People of vision — fiery vision.
What else would one call the photographers, art historians and architects of the Institute of Polish Architecture who took an inventory of the wooden synagogues of Poland between 1929 and 1939?
One of my treasured possessions is the result of their work, Wooden Synagogues, published in 1959 in Warsaw. I bought the book in Boston about 55 years ago for $50. It was a rare book even then. A Google search today reveals two copies available.
This isn’t just a book. These aren’t just wooden synagogues. These synagogues exist only in this book. It is not a record. It is all there is. It is as if in anticipation of the terrible fire that swept away all Jewish communities of Poland, the researchers who took the photos and made the artistic cross sections of these astoundingly beautiful synagogues knew they would have the final say, as all these wooden synagogues would be martyred, burned to the ground. The Nazis burned bodies, and they burned buildings, sacred buildings. They made ashes of both.
I have reproduced just one view of one synagogue from Wooden Synagogues. There are hundreds in the book. There are, for example, the front elevation, the detail of the west elevation, the cross section, the longitudinal section, the side elevation, the interior (showing the bimah) and the interior (looking toward the Ark) of the wooden synagogue in Sidra, Poland. Just one example.
These synagogues were breathtaking, masterpieces of intricate design and construction, with intricate images on the walls, the doors and the ceilings. O the ceilings! Works of art. The admiration for those who built these synagogues and those who preserved their memory is exceeded, infinitely exceeded, by the ache. Each photo in Wooden Synagogues is an illusion. An image, a dream. Places of holiness were reduced to ashes. The ache.
The publication history of this book says it all: the research, completed, of necessity, in 1939. The publication, only 20 years later.
The authors are listed as Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka. The introduction is by Stephen S. Kayser, listed as curator, Jewish Museum, New York City. The publisher is listed as Arkady, Warsaw, but also as The Institute of Polish Architecture of the Polytechnic of Warsaw. The Polish edition was published in 1957, listing two editors-in-chief, a supervising architect, two technical editors and a translator, Rulka Langer. The sponsor of the project is listed as Prof. Oscar Sosnowski. Also listed: Sosnowski was killed in 1939. Then there was the “indefatigable and irreplaceable scholar of Jewish art,“ Syzmon Zajczyk. He is listed as “perished from Nazi hands” in 1942.
Were any of these people Jewish? Was the author of the introduction to the Polish edition, Jan Zachwatowicz? “This book commemorates martyred buildings” is all the book reveals. “Two decades have passed since the wanton destruction began. The following text and pictures, now accessible to the English-speaking public, will undoubtedly help save this amazing chapter of architectural history from complete oblivion.”
“One thing is certain,” the book notes, “if ever there was a truly close relationship between a house of worship and its populace, it lay in the affection which the inhabitants of an Eastern European Jewish country community felt for their synagogue, the home of their souls.”
So said the report — pictorial and editorial — in 1959.
Now, in 2025, I hold a very different book, much smaller, in my hands, all of 34 pages, as opposed to the 220 pages of Wooden Synagogues. The smaller book has not a single picture of a single Polish synagogue and includes but a single schematic, which hardly compares to the detailed reproductions in Wooden Synagogues. Yet, this small book, titled simply, The Ceiling, is a worthy successor to Wooden Synagogues.
The ceiling that The Ceiling commemorates is the amazing work of art that once was the ceiling of the Gwozdziec Wooden Synagogue in Poland. The book lists its photographer as Alois Breyer, but what could he photograph? The synagogue was martyred. Alois Breyer is also listed as the artist who made a drawing of the synagogue ceiling. So, was it a photo or a drawing? The confusion is symbolic and fruitful: The ceiling can best exist only in the imagination. What an imaginative book, The Ceiling!
It is in gorgeous full color. Its characters are drawn, as in a colorful children’s book. It tells the story, as imagined by the author, listed as Wanda Peretz — the story of Israel ben Mordechai Lisnicki and Isaac ben Yehuda Leib HaCohen, the two men who conceived and produced the original ceiling artwork for the Gwozdziec Wooden Synagogue.
Is this, in fact, a children’s book? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. The sparseness and simplicity of its narrative and the overwhelming beauty of Boris Shapiro’s drawings — including six double-page pop-ups — certainly style The Ceiling as a children’s book. But the story itself, the message, the imagined role of the Gwozdziec community members who hired the two artists, the message behind their art, the ways they produced it, the way the community received it, engage the adult the same as the child.
“With talons, hooves, paws, fins, and wings/That’s how this bestiary SINGS!/ Creatures drawn so playfully/Hold deeper truths for all to see.
“Bold swirling vines and flower bloom/On this tapestried and tent-like room/Flora, fauna, all intertwined/Reflect creative thoughts divine!”
The ceiling art that these snippets from the book describe may be accessed not only by buying The Ceiling. One may also visit the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. There, an actual reconstruction of the ceiling from the reconstructed Gwozdziec synagogue stands in utterly glorious color and detail. A picture thereof is produced at the end of The Ceiling.
It is in the nature of reality that neither the amazing, reproduced ceiling nor the compelling imagined artistic rendition thereof in The Ceiling (below) can capture the sense of the black-and-white, unembellished, unfiltered ache projected from the photos and architectural renderings in Wooden Synagogues. Ultimately, the very best of our artistry and imagination cannot fill the empty spaces left by the Nazi hordes. Memory is all we have, including the visual memory conveyed in these two very different books with an identical and sacred focus.
Information on The Ceiling: www.wandaperetzauthor.com
