Wooden synagogues in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

Wooden synagogues are an original style of vernacular synagogue architecture that emerged in the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The style developed between the mid-16th and mid-17th centuries, a period of peace and prosperity for the Polish-Lithuanian Jewish community. While many were destroyed during the First and Second World Wars, there are some that survive today in Lithuania.
According to Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka, wooden synagogues in Poland–Lithuania developed during the Renaissance, sometime from the mid-16th to mid-17th century. This period was described as a time of peace and prosperity for the Jewish community of the vast Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which at its peak occupied much of Central and Eastern Europe. The style was particularly common in the eastern territories of the Commonwealth which now constitute Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. Moreover, such synagogues were predominantly found in smaller townships, villages and shtetls rather than larger cities.
Timber was abundant and inexpensive in the heavily forested Commonwealth, but a large part of the motivation for building in wood rather than stone or brick was the great difficulty of obtaining government permission to erect masonry synagogues. The wooden synagogues, which featured multi-layered high roofs, multi-beamed domes, galleries, wooden balconies and arches were built to high standards of craftsmanship.
The synagogues fell victim to obsolescence and neglect over the next centuries. During the Second World War, the Germans burned and destroyed nearly all of the wooden synagogues that were still standing. None remain in Poland today, however, some did survive in Lithuania.
The wooden synagogue was "an original architectural genre" that drew on several models, including Poland's wooden building traditions and central plan, masonry synagogues in which four massive masonry pillars that define the Bimah rise to support the roof vaulting. Central pillars support the vaulting of only a handful of wooden synagogues. Instead, in wooden synagogues the vaulting and domes are suspended by elaborate roof trusses. Common features shared by wooden synagogues include the independence of the pitched roof from the design of the interior domed ceiling. The outside of a wooden synagogue gave no hint of the domes and multiple, Baroque vaults that would be found within. The exteriors were decidedly plain, giving no hint of the riot of carving, painting, domes, balconies and vaulting inside. The architectural interest of the exterior lay in the large scale of the buildings, the multiple, horizontal lines of the tiered roofs, and the carved corbels that supported them. The elaborate domed and vaulted ceilings were known as raki'a (Hebrew for sky or firmament) and were often painted blue sprinkled with stars. The Bimah was always placed in the center of the room. Wooden synagogues featured a single, large hall. In contrast to contemporary churches, there was no apse. Moreover, while contemporary churches featured imposing vestibules, the entry porches of the wooden synagogues was a low annex, usually with a simple lean-to roof. In these synagogues, the emphasis was on constructing a single, large, high-domed worship space.
According to art historian Stephen S. Kayser, the wooden synagogues of Poland with their painted and carved interiors were "a truly original and organic manifestation of artistic expression—the only real Jewish folk art in history".
According to Louis Lozowick, writing in 1947, the wooden synagogues were unique because, unlike all previous synagogues, they were not built in the architectural style of their region and era, but in a newly evolved and uniquely Jewish style, making them "a truly original folk expression", whose "originality does not lie alone in the exterior architecture, it lies equally in the beautiful and intricate wood carving of the interior".
Moreover, while in many parts of the world Jews were proscribed from entering the building trades and even from practicing the decorative arts of painting and woodcarving, the wooden synagogues were actually built by Jewish craftsmen. Other research points to certain synagogues being made by Christian master builders. For example, the early history of the Gwoździec Synagogue is unknown and portions of the structure date back to 1650. The original structure was built in a regional style exhibiting both Jewish and Polish vernacular architecture. In the 18th century there was a dramatic reconfiguration of the prayer hall ceiling. It is believed to be the first cupola of its kind. The timber framers are unknown but presumed to be Christian master builders since until the 19th century Jews were excluded from the trade. The liturgical paintings were made by Jewish artists. Isaac, son of Rabbi Judah Leib ha Cohen and Israel, son of Rabbi Mordecai, have inscribed their names on the paintings in the western ceiling.
The interior vaulting of the Wolpa Synagogue is described by art historians Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka as having been "the most magnificent of all known wooden ceilings" in Europe. Of course, since Christians were free to build with brick and stone, few European buildings of the scale of the Wolpa synagogue were ever built in wood. The walls of the main hall were 7.2 meters high. The vaulting, under a three-tiered roof, rose to a height of fourteen meters in three tiers marked by fancy balustrades. Each tier was made up of several curving sections faced in wooden paneling to form a graceful, tiered and vaulted dome. The vaulted ceiling was supported by the four wooden corner columns that rose form the bimah, and by trusses in the roof.
Art historian Ori Z. Soltes points out that the wooden synagogues, unusual for that period in being large, identifiably Jewish buildings not hidden in courtyards or behind walls, were built not only during a Jewish "intellectual golden age" but in a time and place where "the local Jewish population was equal to or even greater than the Christian population".
Wooden synagogues can be divided into three types by the plan of the building, according to an article by G.K. Lukomski.
Wooden synagogues may also be divided into three groups according to the shape of the roof and the number of cornices which divide them into stages (of the Mansard type, called in Polish "podcienie"), i.e., roofs with one, two or three stages.
Examples: synagogue at Lanckorona in Podolie; Polaniec; Pareczow; Orsza; Szkloff; Radoszyce; Pilica; Nowogradek; Przedborz; Zydaczew; Brzozdowice; Pieczenierzyn; Jablonow.
Examples: Gwozdziec; Grodno; Chodorow; Uzlany (Usljany); Kamyenyets; Nasielsk; Njaswisch; Mogilev.
Examples: Nowe-Miasto; Pohrebyszcze; Jedwabne; Narowla; Wolpa; Zabłudów.
The interiors were decorated with wall and ceiling paintings that, in many cases, covered the walls and ceilings entirely, and with elaborately carved wooden Torah arks.
Thomas Hubka has traced the style of decorative painting in the wooden synagogues to the medieval Hebrew illuminated manuscripts of Ashkenazi Jewry.
The intricate wooden decoration of the barrel vaulted ceiling of the Przedbórz Synagogue was considered so beautiful that before the Second World War it drew tourists to the small village of Przedbórz.
Architectural historian Rachel Wischnitzer has traced regional variations in wooden synagogue style. The interiors of the wooden synagogues of Lithuania were not as exuberantly painted as were synagogues of other regions. Instead, Lithuanian synagogues were notable for architectural details such as ceilings with the boards laid in decorative herringbone patterns. Several Lithuanian synagogues featured corner pavilions. The wooden synagogues of Galicia were notable for their elaborate wall paintings.
Wooden synagogues were quite abundant, and several famous authors and artists include them in their works.
Adam Mickiewicz gives detailed description of wooden synagogues in his epic poem Pan Tadeusz, Or, the Last Foray in Lithuania; a Story of Life Among Polish Gentlefolk in the Years 1811 and 1812, first published in 1834.
Napoleon Orda, renowned Polish-Lithuanian artist, painted at least two wooden synagogues.
El Lissitzky wrote about the murals in Cold synagogue in Mogilev after his and Issachar Ber Ryback's expedition:
"Jewish period" was very short in the art of El Lissitzky; on the contrary, for Issachar Ber Ryback everyday life of a Jewish shtetl became the foundation of his art. Ryback created several paintings of wooden synagogues, he probably was inspired for these works during the shtetl tour few years earlier.
Marc Chagall claimed that Chaim Segal, the artist who created murals in the Cold synagogue in Mogilev and several other synagogues, was his great-grandfather, and compares his own art to Segal's synagogue murals:
Although it was long thought that none of the wooden synagogues survived the destruction of the First and Second World Wars, it is now known that a number do survive, albeit only of the smaller type.
Surviving examples include:
Destroyed in the 21st century:
Almost all wooden synagogues were destroyed in the 20th century. Some of them were documented during the ethnographic expeditions.
There is a replica of the Wołpa Synagogue in Bilgoraj, and another replica of the synagogue (Połaniec) is in Sanok.
POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw has a partial reconstruction of the Gwoździec Synagogue. The ceiling painting of the synagogue in Chodoriw was reconstructed for the ANU - Museum of the Jewish People (Beit Hatefusot) in Tel Aviv.
In the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme (Museum of Jewish Art and History) in Paris there are models of several wooden synagogues.