mikhalpole paintings cannot be explained outside the framework of religious and social movements (Hasidism), which proliferated in the eighteenth century among wide circles of town and village Jews in Podolia, and later in Galicia and Volhynia. The Hasidim demanded a freer attitude toward ancient religious precepts and burdensome rituals...Their call for more extensive contact with the outside world was reflected by the nature of the paintings in Podolian synagogues.\"<\/p>\n

\"Copper casting stands out among Jewish arts and crafts, mainly in the variety of lighting fixtures\u2013from table candleholders to large two- and three-meter heavyweight nine-candle synagogue \"menorahs.\" An extraordinary menorah decorative style developed in the eighteenth century and continued for most of the next century. One of the best examples was the menorah from the town of Bar in Podolia, a typical decorative item in the late baroque style. Solemn baroque motifs are combined with images of birds and animals. (This work is very close to that of Ukrainian decorative art both in terms of style and artistic techniques).\"<\/p>\n

\"Hanukkah lamps, which existed in almost every Jewish home, were closely connected with this art by utilizing the same artistic ornamentation. The story of Hanukkah and ornamental motifs are very diverse: there are geometric and floral patterns, animal images, symbols and emblems, as well as decorative elements of different art styles.\"<\/p>\n

\"Artistic wood carving is also a widespread form of craftsmanship. The renowned luxuriant decorative carvings of the \"Aron Koydesh,\" in which the Torah scrolls are kept, are similar in nature to Ukrainian carved ornaments of the iconostasis.\"<\/p>\n

\"No less original was the art of jewelry where Jewish artists were widely using embossing, filigree, and engraving. Their products are thin, elegant and, most importantly, harmonious in form and ornamentation. Let us look closely at the besamim <\/em>[spices] container\u2026Usually it is in the shape of an intricate filigreed turret with weather vanes, but often is made in the form of whimsical fish, rams, and trees.\"<\/p>\n

\"The literate population of the ghetto developed a unique art form \u2014 paper and parchment artistic cutouts. These were complex compositions that included iconic symbols \u2014 figures of birds and animals, menorahs, and scrolls\u2026. Among these works are \"mizrah\" wall decorations [indicating the direction of prayer] and \"shvuosleh\" rosette plates, associated with home celebrations of Pentecost.\"<\/p>\n

[P. Zholtovsky, \"Monuments of Jewish Art\" in Decorative Arts of the USSR<\/em>, \u2116 9 (1966) (in Russian)]\n

\"\"Gustav Briling <\/em><\/strong>(1867\u20131942), the Ukrainian ethnographer and founder of the Vinnytsia Regional History Museum. Briling's son Georgii participated in the expeditions in the 1920s organised by his father, who had incorporated into the Vinnytsia museum collection numerous items of Jewish folk art. These were to be featured in an album of \"Jewish antiquity\"\u2015which was never published as Gustav Briling was persecuted by the Soviet regime and died in labour camp in 1942.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"In those years the \"Okopisko\" Jewish cemetery in Nemyriv still remained completely intact with a large number of ancient monuments of a great artistic value.... A simple description does not convey the richness, complexity, and original symbolism represented on these tombstones\u2026Here is a struggle between unicorn and lion; a deer scratching its head with a back hoof; a lion holding the tip of his own tail in his mouth; a four-legged beast with the head and wings of a bird\u2026in a word, in Nemyriv was to be found a fabulous oriental fantasy that had survived the centuries and millennia.\"<\/p>\n

\"To this time also belonged the collection of Jewish gingerbread wooden stamps \u2012 \"Purim-bretel\"...for stamping special cookies for the \"Purim\" holiday\u2026Their shapes were rectangular, multi-faceted, rhombus, round, oval, fish shape, etc. The images were also varied: fantastic monsters, fish, birds, animals, or ornaments. Such forms were carved from wood and the imprinted pattern was transferred onto the dough.\"<\/p>\n

[G.G. Briling, \"Essays on the History of the Vinnytsia Regional Museum\" (manuscript, Vinnytsia, 1968), The State Archives of the Vinnytsia Region, F.R-5257, op.1, d.2]\n

\"\"George Loukomsky <\/em><\/strong>(1884<\/em>\u20121952), Renowned artist and art historian, developed an interest in Jewish architectural landmarks during his first trips to Volhynia and Galicia, as reflected in his essays of 1913<\/em>\u201215 \"Volhynian Antiquity\" (Kyiv, 1913), and \"Galicia in its Antiquity: Essays on the History of Architecture of the twelfth to eighteenth centuries\" (Petrograd, 1915). On the eve of the Second World War (1935<\/em>\u201236) Paris and London hosted an exhibition of Loukomsky's watercolours entitled Synagogues of Europe. In 1947 he published in London the seminal academic monograph Jewish Art in European Synagogues. The following are two graphic sketches of synagogues by Loukomsky:<\/em><\/p>\n

\"The bimah <\/em>(in stone synagogues) [has] characteristic traits\u2026the peculiarities of the architecture are such as to force us to classify this type of structure independently of all others. The most typical bimah <\/em>are found in the Synagogues of Luck, Rzeszow, Slonim, Zolkiew, Luboml, Nowogrodek, etc.\"<\/p>\n

\"With their interior ornamentation, the wooden carvings are the purest expression of the genius of Jewish popular art\u2026The pulpits, elongated, \"svelte\" so to speak, are decidedly different from Christian altars, bearing indisputable witness to the personal taste of the Jewish craftsman. Like the canopy of the bimah <\/em>and the aron-kodesh<\/em>, they are distinguished by especially rich decoration recalling that of Jewish tombstones, a veritable lacework in wood, minutely wrought, with all the characteristics of Oriental art, though Baroque or Renaissance elements are fused in it with ingenious grace.\"<\/p>\n

\"Frescoes, or more correctly paintings in watercolours, are characteristic features of decoration in synagogues, particularly in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in Galicia\u2026The paintings in the Synagogue at Kamionka-Strumilowa, on the Bug River, though unfinished, are particularly interesting. The freshness of the ambient background is remarkable. In 1935\u201236 the paintings were still in excellent condition. Considerable imaginative power is shown in the treatment of motifs from floral and animal life and representation of biblical symbols and liturgical utensils.\"<\/p>\n

\"The ornamental treatment of tombstones in the many Jewish cemeteries in Poland, Ukraine (especially in Galicia), Romania, Bohemia and Moravia, is of great power and beauty. Sculptures of this kind should be made the subject of special investigation and study. Having regard only to the symbolical contents of sculptured representation, these monuments are often masteries of great originality. In them can be traced elements of antiquity and the strata of the varied influences\u2026Most interesting museum-like cemeteries are to be found not only in such great cities as Lwow, Lublin, etc., but in small townships as well: Brody, Chernowice, Tarnow, Mikulow (Nicosburg), and even villages like Gombin and Leszniow, and particularly Kamionka-Strumilowa, near Lwow.\"<\/p>\n

[G.K. Loukomski, Jewish Art in European Synagogues <\/em>(London, 1947): 33, 57, 39]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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