Котляр Евгений. «Предчувствие апокалипсиса: образы синагог и тема крушения еврейского мира в искусстве революционного времени» [“Premonition of Apocalypse: Synagogue Images and the Motif of the Destruction of the Jewish World in Art of the Revolutionary Period“], Judaica Ukrainiсa 6 (2017): 51-82. (original) (raw)

Though bestowing de jure equality and freedom on the Jews of the former Russian Empire, the Revolution and Civil War simultaneously shattered the Jewish world with bloody pogroms, impoverishment, and the destruction of traditional ways of life. This new reality permanently altered the face of what would become Soviet Jewry, a body born out of the physical and spiritual torment of the transitional period. Culture and art reflected the situation: corresponding treatment of synagogue images in artistic works illustrated the ongoing drama, as synagogues – the chief locus of Jewish life – were being destroyed in front of one’s eyes. The present article makes use of an art-historical study to examine the evolution of the image of the synagogue in the artistic works of the period, as seen through the prism of Jewish discourse. It analyzes the semantic content of the image as a special motif and marker of Jewishness in the visual art of the revolutionary era. If in previous years ethnographism and genre art had dominated the depiction of such motifs, during the years of revolutionary convulsion the treatment and distortion of synagogue images gradually came to reflect a sense of ruin and horror. In certain cases these depictions reached a climactic, even apocalyptic intensity. Artists utilized various visual idioms and modernist styles – Cubo-Futurism, Expressionism, lubok (woodcut) style, etc. – to achieve a deeper symbolic and emotional resolution of the subject. Within a few years the works of leading representatives of the modernist Kultur-lige association transformed the image of the synagogue from a typical marker of the Jewish oecumene into a tragic symbol of its destruction. Works such as Abram Manevich’s The Destruction of the Ghetto (1919), El Lissitzky’s Had Gadya (1917–1919), and Issachar Ber Ryback’s large series Pogrom (1918), among others, came to serve as representations of various aspects of and psycho-emotional responses to the collapse of the Jewish world. The subjects portrayed in such works included: the destruction and depopulation of the previously crowded, even packed shtetl; the horror of waiting for a pogrom, as well as bloody scenes of actual violence presented via the traditional narrative of “the labor pains of the Messiah”; and literal self-sacrifice in the spirit of the medieval tradition of Kiddush ha-Shem (“Sanctification of God’s Name”). Compositional and figural resolutions of the synagogue as a place for uniting the whole community with God came to embody the Jewish outlook on life – a living entity, as it were, sharing with the Jews their tragic fate. This development reflected personal tragedies and the general Jewish context, in which the theme of anti-Jewish violence bore an atemporal character. Artists including Ryback also made extensive use of other idioms: the synagogue enveloped in flames; the destruction and desecration of the synagogal prayer space, with the aron kodesh (Torah ark) on fire, martyred Jewish figures, discarded Torah scrolls, and so forth. These images merged with long-established symbols of the galut (exile/diaspora): the depiction of a goat and the eternally exiled Wandering Jew. All these motifs corresponded with Jewish historical, religious, and literary tradition, while also formulating a definite iconography that would be picked up by artists of subsequent decades. Kotlyar E. Premonition of Apocalypse: Synagogue Images and the Motif of the Destruction of the Jewish World in Art of the Revolutionary Period // Judaica Ukrainiсa. Peer-reviewed annual journal in Jewish Studies (ed.: Serhiy Hirik, Börries Kuzmany). – K.: Laurus, 2017. – Vol. 6. – С. 51-82. Котляр Е. Предчувствие апокалипсиса: образы синагог и тема крушения еврейского мира в искусстве революционного времени // Judaica Ukrainiсa. Peer-reviewed annual journal in Jewish Studies (ed.: Serhiy Hirik, Börries Kuzmany). – K.: Laurus, 2017. – Vol. 6. – С. 51-82.