The Development of

Medieval and Renaissance Sculptural Decoration in

Ashkenazi Synagogues
from Worms to the Cracow Area

Thesis Submitted for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

to the Senate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
by
Ilia Rodov

Volume 1

Jerusalem, 2003
This work was carried out under the supervision of
Prof. Ziva Amishai-Maisels and Prof. Olga Goldberg
 I

Contents
Volume 1
Introduction…..............…………………….……………………………….........… 1
Chapter I. The Carvings from the Old Synagogue in Worms: The Antecedents
and Beginnings of Stone Carved Decoration in Ashkenazi Synagogues…………. 20
The Building and Early Built-in Stone Carvings of the Worms Synagogue......... 21
Synagogue Decoration in the Rabbinical Literature and in Practice in
Medieval Ashkenazi Synagogues...............................,.......................................... 42
The Two Earliest Carved Fragments from the Synagogue in Worms................... 52
The Holy Ark in Early Ashkenazi Synagogues and the Zoomorphic Reliefs from
the Synagogue of Worms....................................................................................... 74
The Bimah: Visual Documentation and Other Evidence...................................... 92
The Remodeling of the Medieval Ark and Bimah in Worms................................. 102
Conclusions........................................................................................................... 108
Chapter II. The Decorations from Medieval Synagogues in Prague in
Comparison to Other Contemporary Synagogues...…………….....……................ 110
The Structure and Decoration of the Altneuschul................................................. 111
The Symbolism of the Structure and Decoration in the Altneuschul.................... 119
The Tympanum of the Entrance Portal: The Tree of Synagoga..................... 124
The Pediment of the Holy Ark: The Tree of the Torah.................................... 136
The Sense of the Marginal Ornamentation..................................................... 140
The Synagogue Adornment in the Context of the Religious Encounter.......... 143
Gothic Synagogue Arks: Developments of the Tradition..................................... 146
Principles of Decoration in the Medieval Ashkenazi Synagogue......................... 169
From the Gothic to the Renaissance in the Pinchas Synagogue in Prague......... 172
The Private Patronage of Synagogue Art in Medieval Spain and in 15th-century
Italy....................................................................................................................... 183
Conclusions........................................................................................................... 189
 II

Chapter III. From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in Cracow and
Kazimierz...................................................................................................................... 191
From Prague to Cracow....................................................................................... 191
The Old Synagogue in Kazimierz.......................................................................... 205
The Beginnings of the Renaissance Art in Poland................................................ 215
Renaissance Influences on the Jews of Kazimierz near Cracow and Rabbi
Moses Isserles....................................................................................................... 221
The Foundation of the Remah Synagogue............................................................ 230
The Dedicatory Tablet and Alms Box................................................................... 243
The Renaissance Impact on the Design of the Holy Arks in Italian
Synagogues............................................................................................................ 248
Sculpted Animals on Renaissance Arks in Italy.................................................... 266
The Holy Ark in the Remah Synagogue as a Renaissance Project....................... 273
The Wrought Iron Bimah...................................................................................... 300
Conclusions........................................................................................................... 301
Volume 2
Chapter IV. The Development of the Sculptural Renaissance Decoration in the
Synagogues of Kazimierz near Cracow..................................................................... 302
The Renaissance Reconstruction of the Old Synagogue....................................... 303
The Renaissance Ark and Portal in the Old Synagogue....................................... 311
The Wrought Iron Bimah...................................................................................... 319
Other Stone Carvings in the Old Synagogue........................................................ 325
The High Synagogue............................................................................................. 334
The Reliefs in the High Synagogue....................................................................... 338
The Building and Reliefs in the Kupah Synagogue............................................... 347
Decorated Doors of Renaissance Arks from Synagogues in Kazimierz............... 354
Conclusions........................................................................................................... 364
Chapter V. The Sculptural Decoration in the Synagogues of Szydłów and
Pińczów......................................................................................................................... 367
The Synagogue of Szydłów.................................................................................... 367
 III

The Holy Ark in the Synagogue of Szydłów: A Development of Renaissance 372

Iconography..........................................................................................................
Other Carved Decorations in the Synagogue of Szydłów..................................... 386
Pińczów: Jews between Catholics and Protestants.............................................. 396
The Building of the Old Synagogue of Pińczów.................................................... 402
The Holy Ark in the Pińczów Synagogue: A Revival of the Triangular Pediment 407
Other Carved Decorations in the Pińczów Synagogue..................................... 420
Conslusions........................................................................................................... 425
Conclusions….................…………………….……………………………….........… 427
List of Abbreviations….…………………….……………………………….........… 451
Bibliography (in languages based on Latin script)……………………….........… 451
Bibliography (in Hebrew and Yiddish)…………….........………………………… 496
Bibliography (in languages based on Cyrillic script)............………………........… 501

Volume 3
Map................................................................................................................................ 1
List of Illustrations....................................................................................................... 2
Illustrations 1-359
Volume 4
Illustrations 360-740
 1

Introduction
There is evidence from different areas of the Ashkenazi Diaspora in Northern,
Central and Eastern Europe 1 for the continuous use of the visual arts in synagogues from
the beginning of Jewish settlement in Germany through to modern times. Two of the
earliest Ashkenazi synagogues have survived, although they have been reconstructed to
different degrees: the Worms synagogue from 1174-75 was almost completely rebuilt
from its ruins, while the late 13th-century Altneuschul stands almost intact in Prague.
Comprehensive studies and excavations of these synagogues were made during the 20th
century, and scholars have defined the stylistic traits of the decorations and made
suggestions regarding the symbolism they employed.2 For example, when Otto Böcher
discovered reliefs of dragons in the Worms synagogue, he noted that such images were
found in medieval Jewish art and that they may have been inspired both by Jewish
models and by local folklore.3 However, he did not publish photographs of these
dragons, and his report on them and on many other stone carvings from Worms is still
almost completely ignored in the literature. In their search for the meaning of carved
decorations in the Altneuschul, researchers usually limit their attention to the great vine
tree carved above the entrance into the prayer hall (ill. 1), interpreting it as the Tree of
Life or a reminder of the vine on the portal of Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem, and the
clusters of grapes on it as symbolizing the twelve tribes.4 As a rule, the conclusions

———————————————————————————————————
1
The term Ashkenaz (‫ )אשכנז‬originates from the Bible (Gen. 10:3, I Chron. 1:6, Jer.
51:27; biblical chapters and verses are numbered according to Jewish tradition). After
having been associated with Germany in Hebrew literature from the 11th or 12th century,
this term was first used as a collective name for Jewish communities in the Rhineland,
then also for those in other parts of Germany, and later for all Yiddish-speaking Jews
originating from these communities.
2
Richard Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen (Berlin, 1927), 151-76; Otto
Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge zu Worms,” in Ernst Róth, Die Alte Synagogue zu Worms
(Frankfurt am Main, 1961), 11-154; Zdenka Münzer, “Die Altneusynagoge in Prag,”
Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Juden in der Čechoslovakischen
Republik, 4 (1932): 63-105 (this article gives more specific references and details than
its updated, shorter version, “The Old-New Synagogue in Prague: Its Architectural
History,” in The Jews of Czechoslovakia, 2 [Philadelphia, 1971]: 520-46); Milada
Vilímková, “Seven Hundred Years of the Old-New Synagogue,” Judaica Bohemiae, 5
(1969), 1: 72-74.
3
Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 75-77.
4
Zofja Ameisenowa, “The Tree of Life in Jewish Iconography,” Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 2 (1939): 326-345; Franz Landsberger, A History
of Jewish Art (Cincinnati, 1946), 185-86; Vilímková, “Seven Hundred Years,” 77.
 2

made in these papers have been uncritically accepted in more recent publications.5
From the 15th century on, the Ashkenazi settlement significantly expanded
eastwards, and from the 17th century on, the greater part of Ashkenazi Jewry lived in the
Polish Commonwealth.6 From the beginning of Jewish settlement in this region to the
outbreak of the Second World War, they built thousands of synagogues. Only a fraction
of these buildings have survived, usually in a damaged or reconstructed state. However,
the dedicated work of those researchers who took photographs, made drawings, and
wrote textual descriptions, as well as the large number of pictures scattered in old
publications, museums, archives and private collections allow us to study a number of
the synagogues destroyed in the various disasters of the 20th century, especially during
the Holocaust.7 During the post-war period, the interest of private amateurs and the
increasing efforts of research institutions to document the Jewish heritage resulted in
expeditions across Poland, the Ukraine, Bielorussia, Lithuania and Latvia, which have
filled in the map of the surviving Jewish monuments.8 The information that has been
———————————————————————————————————
5
For example, Böcher’s unconvincing graphical reconstruction of the Worms
synagogue’s Ark from the 1620s (ill. 2) in which the proportions and structure of several
remnants are distorted, has been accepted by Krinsky as reliable and she even assumed
that the clumsy proportions of this Ark led to its being replaced during the remodeling of
the synagogue (Carol Herselle Krinsky, Synagogues of Europe: Architecture, History,
Meaning [New York, 1996], 322). For a discussion of this problem, see Chapter 1
below. For the continuing interpretation of the twelve grapes in the relief from the
Altneuschul as a symbol of the twelve tribes, see ibid., 173-74; Arno Pařík and Pavel
Štecha, The Jewish Town of Prague (Prague, 1992), 24.
6
Now Poland, Lithuania and the western areas of Bielorussia and the Ukraine.
7
E.g., ‫ בתי כנסת בפולין וחורבנם‬,'‫( דוד דוידוביץ‬Jerusalem, 1960); idem, ‫ציורי קיר בבתי כנסת‬
‫( בפולין‬Jerusalem, 1968), 73-109.
8
Several of the main contributions to the field during the last decades must be noted
here. From 1960 on, Zussia Efron (1911-2002), a researcher of East European Jewish art
since the 1930s and director of the Ein Harod Museum of Art from 1953 to 1978,
documented many hundreds of synagogues and Jewish cemeteries throughout Eastern
Europe and the Balkans. Eleonora Bergman and Jan Jagielski established a Department
for the Documentation of Jewish Monuments at the Jewish Historical Research Institute
in Warsaw, assembling there a highly valuable archive on Jewish monuments. They also
compiled a long list of the synagogue buildings surviving in Poland (“Synagogues and
Former Synagogues in Poland,” in Samuel Gruber and Phyllis Myers, Survey of
Historic Jewish Monuments in Poland [n. p., 1995]; Eleonora Bergman and Jan
Jagielski, Zachowane synagogi i domy modlitwy w Polsce [Warsaw, 1996]). For
general information about Polish synagogues, see also Jósef Sandel, “Żydowska sztuka
kultowa,” in Straty wojenne zbiorów polskich w dziedzinie rzemiosła artystycznego,
2, Ministerstwo Kultury i Sztuki. Prace i materiały Biura Rewindykacji i
odszkodowań, 13 (Warsaw, 1953): 91-124; A. Kubiak, “Żydowska architektura
zabytkowa w Polsce,” Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego [henceforth
BŻIH], 6-7 (1953): 122-68; 8 (1953): 73-96; Adam Penkalla, Żydowskie ślady w
 3

collected and partially studied by several generations of researchers has created the
groundwork for further investigations in the field.
The existing monuments and the great collections of archival materials, much of
which has been recently published by Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka, demonstrate that
there was a rich artistic tradition of synagogue adornment in the lands of the former
Polish Commonwealth.9 The decorations could consist of paintings on the walls and
ceilings, sculptures in stone, wood and stucco either in the round or in relief. These
decorations included inscriptions, religious symbols, architectonic, geometric and plant
ornaments, and zoomorphic images.10 The abundant paintings in these buildings dating
———————————————————————————————————
województwe kieleckim i radomskim (Radom, 1992). Descriptions of extant
synagogues are also found in the series “Catalogue of Art Monuments in Poland” (1952
ff.) published by the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Jan Jagielski,
“Zabytki żydowskie w katalogu zabytków sztuki w Polsce,” BŻIH , 3-4 [135-36]
[1985]: 143-53; Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka, Bramy Nieba: Bóżnice murowane na
ziemiach dawnej Rzeczypospolitej [Warsaw, 1999], 463). Benjamin Lukin, Boris
Khaimovich, Ilya Dvorkin, Michael Kheifetz and Dmitry Vilensky together with other
enthusiasts participating in the non-formal seminars on Jewish history and ethnography
in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), undertook a series of expeditions to document the
remnants of Jewish culture in the former Jewish Pale of Settlement in the 1980s. Since
1989, they have been continuing their fieldwork, first as researchers of the Hebrew
University in St. Petersburg and then as members of the Center for Jewish Art at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This activity was summarized in В. Дымшиц, В.
Лукин, Б. Хаймович, История евреев на Украине и в Белоруссии. Экспедиции,
памятники, находки (St. Petersburg, 1994); В. Дымшиц, В. Лукин, А. Соколова, Б.
Хаймович, 100 еврейских местечек Украины, Подолия, 1-2 (St. Petersburg, 1998-
2000). Brief reports on the expeditions of the Center for Jewish Art have being
continuously published in the Center’s Newsletter (Jerusalem, 1986 ff.). Materials from
the expeditions of the Center of Jewish Art in Eastern Europe have served as the base for
Синагоги України [a special issue of Вісник інституту
Укрзахідпроектрестварації, 9] (Lvov, 1998); Ariella Amar, Ruth Jacoby,
Ingathering of the Nations: Treasures of Jewish Art: Documenting an Endangered
Legacy (Jerusalem, 1998), 50-73. Material on the synagogues is also found in the
collections of Jewish materials in museums and archives of the former USSR, which
were almost entirely sealed until the late 1980s, and since then have been partially
studied and exhibited (Mariella Beukers, Renée Waale, eds., Tracing An-sky. Jewish
Collections from the State Ethnographic Museum in St. Petersburg [Zwolle, 1992];
Sarah Harel, ed., Treasures of Jewish Galicia [Tel Aviv, 1996]; Miriam Weiner,
Jewish Roots in Ukraine and Moldova [New York, 1999]; А. Канцедикас, И.
Сергеева, Альбом еврейской художественной старины Семена Ан-ского
[Moscow, 2001]).
9
Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka, Bramy Nieba: Bóżnice drewniane na ziemiach
dawnej Rzeczypospolitej (Warsaw, 1996, an enlarged and revised edition of idem.,
Wooden Synagogues [Warsaw, 1959]); idem, Bóżnice murowane.
10
Complete human images also appeared, although very rarely, in the synagogue murals
from the late 19th and early 20th century. For example, note the Jews praying at the
Western Wall in the painting on the west wall in the Remah synagogue, the small figures
 4

from the 17th and 18th centuries have been much studied ever since researchers on
architecture and art were first attracted to Polish synagogues in the late 19th century.11
Sculptural decorations in synagogue art in Poland have never been the subject of
a monographic study: at most, they have been mentioned in passing, and emphasis has
mainly been placed on the carved Holy Arks.12 Relatively more attention has been paid

———————————————————————————————————
that inhabit the views of Jerusalem and the larger figure of Noah on the walls of the
Kupah synagogue, both in Kazimierz near Cracow (Katalog zabytków sztuki w Polsce,
4, Miasto Kraków, 6, Kazimierz i Stradom. Judaica: Bóżnice, budowle publiczne i
cmentarze, Izabella Rejduch-Samkowa and Jan Samek, eds. [Warsaw, 1995]: 11, 20,
figs. 125, 127). A large standing male figure was depicted above the exit from the prayer
hall in an unidentified Polish synagogue (photograph in the archive of the Institute of
Art, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, neg. no. 13583, erroneously labeled as the
synagogue of Zamość).
11
See, for example, Ludwik Wierzbicki, “Bóżnica w miasteczku Jabłonowie nad
Prutem,” Sprawozdania Komisji do Badania Historii Sztuki w Polsce, 4 (Cracow,
1891): 45-48; C. Aronson, “Wooden Synagogues of Poland,” Menorah Journal, 25
(Frankfurt am Main, 1937): 326-32; Rachel Wischnitzer, “The Wise Men of Worms,”
Reconstructionist, 25 (June 15, 1959), 9: 10-12; idem, The Architecture of the
European Synagogue (Philadelphia, 1964), 125-47; K. Strauss, “The Horb Synagogue
and Polish Synagogue Murals,” Ariel, 24 (Spring, 1969): 75-80; ‫ אמנות ואמנים‬,'‫;דוידוביץ‬
idem,‫כנסת בפולין‬-‫קיר בבתי‬-‫( ציורי‬Tel Aviv, 1982); Ida Huberman, Living Symbols:
Symbols in Jewish Art and Tradition (Jerusalem, 1989); Maria and Kazimierz
Piechotka, “Polichromie polskich bóżnic drewnianych,” Polska sztuka ludowa, 1-2
(1989): 65-87; Iris Fishof, “Depictions of Jerusalem by Eliezer Sussman of Brody,” The
Israel Museum Journal, 14 (Summer 1996): 67-82; -‫הכנסת בגבוז'דז'יץ‬-‫ "בית‬,‫תום הובקה‬
"‫ השפעת ספר הזוהר על האמנות והאדריכלות‬:‫ שער השמים‬in ‫ עורכת חביבה פדיה‬,‫המיתוס ביהדות‬
(Jerusalem, 1993), 263-361; Thomas C. Hubka, “Jewish Art and Architecture in the East
European Context: The Gwożdziec-Chodorów Group of Wooden Synagogues,” Polin,
10, Jews in Early Modern Poland, ed. Gershon David Hundert (Oxford, 1996): 141-83;
Batsheva Goldman-Ida, “Black on the White – a Remembrance of Jerusalem,” Jewish
Art, 23-24, The Real and Ideal Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Art
(1997-98): 203-209; Борис Хаймович, “‘Геральдический орел’ в художественной
культуре восточноевропейских евреев,” Вестник еврейского университета, 3 (31)
(2000): 87-110; Boris Khaimovich, “The Jewish Bestiary of the 18th-century in the
Dome Mural of the Khodorow Synagogue,” Jews and Slavs, 7 (2001): 130-86.
12
See Landsberger, A History of Jewish Art, 236-49; George K. Loukomski, Jewish
Art in European Synagogues: From the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century
(London, 1947), 33-42; Wischnitzer, Architecture, 107-147; Aharon Kashtan,
“Synagogue Architecture of the Medieval and Pre-Emancipation Periods,” in Cecil Roth,
ed., Jewish Art (London, 1971): 108-113; Brian de Breffny, The Synagogue (New
York, 1978), 105-128; Geoffrey Wigoder, The Story of the Synagogue: A Diaspora
Museum Book (New York, 1986); H. A. Meek, The Synagogue (London, 1995), 150-
69; Krinsky, Synagogues of Europe, 56-59; Hans-Peter Schwarz, ed., Die Architektur
der Synagoge (Frankfurt am Main, 1998), 89-156; Dominique Jarassé, “Synagogue: The
Community as Unit. The Quest for a Style,” in Gabrielle Sed-Rajna, ed., Jewish Art
(New York, 1997), 171-72; Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka, Bramy Nieba. Bóżnice
drewniane na ziemiach dawnej Rzeczypospolitej (Warsaw, 1996), 82-110.
 5

to the sculpture on Jewish tombstones.13 In the scholarly discourse, three-dimensional

images in the synagogues are as a rule related to either paintings or architectonic
structures and not discussed separately as sculptures. On the one hand, the discourse
concerning woodcarvings and stucco reliefs usually concentrates on the picturesque
carved Arks and highlights the use of the same motifs in the synagogue paintings,
illuminated manuscripts and ritual objects.14 On the other hand, the sculptural design of
stone Arks, alms boxes, bimahs (pulpits for the public reading of the Torah), and
entrance portals have mainly been examined in the context of contemporary
architectonic styles,15 or the accent has been placed on the formal composition of the
Ark and the bimah as the two focal parts of the synagogue space.16 While discussing
synagogue architecture and paintings, researchers sometimes even ignored the curious
sculptures nearby. A typical example of this is the lack of treatment of the volumetric
sculptures of the bear and the cow sitting on either side of a carved hand holding a scroll
above the exit from the prayer hall in the synagogue of Maciejów in Volhynia (ill. 3).17
Szymon Zajczyk, who visited the synagogue and took photographs of it, reported in his
1933 article that he had seen the name of Ezekiel, son of Moses of Sokal, the builder and

———————————————————————————————————
13
See A. Levy, Jüdische Grabmalkunst in Osteuropa (Berlin, 1935); M. Diamant,
Jüdische Volkskunst (Vienna, 1937); David Goberman, Jewish Tombstones in
Ukraine and Moldova (Moscow, 1993); idem, Carved Memories: Heritage in Stone
from the Russian Jewish Pale (New York, 2000); Monika Krajewska, A Tribe of
Stones: Jewish Cemeteries in Poland (Warsaw, 1993); Andrzej Trzciński, Symbole i
obrazy. Treści symboliczne przedstawień na nagrobkach żydowskich w Polsce
(Lublin, 1997).
14
These arts are almost identified with each other in Ignacy Schipper, “Sztuka
plastyczna Żydów w dawnej Rzeczypospolitej,” in Ignacy Schipper, H. Tartakower and
A. Hafftka, Żydzi w Polsce Odrodzonej, 1 (Warsaw, 1932): 328-29; -‫ ציורי‬,'‫דוידוביץ‬
‫קיר‬56-58.
15
See Wischnitzer, Architecture, 107-124; Breffny, Synagogue, 105-128.
16
Alfred Grotte, “Deutsche, böhmische und polnische Synagogentypen vom IX. bis
Anfang de XIX. Jahrhunderts,” Gesellschaft zur Erforschung jüdischer
Kunstdenkmäler (Eingetragener Verein) zu Frankfurt am Main, 7-8, (Berlin, 1915);
Krinsky, Synagogues of Europe, 49-50; Gerhard W. Mühlinghaus, “Der Synagogenbau
des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts,” in Schwarz, ed., Die Architektur der Synagoge, 115-56;
Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka, “Aron ha-kodesz w bóżnicach polskich. Ewolucja
między XVI i początkiem XIX wieku,” in A. Paluch, ed., The Jews in Poland, 1
(Cracow, 1992): 475-81; Piechotka, Bóżnice murowane, 82-100, 237-43, 302-30.
17
For the sake of uniformity, and based on the Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971;
henceforth EJ), geographical names of cities, towns and villages in the former Polish
Commonwealth are given in their Polish spelling, except for the commonly accepted
English spelling of the names of geographical areas, rivers and several cities (e.g.,
Cracow is used throughout the text for Kraków).
 6

perhaps the sculptor of the synagogue, and the year 1781 inscribed on the scroll, but did
not mention the sculptures flanking it, and published instead a photograph of the vaults
that rest on the four-pillared bimah (ill. 4).18 Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka published
Zajczyk’s photograph of the animals,19 but did not explain this combination of a bear
and a cow. In fact, these sculptures can be interpreted through the vision of the messianic
age in Isaiah 11:7, “And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie
together.”20 Many less impressive images and non-figurative decorations have similarly
been neglected. This lack of interest stands in sharp contrast to the purposeful
examination of the marginal images and ornamentation in studies of European art from
the periods in question, which has revealed the meaningful role such images play in the
semantic program of the work of art.21 The aim of the current research is to broaden the
sphere of scholarly attention to the volumetric art in the synagogues, including hitherto
omitted figurative and non-figurative images, and to reveal their meaning and semantic
importance.
The study of synagogue decorations in the Ashkenazi Diaspora has common
inherent problems. The examination of sculptural artifacts, whether extant or known
from photographs, is difficult because most of these objects underwent changes caused
by damage or restoration, or were moved or recomposed in the course of time. However,
———————————————————————————————————
18
Szymon Zajczyk, “Architektura barokowych bóżnic murowanych w Polsce,” Biuletyn
Naukowy (Zaklad Architektury Polskiej i Historii Sztuki Politechniki Warszawskiej), 1
(June, 1933), 4: 195, fig. 4 facing p. 192 (also the Institute of Art, the Polish Academy of
Sciences, neg. no. 18863). The rhymed Hebrew inscription is,
‫ותשלם המלאכה בכח אל \ בשנת ישראל הקטן \ יחזקאל בן משה מ"ק ]מקהילת[ \ סקאל יזכו בבנין אריאל‬
“And the work was completed by the power of God in the year of ‘lesser Israel’ [by]
Ezekiel, the son of Moses from the community of Sokal, let them merit the building of
Ariel [Jerusalem].” The numerical value of the Hebrew letters of the word “Israel” is 541
to the “lesser counting,” i.e. excluding thousands. The year is thus 5541, that is 1780 or
1781. Zajczyk’s photograph of the sculptures (my ill. 3) is in the archives of the Institute
of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, neg. no. 18865.
19
Piechotka, Bóżnice murowane, 337 fig. 453.
20
Translations of biblical verses are based on the standard English King James version
unless it diverges from the literal sense of the Hebrew Bible: when so, the latest Jewish
Publication Society of America editions are used, or a new translation is proposed in
order to emphasize the relevant meaning of the Hebrew terms.
21
For example, see Lottlisa Behling, Die Pflanzenwelt der mittelalterlichen
Kathedralen (Cologne, 1964); idem, Die Pflanze in der mittelalterlichen
Tafelmalerei (Cologne, 1967); Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting: Its
Origins and Character, 1-2 (New York, 1971); Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol:
Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge, 1989); idem, Image on the
Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Cambridge, 1992); Patrik Reuterswärd, The
Visible and Invisible in Art: Essays in the History of Art (Vienna, 1991).
 7

an in-depth formal analysis of the objects distorted in the course of later alterations and
restorations may reveal their original appearance and thus must be a necessary part of
this research. Moreover, many sculptures are known only from unclear black-and-white
photographs that do not allow us to discern their details and thus may cause the
misidentification of certain objects, images or inscriptions, or a wrong linkage between
the close-up photograph and the general view of the same object. Here again extreme
care must be taken to correct the mistakes of past researchers through a minute formal
analysis.
Other problems of studying the sculptural synagogue decorations stem from the
fact that they were created at a crossroad of different artistic traditions, esthetic attitudes,
languages and cultures, and are located in areas that are difficult to reach. In practice,
researchers have therefore often concentrated on more familiar parts of the composite
background of the synagogue decoration, and were forced to base themselves on
publications that give only partial information on, and interpretations of, objects that
they had not seen themselves and to use documents or illustrations in texts that are in
languages they cannot read. The case of Maciejów (ill. 3) demonstrates that this practice
can lead to a series of misreadings and omissions. Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka
published Zajczyk’s photograph of the sculptures above the exit from the prayer hall,
with the Hebrew inscription containing the name of Ezekiel ben Moses of Sokal and the
date 1781, but they derived this information from Zajczyk’s partial and inaccurate
translation of the text in his article and did not retranslate the text on the basis of the
photograph.22 Wischnitzer, who reproduced the photograph of the upper part of the
bimah and the vault in the Maciejów synagogue from Zajczyk’s publication (ill. 4),
incorrectly thought that Ezekiel’s 1781 inscription was in the vault, obviously not having
seen the photograph of the inscription (ill. 3). Moreover, she cited the date 1763 in one
place, and 1781 in the other.23 In turn, Davidovich quoted the incorrect date of 1763, and
stated that Ezekiel was “a painter, and maybe also a builder,” in spite of the fact that

———————————————————————————————————
22
Piechotka, Bóżnice murowane, 336.
23
Wischnitzer, Architecture, 118 fig. 95, 146-47; Zajczyk’s “Architectura barokowych
bóżnic,” 195. The phrase Wischnitzer uses reads “1781, the year of completion of
construction and of the decoration, the work of Ezekiel, the son of Moses from Sokal.”
This translation is not from Ezekiel’s full inscription in Hebrew (cf. note 18 above).
Wischnitzer erroneously gave 1763 as the date of the Maciejów synagogue in her
Architecture, 118, whereas the correct year of 1781 also appears in ibid., 146-47.
 8

nothing is known about paintings in the Maciejów synagogue.24 Krinsky based her
supposition that Ezekiel was a decorator rather than a builder of the synagogue on her
inaccurate and partial quote of the text of Ezekiel’s inscription from its abridged English
paraphrase in Wischnitzer’s book.25 In order to prevent the use of incorrect dates,
translations and interpretations in the study of synagogue decoration, the original
artifacts and the primary visual and textual sources of information on them and on the
lost objects must be re-examined.
To a certain extent, a subliminal reason impeding the scholars who founded the
study of synagogue architecture and art from concentrating on the sculptural adornment
in these structures may have originated from the idea that the Orthodox Jews who built
and prayed in these synagogues would naturally have avoided any sculptural art in their
sanctuary because of the biblical prohibition against sculptures.26 In spite of the fact that
a strict interpretation of the Second Commandment is still an axiom for a number of
scholars engaging in disciplines other than Jewish Art as well as in the popular mind, the
idea that the Second Commandment did not mean an abstention from creating mimetic
images has become commonly accepted in scholarly discussions on Jewish art during the

———————————————————————————————————
24
‫קיר‬-‫ ציורי‬,'‫ דוידוביץ‬56-57. Zajczyk’s other photographs from Maciejów show that the
decoration of this synagogue consisted of reliefs on the whitewashed walls and the
bimah and of a richly carved wooden Holy Ark (see Piechotka, Bóżnice murowane,
337-39 figs. 451-56).
25
Krinsky omits from Zajczyk’s report and Wischnitzer’s quotation (see note 23 above)
the words “of construction” (Krinsky, Synagogues of Europe, 117 no. 38), and ignores
Wischnitzer’s statement on p. 118 that the synagogue was built in 1763 by Ezekiel, son
of Moses from Sokal.
26
The Second Commandment prohibits the making of “any sculpture (‫ )פסל‬or any
likeness (‫ )תמונה‬of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or
that is in the water under the earth” (Ex. 20:3-4, also Deut. 4:16-18). Other biblical
verses concerning cultic art raise objections against molten figures and carved images,
emphasizing the ban against making statues of idols: note the prohibition on making
“gods of silver and gods of gold” (Ex. 20:23), “molten gods” (Ex. 34:17; Lev. 19:4 ), “a
sculpture” (‫( )פסל‬Lev. 26:1; Deut. 4:16), “a standing image (‫ )מצבה‬and any image of
stone” (‫( )אבן משכית‬Lev. 26:1). This emphasis is mitigated in the Tosafot, collections of
comments on the Talmud compiled by the followers of Rashi (R. Solomon bar Isaac,
1040-1105) in France and Germany in the 12th-14th centuries: ‫דלא שייך לא תעשה לך פסל‬
‫ דאינו אלא לנוי בעלמא‬,‫[“ אלא בתלוש אבל על הכותל המחובר לא‬the prohibition saying] ‘thou shalt
not make unto thee any sculpture’ is relevant only to a detachable [object], however not
to [an object] attached to the wall because it is usually [made] only for beauty” (Tosafot
to Yomah 54a). Rabbinical literature found in the Bar-Ilan University Responsa Project
database is quoted according to the (CD) version 9.0, 1972-2001. Translation of
talmudic excerpts is based on the latest Jewish Publication Society of America editions,
and is given in the Babylonian Talmud version unless otherwise noted.
 9

last half-century.27 Narkiss explained that the belief that the Jews constantly avoided
visual arts became popular after the controversy between the Hasidic movement and
other parts of Orthodox Jewry, one of whose leaders, the Hungarian Rabbi Moses Sofer
(also known as the Hatam Sofer, 1762-1839), opposed any type of decoration. Sofer’s
teaching deeply influenced Orthodox Jews first in Eastern Europe and then elsewhere.
Furthermore, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s 1807 “Phenomenology of Mind”
spearheaded the scholarly attitude to the Jews as the “People of the Book” who had no
feeling for the plastic arts.28 However, already in the Bible, there was evidence of art in
the Jewish Sanctuary, and God is quoted as giving precise instructions for making the
movable Tabernacle and its implements, including the sculpting of cherubim in the
round to be set on the Ark and the embroidering of their images on the curtains of the
sanctuary.29 The adornment of the abode of the Divine Presence in the permanent
Temple in Jerusalem and of the Temple implements was even richer, employing
zoomorphic and plant images in the round and in relief.30 The Bible informs us that
———————————————————————————————————
27
On different definitions of Jewish art in this context, see, e.g., P. Krasnow, “What of
Jewish Art? An Artist’s Challenge,” Menorah Journal 11 (1925): 535-43; S. S. Stephen,
“Defining Jewish Art,” in Mordecai M. Kaplan Jubilee Volume, (New York, 1953),
457-67 (English section); E. Naményi, L’Esprit de l’art juif (Poitiers, 1957); A. Werner,
“What is Jewish Art?” Judaism, 11(1) (1962), 101: 32-43; Joseph Gutmann, “Jewish Art,
Fact of Fiction?” Central Conference American Rabbis Journal (April, 1964): 49-54;
idem, ed., No Graven Images: Studies in Art and the Hebrew Bible (New York, 1971);
idem, ed., The Image and the Word: Confrontations in Judaism, Christianity and
Islam (Missoula, 1977); idem, “Is There a Jewish Art?” in C. Moore, ed., The Visual
Dimension: Aspects of Jewish Art (Boulder, 1993), 1-19; idem, “Jewish Art: Attitude to
Art,” in The Dictionary of Art, 17 (New York, 1996), 552-53; ‫ "האם קיימת‬,‫בצלאל נרקיס‬
‫ אמנות יהודית?" האוניברסיטה‬11 (1965), 2-3: 31-40; Harold Rosenberg, “Is There a Jewish
Art?” Commentary, 42 (1966), 1: 57-60; Carmel Konikoff, The Second Commandment
and its Interpretations in the Art of Ancient Israel (Geneve, 1973); ‫ בית שערים‬,‫ אביגד‬.‫נ‬
3 (Jerusalem, 1982): 201-208; V. Nedomačka, “A Contribution to the Discussion ‘Is
There a Jewish Art?’” in Moore, ed., The Visual Dimension, 21-23; Victor Avigdor
Hurovitz, “Did Solomon Violate the Second Commandment,” Bible Review, 10 (1994),
5: 24-33, 57; Gabrielle Sed-Rajna, “Studies in Jewish Art in the Last Fifty Years: A
Survey,” in Judit Targarona Borrás and Angel Sáenz-Badillos, eds., Jewish Studies at the
Turn of the Twentieth Century: Proceedings of the 6th EAJS Congress, Toledo, July
1998, 2: Judaism from the Renaissance to Modern Times (Leiden, 1999): 93-105;
Margaret Olin, The Nation Without Art: Examining Modern Discourses on Jewish
Art (Lincoln, 2001).
28
Bezalel Narkiss, “What is Jewish Art?” a typescript in English, published in Russian
in Еврейское искусство в европейском контексте (Jerusalem, 2002), 12.
29
See Ex. 25:18-22; 26:1, 31; 36:8, 35; 37:7-9.
30
In addition to the pair of volumetric cherubim in the Holy of Holies, relief cherubim,
palm trees and open flowers appeared on the walls and doors of the Temple (I Kings
6:29, 32, 35, 36; Ezek. 41:18-20, 25), lilies and pomegranates decorated the bronze
 10

sculptural artifacts were destroyed only when they were venerated as objects of idol
worship.31 Researchers of ancient Jewish art have argued that the figurative cycles in the
Dura Europos synagogue (244-245 C.E.), figurative mosaics that included pagan images,
and anthropomorphic and zoomorphic sculptures in the ancient synagogues in Israel and
the Diaspora were a normative practice.32 They also agree that it was only during periods
of iconoclasm in the surrounding milieu that the Jews read the Second Commandment in
a stricter aniconic sense, used abstract adornment and erased undesirable images in their
synagogues.33 When iconoclastic views were adapted in a less radical form, the artists
continued to make images, but deformed artistic conventions: for example, Narkiss
discerned the impact of the medieval German rabbis’ severe approach to art in the
zoocephalic human figures from Hebrew illuminated manuscripts.34 These
considerations on the validity and the limits of the Second Commandment in Jewish art
in the Ancient, Early Christian and Medieval periods may help us to investigate the
———————————————————————————————————
columns, Jachin and Boaz, at the Temple’s porch (I Kings 7:18-20, 42; Jer. 52:22-23),
twelve molten oxen supported the great ritual bowl, the copper “molten sea” (I Kings
7:25, 44; II Chron. 4:4, 15), and lions, oxen, and cherubim ornamented the ten brass
bases in the Temple court (I Kings 7:29).
31
See II Kings 18:4.
32
Goodenough saw in the art in the ancient synagogues a divergence from mainstream
rabbinical Judaism (Erwin R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman
Period, 1-12 [New York, 1954-1968]). For a criticism of his hypothesis and for the
rabbinical views vs. the common artistic practices of the period, see E. E. Urbach, “The
Rabbinical Laws of Idolatry in the Second and Third Centuries in Light of
Archaeological and Historical Facts,” Israel Exploration Journal (henceforth IEJ), 9
(1959), 3: 149-65; 4: 229-45; M. Smith, “Goodenough’s Jewish Symbols in Retrospect,
Journal of Biblical Literature, 86 (1967): 53-68; M. Baumgarten, “Art in the
Synagogue: Some Talmudic Views,” in Steven Fine, ed., Jews, Christians and
Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue: Cultural Interaction during the Greco-
Roman Period (London, 1999), 71-86.
33
It must be noted that an absolute obedience to iconoclastic demands would lead to the
cessation of any artistic practice and would have left no material traces. On iconoclasm
in synagogue art, see Norman H. Baynes, “Icons before Iconoclasm,” Harvard
Theological Review, 44 (1951): 93-106; Charles Barber, “The Truth in Painting:
Iconoclasm and Identity in Early-Medieval Art,” Speculum, 72 (1997), 4: 1019-36; ‫דוד‬
"‫ "איקונוקלזם בבתי כנסת קדומים בארץ ישראל‬,‫ עמית‬in Proceedings of the 11th World
Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, 1993, B-II (Jerusalem, 1994): 9-16 (Hebrew
section); Asher Ovadiah, “Art of the Ancient Synagogues in Israel,” in Dan Urman, Paul
V. M. Flesher, eds., Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaelogical
Discovery, 2 (Leiden, 1995): 316-17; Lee I. Levine The Ancient Synagogue: The First
Thousand Years (New Haven, 2000), 340-43.
34
Bezalel Narkiss, “On the Zoocephalic Phenomenon in Mediaeval Ashkenazi
Manuscripts,” in Norms and Variations in Art: Essays in Honour of Moshe Barasch
(Jerusalem, 1983), 49-62.
 11

sculptures of the Medieval and Renaissance synagogues. This model of two alternating
principles in Jewish art – one advocating or allowing visual expression and the other
condemning the worship of images – was based by scholars on a comprehensive analysis
of biblical and rabbinical texts versus known artifacts, setting both against their
contemporary Jewish background and within the wider context of the dominant culture.
This is the methodology we also plan to utilize. A number of rabbinical opinions about
the arrangement and adornment of Ashkenazi synagogues have been collected in several
annotated miscellanea, but they do not discuss the influence that restrictions in the
sphere of visual art had on the practice of sculptural decoration in the synagogue.35 In
order to disclose by what means and in what ways religious authorities influenced the
synagogue patrons or the makers of the decoration, the relevant rabbinical and halakhic
texts must be re-read and re-applied to the visual material.
Moreover, the fear of idol worship did not prevent Jews from having depictions
or even sculptures of pagan gods in their synagogues,36 or from using in these buildings
architectural and decorative motifs borrowed from church art. Stone carvings from the
Worms synagogue and the Altneuschul in Prague can even be attributed to builders of
contemporary churches from these cities.37 Evidence attributing several synagogues from
the 16th and 17th century in Kazimierz, Lvov, Brest and Żółkiew to Italian and German

———————————————————————————————————
35
‫ מחקרים בספרות התשובות‬,‫( יצחק זאב כהנא‬Jerusalem, 1973), 349-94; Solomon B. Freehof,
[1] The Responsa Literature, [2] A Treasure of Responsa ([New York], 1973);
Brigitte Kern-Ulmer, ed., Rabbinische Responsen zum Synagogenbau, 1 (Hildesheim,
1990); Vivian B. Mann, ed., Jewish Texts on the Visual Arts (Cambridge, 2000).
36
For a variety of views on this art, see Th. H. Gaster, “Pagan Ideas and the Jewish
Mind: Japhet in the Tents of Shem,” Commentary, 17 (1954): 185-90; Goodenough,
Jewish Symbols; Urbach, “The Rabbinical Laws of Idolatry;” J. Neusner, “Jewish Use
of Pagan Symbols after 70 C.E.,” Journal of Religion, 43 (1963): 285-94; idem,
Symbol and Ideology in Early Judaism (Minneapolis, 1991); Bezalel Narkiss, “Pagan,
Christian, and Jewish Elements in the Art of Ancient Synagogues,” in Lee I. Levine, ed.,
The Synagogue in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia, 1987), 183-88; ,‫גדעון פרסטר‬
‫כנסת במאה השישית‬-‫"נושאים אלגוריים וסמליים בעלי משמעות נוצרית בעיטורי רצפות הפסיפס של בתי‬
‫ישראל הביזנטית‬-‫ שומרונים ונוצרים בארץ‬,‫" בתוך יהודים‬,‫ישראל‬-‫( בארץ‬Jerusalem, 1988), 198-
206; Kurt Weitzmann and Herbert L. Kessler, The Frescoes of the Dura Europos
Synagogue and Christian Art (Washington, 1990); Israel Roll, “Figurative Arts among
Jews of Late Antiquity,” Proceedings of the Eleventh World Congress of Jewish
Studies, 1993, D-II (Jerusalem, 1994), 1-8; Stuart S. Miller, “The Rabbis and the Non-
existent Monolithic Synagogue” and M. Baumgarten, “Art in the Synagogue,” in Fine,
ed., Jews, Christians and Polytheists, 57-70 and 71-86 respectively.
37
Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 151-76, 210-11; Böcher, "Die Alte
Synagoge,“ 28-46; Bernhard Grueber, Die Kunst des Mittelalters in Böhmen, 2
(Vienna, 1871): 32. Münzer, “Die Altneusynagoge in Prag,” 74-87.
 12

architects working in Poland38 points to the wide circle of workshops from which Jews
commissioned masons to build and consequently to adorn their synagogues. For
instance, Wischnitzer assumed that the style of the stone fixtures from the Remah
Synagogue in Kazimierz proves that they were made by Jan Maria Padovano, an Italian
builder and sculptor working at the royal court of Cracow. Although her and de
Breffny’s similar attributions39 are not based on a detailed stylistic analysis and thus
must be re-examined, their method of investigation may prove fruitful. A comparative
stylistic analysis of synagogue sculpture within its surrounding milieu will also be
helpful in dating the artifacts, and in attributing them to their creators. On the one hand,
names of Jewish builders and carvers from the 18th and 19th centuries that were found in
several synagogues of the former Polish Commonwealth led late 19th and early 20th
century researchers to note the participation of Jewish craftsmen in the making of
synagogue art, including wooden Holy Arks.40 In addition, the ways Jewish patrons
collaborated with Jewish and Christian craftsmen to produce synagogue sculptural
decorations must be investigated.
The different approaches to the problem of the Christian influence on Jewish art
that scholars adopted were in certain cases caused by their ideological predispositions.
For example, discussing the puzzling form of wooden synagogues in Poland, those who
denied the inherent development of Jewish art saw in these buildings a folk adaptation of
vernacular architecture,41 whereas those advocating the unique character of Jewish
culture referred only to the Jewish context of the synagogues, occasionally tracing their

———————————————————————————————————
38
Wischnitzer, Architecture, 111, 122, 145; Piechotka, Bóżnice drewniane, passim;
idem, Bóżnice murowane, passim.
39
Wischnitzer, Architecture, 107; Breffny, Synagogue, 105-107, 111.
40
Mathias Bersohn, Kilka słów o dawniejszych bóżnicach drewnianych w Polsce, 1
(Cracow, 1895): 21; 2 (1900): 6, 13, 16; 3 (1903): 26; Max Grunwald, “Wie baut man
Synagogen?” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums, 65 (1901): 115-17; Рахель
Бернштейн, “Синагогальная архитектура,” Еврейская энциклопедiя, 14 (St.
Petersburg, [1912]): 271; idem [Бернштейн-Вишницер], “Искусство у евреевъ в
Польш и на Литв ,” in Исторiя еврейскаго народа. Исторiя евреевъ въ Роcсiи,
1 (Moscow, 1914): 390-405 (in the references and bibliographical list, the titles of
books, articles and serials are copied in their original form, including the pre-reform
spelling of older Russian, Polish and German items, and the non-standard spelling of
Latin titles in medieval and early modern books); idem [Wischnitzer], Architecture,
145-147; Zajczyk’s “Architectura barokowych bóżnic,” 4: 192, 195; idem, “Bóżnica w
Kępnie,” BŻIH, 43-44 (July-December, 1962): 63-83; Loukomski, Jewish Art, 65 no.
10; ‫קיר‬-‫ ציורי‬,'‫ דוידוביץ‬56-58; Piechotka, Bóżnice drewniane, 167-68; idem, Bóżnice
murowane, 446-48.
 13

form back to the Khazars, or stating that the wooden synagogue was a product of the
collective effort of the Jewish folk and built without any external influences.42 Recent
studies of Jewish art in general have demonstrated that the Jews intentionally adopted
motifs and topical subjects from the religious art of their surroundings, and discuss the
sources and paths of this artistic interplay. For example, Herbert Kessler stated that in
the paintings from the Dura Europos synagogue, the artists reinterpreted universal
religious images according to a Jewish outlook;43 Marc Epstein saw the allusions to
Christian iconography in medieval Hebrew manuscripts as a subversive reaction of the
minority to the oppressive ideology of the majority;44 and Gabrielle Sed-Rajna,
following Gilbert Dahan’s definition of the “areas of encounter” between Jews and
Christians in France in the period of the first Crusades, considered art as just such an
area of encounter between the craftsmen of the two communities.45 Investigating the
impact of interpretations of pagan gods and other mythological images from the
Renaissance and Baroque periods on Jewish art, Mira Friedman explained why the Jews
of Worms and those of Prague used candelabra containing an allegorical sculpture of
Jupiter in their synagogues.46 The concept of cultural and religious interplay must be re-

———————————————————————————————————
41
K. Mokłowski, Sztuka ludowa w Polsce (Lwow, 1903), 424-43; Zygmunt Gloger,
Budownictwo drzewne i wyroby z drzewa a dawnej Polsce, 1 (Warsaw, 1907): 22-53;
Г. Г. Павлуцкий, “Старинныя деревянныя синагоги в Малоросiи,” in И.
Грабарь, Исторiя русскаго искусства, 7 (Moscow, 1909): 377-82; Paul Juckoff-
Scopau, Architektonischer Atlas von Polen (Berlin, 1921), 127-43; Adolf Szyszko-
Bohusz, “Materiały do architektury bóżnic w Polsce,” Prace Komisji Historii Sztuki, 4
(1927), 1: 1-25.
42
For detailed references and an uncritical review of these concepts, see ,'‫דוידוביץ‬
86 ,‫קיר‬-‫ ;ציורי‬and idem, ‫ אמנות ואמנים‬79. See also Loukomski, Jewish Art, 37. Cf.
Pinkerfeld, who supposed that the two-nave plan of medieval synagogues in Europe
stemmed from ancient Jewish architecture (-‫כנסת בארץ‬-‫ בתי‬,‫יעקב פנקרפלד‬
‫[ישראל‬Jerusalem, 1947], 47-48).
43
Herbert L. Kessler, “A Response to Christianity?” in Weitzmann and Kessler, The
Frescoes of the Dura Europos Synagogue, 178-183; note also Kessler, “Medieval Art
as Argument,” in Brendan Cassidy, ed., Iconography at the Crossroads (Princeton,
1993), 59-70.
44
Marc Michael Epstein, Dreams of Subversion in Medieval Jewish Art and
Literature (Pennsylvania, 1997).
45
Gilbert Dahan, The Christian Polemic against the Jews in the Middle Ages (Paris,
1998); idem, Les intellectuels chrétiens et les juifs au moyen âge (Paris, 1990); Sed-
Rajna, ed., Jewish Art, 227.
46
Mira Friedman, “Pagan Images in Jewish Art,” Jewish Art (henceforth JA), 19-20
(1993-1994): 145-47; G. Shoenberg, “A Late Survival: Jupiter Fulgur,” in Lucy
Freeman, ed., Essays in Memory of Karl Lehmann (Locust Valley, 1964), 288-92. See
also Ellen S. Saltman, “The ‘Forbidden Image’ in Jewish Art,” Journal of Jewish Art
 14

applied also to the other forms of sculptural synagogue decorations.

Researchers into Jewish art have also analyzed the meaning of many of the
symbols and zoomorphic allegories in the art of Polish synagogues, comparing them
with the imagery in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts and ritual objects. They derived
their interpretations mainly from Jewish textual sources, occasionally comparing the
symbols with those used in the art of the surrounding milieu.47 All this research forms
the basis for our understanding of the sculptural adornment in the synagogues, but the
methods and particular conclusions reached must be treated critically, especially as the
analysis of the word-and-image interaction in synagogue art has its limits. First of all, the
textual sources give a very fractional and late record of the symbolic inspirations of
synagogue art, which could have been derived from Jewish oral folklore, sermons in the
synagogue or discussions during Torah lessons. Secondly, the programmer or maker of
the synagogue decoration may not have based himself only on Jewish textual sources, as
these do not necessarily furnish sufficient information for the creation of a detailed
symbolic programme of synagogue decoration. In the Bible and its commentaries, the
descriptions of the Sanctuary, its appurtenances and other objects of artistic interest lack
important details and are equivocal or controversial on some points. Third, the rabbinical
decisions relating to the making or possessing of images sometimes note their Jewish
context, but prohibit them because of their meaning in alien cults.48 Moreover, the
appearance of an image in Jewish literature does not always give sufficient evidence for
its meaning in synagogue art. In fact, the method of semantically searching for the sense
of an image in the textual discourses and than applying this meaning to the pictorial
representation of this image may lead to arbitrary conclusions,49 because the visual form
of the image may convey an expression that is not limited to its verbal content. It is here
that modern iconographic and semiotic practices can prove helpful, as instead of reading
———————————————————————————————————
(henceforth JJA), 8 (1981): 42-53; Shalom Sabar, “The Beginnings and Flourishing of
Ketubbah Illustration in Italy: A Study in Popular Imagery and Jewish Patronage during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” Ph.D. Thesis, the University of California,
(Los Angeles, 1987), 213-32; idem, Ketubbah: Jewish Marriage Contracts of the
Hebrew Union College, Skirball Museum and Klau Library (Philadelphia, 1990),
passim.
47
Rachel Wischnitzer, Symbole und Gestalten der jüdischen Kunst (Berlin, 1935);
Huberman, Living Symbols.
48
See the materials published in ‫ מחקרים‬,‫ כהנא‬94-349; Freehof, The Responsa
Literature; Kern-Ulmer, ed., Rabbinische Responsen; Mann, ed., Jewish Texts.
49
This seems to be one of the problems in the semantic analysis of symbolic
representations in Jewish Art in Marc Epstein’s Dreams of Subversion.
 15

an image as a fixed visual substitute for a verbal expression, they yield a deeper insight
into the art object by relating to its formal structure, and by studying the larger semantic
conventions and associative relationships to which the work belongs.50 One of the
methods that we will adopt here will therefore emphasize the semantic traits of the visual
structure as well as the extent to which a relevant text inspired the meaning of the image.
Moreover, among the enormous number of verbal symbols and parables scattered
in the Bible, rabbinical exegesis and Jewish literature, one may find more than one
symbolic explanation of almost any possible visual image, and some of these
explanations will be ambivalent or controversial. Philologists have noticed that texts
convey their messages indirectly or partly, and that understanding them requires a
constant interpretive effort that may lead to overinterpretation.51 The same may be said
about images. A distinction must be made between the message that the artist has
intentionally expressed in the work of art, and the possible associations that this work
may inspire in different spectators over the ages. The current study will attempt to reveal
the first message, the one the artist wished to impart through his work, but will also
examine certain clues to this original message that may be found in the reactions of the
audience of that time. It must be unequivocally stated that any research creates a
hypothetical model of the artist’s original intentions, but cannot pretend to their full and
authentic disclosure. Several logical operations can ascertain the relevance of a particular
interpretation to the object under examination: the model must give an integral and
consistent explanation of all the known facts about the object; the concept should be
equally relevant for the work of art taken as a separate object, and for its relation to
previous developments and to the expressive conventions current in the contemporary
artistic language. It may even occur that two or more hypotheses will provide a reliable
explanation of the same object or artistic development. If new facts are revealed in the
future, they should either confirm or rebut the particular assumptions or even the whole
model that will be presented on the following pages.

———————————————————————————————————
50
See the reviews of the semiotic approaches in Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson,
“Semiotics and Art History,” Art Bulletin, 73 (1991), 2: 174-208 and in Laurie
Schneider Adams, The Methodologies of Art (New York, 1996).
51
Umberto Eco, Interpretation and Overinterpretation (Cambridge, 1990); Annete
Barnes, On Interpretation (Oxford, 1988); Michael Riffaterre, “Overinterpretation: On
Relevance in Reading Literature,” in Dov Landau, Gideon Shunami and Yaffa Wolfman,
eds., Bar Ilan University Studies in Comparative Literature (Ramat Gan, 2001): 1-
32.
 16

Another problem in the research on synagogue architecture and decoration is that

experts usually discuss artifacts and other evidence of early sculptural decoration in
synagogues from the western parts of the Ashkenazi Diaspora separately from similar
later examples from its eastern areas, and do not compare them. For example, discussing
the composition of Renaissance Holy Arks from Kazimierz near Cracow (ill. 5) and a
Late Renaissance Ark from Szydłów (ill. 6), the Piechotkas refer to the arboreal reliefs in
the pediments as the Tree of Life, but do not explain the source of this idea.52 The
parallel between this interpretation and the assumptions that medieval arboreal images
from the Worms synagogue and from the Altneuschul in Prague also represent the Tree
of Life (e.g., ill. 1)53 calls for a further examination of the sculptural synagogue
decorations as a continuum of the same artistic tradition stretching from the early
medieval period through the Late Renaissance, and from Eastern to Western Europe.
Only a study of this continuing tradition can throw light on whether this decoration was
influenced by the biblical description of the volumetric adornment in the Sanctuary,
whether it developed the sculptural motifs found in synagogues from Antiquity through
Early Christianity,54 and to what extent it became the basis for the rich sculptural
adornments in Eastern European synagogues from the Baroque period through to first
half of the 20th century. The deductions that will be derived from the analysis of each
artifact within its own contexts should also clarify the changes wrought in this continuity
in the development of synagogue art through the ages.
Historians of architecture reinforce the idea of a continuum from West to East
when they suggest that the old synagogues in Worms, Prague and Kazimierz near
Cracow are milestones of development of architectural types that originated along the
Rhine in Worms, Cologne, Mainz and Speyer and, following the main Jewish
migrations, came to the Cracow area through Bohemia and Silesia.55 Moreover, on the

———————————————————————————————————
52
Piechotka, “Aron ha-kodesz,” 477; idem, Bóżnice murowane, 82. Cf. also Andrzej
Trzciński, Symbole i obrazy, 69.
53
See note 4 above and Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 75.
54
See numerous examples, a classification and the bibliography in Rachel Hachlili, Art
and Archaeology in the Land of Israel [henceforth Art and Archaeology –Israel]
(Leiden, 1988); idem; Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Diaspora
[henceforth Art and Archaeology – Diaspora] (Leiden, 1998); Levine, The First
Thousand Years.
55
Grotte, “Deutsche, böhmische und polnische Synagogentypen;” idem, “Die
Beeinflussung jüdischer östlicher Sakralkunst durch Prager Vorbilder,” Jahrbuch der
Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Čechoslovakischen Republik, 6 (1934): 457-69;
Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen; Rachel Wischnitzer, “Mutual Influences
 17

map of medieval Jewish migration and trade, Worms, Prague and Cracow mark
important crossroads connecting the western and eastern parts of the Ashkenazi
Diaspora, and their ideological influence reached far beyond their communities. The old
customs that made their way from the Rhineland through Prague to Cracow included not
only conventions of synagogue architecture, but also traditions of synagogue decoration.
It is thus probable that Jews who planned to build a new synagogue in these cities or in
provincial towns turned to the renowned synagogues as models both in structure and in
decoration. On the other hand, when the Jews built the medieval and Renaissance
synagogues, the towns of Worms, Prague and Cracow were places of royal residence and
sites of intensive church and secular building. Architectural historians have also noticed
that stone carvings from the Worms synagogue and the Altneuschul of Prague are
similar to those in contemporary churches.56 For all these reasons, the oldest synagogues
with many extant remains in Worms, Prague and Kazimierz are appropriate objects for
studying the ways in which the continuum of Jewish traditions interacted with the art of
the milieu in developing the volumetric adornment of synagogues.
Researchers have also stated that it was in Prague in the second quarter of the
early 16th century and in the Jewish quarter of Kazimierz near Cracow in the mid-16th
century that Ashkenazi Jews first used new Renaissance principles instead of the
medieval arrangement and decoration of synagogues.57 The Czech and Polish Jews may
have learned these new artistic codes from the Renaissance art that was being practiced
at the royal court in their cities, or through direct contacts with Italian Jewry. As we shall
see, Jewish immigrants from Italy had a strong influence on the early Ashkenazi
settlements in the Rhine region, and Jews of Italy and the Ashkenazi communities of
Germany, Bohemia and Poland maintained close contacts throughout the medieval
period. These contacts would also have made Ashkenazi Jews familiar with Italian
attitudes to synagogue art. Therefore, the evidence remaining from the synagogue art in
Italy allows us to substantiate deductions based on an analysis of Ashkenazi synagogues
beyond the Alps, and to reveal models that influenced the Renaissance adornment of
———————————————————————————————————
between Eastern and Western Europe in Synagogue Architecture from the 12th to the 18th
Centuries,” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science, 1-2 (1947-1948): 25-68; idem,
Architecture, 44-56; Hana Volavková, The Pinkas Synagogue (Prague, 1955), 52-69;
Piechotka, Bóżnice murowane, 7-53.
56
Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 151-176, 210-11; Böcher, “Die Alte
Synagoge,” 28-46; Bernhard Grueber, Die Kunst des Mittelalters in Böhmen, 2
(Vienna, 1871): 32. Münzer, “Die Altneusynagoge in Prag,” 74-87.
57
See note 55 above.
 18

Eastern European synagogues.

At the same time, the synagogues remaining in Kazimierz must be closely
studied in order to clarify how the Renaissance models were reinterpreted in its many
copies. The spread of this model beyond Kazimierz can be investigated through the case
of the two masonry synagogues surviving in the neighbouring towns of Szydłów and
Pińczów, each not more than 100 km to the northeast of Cracow. In the hierarchy of the
Jewish autonomy in Poland, the Jewish communities of both towns were part of the
district of Cracow, i.e. they were subordinated to the Jewish community of Kazimierz.
Worms, Prague and Cracow will furnish us with representative examples of a
single developing tradition that will be investigated here in depth, in order for the later
decorations of these and other areas of the Ashkenazi Diaspora to be understood. They
also are paradigmatic for the methodology of research on Ashkenazi synagogues. The
case of Worms reveals the paradigm for the study of the beginning and development of
medieval Ashkenazi synagogues. To attain a comprehensive understanding of the
existing information and surviving fragments of decorations from early Ashkenazi
synagogues, we must locate them in the structure of the synagogue. Although remnants
of early reliefs from Ashkenazi synagogues were found also in other Romanesque
synagogues such as that in Rouen,58 the Worms synagogue gives us a better opportunity
to realize the general decorative arrangement of Romanesque synagogues, and to trace
the reuse of old stone carvings in reconstructions over a period of centuries. The
evidence from Worms allows us to reveal the chronology of the changes, and to correlate
the transfer of sculptured images from their original location to other places in the
synagogue with permissive or iconophobic trends in religious teachings and practice,
both that of the Jews and that of certain Christian sects. The monumental inscriptions
from the Worms synagogue suggest the forms of patronage in the establishment and
adornment of the synagogue, and also provide clues for the symbolism of the building
and its decorations. Moreover, the motifs found in the stone carvings from the Worms
synagogue created a basis for the iconographical development of the sculptural
———————————————————————————————————
58
Dominique Bertin, “Deux constructions juives du XIIe siècle: Une découverte récente
à Rouen,” Archives juives, 12 (1976), 4: 55-60 ; Bernhard Blumenkranz, “Un ensemble
synagogal à Rouen: 1096-116,” Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Comptes
rendus des séances de l’année 1976 (Paris, 1976): 663-87; idem, “La synagogue à
Rouen (env. 1100),” Archives juives, 13 (1977), 3: 37-44 ; idem, ed., Art et
archéologie des juifs en France médiévale (Toulouse, 1980), 231-303; Norman Golb,
“Nature et destination du monument juif découvert à Rouen,” Proceedings of the
American Academy of Jewish Research, 48 (1981): 101-176; Krinsky, Synagogues of
Europe, 236-38.
 19

embellishment of Ashkenazi synagogues. As a result, the detailed analysis of the Worms

Synagogue should yield an understanding of many principles that continued through the
later development of synagogue art.
The Altneuschul in Prague is an excellent example of a synagogue established
and decorated in a homogenous style that survived in more or less the same shape
despite various repairs. The decorations allow us to understand the way an integrative
complex of Gothic images and architectonic forms was adapted to synagogue use. The
ensemble of carvings in the Altneuschul throws light on fragmental finds of Gothic
sculptural decorations in other locations, and creates the basis for understanding other,
more fragmented evidence that remains from Late Gothic synagogues. The case of the
early 16th-century reconstructions of the Pinchas synagogue in Prague is useful to clarify
the paradigm of a private synagogue. The sculptural decorations of the Pinchas
Synagogue are also representative of the impact of the style of royal architecture on
synagogues established by wealthy individuals.
The Remah Synagogue in Kazimierz near Cracow is a perfect example for
studying the beginnings of Renaissance art in Eastern European synagogues, as it
displays an interplay of medieval traditions with direct influences from Jewish art in
Italy and from the local version of Renaissance architecture and sculpture that was
cultivated at the royal court. The group of four synagogues that are situated in Kazimierz
a few hundred meters from each other, create a homogeneous group for studying the
development of the Renaissance model, from its first, eclectic implementation in the
Remah Synagogue through its application during the Renaissance reconstruction of the
Gothic Old Synagogue, and the Renaissance fragments still found in the High
Synagogue, to its simplified late interpretation in the Kupah Synagogue. The stone
carvings from the Szydłów synagogue allow us to examine the enrichment of the
common Renaissance programme by new images, whereas the case of the Pińczów
synagogue suggests the reasons that caused a restrained version of the basic Renaissance
model to be adopted. The synagogues in Szydłów and Pińczów and the Kupah
Synagogue mark the fading of the Renaissance influence on synagogue art, but testify to
the continuity of the tradition of sculptural decorations that can be derived from Worms.
For all these reasons, the present research into the medieval and Renaissance sculptural
decoration of Ashkenazi synagogues will be limited primarily to the cases of Worms,
Prague, Cracow and the area around it.
 20

Chapter I
The Carvings from the Old Synagogue in Worms:
The Antecedents and Beginnings of Stone Carved Decoration in
Ashkenazi Synagogues
The presence of Jews in the Roman colonies in the Rhineland was recorded as
early as the 4th century C.E.,1 but established Jewish communities appeared in Germany
and then in Bohemia only in the 10th century, and in the following century in Poland. In
the course of time, these communities formed a cultural unity that became collectively
identified as Ashkenazi Jewry. The establishment of a Jewish community necessarily
required the foundation of a synagogue.2 Of the oldest medieval Ashkenazi synagogues
little material evidence has survived. Remnants of an 11th-century synagogue and a few
small fragments of stone carvings from the Gothic period were discovered in Cologne.3
A Romanesque twin window and fragments of masonry have been identified as being
from the late 11th-century synagogue of Speyer.4 A stone building datable between ca.
1096 and 1116 including remnants of stone carvings and Hebrew graffiti that was
discovered in Rouen in 1976 was probably a synagogue.5 Recent excavations have also
revealed foundations of a late 11th or early 12th-century Romanesque synagogue in

———————————————————————————————————
1
In 321 C.E., Jews resided as Roman citizens in Cologne (Codex Theodosianus
[Hildesheim, 1975], 16:8, 3-4; Julius Aronius, Regesten zur Geschichte der Juden im
fränkischen und deutschen Reiche bis zum Jahre 1273 [Berlin, 1902], no. 2;
Germania Judaica, 1 [Tübingen, 1963]: 69 ff.).
2
Maimonides, Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, also known as the Rambam (Cordoba 1135-
Fustat, 1204) concluded this halakhic demand in his legislative code Mishneh Torah:
“Every settlement counting at least ten of the people of Israel must define a house where
they will assemble for the reciting of prayers at every service, and this place will be
called a ‘synagogue.’ The citizens should demand from each other to build a synagogue
and to acquire the Scroll of the Law, Prophets and Writings” ( ‫ "הלכות תפילה ונשיאת‬,‫רמב"ם‬
‫" משנה תורה‬,‫ כפים‬1:1).
3
In 1426, the synagogue was converted into a church and remodelled, and the building
was destroyed during World War II (Otto Doppelfeld, “Die Ausgrabungen im Kölner
Judenviertel” in Zvi Asaria, ed., Die Juden in Köln von den ältesten Zeiten bis zur
Gegenwart [Cologne, 1959], 71-145).
4
Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 145-50; Wischnitzer, Architecture, 44-45;
Hannelore Künzl, “Der Synagogenbau im Mittelalter” in Schwarz, Die Architektur
der Synagoge, 85.
5
Bertin, “Deux constructions juives du XIIe siècle;” Blumenkranz, “Un ensemble
synagogal à Rouen: 1096-116;” idem, “La synagogue à Rouen (env. 1100);” Archives
juives, 13 (1977), 3: 37-44 ; idem, Art et archéologie, 231-303; Golb, “Nature et
destination du monument juif découvert à Rouen;” Krinsky, Synagogues of Europe,
236-38.
 21

Regensburg.6 The pictorial and textual evidence from these synagogues add important
aspects to our knowledge on synagogue art, but they suggest only partial and desultory
ideas on how the decorations were arranged. In contrast to these other Romanesque
synagogues, the Worms synagogue of 1174-75 still exists, albeit much renovated during
the centuries and almost completely reconstructed from its ruins in 1961 after its
destruction by the Nazis. This synagogue is not only the most complete example that
has survived, but also an important monument in the development of synagogue
architecture in Ashkenazi countries. For many generations of Ashkenazi Jews, the
synagogue of Worms served as a model for synagogue building and as a venerated
ancient monument,7 the rabbis of Worms left their impression on religious thought,8 and
the tales about Worms and its sages influenced Jewish folklore and folk art.9 All these
circumstances make the synagogue of Worms a significant object that can serve as the
starting point in the study of the decoration of Ashkenazi synagogues. We will begin
our investigation with a brief history of the building and a study of its earliest reliefs
which will reveal the probable antecedents and development of the earliest sculptures
decorating Ashkenazi synagogues.
The Building and Early Built-in Stone Carvings of the Worms
Synagogue
The town of Worms was established as a Roman military camp on the Rhine in
st
the 1 century C.E., and the origins of the Jewish community in Worms may be traced
back to the end of the 10th century. The Jews of Worms were closely allied with the
Jewish communities of Speyer and Mainz.10 Medieval Hebrew sources refer to these
———————————————————————————————————
6
Silvia Codreanu-Windauer, “The Medieval Jewish Quarter of Regensburg and Its
Synagogue: Archaelogical Research 1995-1997” in Timothy Insoll, ed., Case Studies
in Archaelogy and World Religion: The Proceedings of the Cambridge Conference
(Oxford, 1999), 139-52.
7
Grotte, “Deutsche, böhmische und polnische Synagogentypen,” passim; Wischnitzer,
“Mutual Influences,” passim.
8
Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1973), 80-
118.
9
Wischnitzer, “The Wise Men of Worms,” passim.
10
On the early history of the Jews in Worms, see Moses Mannheimer, Die Juden in
Worms (Frankfurt am Main, 1842); idem, Die Judenverfolgungen in Speyer, Worms
und Mainz im Jahre 1096 während des ersten Kreuzzuges (Darmstadt, 1877);
Gerson Wolf, Zur Geschichte der Juden in Worms und des deutschen Städtewesens
(Wroclaw, 1862); Abraham Epstein, Jüdische Altertümer in Worms und Speier
(Wroclaw, 1896); Heinrich Boos, Urkundenbuch der Stadt Worms, 1-3 (Berlin,
1886-1893); idem, Geschichte der rheinischen Städtekultur, 1-3 (Berlin, 1897-1899);
Ephraim Carlebach, Die rechtlichen und sozialen Verhältnisse der jüdischen
 22

three communities collectively as Shoom ( ‫)שו"ם‬, the acronym of the Hebrew

transliteration of these three names.11 Several names of Italian origin on the early Jewish
tombstones from Worms and the migration of the rabbinical family of Kalonymus from
Tuscany to the Rhineland indicate that part of the Jewish population were immigrants
from Italy.12 From the 11th century on, the Shoom communities were noted for Bible
learning: the yeshivahs of Mainz and Worms attracted students from Central Europe
and France, among them Rashi (1040-1105), whose authority later became decisive for
Rhineland Jewry and whose exegesis became popular everywhere in the Jewish world.13
The Jews of Worms were granted economic privileges and a high degree of autonomy,
but their flourishing periods were interrupted by Crusader attacks in 1096, 1146 and
1196, and by renewed violence at the time of the Black Death in 1349.14 In the 12th
century, rabbis from the Kalonymus dynasty began the Hasidei Ashkenaz (“the Pious of
Ashkenaz”) movement marked for its humility, devotion and mysticism. A prominent
leader of the movement was R. Judah ben Samuel he-Hasid (ca. 1150-1217), a member
of the Kalonymus family, who spent his early life in Speyer and probably in Worms,

———————————————————————————————————
Gemeinden: Speyer, Worms und Mainz, von ihren Anfängen bis zur Mitte des 14.
Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1901); Leopold Rotschild, Die Judengemeinden zu Mainz,
Speyer und Worms von 1349-1438 (Berlin, 1904); Benas Levy, Die Juden in Worms
(Berlin, 1914); Sara Schiffmann, Die Urkunden für die Juden von Speyer 1090 und
Worms 1157 (Berlin, 1930); Guido Kisch, Die Reschstellung der Wormser Juden im
Mittelalter (Halle a. d. Saale, 1934); J. Jakobsohn, “Worms,” Germania Judaica, 1
[Tübingen]: 437-474; Fritz Reuter, Warmaisa: 1000 Jahre Juden in Worms
(Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 17-33.
11
[Alexander Shapiro and B. Mordechai Ansbacher],”Shum,” EJ, 14: 1479-81.
12
Note, for example, the names Bella, Bona, Bonafila, Senior and Speranza on
tombstones from the late 11th and 12th century in the Old Jewish cemetery in Worms
(Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 24-26; idem, Die alte Synagogue in Worms am Rhein,
[München, 1985], 3). See also Julius Aronius, “Karl der Grosse und Kalonymus von
Lucca,” Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, 2 (1888): 82-88;
‫" ציון‬,‫ "חגירתה של משפחת קלונימוס מאיטליה לגרמניה‬,‫ אברהם גרוסמן‬40 (1975): 154-85; [Joseph
Dan], “Kalonymus ”,EJ, 7: 718-22.
13
Abraham Epstein, ”Die nach Rachi benannten Gebäude in Worms,” Monatsschrift
für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums, 45(9) (1901; offprint [Wien,
1901], 1-5); Esra Shereshevsky, Rashi, the Man and His World (New York, 1982),
25-27.
14
Mannheimer, Die Judenverfolgungen; A. Neubauer and M. Stern, Hebräische
Berichte über die Judenverfolgungen während der Kreuzzüge (Berlin, 1892); ‫אברהם‬
‫ ספר גזרות אשכנז וצרפת‬,‫( הברמן‬Jerusalem, 1945); Ernst L. Dietrich, “Das Judentum im
Zeitalter der Kreuzzüge,” Saeculum, Jahrbuch für Universalgeschichte, 3 (1952): 94-
131; Jakobsohn, “Worms,” 437-74; Shlomo Eidelberg, ed., The Jews and the
Crusaders (Madison, 1977).
 23

and later resided in Regensburg.15

The first recorded synagogue was established on the north side of Worms in
1034, but had seemingly been attacked during the anti-Jewish persecutions in 1096 and
1146. It was replaced in 1174-75 by a new two-nave synagogue that was built nearby,
but it too was damaged in 1196, 1349, 1615 and 1689.16 During the 1349 pogrom not
only the interior but also the spanning and upper section of the walls were badly
damaged.17 After each period of violence the Jews rebuilt or renovated their synagogue:
this was done in 1212-13, 1355, 1620-24 and 1699 respectively.18 In the course of time,
the prayer hall became the core of a complex consisting of several separately spanned
additions built at different periods (ills. 7-8). The synagogue complex was partially
reconstructed or repaired in 1816, 1854-55, 1860 and 1926.19 In 1938, the Nazis
devastated the synagogue, and the bombings of 1944-45 destroyed the building. In
1961, the German authorities rebuilt the synagogue from its ruins.20
The main structure, the men’s prayer hall, is a double-naved building. A
monumental recessed portal in the west part of the southern wall (ill. 9) leads to the
sunken level of the quadrilateral prayer room (9.5 x 14.3-14.8 m), which is spanned by
six cross vaults set in two rows (ill. 8). The vaults rest on two columns standing in the
———————————————————————————————————
15
‫ תורת הסוד של חסידי אשכנז‬,‫( יוסף דן‬Jerusalem, 1968); Scholem, Major Trends, 80-
118; Ivan G. Marcus, Piety and Society: The Jewish Pietists of Medieval Germany
(Leiden, 1981).
16
Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge zu Worms,” 28, 57-59, 63, 129.
17
Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 73. He reported that only about 3 m of Romanesque
masonry remained above ground in the prayer hall’s walls in some places, and that the
upper sections were made using a Gothic masonry technique (ibid., 57).
18
Ibid., 28-46, 52-65. Böcher attributed the script of a short fragment of an inscription
found in the ruins of the Rashi chamber to the 14th century and believed that it refers to
the reconstruction of ca. 1355. The remaining words are, ‫[ בר אפרים‬...] \ [...]‫[ מפילת ו‬...]
[...]‫[ להתפל‬...] \ [...] ‫[ אייר יום ו‬...] \ [...] “destruction [?] / bar Ephraim / [the month of]
Iyyar 6 / to pray” (ibid., 109 no. XI). The word in the first line derives from the root ‫הפיל‬
that means “to bring down, let fall or destroy.” The verb “to pray” appears also in the
1212-13 dedicatory inscription of Meir ben Joel, who established the women’s chamber
“in order to pray in it” (ibid., 105 no. VIII). The epigraphic analysis on which Böcher
based his date is not convincing, and the remaining letters allow one to date the
inscription also to the late 13th century (cf. no. 4 vs. fig. 3 in ibid., 125). However the
readable words, the name and the date in the inscription suggest that the fragment
originates from a dedication of Bar Ephraim who donated money for the reconstruction
of the part of the synagogue that was destroyed, and thus corroborate Böcher’s date.
19
Ibid., 66-68.
20
Henry R. Huttenbach, The Destruction of the Jewish Community of Worms, 1933-
1945 (New York, 1981); Annelore and Karl Schlösser, Keiner blieb verschont: die
Judenverfolgung 1933-45 in Worms (Worms, 1989); Reuter, Warmaisa, 184-208.
 24

center of the longitudinal axis, and on corbels on the walls (ills. 10-12). An apse
protruding outward from the center of the east wall contains a niche for the Torah
scrolls (ills. 8, 10a, 13). A platform and stairs before the niche of the Torah repository
were necessitated by the placement of its aperture above the floor level under the
influence of the Mishnaic account of the cantor who “goes down before the Ark.”21 A
women’s chamber covered with four cross-bays resting on a single pillar at its center,
was attached to the east section of the northern wall in 1212-13 (ills. 8-9, 10b, 15-16).22
At that time, the entrance to the synagogue’s main portal probably already led through a
court enclosed from the east by the wall of the women’s chamber (ill. 7) in accordance
with the prescription in Berakhot 8a, which precludes entering the synagogue directly
from the street.23 It is also possible that this Talmudic norm was revived in the Middle
Ages because of the fear that a view of a synagogue’s richly decorated portal might
arouse the hostility of the Christian population.
According to the dedicatory inscription from 1623-24, David Oppenheim and
his wife were the donors of the renovation of the synagogue, the Holy Ark and bimah
after the 1615 pogrom, and also founded a smaller rounded chamber, later called the
“Rashi Chapel,” built to house the yeshivah next to the west wall of the prayer hall (ills.

———————————————————————————————————
21
Originally, ‫( יורד לפני התיבה‬Ta’anit 2:2, see also Rosh ha-Shana 34b). See also
‫" קתדרה‬,‫ "מתי התחילו מורידין שליח ציבור לפני התיבה‬,‫ זאב וייס‬55 (1990): 8-21.
22
Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge zu Worms,” 52-57, 105-108 inscriptions VIII-IX. Two
great arches were opened in the synagogue wall between the women’s chamber and the
main hall in the 1840s (my ills. 8, 11-12, 17; Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 66). Before
this, the women’s view of the main hall was limited to that obtained through a small
door and several windows (my ill. 18, and Neu’s lithograph showing the women’s
chamber interior in Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 135 fig. 35). The small
door between the women’s chamber and the prayer hall would be used as a Judsch (sic!)
Tirchen (“Jewish door”) through which a newborn boy was brought into the synagogue
for his circumcision (Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 84; Joseph Gutmann, “Christian
Influences on Jewish Customs” in Leon Klenicki and Gabe Huck, eds., Spirituality and
Prayer: Jewish and Christian Understandings [New York, 1983], 131).
23
An additional entrance to the prayer hall is set into the western section of the southern
wall (ills. 8, 14, 18) Heinrich Hoffmann’ watercolour (ill. 19) erroneously depicts this
door in the central section of the wall. This small 0.75-meter-wide door was used during
the marriage ceremony: it allowed the bridegroom and his male entourage to take a
shortcut from the synagogue to the wedding hall situated some 15 meters to the south.
The hall (ills. 7, 20 seen to the right of the synagogue), now the Rashi House and the
residence of the Jewish Museum of Worms, was once called Klause, Braut Haus or
Tanzhaus (Mannheimer, Die Juden in Worms, 20; Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 35-
36; ‫ עורך ישראל מרדכי פלס‬,‫ מנהגות וורמייזא‬,[‫[ יודא ליווא קירכום ]קירכהיים‬Jerusalem, 1987],
76-79).
 25

8, 10, 14).24 The two-storied structure to the left of the synagogue court and touching
the west wall of the women’s gallery seen on Carl Hertzog’s lithograph from ca. 1860
(ill. 20) is a residential annex destroyed later in the 19th century (ill. 7).25 An anteroom
was added to the northern side of the women’s chamber after 1615 (ills. 7-8).26
The earliest inscriptions engraved on stone plaques found in the synagogue are
dated to 1034: one of them, slightly damaged, is built into the exterior wall to the right
of the entrance to the prayer hall (ills. 9, 21). Eliezer ben Samuel saw and copied the
texts of this inscription and of two other plaques, now in fragments, in 1559.27 The large
inscription on the exterior states that Jacob ben David and his wife Rachel built the
synagogue “from their wealth” in 1034.28 As in the Biblical formulae for the
———————————————————————————————————
24
The inscription is on a plaque of reddish sandstone (78 x 83 cm.) built into the south
wall of the Rashi chamber. It was broken in 1942 (Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge zu
Worms,” 111-12 no. XV). The text was recorded by A. Epstein (Jüdische Altertümer,
11; idem, ”Die nach Rachi benannten Gebäude in Worms,“ 28-29). The inscription
reads:
‫ד'ורש ו'מבקש ד'רך ב'רורה \ ר'גש י'הלך ה'יכל ו'עזרה \ ש'ואב ע'מוד י'מין ו'מורה \ ס'גן פ'רנס ז'היר ל'נדב‬
\ '‫מ'הרה \ מ'כיסו ש'לם פ'אר ח'דר ת'ורה \ א'ף ו'רד פ'רח נ'עים ה'בימה \ י'סד י'קרה מ'אורה שנת ב'נ'ה‬
‫י'ש'י'ב'ה' ללמד בה כחמה ברה‬
“One who requires and demands a clear way / will go to the sanctuary and the court
jubilantly [cf. Ps. 55:15] / aspiring to be a right pillar (an allusion to a pious man, cf.
Berakhot 28b) and a teacher, / a careful deputy rushing to donate, / paid from his pocket
the splendour of the room of the Torah / and also a rose, a nice flower, the bimah /
established a precious lighting, in the year [he] built / a yeshiva to study in it clearly as
the sun [Song of Songs 6:10].” The sum of the numerical value of the marked letters in
the words “built” and “yeshivah” is 384, corresponding to the years 1623-24, and all the
marked letters in the text compose an additional phrase, ‫דוד בר יהושע יוסף ז"ל ממשפחת‬
‫“( אופנהיים בנה ישיבה‬David bar Joshua Joseph, be his memory blessed, of the Oppenheim
family, built the yeshiva”). Epstein published also a record from the memorial book of
the Worms community, testifying that Oppenheim “donated 100 royal thalers for
building (renovating) the synagogue, and built from his pocket the bimah-almambro in
the synagogue and also the yeshiva beyond the synagogue” (“Die nach Rachi benannten
Gebäude in Worms,” 28 n. 1). On the damage to the synagogue in 1615 and on David
Oppenheim, see Schlomo Eidelberg, R. Juspa, Shammash of Warmaisa (Worms):
Jewish life in 17th century Worms (Jerusalem, 1991), 71-75.
25
Otto Böcher, “Wohnflügel und Romanisches Badhaus. Zwei verschwundene Gebäude
des Wormser Synagogenbezirks,” Der Wormsgau, 6 (1963-64): 80-81.
26
Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge zu Worms,” 59-60.
27
Published in A. Epstein, Jüdische Altertümer, 5-7.
28
The plaque of yellowish sandstone (54 x 180 cm.) bears the following inscription,
and the lost fragments are completed after the 1559 record by Eliezer ben Samuel (A.
Epstein, Jüdische Altertümer, 6) and set in brackets in the Hebrew text):
 26

establishment of the Temple, the “builder” in the dedications from Worms is the patron,
not the mason who actually built the construction.29 Such monumental inscriptions were
usually set “at the side of the Holy Ark,” that is in front of the praying members of the
community as a constant reminder. Another inscription that Eliezer saw south of the
Ark on the east wall of the prayer hall (ills. 11, 22), praises Jacob, obviously the same
person who is mentioned in the great tablet, and the plaque that was north of the Ark
under the window on the same wall (ills. 18-19) is the patron’s request that the
community complete and keep up the synagogue.30

———————————————————————————————————
‫אשר מילא לב עבדו באמונות‬ ‫יתב]רך לעד שו[מע תחינות‬
‫לשמו הגדול בית לבנות‬ ‫מר ]יעקב בר דוד[ איש תבונות‬
‫כיבדו את יי מהונם להנות‬ ‫ו]לוי[תו מרת רחל חשובה בין שאננות‬
‫והושלם בירח אלול בת'ש'צ'ד' לחשבונות‬ ‫יפו מקדש מעט בתכונות‬
‫זכו שם עולם לקנות‬ ‫יוטב לבוראם מ]ה[עלת קרבנות‬
‫טוב מבנים ומבנות‬ ‫יד ושם ותשואות הנות‬
‫יזהר הקורא אמן לענות‬ ‫יזכרו בטו]ב[ות זכרונות‬
“Blessed be He who hears supplications / who filled the heart of his servant [cf. I Kings,
8:30] with faith // Jacob, son of David, a wise man / to build a house to His great name
[cf. I Kings 8:17] // and his consort, Rachel, important among the complacent women
[cf. Isa. 32:9] / honoured the Lord to please [Him] with their wealth [cf. Prov. 3:9] //
beautified the Lesser Sanctuary [Ezek. 11:16] with attributes / and it was completed in
the month of Elul, in [4]794 to the Creation [August-September, 1034] // their Creator
will benefit [from it] more than from the offering of sacrifices / they merited acquiring
an eternal name // a monument and a name and fame are / better than sons and
daughters [cf. Isa. 56:5] // they will be remembered in kindly memories / the reader
should be careful to reply Amen.” See also Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen,
268 ff., note 161. The composition of the text follows the Talmudic concept, “a man
should praise God first and pray [i.e., petition for his needs] afterward” [Avodah Zarah
7b].
29
Note, for example, II Chron. “Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord.”
30
The first slab of reddish sandstone (the remaining fragment is 38.5 x 72 cm) bears the
following inscription, with the lost fragments completed after the 1559 record by
Eliezer ben Samuel (A. Epstein, Jüdische Altertümer, 6) and set in brackets in the
Hebrew text:
‫]הא[בן הזא]ת שבצד הארון[ \ ]עד[ה למר יע]קב איש כשרון[ \ בכל שבת ]ושבת בזכרון[ \ להזכיר]ו‬
[‫עם ישיני חברון‬
“This stone at the side of the Ark / [is] a witness for Jacob, a man of talent / every
Sabbath in memory / to remember him [saying his name] along with the sleeping men
of Hebron.” See also Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge zu Worms,” 99. The term, “sleeping
men of Hebron,” refers to the Biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob buried in
Hebron, whose names are mentioned in the morning service on Sabbaths in the prayer
‫“( מי שברך‬He Who blessed”), blessing those who ascend to read from the Torah. Since it
was customary in the Middle Ages that the congregation used this prayer also in order
to bless those who made a charitable donation, the inscription on the plaque suggests
that this would be an appropriate place to bless Jacob, son of David, who built the
synagogue “from his wealth.” The second plaque is also a slab of reddish sandstone (the
remaining slab is 25 x 28 cm) and bore the following inscription, the lost fragments of
 27

The origins of the custom of setting a plaque with the patron’s dedication in the
synagogue may be traced back to the Holy Land during the late Second Temple
period.31 The inscriptions from ancient synagogues in Israel and in the Diaspora usually
contained the patron’s request to remember him for his good deed, and they sometimes
included the date of the building, a plea for future Redemption, and ended with the word
“amen”.32 Jacob’s rhymed dedications from 1034 include the same elements, but were
compiled in the contemporary spirit of the piyyut, poetry that flourished in the
Rhineland in the 10th and 11th century and contained new symbolic allusions and
liturgical suggestions.33 The opening verses of the great inscription, “Blessed be He,
who filled the heart of his servant with faith, Jacob ben David, a wise man, to build a
house to His great name” (ill. 21) paraphrase lines from I Kings 8 on the dedication of
the Temple. The inscription implies a symbolical analogy between the builder of the
synagogue and King Solomon whom God destined to realize the desire of his father
David “to build a house for the name of the Lord” (I Kings 8:17-20). The parallel plays
on the fact that David is also the name of the father of Jacob, who built the synagogue.
Praising the patron of a church by comparing him to Solomon was also customary in

———————————————————————————————————
which are also completed after the 1559 record by Eliezer ben Samuel (A. Epstein,
Jüdische Altertümer, 7) and set in brackets in the Hebrew text,
‫]זכר[ עדות ה]צוואה ביד הקהילה[ \ ]הייפ[וי והקירו]י לבית התפילה[ \ על יורשי ]הביתים הכל‬
[‫תלה[ \ ]זכר צדיק לברכה ולתהלה‬
“Reminder of the testimony of the will in the keeping of the community / the adornment
and the roofing for the house of prayer / to the inheritors of the houses all is entrusted /
the memory of [the] righteous man for blessing and praise.” See also Krautheimer,
Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 163; Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge zu Worms,” 100.
31
An early example is the Greek inscription of Theodotus that was found in Jerusalem
in 1913-14 and is dated to the late 1st century B.C.E. or the early 1st century C.E. (Lee I.
Levine, “The Second Temple Synagogue: The Formative Years” in idem, The
Synagogue in Late Antiquity, 17; -‫ הכתובות היווניות מבתי הכנסת בארץ‬,‫גרסון‬-‫לאה רוט‬
‫[ ישראל‬Jerusalem, 1987], 76-77).
32
Eleazar Lipa Sukenik, Ancient Synagogues in Palestine and Greece (London,
1934), 69-78; Baruch Lifschitz, Donateurs et fondateurs dans les synagogues juives
[Cahiers de la Revue Biblique, 7] (Paris, 1967); Samuel Klein, Jüdisch-palästinisches
Corpus Inscriptionum (Ossuar-, Grab- und Synagogeninschriften) (Hildesheim,
1971); Lee I. Levine, ed., Ancient Synagogue Revealed (Jerusalem, 1981), 133-51;
Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art – Diaspora, 401-13; ‫ הכתובות‬:‫ על פסיפס ואבן‬,‫יוסף נוה‬
‫( הארמיות והעבריות מבתי הכנסת העתיקים‬Tel Aviv, 1978).
33
Note the similar use of Biblical quotations and paraphrases and “terminal rhyme.” On
the piyyut, see [E. Fleischer], “Piyyut” and [Benjamin Hrushovski], “Prosody, Hebrew,”
EJ, 13: 573-602, 1218-20; J. Yahalom, “Piyyut as Poetry” in Levine, The Synagogue
in Late Antiquity, 111-26; ‫"כתובות מבתי הכנסת העתיקים וזיקתן לנוסחים של ברכה‬,‫גדעון פרסטר‬
‫" קתדרה‬,‫ ותפילה‬19 (1981): 11-40.
 28

Romanesque Christian art.34 The definition ‫“( מקדש מעט‬the lesser Temple”) borrowed in
Jacob and Rachel’s dedication from Ezekiel 11:16, reflects the approach to the
synagogue as a temporary substitute for the destroyed Temple in Jerusalem which will
be rebuilt in the days of the Messiah.35
The texts represent the building of the synagogue as a pious act for which the
patron would deserve both Divine mercy and remembrance by the congregation, and
express hope for messianic Redemption.36 In addition to the satisfaction of the essential
need of the Jewish community to have a synagogue, individual and collective donors
thought of its building and decoration as a pious act, and hoped to merit heavenly
protection in the messianic future. The inscriptions also express concern about the
esthetic aspect, implying that adornment is an integral part of “building a House for His
Great Name”: the text on the large plaque notes that Jacob and Rachel not only built,
but also ‫“( יפו‬beautified”) the synagogue, and the third tablet adds that the congregation
had to complete both the roofing and the ‫“( ייפוי‬beautification”) of the building. In the
context of the large inscription, this “adornment” is an additional expression of the
glorification of the Lord’s Name. Customarily, such an esthetical expression of devotion
derives from the requirement for ‫“( הידור מצווה‬adornment of the commandment”), which

———————————————————————————————————
34
Walter Cahn, “Solomonic Elements in Romanesque Art” in Gutmann, Joseph, ed.,
The Temple of Solomon (Missoula, 1976), 57-58.
35
The interpretation of the Biblical term “lesser Temple” for the synagogue goes back
to Megillah 29a. Already in the Greco-Roman period, a synagogue was considered to be
a substitute and reminder of the Temple in Jerusalem. See the discussion of the imitatio
Templi in Steven Fine, This Holy Place: On the Sanctity of the Synagogue during
the Greco-Roman Period (Indiana, 1997), esp. 41-49, 79-94. See also Joseph
Gutmann, “Return in Mercy to Zion: A Messianic Dream in Jewish Art” in idem,
Sacred Images: Studies in Jewish Art from Antiquity to the Middle Ages
(Northampton, 1989), 238; ‫ הריהוט והפנים של בית‬:‫ "ממרכז קהילתי למקדש מעט‬,‫ לוין‬.‫ישראל ל‬
‫" קתדרה‬,‫ הכנסת העתיק‬60 (1991): 36-84.
36
The term “the sleeping men of Hebron” also alludes to the Resurrection in the
messianic age. In such a sense the term is found in the Mahzor Vitry: ‫ כי‬,‫עלזי חבצלת השרון‬
.‫ הוא דוד בעצמו‬,‫ צמח איש צמח שמו‬.‫ היום אם בקולו תשמעו‬,‫ ופנו אלי והשוועו‬.‫“ קמו ישיני חברון‬Be
joyful, the lily of Sharon, for the sleepers of Hebron have awakened. Turn to me and cry
out, if today you would harken to his voice. A man grew up whose name is Tzemakh
(scion), he is David himself” (‫ מחזור ויטרי‬no. 408. London, British Museum, Cod. Add.
27200/1, the S. Hurwitz edition [Nuremberg, 1923] is used here). The last quoted verse
is a paraphrase of Zechariah 6:12, telling about the man whose name is Tzemakh who
shall build the temple of the Lord. Rashi interpreted him to be the Messiah. This
Mahzor, compiled by Simha ben Samuel of Vitry before 1105 on the base of the
decisions and customs of Rashi, observed contemporary customs and became the basis
of the Ashkenazi rite (Abraham Zwi Idelsohn, Jewish Liturgy and Its Development
[New York, 1967], 60).
 29

is based on the interpretation of the passage ‫( זה אלי ואנוהו‬Ex. 15:2) as “He is my God
and I shall adorn Him” by Rabbi Ishmael, who in Shabbath 133b specified: “I will make
before Him a nice sukkah (a booth for the Feast of Tabernacles), and a nice lulav (palm
branch), and a nice shofar (ram’s horn).” The Zohar from the late 13th century demands
that one “build a synagogue with great magnificence,” indicating that the esthetic
approach was also sometimes applied to the appearance of the synagogue.37 The Rashba
(R. Solomon ben Abraham Adret of Barcelona, ca. 1235-ca. 1310) connected the social
and esthetic aspects of the synagogue, stating that its beauty added to the community’s
prestige and self-esteem.38 This could have also been true in Ashkenazi communities.
Although the large dedicatory tablet was built into the 1174-75 building (ills. 9,
21), the date 1034 suggests that this tablet was taken from the original synagogue of that
date, rather that made by a 12th-century donor. Böcher reported that excavations made
west of the prayer hall in 1956-57 revealed remnants of a quadrilateral basement
(13.8x9.6 m, ill. 7 no. 1). This may be identified as part of the 1034 synagogue, to
which the date on the early plaque refers.39 The older synagogue was probably damaged
during the Crusaders’ attacks on the Jews of Worms in 1096 and 1146.40 However, in
spite of such occasional persecutions, the Jewish population of the town grew, and a
larger synagogue was needed. It was established in 1174-75 in such a way that most of
its west wall abutted on the east wall of the 1034 synagogue.
The 1174-75 synagogue in Worms is the first known example of a synagogue
built on a two-nave plan with an entrance in the west bay of a longitudinal wall, a plan
that became typical of Germany, Bohemia and Poland until the late 15th century. The
earliest types of synagogues in Europe were either the single hall or three-nave basilica
that may be traced back to the most ancient European synagogues. Excavations on the
Greek island of Aegina revealed a 4th-century single-nave synagogue with a great apse
for the Holy Ark at the East and the entrance in the western wall, while a 5th-century
three-nave synagogue with three portals in its western wall and an apse at the eastern
end for the Holy Ark was discovered at Stobi, the ancient capital of Macedonia.41 In like
———————————————————————————————————
37
‫" ספר הזהר‬,‫ "רעיא מהימנא‬2: 59(1)
38
Yom-Tov Assis, “Synagogues in Medieval Spain,” JA, 18 (1992): 17.
39
Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 26-28.
40
Mannheimer, Die Judenverfolgungen; Dietrich, “Das Judentum im Zeitalter der
Kreuzzüge;” Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 28.
41
B. D. Mazur, Studies on Jewry in Greece (Athens, 1915), 25-33; Maria Floriani
Squarciapino, “La Sinagoga di Ostia,” Bolletino d’Arte, 46 (1961): 326-37; idem, “The
Synagogue of Ostia,” Archaelogy, 16 (1963), 19-26; Wischnitzer, Architecture, 5-9.
 30

manner, the earliest known Ashkenazi synagogue in Cologne from ca. 1000 was a three-
nave hall, with a door at the center of the western wall (ill. 23). Single-hall synagogues
with a door at the western side opposite the Ark were also built in Miltenberg, Bamberg,
Rufach and the oldest synagogue in Frankfurt am Main, and the last three buildings had
an apse at their eastern end.42 In like manner, the transposition of the entry to the
western section of the northern wall after the rebuilding of the synagogue of Cologne as
a single-nave space in 1096 (ill. 25a) marks the period when this new position of the
entrance had been accepted. At the same period – between ca. 1096 and 1116 – a
synagogue with an entrance in the southern wall was built in Rouen (ill. 24).43
According to Codreanu-Windauer, the Romanesque synagogue of Regensburg, also
built in the late 11th or early 12th century, had its main entrance in the middle of the
southern wall (ill. 26, she did not mark it on this plan).44
The two-nave plan of Worms differed from these single-hall and basilican
synagogues, and was modelled on the axial-pillar structures used in 12th century
Germany and France for community and monastic buildings, and also in the small
modest churches of the mendicant orders.45 The side entrance into the prayer hall is also
a feature of German sacral architecture and was, in particular, characteristic for
Romanesque imperial churches that had an additional apse at the western side. An
example of such architecture is the Cathedral of Worms from the late 12th century,
which has a monumental portal in its northern wall (ill. 27). In the synagogue, prayer
was directed towards the Holy Ark, which was set into the eastern wall at the junction
of the two naves (ill. 11) and enclosed the aperture of the repository for the Torah
scrolls that was situated in the apse attached to the wall that is clearly visible on the
exterior (ill. 13).46
———————————————————————————————————
42
Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 181-86, 189-95, 226-27.
43
Georges Duval, “Découverte, conservation et présentation de l’édifice juif d’époque
romane de Rouen” in Blumenkranz, Art et archéologie, 239-49.
44
Codreanu-Windauer, “The Medieval Jewish Quarter of Regensburg,” 144.
45
Karl Simon, “Die Anlage zweischiffiger Räume in Deutschland,” Repertorium für
Kunstwissenschaft, 25 (1902): 41-48; Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 102-
105; idem, Die Kirchen del Bettelorden in Deutschland (Cologne, 1935); R. K.
Donin, Die Bettelordenskirchen in Österreich (Wien, 1935); Wischnitzer,
Architecture, 47-48.
46
The East was commonly accepted as the direction of Jerusalem, towards which the
congregation had to turn while praying (Berakhot 30a; Franz Landsberger, “The Sacred
Direction in Synagogue and Church,” Hebrew Union College Annual (henceforth
HUCA), 28 [1957]: 181-203). In fact, the longitudinal axis of the 1074-75 hall does not
run exactly from West to East, but slightly declines to the South (ill. 8), unlike the
 31

The two-nave space with a lateral entrance does not fully answer the halakhic
prescriptions: the door in the longitudinal wall of the synagogue contradicts the
prescription to place the entrance on the west side of the synagogue if the prayer is
directed towards the East (Tosafot to Berakhot 6a; Eruvin 18b). Moreover, as
Krautheimer and Wischnitzer pointed out, it does not answer the standard needs of the
synagogue service: the east axial column blocks the view of the Holy Ark from the
reader of the Torah who stands on the bimah in the center of the hall. They explained
that the double nave was adopted in the synagogue because it belonged to secular
architecture and thus provoked less church-like associations.47 Wischnitzer added that it
was the only technical solution to support the vaulting of the 9.5-meters span.48
However these assumptions are not plausible: both scholars concede that there were
two-nave mendicant churches in Germany, and the two-nave churches of Bohemia and
Poland did not prevent the Jews there from choosing the same construction for their
synagogues. The synagogue in Cologne controverts Wischnitzer’s second argument, as
its dimensions are 9.2 x 14.5 m, almost identical with those of the Worms synagogue
(9.5 x 14.3-14.8 m). However in Cologne, this space was first divided into three naves,
then became a single-nave hall, and only in 1372, was it rebuilt according to the two-
nave model.49 Moreover, if the pillars in the center of the prayer hall were seen as an
obstacle to the synagogue service, other arrangements of the ground plan would have
been preferred, and this would not have become a popular plan.
In fact, anyone entering the synagogue in Worms from its northern side would
———————————————————————————————————
earlier building, which was built on a clear West-East axis (ill. 7). Böcher supposed that
this change was caused by several practical reasons of building on this site and by the
imprecise mode of medieval astronomical orientations (“Die Alte Synagoge,” 31-33).
However in a number of ancient synagogues discovered in Greece and Italy the worship
was also oriented toward the southeast (Levine, The First Thousand Years, 303). As
the southeast in these countries is the direction of Jerusalem, it is more probable that the
synagogues were intentionally oriented towards that side in contrast to the churches
oriented towards the sunrise. Rashi stressed that the gentiles prayed towards the East
(commentary on Bava Batra 25a), and in his glosses on the mid-15th century code
Shulkhan Arukh by Joseph Caro, Rabbi Moses Isserles (Remah, ca. 1530-72), basing
himself on medieval customs, suggested that for this very reason one should not make
the Holy Ark and the direction of the prayer toward the rising sun, but it must be
inclined from the eastern direction “toward the midst of the day,” i.e. southeast
(‫" שלחן ערוך‬,‫ "אורך חיים‬94:2), which in Poland is the direction of Jerusalem.
47
Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 102-105; Wischnitzer, “Mutual
Influences,” 29.
48
Wischnitzer, Architecture, 47-48.
49
Doppelfeld, “Die Ausgrabungen,” passim.
 32

see the Holy Ark and bimah better than someone entering it from the West, where the
axial columns and bimah would block the view. Furthermore, pictures drawn before
1842 (ills. 18-19) show that most of the congregation’s seats did not face the Ark: there
was a row of seats along the northern wall to the east of the entrance, facing the bimah,
and several rows of seats faced the northern wall; directly behind the western column, a
few seats faced towards the western wall, away from the direction of prayer and the
Holy Ark, while only one row apparently faced the bimah and Ark. Even if the men
turned towards the East while standing, those seated behind the column and bimah
could not see the Ark clearly. Doppelfeld discovered that in the synagogue of Cologne
before 1270, stone benches were similarly set along the longitudinal walls and perhaps
along the eastern wall at either side of the Ark,50 and Abraham Neu seems to have
depicted a row of seats at the eastern wall turning westward in Worms (ill. 18). This is
the only feature that recalls the Rambam’s contemporary testimony about the
arrangement of Sephardi synagogues, where seats for the elders were placed along the
eastern wall of the synagogue, turning westward.51 However, as late as the 17th century,
the eastern row was not the most valued place in the synagogue of Worms: in his
“Custom Book of Worms” from the 1660s, Juspa the Shammash recorded that the most
honourable seat for the rabbi was facing east near the north side of the bimah.52
The diversity of the directions of seats may be an indication of the less
centralized and intimate liturgy of Ashkenazi Jews that the axial division of the two-
nave space promotes. This practice contrasts with the more consolidated service in the
Sephardi synagogues known to us from the Rambam’s account. Since in axial-pillar
churches, the two naves were sometimes used to divide between the sexes, or between
the laity and clergy, or to separate the congregation into social groups,53 it is possible
that the two naves in Worms served to segregate the sexes in the prayer hall before the
women’s annex was built. Eliezer ben Joel of Bonn and Cologne (died 1235) testified
that women present in the synagogue during Sabbath sermons were separated from the
male congregation by means of curtains pulled across the prayer hall and this practice is

———————————————————————————————————
50
Ibid., 126.
51
According to the Rambam, the rest of the congregation should sit in rows behind each
other and face the Holy Ark (‫" משנה תורה‬,‫ "הלכות תפילה ונשיאת כפים‬,‫ רמב"ם‬11:4).
52
Eidelberg, R. Juspa, 19.
53
Paul Crossley, Gothic Architecture in the Reign of Kasimir the Great: Church
Architecture in Lesser Poland, 1320-1380 (Cracow, 1985), 214.
 33

seen in pictures from the early 16th century (ills. 28-30).54 The women’s section attached
to the two-nave synagogue of Worms in 1212-13 is the earliest known separate prayer
room for the female congregants.55 This allocation of a special building might have been
caused not only by a growth of the Jewish population in Worms, but by the
community’s wish to emphasize the separation between the sexes. This was probably
their reaction to the Crusader pogrom in 1196: Jews might have explained the Crusader
attack as God’s punishment because His people deviated from the exact fulfillment of
His Commandments, and they therefore tried to execute the Halakhic rules – including
the ritual separation of men and women – in their strictest sense.56
Researchers have also noticed that the two-nave layout in churches did not
emphasize the celebration of the Mass, but created a more mystical and intimate
atmosphere of prayer. Since the axial position of the columns frustrates the
worshipper’s natural desire to comprehend the space of the building by standing on its
longitudinal axis, this may lead him to a spirit of humility and to the devotional life.57
Jews could also have adopted this use of a space divided by axial columns in order to
accentuate the mysticism and individual faith that marked the spiritual life of the Shoom
communities and culminated in the contemporary Hasidei Ashkenaz movement. Thus it
appears more likely that religious or liturgical reasons rather than secular connotations
or technical limitations of the structure influenced the choice of a two-nave division of
the Worms synagogue and its immediate descendants. For example, the rebuilding of
the single-nave Romanesque synagogue of Regensburg in accordance with the two-nave
model began when R. Judah ben Samuel he-Hasid lived in the town prior to his death in
1217. After the new building was expanded to the West and the walls were raised and
reinforced, the remaining 9.2-meters width of the old hall could have been spanned
———————————————————————————————————
54
I. Elbogen, Jüdischer Gottesdienst (Leipzig, 1913), 467 (referred to in Wischnitzer,
Architecture, 51). This practice is still in use today.
55
According to recent studies, there was no separate women’s area in the ancient
synagogues (Levine, The First Thousand Years, 471-90; ‫ "האם היתה קייתם‬,‫שמואל ספראי‬
"?‫הכנסת מהתקופה העתיקה‬-‫ עזרת נשים בבתי‬in ‫ בימי הבית ובימי המשנה‬,‫שמואל ספראי‬, 1
(Jerusalem, 1991): 159-68.
56
The ritual separation of men and women was suggested in the commentary on the
presence of the Jewish people at Mount Sinai in the 8th-century Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer
40:1, while the 13th-century Yalkut Shimoni 934 commenting on Deut. 23:14 stated that
men should not sit with women on ritual occasions (cf. Seth D. Kunin, God’s Place in
the Word: Sacred Space and Sacred Place in Judaism, London, 1998, 122-23).
57
Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 104-105; H. Sedlmayr, “Säulen mitten im
Raum” in Epochen und Werke (Wien, 1959), 99-201; Crossley, Gothic Architecture,
213.
 34

without the additional supports that obstructed a clear view of the interior (ill. 31).
Instead, the builders made two rows of cross vaults, setting their central abutments on
massive axial columns (ill. 32). The entrance to the prayer hall was possible from the
street through a vestibule and a portal (ill. 33) set on a lateral wall opposite the steps of
the bimah’s platform.58 The elongated proportions of the new hall caused the use of four
vaults in each nave and three columns on the axis, but the platform for the bimah in the
center of the hall stretched from the western to the eastern column as in the synagogue
of Worms, but here it also surrounded the middle column (ill. 31).59 According to
Altdorfer’s engraving (ill. 32), the bimah’s platform was also set off-center – in the
picture slightly to the left of the central axis – perhaps to allow more space between the
entrance to the prayer hall and the entrance to the bimah. The function of the pulpit
standing off-center in front of the middle column is not clear: its inclined top seems to
be too narrow to support an open Torah scroll.60 The table for reading the Torah might
have been situated behind the central column, i.e., on the side facing the Ark.
The capital of the eastern column from the Worms synagogue (ill. 34) bears one
of the two Hebrew inscriptions that formed an integral part of the carved-stone
———————————————————————————————————
58
The examination of the southern wall uncovered during the excavation prompted
Codreanu-Windauer to suppose that the earliest main entrance on the southern side of
the Romanesque synagogue was walled up before the Gothic renovation, that the early
12th-century prayer hall had no door on its southern side, and that the building adjacent
to the synagogue’s southern wall was a house consisting of two separate rooms and was
on a lower level than the synagogue hall, thus contradicting the synagogue vestibule
seen in Altdorfer’s 1519 engraving (ill. 33). To explain Altdorfer’s two engravings that
clearly show the entrance in the third bay on the southern side of the prayer hall (ills.
32-33, note the aperture and step opposite to the bimah’s steps), she accepted the
opinion of A. Schmetzer (“Die Regensburger Judenstadt,” Zeitschrift für Geschichte
der Juden in Deutschland, 3 [1931]: 20 and W. Busch (“Regensburger
Kirchebaukunst 1160-1280,” Verhandlungen des Historischen für Oberpfalz und
Regensburg, 85 [1932]: 3-19) that because the artist engraved the drawing directly on
the plate, the prints show a mirror-inverted picture (Codreanu-Windauer, “The Medieval
Jewish Quarter of Regensburg,” 150). Decisive conclusions to this question are
impossible because the archeological strata of the site were badly damaged.
59
Codreanu-Windauer revised Krautheimer’s opinion that the bimah in the Regensburg
synagogue was set between the western and middle column (Krautheimer,
Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 177 figs. 58, 178), justly noticing that in Altdorfer’s
engraving (my ill. 32), the right arcade casts a shadow on the middle column, which
thus must be inside the enclosure (Codreanu-Windauer, “The Medieval Jewish Quarter
of Regensburg,” 148-49).
60
As the pulpit is near the middle column, the Ark could not be seen clearly from this
spot. In contrast, Wischnitzer believed that this was the table for the Torah scrolls and
that it was situated beside the eastern column, so that the reader could see the Ark
(Wischnitzer, “Mutual Influences,” 32; idem, Architecture, 49).
 35

decoration of the two-nave building:

'‫פ'א'ר'י' ה'ע'מ'ו'ד'י'ם' ש'ת'י'ם' \ ע'ש'ה' ב'ל'י' ע'צ'ל'ת'י'י'ם' \ ג'ם' ג'ו'ל'ת' ה'כ'ת'ר'ו'ת' \ ג'ם' ת'ל'ה' ה'נ'ר'ו'ת‬
“The top of the two pillars [cf. I Kings 7:41] / he made without idleness [cf. Eccles.
10:18] / he also made the bowls of the capitals [cf. I Kings 7:41] / he also hung up the
lamps [cf. I Kings 7:49].”61 The second inscription is the phrase recorded by Eliezer ben
Samuel in 1559, that was “written in a rounded way on the synagogue’s lintel,”62 a
reference to the arch above the entrance to the synagogue, most of whose carved
ornamentation was replaced by smooth stones before 1938 (ills. 35-38):
‫מקראות חצבתי ציונים \ נאמן עד לימים הנמנים \ חשבון תת"קלה נבנו הבנינים \ מפתיחת שער מוכיח‬
'‫לשנים \ ו'י'ב'ו'א' ג'ו'י' צ'ד'י'ק' ש'ו'מ'ר' א'מ'נ'י'ם‬
“I carved marks of recitations / being faithful to the counted days / [In the year] 935
from the Creation [that is 4935 or 1174-75 C.E.] the buildings were built / from the
opening of [the] gate will prove for years / and [the] righteous nation that keeps the
truth will enter.”63 Both texts record the Jewish date of 4935 (corresponding to 1174-
1175)64 and contain symbolic Biblical allusions. The inscription on the capital
paraphrases several verses from I Kings 7.65 The Biblical account tells about the works
made by Hiram of Tyre for the Temple of Solomon, and the text in the synagogue
creates a symbolic parallel between building the Temple and the synagogue, rather than
being the signature of a proud Jewish stone carver or architect as Landsberger and
Rosenau believed.66 The terms “the top of the two pillars” and “the bowls of the
capitals” appearing on the eastern capital recall the two brazen pillars of Jachin and
———————————————————————————————————
61
See also Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 101-103.
62
A. Epstein, Jüdische Altertümer, 7 no. 4.
63
Ibid. Cf. Isa. 26:2: “Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which keeps the truth
may enter it.” See also Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 162, 268 n. 160;
Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 100-101.
64
In the inscription on the capital, the sum of the numerical value of all the letters is
4935. In the inscription on the lintel, the sum of the numerical value of the marked
letters in the last row is also 935, i.e., a shortened version of the year 4935.
65
Wischnitzer explained the paraphrases on the capital from I Kings 7:40-50 as the
result of the need to have the words total the numerical value desired (Architecture, 45-
48). The use of paraphrases might also be caused by a disinclination to copy entire
verses from the Torah that is reflected in a responsum of Rambam: “one may not write
entire verses from the Torah, but only three [consecutive] words and no more” ( ‫שו"ת‬
‫ רמב"ם‬no. 268), translation into English is cited after Mann, Jewish Texts on the
Visual Arts, 106).
66
Cf. Franz Landsberger, “The Jewish Artist before the Time of Emancipation,”
HUCA, 16 (1941): 349; idem, “New Studies in Early Jewish Artists,” HUCA, 18
(1943-44): 284; Helen Rosenau, A Short History of Jewish Art (London, 1948), 26.
 36

Boaz flanking the entrance to the Temple, and imply a parallel between them and the
two great pillars of the synagogue.67 The verses 7:48-50 give an account of the
numerous Temple utensils, among which are five pairs of golden ‫( מנורות‬menorot –
“candlesticks,” 7:49) and also unspecified ‫( נרות‬nerot – “lamps,” 7:49), which Solomon
made (‫ויעש‬, 7:48), but did not hang (‫ )תלה‬in contrast to the statement on the eastern
capital. Wischnitzer supposed that the lamps were chosen for the inscription because the
other objects mentioned in Kings were not used in the synagogue, and that the verb “to
hang” was used instead of “to make” in order to adapt the Biblical quotation to the
actual situation. It is indeed probable that the maker of the capital took into
consideration the lamps to be hung from the holes at the edges and the metal rings
above the center of each side of the inscribed abacus (ill. 34).68
———————————————————————————————————
67
The Cathedral of Worms had made use of the symbolism of Jachin and Boaz in the
two free-standing decorative Romanesque columns with large capitals that are placed on
corbels above the north portal (ill. 39). The symbolic parallel between the two columns
in the synagogue of Worms and the pillars of Jachin and Boaz has been noticed by
several scholars (H. Frauberger, “Über Bau und Ausschmückung alter Synagogen,”
Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft zur Erforschung jüdisher Kunstdenkmäler, 2
[Frankfurt am Main, 1901], 3; Grotte, “Deutsche, böhmische und polnische
Synagogentypen,” 25; Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 43; ",‫ " אמנות יהודי פולין‬,‫נפתלי שנייד‬
‫ סיני‬5 [1942]: 248). Wischnitzer disagreed, first arguing that the pillars of the Temple
stood to the right and the left of the spectator, while in the synagogue of Worms they
are on the longitudinal axis (Wischnitzer, “Mutual Influences,” 29), and then that the
detailed Biblical description of the capitals of the Solomonic pillars had no direct
influence on the design of the capitals in the synagogue (Wischnitzer, Architecture, 47-
48). However, her arguments are not plausible because in 12th-century architecture there
was not yet a direct correspondence between structures or decorations believed to be
Solomonic and the description of Solomon’s Temple in the Bible (Cahn, “Solomonic
Elements in Romanesque Art,” 45-72). For example, in the “Annunciation” (New York,
Metropolitan Museum) attributed to Hubert van Eyck, Jachin and Boaz are depicted as
twin Romanesque colonettes above the right impost of the Gothic arch (Panofsky, Early
Netherlandish Painting, 1: 33; 2: fig. 284). Moreover, the Worms community may
have taken seriously the injunction against making a building, courtyard, table or
menorah in the likeness of those of the Temple in Jerusalem (Rosh Ha-shana 24a-b;
Avodah Zarah 43a, Menakhot 28b).
68
Assuming that they were glass oil lamps like those found in medieval depictions from
Worms, Böcher proposed his reconstruction of four glass lamps set in the metal rings,
bound to the capital by a rope passing through the holes at the capital’s upper corners
(Böcher, "Die Alte Synagoge,“ 85-86, fig. 55). This reconstruction is, however, not
plausible as the lamps and ropes would hide the inscription, and since the glass lamps
would anyway sit firmly in the metal rings, the ropes would not be necessary.
Moreover, lamps set so high on the column could not light the bimah effectively, and it
would be very difficult to dress them regularly: note the lower level of the large
chandeliers in ills. 11-12 and candlesticks set on the bimah’s parapet (ill. 18) to light the
bimah. Even the more powerful electric lamps on the column of the women’s gallery
were lowered by means of metal strips suspended from the capital (ill. 16). It is
 37

The original capitals of the two axial columns in the synagogue hall are seen in
several photographs taken before the synagogue was destroyed in 1938 (ills. 34, 40).69
Both capitals were designed as flattened and schematized imitations of Corinthian
capitals, set under a high echinus decorated with repeating palmettes, and an abacus.
However the eastern capital (ill. 34) is more elaborate: it has rows of faceted shapes
running along the acanthi, its palmettes are set in more complex patterns and have more
precise outlines, and the inscription is engraved on the abacus, while on the western
capital (ill. 40) the abacus is decorated with interlacing zigzags like that on the abaci of
the portal’s imposts (ill. 37-38). Krautheimer and Böcher have convincingly shown that
similar carved ornamentations were produced by the local workshops for churches in
Strasbourg, Fritzlar, Worms, and other cities in the region from the 1170s to the
1220s.70 Böcher also attributed the capitals to the so-called Strasbourg type and objected
to the supposition that they were made by a Jew.71 Scholarly research on Jewish artists
from the pre-Emancipation periods does not reveal any reliable historical records of
Jewish mason workshops in medieval Germany,72 a fact that reinforces our reading of
the terms “building” or “making” in medieval dedicatory inscriptions as parabolic terms
for the donor. At the same time, some participation of Jews in the synagogue’s
decoration cannot be excluded. The community constantly needed a craftsman able to
engrave Hebrew inscriptions on tombstones correctly. Such a craftsman was probably
Jewish, and did not need to undergo professional training with an experienced sculptor
in a mason’s workshop, but could easily have learned from an older Jewish craftsman.
The great variety of the texts on the early tombstones from the Jewish cemetery in
Worms suggests that the engraver knew Hebrew and could write the text of the epitaph
by himself instead of having to copy unknown Hebrew characters from an exemplar or

———————————————————————————————————
therefore more likely that lamps were hung from the holes and rings in the synagogue
hall’s capital on long cables or chains.
69
These capitals were hardly damaged during the fire in the synagogue (Böcher, “Die
Alte Synagoge,” fig. 41) in 1938 and were restored in 1961.
70
Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 151-76; Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,”
28-46, figs. 13-23.
71
Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 28 n. 85, 43 n. 149.
72
See Albert Wolf, “Etwas über jüdische Kunst and altere jüdische Künstler,”
Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft fur jüdische Volkskunde, 5 (1902), 9: 44 ff.;
Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 142, 267 n. 142. Cf. the persuasive
argument of Mann against the misinterpretation of Eliakim ben Joseph’s responsum on
the synagogue in Cologne as evidence about Jewish makers of medieval stained glass
(Mann, Jewish Texts, 72-74).
 38

sketch. Such a person could have incised a similar stone inscription on the abacus of the
eastern capital.
Explaining the difference between the two capitals, Böcher attributed the eastern
capital to the earlier and the western one to the later type of the Strasbourg capitals.
Undoubtedly, the capitals in the synagogue must be attributed to two different sculptors:
the one who made the reliefs on the eastern capital (ill. 34) perhaps came from the
workshop that in 1173-80 carved the palmettes and acanthi in a precise and dynamic
style on the imposts of the northern portal of the Cathedral of Worms (ill. 41), while the
western capital was made by a less skillful carver who presumably also produced the
similar palmettes and interlacing bands on the synagogue portal (ills. 38, 42). Noticing
that in the monastery church of Strasbourg they began to make the capitals of the “later
style” after 1190, Böcher stated that the synagogue’s western capital that he dated to
1174-75 is the earliest known example of this type.73 In practice, the two capitals could
have been made in different years. It must be noted that completing great masonry
structures often was done in stages and took several years, sometimes even a few
decades. Thus after the synagogue had been established in 1174-75 and the builders
raised the walls around it, they might first have spanned the eastern bays near the niche
of the Torah Scrolls in order to allow services to take place, and later have continued the
spanning to the west and completed the decoration of the portal in the western part of
the northern wall. The dedicatory tablets would have recorded the year of the
establishment of the synagogue. It is probable that work on the synagogue had been
completed before 1185-86, when, according to a surviving dedicatory tablet, Joseph
sponsored the construction of a ritual bath at the southwestern corner of the new
building (ill. 7 no. 7).74 After the Crusaders attacked the synagogue in 1196, some
damaged parts of the structure may have had to be repaired or remade. If the western
capital and the portal were redecorated at that time, their style was already normative.
The decorated imposts and a section of the ornamented voussoir of the entrance
into the prayer hall are the oldest decorative carvings remaining in situ after the Worms
synagogue was damaged in 1938-44 (ills. 37-38, 42-43). The ornamentation on the three
successively receding planes of the imposts (ill. 43) consists of repeating palmettes (on
the front and rear planes), an acanthus (on the middle plane) and interlacing zigzag
bands running along the abacus (ill. 38). Like the text engraved on the eastern capital,

———————————————————————————————————
73
Böcher, ibid., 42-44.
74
Ibid., 46-51, 103-105 no. VII.
 39

the inscription from 1174-75 that Eliezer ben Samuel saw above the portal in 1559
paraphrases a Biblical verse, giving a symbolic interpretation to the entrance to the
synagogue that is called the “gate that the righteous nation that keeps the truth will
enter.” The symbolic meaning and contemporary connotations of the phrase may be
understood through the commentary on the Passover Haggadah attributed to Eleazar ben
Judah Kalonymus (Rokeah, the “pharmacist,” ca. 1165- ca. 1230),75 who lived in
Worms and would have seen the 1174-75 inscription on the synagogue. In the
Haggadah, the gate the righteous men will enter is identified with “the gate to the Lord”
('‫)שער ליי‬, which is also the “gates of righteousness” (Ps. 118:19-20).76 These terms are
recited in the stanza in the Haggadah that begins: “In distress I called upon the Lord,” in
which the Jew expresses his belief in a future Redemption despite the persecutions he
suffers in the present and the severe chastisements of God, and prays to God to open the
gate of righteousness so that he may worship Him. Early rabbinical sources had already
stated that one might merit entering a synagogue in the world to come if one had done
so in the mundane world.77 In his commentary on the Haggadah, Eleazar Rokeah
developed this idea by giving a double interpretation to the synagogue gate: according
to the exegetical approach, these gates are those of the “Temple of the Lord” where
righteous people found salvation from exile, whereas in the didactic sense, these are
“the gates of synagogues and schools, which belong to the Lord” and the righteous
people is the congregation that enters through them.78 Thus the phrase stressed the
symbolism of the synagogue as a “lesser Temple,” but when it was set above the
entrance to the synagogue in 1174-75, the Jews who remembered the persecutions in
———————————————————————————————————
75
See David Goldstein, ed., The Ashkenazi Haggadah: A Hebrew Manuscript of the
Mid-15th Century from the Collections of the British Library (with a commentary
attributed to Eleazar ben Judah of Worms), (New York, 1985), 14.
76
Cf. also the interpretation of the Lord’s gate for the righteous as the gate of Divine
mercy in Midrash Tanhuma, Vaetkhanan (Deut. 3:23-6:11) 6.
77
(Jerusalem Talmud) Berakhot 5:1; Deut. Rabba 7:1, see also Fine, This Holy Place,
65.
78
The Ashkenazi Haggadah, London, British Museum, Add. Ms. 14762, fol. 36
(Goldstein, The Ashkenazi Haggadah, 35), cf. also Midrash Tanhuma (9-10th century),
Beshalakh (Ex. 13:17-17:14) 10. A later example from the Bird’s Head Haggadah
(Southern Germany, c. 1300, Jerusalem, Israel Museum, Ms. 180/57) corroborates the
eschatological interpretation of the “gates for the righteous nation”: the illustration to
the same pericope shows the righteous people as men in pointed Jewish hats, who
approach a gate leading to a tower atop of which are the messianic symbols of the sun
and the moon and the inscription “this is the garden of Paradise” (ill. 44). In his
commentary on Ps. 118:20, Rashi interpreted “the Gate to the Lord” as the gate of the
messianic Temple. Cf. also the Gate of Mercy as a city gate in ill. 45.
 40

Worms in 1096 and survived the attack of the Crusaders in 1146,79 would also find in
these lines a promise for their future salvation.
The adornment of the portal developed this symbolism. The outer carved
sectors of the perspective voussoirs contained medallions enclosing an alternating grape
cluster and a five-petalled leaf, while a row of repeating acanthi covered the arch
beneath it (ill. 42). Biblical mentions of a vine, vineyard or grapes parabolically allude
to the people and land of Israel.80 This symbolism inspired Jewish art in late Antiquity
to reinterpret and widely use the vine imagery that had been a ubiquitous symbol of the
Dionysian cult.81 For example, a vine leaf and clusters of grapes were minted on the
coins of the Hasmoneans and their Bar-Kokhba replicas, often appearing on the reverse
of coins depicting the seven-branched palm, a symbol of the redemption of Israel (ill.
46). Various symbolic interpretations of the vine reliefs in the synagogue could be
derived from the rabbinical literature, which gives several symbolic parallels between
the vine and the people of Israel,82 and also associates it with the Messiah,83
Jerusalem,84 the paradisiacal Tree of Knowledge,85 and compares the blossoming vine
to the Redemption,86 vine clusters or grapes to the sages of Israel,87 and wine to the
Torah.88
In contrast, the New Testament associated the vine with Christ.89 The Christians
———————————————————————————————————
79
See note 14 above. Cf. also Marcus, Piety and Society, 67, 150 n. 57.
80
See Num. 13:23; Ps. 80:9-12; Isa. 5, Jer. 2:21, Ezek. 17:1-10, 19:10-14 and Hos. 9:10.
See also “Виноград,” Еврейская энциклопедия, 5 (St. Petersburg, [1903-1913]):
620-621, [Judah Feliks], “Vine,” EJ, 16: 155-157; Gary C. Porton, “The Grape-Cluster
in Jewish Literature and Art of Late Antiquity,” Journal of Jewish Studies, 27
(Autumn 1976): 159-176.
81
See Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, 6: 126-217, 9: 79-82 and the related illustrations.
This research is useful for its great number of visual and textual sources, although a
number of Goodenough’s interpretations of vine images are not reliable and have been
revised in the more recent literature (e.g., Weitzmann and Kessler, The Frescoes of the
Dura Europos, 151-83).
82
Gen. Rabba 88:5; Lev. Rabba 36:2; Yalkut Shimoni 422, 829.
83
Lev. Rabba 36:2.
84
‫ ספר נצחון ישן‬,‫( מרדכי ברויאר‬Jerusalem, 1978) 45 no. 25 (on Gen. 40:10).
85
Berakhot 40a, Sanhedrin 70a.
86
Gen. Rabba 88:5.
87
Lev. Rabba 36:2.
88
Gen. Rabba 43:6.
89
Christ proclaimed, “I am the true vine” (John 15:1). Note also John 15:4, and see
Robert Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study in Early Syriac
Tradition (Cambridge, 1977), 104-113. The vine giving wine connotes the mystery of
 41

reinterpreted the Biblical “vine of Israel” as a prefiguration of the “true Israel” who
accepted the New Testament in contrast to the Jews, whom they called “God’s rejected
vineyard.”90 From at least the third century C.E., the vine and clusters of grapes
symbolizing Christ, Christianity and the Eucharist were continuously depicted in
Christian art. The Jews of Worms were familiar with the vine images in local
ecclesiastic art. In the Midrashim, they constantly stressed the direct sense of the
Biblical simile of the vine as Israel, stating that they are the Biblical Israel and God’s
chosen people even when they are oppressed. The Midrash also compares the vine that
is lower than other trees but rules over everything with the people of Israel that look as
if they were abject in this world, but hereafter will posses the entire universe.91 The
synagogue’s art reflected this attitude.
Above the entrance to the synagogue (ill. 42), the vine may be not only a
comprehensive symbol of Judaism and messianic redemption, but a token of
remembrance of the Temple in Jerusalem. Several Jewish sources and non-Jewish
chronicles mention that a golden vine with grape-clusters hung from the porch of the
Second Temple of Jerusalem, and these records might have inspired images of a vine at
the top of the depictions of the Temple’s façade, above the entrance to a synagogue or
above the Torah shrine in the Late Antique and Early Christian periods (e.g., ill. 47).92
In the synagogue of Worms, the vine image would also be a visual emblem stressing the
context of the inscription, which associated the entrance into the synagogue with the
“gates for the righteous people,” thus alluding to the Temple’s portal and to the
———————————————————————————————————
the Eucharist in Matt. 26:27-29; Mark 14:23-25; Luke 22:17, 18, 20.
90
On the history of this conception, see Marcel Simon, Verus Israel (Paris, 1948), 110-
111; Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom, 96-104.
91
Lev. Rabba 36:2. Glossing the passage “Thou have brought a vine out of Egypt” (Ps.
80:9), this 5th-century Midrash recounts sixteen symbolic interpretations of vines,
grapes and wine. Versions of some of these and several more interpretations are found
also in Berakhot 40a, Sanhedrin 70a, Gen. Rabba 88:5, Ex. Rabba 25:8, Num. Rabba
10:5-9, 21:21; Yalkut Shimoni 168, 422, 829.
92
Middot 3:8; (Jerusalem Talmud) Nedarim 7:40c, Yalkut Shimoni 168; Josephus
Flavius, Jewish Antiquities 15:11; idem, The Jewish War 5:5; Florus, Epitoma I,
40:30; Tacitus, Historiae 5:5. See also Alice Muehsam, Coin and Temple: A Study of
the Architectural Representation of Ancient Jewish Coins (Leeds, 1966); Lawrence
D. Sporty, “Identifying the Curving Line on the Bar-Kohba Temple Coin,” Biblical
Archeologist, 44 (1983): 121-23; Asher Kaufman, “A Note on Artistic Representations
of the Second Temple of Jerusalem,” Biblical Archeologist, 47 (1984): 253 ff.; Joseph
Patrich, “The Golden Vine, the Sanctuary Portal, and Its Representation on Bar-Kokhba
Coins,” JA, 19-20 (1993-1994): 56-61. For examples of a vine decoration above the
Torah Shrine and the entrance of the synagogue, see -‫כנסת קדומים בארץ‬-‫ בתי‬,‫צבי אילן‬
‫( ישראל‬Tel Aviv, 1991), 28, 89, 97-98, 261.
 42

eschatological “gate to the Lord.”

Like the vine, the palmettes on the portal and capitals of the synagogue would
recall the palm reliefs from the Biblical Sanctuary,93 evoking the concept of the
synagogue as a “lesser Temple.” The Psalm (92:13) stating that the righteous “shall
flourish like a palm tree” also connects the palm to the gate that the “righteous nation”
enters. Thus the synagogue patrons, both individuals and community representatives,
used monumental inscriptions and supposedly purely decorative and neutral
architectonic decorations to express their ideas. However, these were not the only
sculptural decorations in the synagogue, as emerges from the controversies in the
Rabbinical literature and the remnants of sculpture extant in Worms.
Synagogue Decoration in the Rabbinical Literature and in Practice
in Medieval Ashkenazi Synagogues
The spiritual activity of the Jewish scholars in medieval Germany, and in
particular the Hasidei Ashkenaz in the Rhineland and their pupils and followers
elsewhere, yielded a great corpus of rabbinical literature. German Jewish theologians
and Biblical exegetes based themselves on the Talmud and post-talmudic traditions and
were in contact with the rabbinical authorities in France and Spain. Several legislative
decisions of these medieval Jewish sages mention contemporary synagogue decorations
and express their attitude to using images in the synagogue, thus revealing more aspects
of the synagogue art of the period.
The earliest known testimony on synagogue decoration in Medieval Europe is a
responsum by Eliakim ben Joseph from Mainz (born ca. 1070) about the “shapes of
lions and snakes” that had been “formed in the windows” of the north wall of the
synagogue in Cologne.94 Most modern scholars accept this as a reference to stained
glass windows.95 Since Eliakim was probably born in the late 11th century and was still
———————————————————————————————————
93
1 Kings 6:29-35; 2 Chron. 3:5; Ezek. 40:16-37; 41:18-26.
94
"‫ בכותל צפוני וצרו בחלונות צורות אריות ונחשים‬,‫ "בבית הכנסת של קולוניא‬Eliakim’s responsum
is known through a later citation of it in the treatise ‫ אבי עזרי‬compilled by the Ravi’ah
(Rabbi Eliezer ben Joel Ha-Levi of Bonn, 1140-1225) that is found in Isaac ben
Moses’s Or Zaru’a (ca. 1180- ca. 1250) (‫" אור זרוע‬,‫ "עבודה זרה‬,‫ יצחק בן משה‬no. 203). On
this responsum and its textual versions, see also Mann, Jewish Texts, 71-76;
‫ מחקרים‬,‫ כהנא‬351-53. It is unclear whether Eliakim had seen the synagogue in Cologne
himself or based his decision on the text of the question posed to him and on the images
of snakes and lions that he could have seen elsewhere in contemporary art.
95
Adolf Kober and Zvi Asaria, “Die Kölner Juden von den ältesten Zeiten bis zur
Schwelle unseres Jahrhunderts” in Asaria, Die Juden in Köln, 45; Wischnitzer,
Architecture, 52; Krinsky, Synagogues of Europe, 45; Mann, Jewish Texts, 71-74;
‫ מחקרים‬,‫ כהנא‬353.
 43

active in the mid-12th century, these windows should be dated to the reconstruction of
the synagogue of Cologne in 1096.96 Eliakim conceded that the intention of the
community making the decorations was “for the sake of Heaven, to be pleasing to their
Creator.” He also noticed that one might find representations of cherubim in Jewish
cemeteries and that such images were present in the Holy Temple, but opposed these
and any other designs in the synagogue, lest they divert the mental concentration of the
worshipper from his prayers and from the service. Eliakim especially objected to images
of snakes because they might be seen as idolatrous: first, snakes must be destroyed just
as Hezekiah, king of Judah, broke Moses’ brazen serpent that the people had turned into
an idol (II Kings 18:4). Secondly, “a snake (‫ )נחש‬is a dragon (‫ )דרקון‬in all” and
therefore could be considered a possible idol, since the Mishnah forbade having in one’s
possession any utensil with a depiction of a dragon (‫ )דרקון‬on it (Av. Zar. 3:3).
The combination of snakes and lions may seem untypical in the art of the period,
but Eliakim’s identification of snakes with dragons suggests that those in question in
Cologne were not limbless serpents but monstrous winged reptiles with claws like a
beast or bird of prey, such as the dragons frequent in Christian and Jewish art (ills. 48-
53) and found in the synagogue reliefs from Rouen (ill. 54) and Worms (ills. 55-56).97
Literally reading the definition of dragons in the Talmud as a creature having “frills
rising between its spinal and cervical vertebrae,” the medieval “snakes” might not have
been identified by the rabbis of medieval Germany with the dragon whose depiction is
———————————————————————————————————
96
Eliakim of Mainz was the father-in-law of Rabbi Eliezer bar Nathan of Mainz
(Raben, active in the first half of the 12th century). Ravi’ah (1140-1225) called Eliakim
“old man” or “elder” (‫זקן‬, also meaning a “sage”), leading most scholars to conclude
that Eliakim of Mainz belonged to an older generation. They supposed that he was born
in 1070 (‫ מחקרים‬,‫ כהנא‬351-52 and n. 19) and was still active in 1152 (I. Elbogen, A.
Freimann and H. Tykocinski, eds., Germania Judaica, [1] [Wroclaw, 1934], 71-72).
Since Mann mistakenly believed that Eliakim (born ca.1070) was born in 1170, she
stated that the stained glass was installed in the synagogue in Cologne about 1200
(Mann, Jewish Texts, 71-72). An earlier date for the stained glass windows is also
possible as the earliest written mention of “windows containing various histories” in the
Cathedral of Reims is from 970 to 989, and a simply decorated fragment of window
glass dated to the period before the 12th century was excavated at Cologne Cathedral
(Charles Reginald Dodwell, The Pictorial Art of the West, 800-1200 [New Haven,
1993], 375-76).
97
Cf., for example, the juxtaposition of a dragon and a lion in the top of ill. 52.
Discussing the windows of the synagogue in Cologne, Mann mentioned the fact that a
number of German Romanesque stained-glass windows represented scenes involving
snakes or serpents like that of Moses transforming his staff into a serpent (Mann,
Jewish Texts, 72-73). It is less probable that the description mentioning “lions and
snakes” in the windows of the synagogue referred to a narrative picture, nor was an
independent image of a serpent, a characteristic artistic device of the period.
 44

forbidden.98 By interpreting the snakes as dragons, Eliakim had broadened the narrow
Talmudic formula, but he also reflected the medieval Jewish and Christian traditions
that did not make a clear distinction between these two creatures: the Talmudic
commentaries of the 11th and 12th century constantly identified a dragon with a snake,99
and the brazen serpent mentioned by Eliakim was often represented as a dragon in
Christian art.100 In German, such dragons, often with serpent-like reed or coiled tail,
would be called Würme or Lindwurme, terms used also for snakes.101 In addition, Jews
may have identified Romanesque humpbacked dragons (ill. 50) and their copies in the
Worms synagogue (ill. 55) and the Worms Mahzor (ill. 48) with the primordial serpent
of Paradise described in a 4th-century Jewish midrash as a camel-like creature with
legs.102
Rabbi Isaac ben Moses (ca. 1180- ca. 1250) wrote that in his youth, that is in the
late 12th century, he saw a painting of fowls and trees in the synagogue of Meissen.103
If this picture was influenced by Christian art, the description would suggest either a
free Romanesque composition of landscape such as that in the Carmina Burana (ill. 57),
or an earlier, more strictly heraldic scheme consisting of birds on either side of the Tree
of Life like that in the center of the lower register in the relief from Cividale (ill. 58). As
we will see, both of these formal interpretations of trees were not alien to Jewish art and
may explain the trees on the stone pillars from Worms (ills. 59-62).104 The heraldic
———————————————————————————————————
98
"‫ בין פרקי צואר‬:‫ מחוי רבי אסי‬.‫ כל שיש לו ציצין בין פרקיו‬:‫"איזהו צורת דרקון? פירש רשב"א‬
(Avodah Zarah 43a). See also the Tosefta to Avodah Zarah 5:2.
99
See the commentaries of Rashi on Berakhot 62b, Avodah Zarah 42b and of Rashbam
(R. Samuel ben Meir, ca. 1080- ca. 1160) on Bava Batra 16b. For a brief review and
several more examples of the interchangeability of serpent and dragon, see Marc
Epstein, Dreams of Subversion, 72 ff. Note also the snake-like coiled tail of the
dragons in my ills. 52-53, 55.
100
For example, a dragon-shaped serpent sits on the “brazen column” of Moses at the
left side of the sculptural porch of the north transept of Chartres Cathedral, 1194. See
also Marc Epstein, Dreams of Subversion, 70-95.
101
Juspa the Shammash of Worms called the dragon “lint wurm” and described it as a
two-legged “snake-like worm, only fatter and larger” (Eidelberg, R. Juspa, 83). On a
similar use of a “dragon” for “a huge serpent or snake, a python” and the “Old Serpent”
in medieval English literary sources, see the quotations in “Dragon,” Oxford English
Dictionary Online (http://dictionary.oed.com), Oxford, 2000, I.1, 4.a. See also G. E.
Smith, Evolution of the Dragon, Manchester, 1919; W. Bölsche, Drachen, Sage und
Naturwissenschaft, Stuttgart, 1929.
102
Gen. Rabba 19:1.
103
‫" אור זרוע‬,‫ "עבודה זרה‬,‫ יצחק בן משה‬no. 203. Isaac ben Moses will be called henceforth
Isaac Or Zaru’a as usual in the rabbinical and historic literature.
104
Doppelfeld interpreted the relief on one of the carved fragments from the genizah of
 45

composition of trees and fowl may be traced back to the reliefs from ancient synagogues
in Israel and the Mediterranean Diaspora: for instance, two birds flank a palm tree in a
chancel screen datable to the 5th or 6th century from Susiya (ill. 64). Isaac Or Zaru’a
stressed that such paintings in a synagogue would have a strong esthetic expression that
might cause the worshipper to say, “How beautiful is this tree,” and thereby interrupt
his concentration on religious matters, thus echoing the opinion of Eliakim.
On the other hand, Eliakim’s younger contemporary, R. Ephraim ben Isaac of
Regensburg (ca. 1110- ca. 1175), permitted performing the service in the presence of
textiles decorated with images of lions, horses, birds and fish set on the reader’s desk
“in honour of the Torah,” or on the chair for a circumcision, since gentiles do not pray
to them and thus they may not be suspected of being idols.105 The Maharam of
Rothenburg (Rabbi Meir ben Baruch, born in Worms, ca. 1215-93) permitted flat
paintings, but not three-dimensional representations or likenesses of the heavenly
creatures, the human face and the Temple vessels.106 The Rambam (b. Cordoba, 1135-
d. Fustat, 1204) allowed portraying all creatures even in sculpture and relief except for
the three-dimensional human figure.107 In a similar way, the Rosh (R. Asher ben Yehiel,
ca. 1250-1327), a pupil of the Maharam of Rothenburg, and Rosh’s son Jacob bar Asher
Ba’al ha-Turim (ca. 1270- ca. 1343), both of whom had been born in Germany and
emigrated to Spain, forbade only the three-dimensional likeness of a man or a dragon
with all their limbs.108
The corpus of rabbinical literature in the sphere of visual images thus
demonstrates a great variety of attitudes and does not constitute a consistent set of rules,
which would limit the practice of synagogue design. To understand this lack of
———————————————————————————————————
the synagogue in Cologne as part of a bird’s image (my ill. 63 no. 4, “Die
Ausgrabungen,” 127). If this is true, this is a Gothic version of the foliage-and-birds
motif in synagogue decoration.
105
See the text and commentary in ‫ מחקרים‬,‫ כהנא‬353-54. A note in the Prague 1607
edition of Ephraim’s responsa (reprinted in Budapest in 1895), which states that these
images were drawn in the synagogue, mistakenly interprets the embroidered or woven
textiles as murals (see ibid., 354 n. 47; Mann, Jewish Texts, 39-42).
106
Tosafot to Yoma, 54a and ‫ שאלות ותשובות‬,‫ מהר"ם‬no. 610. The Maharam based
himself on the distinction made in the 4th-century exegesis between permissible flat
patterns and likeness of earth’s creatures, and the more problematic three-dimensional
representations, images of the celestial creatures and of the human face (Mekhilta of R.
Ishmael to Ex. 20:3). See also Mann, Jewish Texts, 42-43, 109-111.
107
‫" משנה תורה‬,‫ עבודת כוכבים‬,‫ "ספר המדע‬,‫ רמב"ם‬3:10-11.
108
See the commentary of the Rosh on Avodah Zarah, 42b and ",‫ "יורא דעה‬,‫יעקב בר אשר‬
‫ ספר הטורים‬no. 141.
 46

uniformity, modern scholars have examined the correlation between the dicta of Jewish
scholars and their cultural milieu. Wischnitzer pointed out the parallel between the
austere position of certain German rabbis of the 11th and 12th century and the negative
attitude toward art prevailing in the Christian ascetic movement led by St. Bernard of
Clairvaux (1090-1153), a founder of the Cistercian order. Mann added that the
rabbinical claim that the images distract the worshipper from prayer is very similar to
St. Bernard’s argument against extravagant church art.109 Moreover, just as St. Bernard
remarked on the extravagant decorations of Cluniac churches: “Let them be, it may be
that they are after all to God’s honour,”110 his contemporary, Eliakim of Mainz, noted
that the undesirable synagogue decorations were nevertheless made for the sake of
Heaven.111 Bezalel Narkiss discerned another set of sociological parallels: he connected
the ultimately strict notion of Judah he-Hasid, which prohibited any adornment in the
home, on clothing or in the illumination of manuscripts,112 with the ascetic spirit of the
Hasidei Ashkenaz and the austere predisposition of rabbis from Germany. As opposed
to this, he proposed that the more open decisions of the Rambam, the Rosh and Jacob
bar Asher emerged from the more liberal atmosphere of Sephardi culture.113
A further attempt to read the responsa as providing regulations for making
synagogue decorations does not reveal a consistent correlation between the rabbinical
attitudes to synagogue art and the real practices in this sphere. Moreover, the few
remnants of the medieval decorations of the Ashkenazi synagogue that have survived

———————————————————————————————————
109
Wischnitzer, Architecture, 52. Mann refers to Bernard’s view on sculptures in a
monk’s cloister (Jewish Texts, 72, 109). See also Jean-François Leroux-Dhuys,
Cistercian Abbeys: History and Architecture (Cologne, 1998), 34. Note also the
statement that sumptuous decoration and finely executed pictures in churches “divert
the attention of those who are praying and impede devotion” in St. Bernard’s Apologia
ad Guillelmum – Sancti Theodorici Abbatem, ca. 1124 (cited after the English
translation in Wolfgang Braunfels, Monasteries of Western Europe: The
Architecture of Orders [London, 1993], 241).
110
Apologia ad Guillelmum (Braunfels, Monasteries of Western Europe, 241).
111
‫“ ואע"פ שכוונת' לשמים להתנאות לבורם במצות הרי הוזהרנו בדיבור השני מלעשות כך‬And in spite
of the fact that their intention is for the sake of Heaven in order to adorn themselves
before their Creator through good deeds: yet we were warned in the Second
Commandment against doing so” (cited from ‫ מחקרים‬,‫ כהנא‬353).
112
‫ עורך ראובן מרגליות‬,‫ ספר חסידים‬,‫( יהודה בן שמואל החסיד‬Jerusalem, 1957), no. 709.
113
Narkiss, “Zoocephalic Phenomenon,” 49-62. Rambam was born in Cordoba 1135
and lived in Spain and Egypt, and the Rosh and Jacob bar Asher had emigrated from
Germany to Barcelona and Toledo. It may be noted also that in contrast to the Jews in
Christian lands, those in Moslem countries were not exposed to a cultivated system of
sacred images and visual propaganda by the majority religion surrounding them.
 47

after a long period of time and many disasters suggest that the extent of this artistic
tradition was widespread, but in the responsa known to us none of the sculpture and
only a few of the paintings seem to have raised questions as to their halakhic propriety.
There is also no record in the medieval responsa that anyone planning the adornment of
a synagogue turned to a rabbi in order to gain his permission to make images or to
receive instruction on the symbolic contents of the decoration. After all, the most
austere instructions would not have left any material evidence because those following
them would have foregone making decorations.114 As early in the late 11th century,
snakes – or dragons – appeared in the stained glass window in the synagogue of
Cologne, and the information on paintings in the synagogue of Meissen indicate that
arboreal images were produced for the decoration of synagogue interiors in the last
quarter of the 12th century. This was thus after Samuel he-Hasid Kalonymus (active in
the second half of the 12th century) had worked up the ascetic principles of the Hasidei
Ashkenaz and in the period of the activity of his son Judah he-Hasid (ca. 1150-1217),
the principal leader of this spiritual movement.
Strictly speaking, even the allegation of Ephraim of Regensburg that gentiles do
not pray to images of lions, birds and fish is not absolutely correct: the fish is a symbol
of Christ, the Holy Spirit is depicted as a bird, and the lion is the emblem of St. Mark.
Vine images in the synagogue also were not rejected in spite of the fact that Christians
used them as a symbol of the Eucharist.115 The use of motifs from ecclesiastic art in the
synagogue may not be explained by Jewish ignorance of Christian symbolism. Already
in the 11th century, Jewish scholars in the Rhineland were involved in public disputes

———————————————————————————————————
114
Cf. Judah he-Hasid’s strict prohibitions of paintings and linear masorah decorations
in manuscripts vs. the artistic practices at the time (ibid., 56-57).
115
Mann accepted the argument that zoomorphic images were neutral in church
decoration, citing Lucas, Bishop of Tuy, who wrote ca. 1230: “The forms of animals,
birds and serpents, and other things depicted in the church are only for ornament and
beauty” (Mann, Jewish Texts, 72). Presumably, Lucas opposed some folklore or
magical explanations of the church decorations, and the polemic intonation of his
statement indicates that there were those who indeed saw in the zoomorphic images
more than mere ornamentation. The plain reading of the passage is at odds with the
deeply rooted tradition in Christian art of the symbolic interpretation of zoomorphic
images for their spiritual and didactic symbolism, and this interpretative method was
also applied to the ornamental and marginal depictions. See Francis Donald Klingender,
Animals in Art and Thought to the End of the Middle Ages (London, 1971); Willene
B. Clark and Meradith T. McMunn, eds., Beasts and Birds of the Middle Ages: The
Bestiary and Its Legacy (Philadelphia, 1989); Camille, The Gothic Idol; idem, Image
on the Edge; Debra Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology (Cambridge,
1995).
 48

with Christian theologians that sometimes concerned aspects of Christian symbolism

and esthetics. Thus in the religious disputation in the presence of Emperor Henry III
(reigned 1046-56), a rabbi from the Kalonymus dynasty discussed the identification of
churches with the Christian Temple of the Lord that the Church believed to have
replaced the destroyed Temple of the Jews. Kalonymus argued that even a magnificent
church such as the Cathedral in Speyer could not surpass the sacredness of the Temple
in Jerusalem.116 The compilations of the typical counter-arguments for use by Jews
when encountering Christian polemics indicate that Jewish writers knew the New
Testament, often quoting Christian dogma in Latin and German. From at least the 12th
century, the compilations of anti-Christian argumentation117 and critical and satirical
legends about Jesus118 exposed a wide stratum of the Rhineland Jewish community to
popular Christian symbols. For example, one of these manuals explained to the Jewish
reader that the Christians considered the vine with clusters of grapes and a lion to be
symbols of Jesus.119
Business and routine contacts also exposed Jews to their Christian neighbours:
although much of the communal life of Jewish merchants and moneylenders took place
within the Jewish quarter, most of their clientele were non-Jews.120 The continuous
encounters led the Jewish minority to adopt some of the models of the majority culture:
Judah he-Hasid stated that “Jewish customs in many places [in Germany] are like those
practiced by non-Jews.”121 If these cultural models were a priori comprehended as

———————————————————————————————————
116
See the commentary on Exodus 40:35 in ‫ ספר נצחון ישן‬quoted in David Berger, ed.,
The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of
Nizzahon Vetus (Philadelphia, 1979), 28 (Hebrew section), 68-69 and 256-257 (English
section). See also the commentary on Gen. 28:11-17 in ‫ ספר נצחון‬,‫מרדכי ברויאר‬
‫(ישן‬Jerusalem, 1978), 42 no. 21 .
117
[Ben-Sasson], “Disputations and Polemics,” EJ, 6: 89-91; ‫ספר יוסף המקנא לר' יוסף‬
‫ עורך יהודה רוזנטל‬,‫( ב"ר נתן אופיציאל‬Jerusalem, 1970); ‫ ספר נצחון ישן‬,‫ ברויאר‬13-15
(introduction).
118
Samuel Krauss, Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen (Berlin, 1902); Hyman
Gerson Enelow, A Jewish View of Jesus (New York, 1931); Joseph Jacobs, Jesus as
Others Saw Him (New York, 1975); [Joseph Dan], “Toledot Yeshu,” EJ, 15: 1208-9.
119
See the commentary on Gen. 40:10 and Num. 13:23, and also a polemic nterpretation
of Judah, the lion’s whelp (Gen. 49:9), as an allegory of Jesus in ‫ ספר נצחון ישן‬,‫ ברויאר‬44
no. 25, 48 no. 31, 58-59 no. 54.
120
Guido Kisch, The Jews of Medieval Germany: A Study of Their Legal and
Social Status (New York, 1970).
121
‫ ספר חסידים‬,‫ יהודה החסיד‬no. 1101 (translated into English in Gutmann, “Christian
Influences,” 128 .(On the paths of such cultural interactions, see Jacob J. Schlachter,
ed., Judaism’s Encounter with Other Cultures: Rejection or Integration
 49

proclamations of an alien religion, Jewish society would not have accepted them
because of a fear of idolatry. However, if such customs, as well as certain visual
expressions and verbal structures of the majority, were accepted as universal media of
communication, Jews might cast their own ideas and beliefs into commonly
apprehensible forms.122 This paradigm was not new and had already taken place in the
synagogue art of Antiquity and of the Early Christian period, when the Jews
reconsidered the use of polytheistic imagery for the expression of their own religious
concepts.123
Why then did the rabbis sometimes react against certain synagogue decorations
whereas images having evident Christian connotations did not cause a protest? Gutmann
already remarked that while complaining about the alien influences on Jewish customs,
Judah he-Hasid was not sensitive to the strong effect of contemporary Christian
theology on his own teachings.124 It must have been exposure to different views of the
customary synagogue adornments that caused Jews to ask a rabbi about the objects
already accepted by the community. The new ascetic trends made their way into
mainstream Judaism either through the doctrine of the Hasidei Ashkenaz or through the
influence of more austere practices in the Christian milieu, and such trends might
sometimes have raised a critical attitude in the individual Jewish worshipper towards
the common practices of synagogue adornment. In examining the sculptural decorations
in Worms in the following sub-chapters, we will examine whether and how halakhic
dicta caused synagogue adornments to be suppressed.
The lack of aesthetic theories, iconographical compilations or instructions for
———————————————————————————————————
(Northvale, 1977).
122
The same process of cultural encounter between the Rhineland Jews and the German
milieu from the late 9th century on led to the formation of Yiddish, a Jewish language
mixing elements derived principally from local German dialects and secondarily from
Hebrew and Aramaic, Old French and Old Italian. It is noteworthy that the oldest dated
Yiddish text known to us appears in the Worms Mahzor of 1272, fol. 54 (Chone
Shmeruk, “The Versified Old Yiddish in the Worms Mahzor” in Worms Mahzor. Ms.
Jewish National and University Library, Heb. 40 781/1, Introductory volume to the
complete facsimile, ed. Malachi Beit-Arié [Vaduz, 1985], 100-103).
123
See Gaster, “Pagan Ideas and the Jewish Mind;” Goodenough, Jewish Symbols;
Urbach, “The Rabbinical Laws of Idolatry;” Neusner, “Jewish Use of Pagan Symbols
after 70 C.E.;” idem, Symbol and Ideology in Early Judaism; Narkiss, “Pagan,
Christian, and Jewish Elements;” Weitzmann and Kessler, The Frescoes of the Dura
Europos; Roll, “Figurative Arts among Jews of Late Antiquity;” Miller, “The Rabbis
and the Non-existent Monolithic Synagogue;” Baumgarten, “Art in the
Synagogue;”",‫ "נושאים אלגוריים וסמליים‬,‫ גדעון פרסטר‬198-206.
124
Gutmann, “Christian Influences,” 128.
 50

visual propaganda in medieval Jewish literature, and the discrepancy between

traditional practices and strict halakhic limitations of synagogue decoration suggest that
Jewish scholars neither wrote programmes nor acted as patrons for synagogue art. The
inscriptions from the Worms synagogue indicate that the works were ordered and
directed by individual patrons,125 and that the whole community participated in
financing and realizing the project.126 In the mind of Jews, such a collaboration could
evoke the Biblical paradigm of the leader who establishes and arranges the Sanctuary in
accordance with Divine directions, while the people make and participate in works (Ex.
35:4-36:8) or take part in levies for the building (I Kings 5:27). This again points up the
parallel between decorations in the synagogue and those in the Tabernacle and the
Temple in Jerusalem that was prescribed by God, and thus may not be considered to be
objects of worship prohibited in the Second Commandment.
The private patrons who had enlisted the aid of the community and the
community rabbi would thus have been primarily responsible for the choice of
decorative devices and their iconographical programme. Although the whole
community lived according to halakhic norms and prescriptions, their attitude to the
artistic tradition and practices cannot be fully identified with that of the halakhic
legislators. When questioning the legitimacy of images in the synagogue, rabbinical
authorities based themselves on general halakhic principles and known precedents in the
halakhic literature. In contrast, the kind of public consciousness responsible for the
decorations consisted of a mixture of concepts stemming from popular aspects of
Jewish Biblical exegesis, midrashic stories and topical theological issues as well as
common folk beliefs. Usually such folk attitudes do not leave traces in written sources
until very late periods and are not based on detailed scholarly theories. Moreover, the
———————————————————————————————————
125
The known names of patrons of the earlier stages of the building and decoration of
the Worms synagogue are: Jacob ben David and his wife Rachel, who built the 1034
synagogue “from their wealth” (see note 28 above); Mistress Belette, who sponsored a
carved pillar “from her treasures” (see ill. 59 and discussion below); Meir ben Joel ha-
Cohen and his wife Judith, “daughter of a generous person,” who built the women’s
gallery in 1212-13 (Böcher, "Die Alte Synagoge," 105-108 no. VIII, IX); David
Oppenheim, “a teacher, deputy and community leader ready to donate,” who “paid from
his pocket” for the renovation of the synagogue and the building of the Rashi yeshiva in
1620-24 (see ibid., 111-113 no. XV-XIX and my note 24 above).
126
Note the dedication of Jacob ben David, who entrusted the completion of the works
“to the inheritors of the houses” (see note 30 above). Juspa the Shammash described the
part of the community in rebuilding the synagogue of Worms after the pogrom of 1615:
“the synagogue was quickly rebuilt, for every community member contributed his
money. Many also participated in the physical construction. […] Everyone
enthusiastically took part in the great mitzvah (good deed)” (Eidelberg, R. Juspa, 75).
 51

community would be more influenced by the presence of similar art in other synagogues
and Hebrew illuminated manuscripts, by the memory of decorations once seen in
synagogues during their lifetime, or by surviving relics from the remote past. Whereas
Isaac Or Zaru’a used his memories on paintings in the synagogue in order to disapprove
of this practice, the community and patrons of synagogue decoration might remember
the synagogue where their fathers and grandfathers prayed with reverence and take the
decorations there as part of a legitimate, time-honoured tradition.
Respect for an old synagogue, even if it is no longer in use, is also based on
halakhic decisions on the sanctity of the synagogue and its components. The Halakhah
states that a ruined synagogue is still holy127 and that an old synagogue may not be torn
down or abandoned until the community erects a new synagogue, or builds “at least one
wall of the new synagogue beside the old building.”128 The community of Worms
followed these principles in building the 1174-75 synagogue abutting on the old one.
The fact that the 1034 dedication plaques were built into the walls of the new prayer hall
declares that while the old synagogue was abandoned, continuity with it was
maintained. The Halakhah also states that synagogue furnishings may be holier than the
building. The discussion in Megillah 3:1 explains the hierarchical sanctities in the
synagogue: the most holy object is the scroll of the Torah, then – in decreasing order of
holiness – the chest or ark containing the scrolls, and the synagogue building.129 Even
when no longer in use, the Torah scrolls or other objects bearing holy names may not be
thrown out, but must be concealed in a genizah, a hiding place for disused sacred
objects, or be buried.130 Sometimes, the genizah was in the synagogue’s attic, and
occasionally, between the stone courses of the synagogue’s walls.131 When the
synagogue in Cologne was reconstructed in 1096, a cellar for the genizah was made
under the bimah and the steps at the south part of the bimah’s west side led down to
it.132 In the synagogue of Mainz, the genizah was placed under the foundation stones of
the synagogue.133 Since the Ark is holy as it contains the Torah scrolls, the dismantling
———————————————————————————————————
127
‫" משנה תורה‬,‫ "הלכות תפילה ונשיאת כפים‬,‫ רמב"ם‬11:11.
128
Ibid., 11:12. This is to prevent a situation wherein the community, after tearing
down, abandoning or selling the old synagogue, could not build a new one.
129
Fine, This Holy Place, 38-41, 67-72.
130
See Shabbat 115a; Megillah 26b; Lev. Rabba 21:12, and also [Abraham Meir
Habermann], “Genizah,” EJ, 7: 404-405.
131
The custom is based on Shabbat 115a.
132
Doppelfeld, “Die Ausgrabungen,” 113, 116-17.
133
Habermann, “Genizah,” 405.
 52

of an Ark or any of its parts must be done so as not to lessen, even obliquely, the
holiness of the Torah. Therefore, the Ark or other parts of the synagogue furnishings
may not be discarded and, after being dismantled because the style is obsolete or
because they have been damaged, they must be reused, stored, or buried.134 Thus
fragments of the broken stone carvings of the interior decoration dating to the 1270s
were stored in the genizah of the synagogue in Cologne (ill. 63).135 This practice is also
found in Worms where the broken parts of early stone structures were found in places
that usually served as a genizah: several stone fragments with geometrical, plant and
zoomorphical reliefs were stored above the vaults of the prayer hall;136 others were
found in the process of excavating the prayer hall; and an inscribed stone was revealed
among the lower courses of the eastern wall of the synagogue.137 In light of these
halakhic rules, these objects must be remnants of the disassembled Holy Ark and bimah
or of other structures of the synagogue.
The Two Earliest Carved Fragments from the Synagogue in Worms
While the surviving Romanesque reliefs on the synagogue’s portal and old
photographs of the great capitals in the prayer hall indicate the original placement of
these decorations, our knowledge of the other early sculptured adornments of the
Worms synagogue is based on the fragments, mostly damaged, separate and incomplete,
and on scanty and sometimes controversial textual and visual documents. Most of the
surviving carved stones are now housed in the annexes of the Old Synagogue, in the
Rashi-House Jewish Museum and in the Municipal Museum of Worms. In his 1927
book, Krautheimer identified some of them as remnants of the stone bimah seen in the
pictures from about 1840 (ills. 18-19) and disassembled in 1842, and accepted other
stones as belonging to the Holy Ark. Among the latter, he mentioned carvings similar to
the supports of the table built after the dismantling of the bimah in 1842 (ills. 65-66),
several stones that are similarly decorated with geometric and vegetal patterns, which
may be identified with the fragments in ills. 67-69, and a crown with “great diamond-
like facets like those on the portal of the Rashi yeshivah” (cf. the faceted rectangle

———————————————————————————————————
134
This as confirmed in the mid-16th century by Joseph Caro ( ‫ הלכות בית‬:‫"אורך חיים‬
‫" שלחן ערוך‬,‫ הכנסת‬154:3) who based his decisions on medieval halakhic rules.
135
Doppelfeld, “Die Ausgrabungen,” 123, 127; Monumenta Judaica. 2000 Jahre
Geschichte und Kultur der Juden am Rhein, Catalogue (Cologne, 1964), B-66.
136
Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 174-75.
137
Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 73-74 n. 328-328a; 98, no. II, fig. 78-1; Monumenta
Judaica, (Catalogue), B-65.
 53

above the pilasters in ills. 70-71).138 Krautheimer did not try to date the reliefs and
believed that there were not enough remnants in order to make a reconstruction of the
Holy Ark.139 Fourteen fragments survived the demolition of the synagogue and Jewish
Museum of Worms in 1938, and a number of others were revealed in the ruins during
the early 1950s and during the excavations in the synagogue in 1956-59.140 Böcher
attributed most of the fragments known to him to the synagogue furnishings from
different stages of the building and used them to draw reconstructions of the 12th-
century bimah (ill. 73), and the 1623-24 bimah (ill. 74) and Ark (ill. 2).141 While the
chronological classification of sculptural decorations in accordance with the stages of
building and renovating the synagogues and attempts to reconstruct lost objects from
their fragments are productive methods, Böcher’s particular deductions are not reliable.
For example, he based the graphical reconstruction of the 1623-24 Ark (ill. 2) on an
assemblage of fragments found in the 1950s (ill. 75). Even a preliminary examination of
one of the major fragments, the dragon (ills. 56, 75 no. 10), raises questions about
Böcher’s conclusions. As Böcher noted, this fragment has a flower and a few remnants
of Hebrew letters on its other side (ills. 76-78). Böcher found medieval models for the
dragon and the flower, but unconvincingly dated the whole fragment to the 1620s.142 In
the reconstruction, he drew the dragon on the Ark’s façade (ill. 2), without explaining
why the flower and inscription should be carved on the arch’s inner side where nobody
could see them. Answering this question will demand a methodological approach that
will analyze these images that coexist on the same object but are probably from
different dates, and will explain why the stone was recarved. Such inconsistencies in
Böcher’s analysis have prompted us to reexamine all the known remnants in order to
attain new stylistic distinctions, iconographical parallels, and suppositions about their
constructive roles during the different renovations. This analysis will be done in
chronological sequence to get a clear idea of the development of the synagogue’s
decorations.
The earliest fragments are two broken stone piers of yellowish sandstone
———————————————————————————————————
138
Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 174-75. Böcher stated that the fragment
with the crown had been lost and identified it as a part of the relief crowns seen in ill. 72
(“Die Alte Synagoge,” 74). Only the upper part of the crowns remains on this fragment,
but the “diamond-like facets” could have been on their lower part.
139
Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 175.
140
See the list in Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 73-74 n. 328-328a.
141
Ibid., 70-85.
142
Ibid., 73-76, 110 no. XIII.
 54

decorated by arboreal reliefs that were not used in Böcher’s reconstructions of the Ark
and bimah. The taller of them is 74 cm high, 16 cm wide and approximately 24 cm
long. It is carved on all four sides (ills. 59-60, 79-80). On one side, a palm tree
protrudes from a shallow rectangular panel (ills. 59, 81). It consists of a trunk growing
from three short roots with a node in the trunk’s center, and seven sharpened leaves
symmetrically spreading from the trunk’s upper section: the three uppermost leaves
form a fan-like pattern, the two leaves below them curve downwards, and the lowest
pair of leaves scroll inwards. Several rows of Hebrew letters in the panel above the palm
are a fragment of the dedication of the woman who donated the structure of which this
carved stone was a part (ill. 82). As the pier is broken from above, the uppermost part of
the text is missing, but the lower lines read,
‫ העלמות‬/ ‫ במספר‬/ ‫ וזכרת‬/ ‫ לטובה‬/ ‫ הזכרת‬/ ‫ בלט‬/ ‫ מרת‬/ ‫מאוצרת‬
(“From the treasures / of Mistress / B-L-T [Belette?] / remembered / for good / and
remembered / in the number / of the maidens”).143 Although the precise shape of this
script is not clear because the stone’s surface has deteriorated, several features indicate
an approximate date of the inscription: the square shape and linear design of the letters,
the widening of some letters in order to align the rows of the text, a light horizontal line
incised between the rows and the placement of the inscription within a shallow
recession are characteristic of the 11th-century inscriptions on the dedicatory tablets in
the synagogue (e.g., ill. 21) and on the tombstones in the Old Jewish cemetery of
Worms.144
This dating is reinforced by the style of the palm tree. The formal scheme of this
plant with a spiraling lower pair of leaves may be traced back to the images of palm
trees on glass bottles produced for Jewish pilgrims visiting Jerusalem in the last quarter
of the 6th or the early 7th century (ill. 84, note the drawing in the second frame from the
right). Similar images of paradisiacal palms appear in Italian reliefs from the 8th
———————————————————————————————————
143
The Hebrew text with its translation into German, including vocalization of the
consonants B-L-T in the third row as belet, is published in Böcher, “Die Alte
Synagoge,” 123 no. XXXIX. The name Bella appearing on tombstones from the late
11th and 12th century in the Old Jewish cemetery in Worms (see note 12 above) allows
us to suppose that the patroness’ name was Belette, a diminutive form of the French or
Italian name Bella, which in French and German is pronounced belet. The reading of B-
L-T in German as Blatt is possible as well, but there is no record of such a personal or
family name for Jews in the medieval Rhineland. A number of dedications from ancient
synagogues in Israel and the Diaspora testify that there were women who made
contributions by themselves for the building or refurbishing of the synagogue or its
parts (Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 479-81).
144
Cf. Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” figs. 65-68, 70-73.
 55

century: for instance, the palm tree seen on the left of the chancel screens of the old
shrine in St. Peter’s in Rome (ill. 85) also includes split roots and symmetrically
spreading leaves that increasingly curve downward, with spirals added to the trunk.145
Fruitless trees with pairs of spiraling leaves beneath the foliage are found on both sides
of the cross in the 8th-century stone relief from the baptistery in Cividale (ill. 58).
Sculptors working in the Rhineland imperial towns could have known this kind of art,
and the patrons of the Worms synagogue, some of whom were of Italian origin, could
have been exposed to it either in Italy or in Germany. The slim palm with an incised
axial line in each leaf would thus be an early Romanesque interpretation of this old
scheme, and was produced together with the dedicatory inscription in the 11th century.
Thus this palm and the inscription would be a fragment of the “adornment” which Jacob
ben David, the patron who built the synagogue in 1034, “entrusted to the community.”
Like the vine, the palm tree is a traditional symbol in Jewish art that may be
traced back to Biblical times: palm reliefs decorated the interior and vessels of the
Temple in Jerusalem.146 Although these Temple ornaments could not have served as a
visual model, their description may have inspired or legitimized the depiction of palm
trees in the synagogue. Such Biblical allusions could have prompted the interpretation
of the Romanesque palmettes on the synagogue’s portal as signs of the Sanctuary, but
do not give a fully satisfactory explanation for the earliest relief from the 11th century of
a palm tree below a dedication on a stone pier (ill. 59). Obviously, since evergreen
tropical palm trees did not grow in the Rhineland, this was not simply a copy from
nature, but it was also more than just a reminder of the Holy Land. This schematic
representation of a palm tree with its pair of spiral leaves and its three roots must have
been used because of its symbolic meaning.
Such symbolic palm trees are found in synagogues and Jewish sepulchral art of
the Late Antique and Early Christian periods, and they echo in turn the minor arts of the
Hasmonean period. The Romans customarily carried a palm-tree branch as a symbol of
victory and on festal occasions, and in art a palm tree or branch was regarded as an
emblem of victory, success, or joy.147 The Hasmoneans, who also practiced this
———————————————————————————————————
145
J. B. Ward Perkins, “The Shrine of St. Peter and Its Twelve Spiral Columns,” The
Journal of Roman Studies, 42 (1952): 21-33; 794 – Karl der Groβe in Frankfurt am
Main. Ein König bei der Arbeit (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), 150; 799 – Kunst und
Kultur der Karolingerzeit: Katalog der Ausstellung, Padeborn, 1999 (Mainz, 1999),
617-19.
146
1 Kings 6:29-35; 2 Chron. 3:5; Ezek. 40:16-37; 41:18-26.
147
For example, see Aulus Gellius (ca. 130-180 C.E.), Noctes Atticae, III, 4:1.
 56

custom,148 minted the palm as an emblem of victory on their coins. After the Romans
engraved the allegory of the mourning Judea capta seated under a palm tree on their
coins to commemorate the capture of Jerusalem (ill. 86), Simon bar Kokhba returned to
the Hasmonean model during the revolt of the Jews in 132-35: the palms on his coins
bear the motto “For the Deliverance of Jerusalem” or are dated by a year “to the
Redemption of Israel” (ill. 46).149 On Jewish coins, as in the palm tree from the
synagogue (ill. 81), the palm has seven leaves symmetrically arranged with three at
either side and one in the middle. This is in contrast with the variable number of leaves
and the occasional absence of an axial leaf at the top of the palm tree on Roman coins
from Judea150 and Christian objects (ills. 85-86).
Palm trees continuously appeared in Jewish art even after the Jews lost their
hope for an imminent political and national deliverance. The palm trees continued to
reflect their belief in a messianic redemption of the Jewish people and the revival of the
Kingdom of Judea, but this event was placed in the future. This symbolism is found in
the mosaic floor from the early 6th century synagogue at Maon (Nirim) in Judea (ill. 87),
where the palm trees are placed around a bird in a cage – the only caged animal in the
mosaic – and are accompanied by freed birds that may allude to the freeing of the soul
and its ascent to Paradise.151 In a similar way, the Christians adopted the palm tree as a
symbol of the victory of the spirit over the flesh and of the soul’s bliss in Paradise.152
The great menorah placed in a dominant position in the composition of the Maon
———————————————————————————————————
148
I Maccabees 13:37, II Maccabees 14:4.
149
Frederic W. Madden, History of Jewish Coinage and of Money in the Old and
New Testament, (1864, reprint: New York, 1967), 154-98; ‫ אנציקלופדיה‬,‫צבי שטאל‬
‫( למטבעות ארץ ישראל בתקופה העתיקה‬Tel Aviv, 2000), 157-61, 350-57 .See also
Goodenough ,Jewish Symbols, 7: 106-88, 121-123; Steven Fine, “On the Development
of a Visual Symbol: The Date Palm in Roman Palestine and the Jews,” Journal for the
Study of the Pseudepigrapha, 4 (1989): 105-118.
150
See examples in Madden, History of Jewish Coinage, 172-173, 177, 182, 184-99,
209.
151
M. Avi-Yonah, “The Mosaic Pavement [of the Ma’on Synagogue],” Louis
Rabinowitz Fund for the Exploration of Ancient Synagogue, Bulletin, 3 (Jerusalem,
1960): 25-35; A. Ovadia, “The Synagogue at Gaza,” in Levine, Ancient Synagogue
Revealed, 129-32; "‫ "נושאים אלגוריים וסמליים‬,‫ פרסטר‬198-206.
152
H. Leclerq, “Palme, Palmier” in F. Cabrol and H. Leclerq, Dictionnaire
d’archéologie chrétienne et liturgie, 12/1 (Paris, 1937): 947-61; F. X. Murphy,
“Palm,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 10 (New York, 1967): 933-34; Mirella Levi
d’Ancona, The Garden of the Renaissance: Botanical Symbolism in Italian Painting
(Florence, 1977), 279-89; Gertrud Schiller, Ikonographie der Christlichen Kunst, 4/2
(Gütersloh, 1980): 181-83; J..Flemming, “Palme,” in Engelbert Kirchbaum, ed.,
Lexikon der Christlichen Ikonographie, 2 (Freiburg, 1990): 364-65.
 57

synagogue floor is a distinct Jewish national emblem and an antithesis to the cross used
in churches. The menorah gives the composition a Jewish perspective, expressing hope
for the messianic Redemption, the rebuilding of the Temple and the renewal of its daily
service.153 In this context, the palms around the “caged bird” of Israel, and the freed
birds beside them, allude to the deliverance of the Jews in the messianic realm to come.
While sharing with Christian art the use of certain pagan symbols of Redemption, the
whole program of the synagogue mosaic floor stresses the contrast between the
Christian doctrine of individual salvation and the Jewish concept of national
redemption.154
A relief of a palm tree is also engraved on a chancel screen from the 5th or 6th
century found in front of the Holy Ark in the synagogue of Susiya (ills. 64, 88). As in
the mosaic floor in Maon (ill. 87), the relief of the date palm from Susiya stands next to
a relief of a menorah that alludes to the Temple in Jerusalem.155 The date palm is set
between two birds, perhaps peacocks,156 suggesting that it is the Tree of Life, as the
———————————————————————————————————
153
This is expressed in Num. Rabba 15:10. On the messianic and other probable
symbolism of the menorah, see Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, 4: 71-98, 12: 79-83; W.
Wirgin, “The Menorah as Symbol of After-Life,” Israel Exploration Journal, 14
(1964): 102-104; A. M. Goldberg, “Der siebenarmige Leuchter, zur Entstehung eines
jüdischen Bekenntnissymbols,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen
Gesellschaft, 117 (1967): 232-246; Cecil Roth, “Messianic Symbols in Palestinian
Archaeology,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 87 (1955): 151-164; C. Meyers, The
Tabernacle Menorah: A Synthetic Study of a Symbol from the Biblical Cult
(Missoula, 1976); Steven Fine and B. Zuckerman, “The Menorah as a Symbol of Jewish
Minority Status,” in Steven Fine and B. Zuckerman, eds., Fusion in the Hellenistic
East (Los Angeles, 1985), 34-31; Dan Barag, “The Menorah as a Messianic Symbol in
Antiquity,” in Yael Israeli, ed., In the Light of the Menorah: Story of a Symbol
(Jerusalem, 1998), 71-75; Lee I. Levine, “The History and Significance of the Menorah
in Antiquity” in Lee I. Levine and Zeev Weiss, eds., From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies
in Jewish Art and Society in Late Antiquity (Portsmouth, 2000), 131-53.
154
Narkiss, “Pagan, Christian, and Jewish Elements,” 184-85. Cf. also palm trees
framing a “Fountain of Life” flanked by peacocks and smaller birds in the mosaic floor
of the synagogue in Naro (Hammam Lif) in Tunisia (F. M. Biebel, “The Mosaics of
Hamman Lif,” Art Bulletin, 18 [1936]: 541-551; Wischnitzer, Symbole und
Gestalten, 59-61, 121-22; Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, 2: 89-100; Gideon Foerster,
“A Survey of Ancient Diaspora Synagogues” in Levine, Ancient Synagogue Revealed,
171). For a similar use of palm branches and trees in Jewish sepulchral art, see Lihi
Habas, “Identity and Hope: The Menorah in the Jewish Catacombs of Rome” in Israeli,
In the Light of the Menorah, 76-80.
155
The proportions of the Menorah screen are similar to those of the screen with the
palm. On the mosaic floor from Susiya, see "‫ "נושאים אלגוריים וסמליים‬,‫פרסטר‬. See also
Habas, “Identity and Hope,” 77; Hachlili ,Ancient Jewish Art – Diaspora, 381;
‫ העולם הצומח המקראי‬,‫( יהודה פליקס‬Tel Aviv, 1968), 48-51 .
156
After the rise of iconoclasm in Israeli synagogues in the late 6th century, the heads of
 58

fruitful evergreen palm inspires associations with the paradisiacal Tree of Life whose
fruits give immortality (Gen. 3:22). The reliefs of the synagogue in Susiya seem to have
existed in situ until the 8th century or later,157 and their eschatological symbolism could
have been spread in the Diaspora through both Jewish and Christian sources: palms
appear together with the messianic menorah and the Holy Ark on pilgrims’ glass bottles
dated to the last quarter of the 6th or the early 7th century from Jerusalem (ill. 84); an 8th-
century aggadah (legend) reinforces the messianic connotations by comparing the
future Messiah with a palm tree,158 and at that time, such trees adorned chancel screens
in Italian churches (ills. 58, 85).
An additional aspect of the messianic symbolism of the palm was derived from
its connection with the festival of Sukkoth (the Feast of the Tabernacles) that included a
pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem and the rite of the four species, one of which is
the lulav, or palm branch (Lev. 23:40). After the destruction of the Temple, the Feast of
the Tabernacles became associated with the hope of rebuilding the Temple and with the
bliss the righteous would experience at a banquet in the heavenly tabernacles in the
messianic future. In Jewish art, this concept was reflected in the menorah or the façade
of the Temple that were depicted together with the lulav and/or one or several palm
trees and ritual objects in works believed to date from the 4th to the 6th centuries, that are
interpreted as relating to this feast or to the service in the Temple. In the Diaspora, the
lulav was the most common component of these varied combinations (ills. 89-94).159
On the other hand, the node and the tripodal bottom on the trunk of the palm tree
relief from Worms (ill. 81) cannot be explained as a mere copy of one of the models of
a messianic or paradisiacal tree, although we may find parallels to these features in the
———————————————————————————————————
the birds and other animals on this screen were partially erased (Baynes, “Icons before
Iconoclasm;” Barber, “The Truth in Painting;” Ovadiah “Art of the Ancient
Synagogues,” 316-317; Levine, The First Thousand Years, 342-343; "‫ "איקונוקלזם‬,‫עמית‬
passim).
157
Lihi Habas, “The Bema and Chancel Screen in Synagogues and Their Origin” in
Levine and Weiss, eds., From Dura to Sepphoris, 122.
158
“The Creation on the Eve of the Sabbath” in Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, translated and
annotated by Gerald Friedlander, (New York, 1981), 132, chapter 18 [19]. See also
‫ העולם הצומח המקראי‬,‫ פליקס‬46.
159
Archer St. Clair, “God’s House of Peace in Paradise: the Feast of Tabernacles on a
Jewish Gold Glass,” JJA, 11 (1985): 6-15; Elisheva Revel-Neher, “L’alliance et la
promesse: le symbolisme d’Eretz-Israël dans l’iconographie juive du Moyen Age,” JA,
12-13 (1986-87): 135-146; Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art – Diaspora, 347-378;
Gabrielle Sed-Rajna, “Images of the Tabernacle/Temple in Late Antique and Medieval
Art: the State of Research,” JA, 23-24, The Real and Ideal Jerusalem in Jewish,
Christian and Islamic Art (1997-98): 42-53.
 59

vocabulary of other messianic symbols. The triple roots of the palm relief resemble the
three legs that were a widespread feature in depictions of the menorah in ancient Jewish
art, perhaps having been inspired by the form of the Second Temple menorah (ills. 84,
89, 91-93, 94-96).160 The tripodal base is commonly used as a steady support, but in an
eschatological context this structural element invites a symbolic interpretation. The
Hebrew word ‫( רגל‬regel) means both a leg and a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, so that three
legs or ‫( שלוש רגליים‬shalosh raglayim) would recall the three pilgrimages or ‫שלוש רגלים‬
(shalosh regalim) that is the festivals of Pesach (Passover), Shavuot (the Feast of
Weeks) and Sukkoth on which Jews journeyed to the Temple in Jerusalem. Similarly, a
tripod with lion’s feet such as that in the menorah from Maon (ill. 87), usually seen as a
copy of zoomorphic tripods in ancient art,161 would suggest that the Kingdom of Judah,
whose emblem is a lion (Gen. 49:9), will be restored together with the Temple in the
messianic hereafter. The lion-footed tripod of the menorah was reproduced in medieval
Ashkenazi art, for instance in the Regensburg Bible from about 1300 (ill. 97). Three
paw-like supports are also depicted under the Holy Ark in a Mahzor for Rosh Ha-
shanah from the first quarter of the 14th century (ill. 98), three lion paws are clearly seen
under each of three columns on the façade of the Temple in the early 16th-century
Farissol Haggadah (ill. 99), and three short supports appear under the base of a portal
decorating Juspa Shammash’s “Custom Book of Worms” (ill. 100). Whereas the reason
for making three supports of the Ark, such as that in the Mahzor of ca. 1300 from Milan
(ill. 101), might be merely practical, the continuous use of this motif over the centuries
indicates that it was considered to be meaningful, and this would be equally true for the
artworks from Worms.
The similarity to the Menorah is reinforced in Worms by the structure of the
palm tree’s trunk, with its three legs and knob-like node in the center of the stem. These
agree with the proportions of the measurements of the shaft of the Temple menorah as
———————————————————————————————————
160
Bezalel Narkiss, “A Scheme of the Sanctuary from the Time of Herod the Great,”
JJA, 1 (1974), 6-15; Daniel Sperber, “The History of the Menorah,” Journal of Jewish
Studies, 16 (1965), 135-159; idem, “Between Jerusalem and Rome: The History of the
Base of the Menorah as Depicted on the Arch of Titus” in Israeli, In the Light of the
Menorah, 50-53; Rachel Hachlili and Rivka Merhav, “The Menorah of the First and
Second Temple Periods in Light of Literary Sources and Archaeological Finds” in
Israeli, In the Light of the Menorah, 43-49; Barag, “The Menorah as a Messianic
Symbol in Antiquity.”
161
Heinrich Strauss, “The History and Form of the Seven-Branched Candlestick of the
Hasmonean Kings,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 22 (1959):
13-14; Avi-Yonah, “The Mosaic Pavement [of the Ma’on Synagogue],” 33;
Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, 7: 35-36.
 60

recounted in the Talmud (Menakhot 28b): “The height of the menorah is eighteen
handbreadths: the legs and the flower – three handbreadths, two handbreadths – smooth;
then a handbreadth in which are a cup and a knob and flower, and two handbreadths
smooth” (ill. 102).162 The sum of the units is symbolic: as written in Hebrew, the
number eighteen is ‫ חי‬that also means living and may allude to the everlasting nature of
the eschatological menorah and its light.163 Among the variety of three-legged seven-
branched menorahs depicted in ancient Jewish art, only a few demonstrate a similar
composition of the shaft (see, e.g., the menorah on a Jewish sarcophagus from the
Torlonia catacomb, ill. 96).164 It is thus striking that the proportions of the trunk to the
height of the foliage of the palm tree relief from Worms are the same as the Talmudic
ratio of the menorah’s shaft to the height of the branches, that is 8:10 (ill. 102), and that
the trunk is divided into sections including the three legs and two smooth sections above
and below a “cup” or “knob”-like node, although here the proportions are less exact.
The structural resemblance of the base and trunk of the palm tree relief from
Worms (ill. 81) to the legs and shaft of the menorah also implies the reading of the
whole image with seven leaves as a representation of the seven-branched menorah. The
interpretation of the menorah as a plant had its precedents in the Jewish art of previous
periods.165 First of all, the terms ‫“( פרח‬flower”) and ‫“( כפתור‬bud” or “knob”) used in the
Biblical description of the menorah (Ex. 25:33-35) associate it with a plant, and a
number of menorah images from the Mediterranean Diaspora had organic elements. For
example, in several examples of Jewish gold glass from Rome, the wavy outlines of the
arms or the small leaves attached to them give the menorah seemingly leafy branches
(e.g., ill. 103),166 perhaps to suggest that the inextinguishable messianic menorah is

———————————————————————————————————
162
See Sperber, “Between Jerusalem and Rome,” 50; idem, “The History of the
Menorah,” 135-159. The two lower pairs of leaves of the palm tree (ill. 102) do not
answer the demand of Menakhot 28b that all the menorah’s branches must rise up to the
same level. On deviations from this scheme of the menorah’s branches in Jewish art and
ritual objects, see ‫ מנהגי ישראל‬,‫ דניאל שפרבר‬5 (Jerusalem, 1995): 162-70; 6 (Jerusalem,
1998): 183-91. Note also the irregular branches of the menorah in Dura Europos (my ill.
121), and see the explanation below.
163
In the Bible, the menorah is said to have a ‫( נר תמיד‬ner tamid, “eternal lamp”). See
Ex. 27:20; Lev. 24:2-4.
164
See also the menorah in the ceiling painting of cubiculum II in the Torlonia
catacomb (Israeli, In the Light of the Menorah, 77 fig. 3).
165
See, e.g., Ameisenowa, “The Tree of Life in Jewish Iconography,” 326-45; L.
Yarden, The Tree of Life: A Study of the Menorah (London, 1971), 38-40.
166
See Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art – Diaspora, 298-300 nos. 9-11.
 61

associated with the unfading Tree of Life.167 Secondly, as was mentioned above, the
menorah and palm appeared together as messianic symbols in emblematic compositions
(e.g., ills. 84, 87, 92), and were often set beside each other in the synagogue interior, as
on the chancel screen from the synagogue of Susiya (ill. 88). Several examples
demonstrate that these two objects can be substituted for each other: for instance, the
scheme of the menorah flanked by birds on the ashlar from Priene (ill. 89) is akin to that
of the palm trees flanked by birds in the mosaic floor from Maon (ill. 87) and on the
carved screen from Susiya (ill. 64). In several other works, the design of the palm leaves
stresses its affinity to the menorah: for example, on the plaque from the Sardis
synagogue (ill. 93), the symmetrical palm tree or branch with a triangle on its trunk at
the left closely resembles a menorah, whereas in the relief from Ostia (ill. 91), a small
seven-branched symmetrical plant with an angular base is incised in the top of the
central branch of the menorah in addition to the more traditional representation of the
lulav to the left. This similarity is stressed in the seven-branched palm trees on Bar-
Kokhba’s coins (ill. 46), where the symmetrical scheme of seven branches clearly
alludes to the menorah. Another merging of the two images can be found on two
plaques from synagogues in Asia Minor (ills. 92-93): although no Jewish textual source
suggests that the menorah had a fourth pair of branches that spiraled upwards, a pair of
symmetrical curls emanate from the central stem of the menorah that look like the
sprouts of a plant. Similar spiral curls flank the stalk of the menorah on a 3rd or 4th-
century relief plaque from the Priene synagogue (ill. 94). Following Cohn-Wiener who
identified these spirals with the ends of Torah scrolls (cf. ill. 90), scholars have usually
given the same interpretation for all the spirals stemming from the stalk of the menorah,
disregarding their plant-like form.168
In contrast, Fine and Rutgers considered that these curves are the schematic
rudiments of the spiraling handles of the amphora depicted on the central stem beneath
the branches of the menorah engraved on a stone ashlar from Nicaea (now Iznik, Asia

———————————————————————————————————
167
Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, 4: 71-98, 12: 79-83; Yarden, The Tree of Life,
36 ff.
168
Ernst Cohn-Wiener, Die jüdusche Kunst, ihre Geschichte von den Anfängen bis
zur Gegenwart (Berlin, 1929), 112; Sukenik, Ancient Synagogues in Palestine and
Greece, 40-43; Y. Shiloh, “Torah Scrolls and the Menorah Plaque from Sardis,” Israel
Exploration Journal, 18 (1968): 54-57; Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art – Diaspora,
355-57; ‫" שנתון למקרא ולחקר‬,‫ "ספרי תורה וספרי מקרא במאות הראשונות לספירה הנוצרית‬,‫מנחם הרן‬
‫( המזרח הקדום‬1986): 103-104. On the horizontal position of the Torah scrolls in the Ark,
see ‫ מנהגי ישראל‬,‫ דניאל שפרבר‬4 (Jerusalem, 1995): 230-31.
 62

Minor) dated to the period between the 4th and the 6th century (ill. 104).169 This theory is
problematic because the opposite development from a common simple scheme of
spirals recalling plant imagery and scrolls into the design of an amphora with spiraling
handles cannot be excluded, especially since the plaque from Priene (ill. 94) appears to
be earlier (3rd or 4th century). Fine and Rutgers were also not concerned with why the
amphora had been inserted into the menorah and given oversized, spiraling handles, nor
why the handles and not the amphora proper were copied in other reliefs. The amphora
probably derives from the miracle of Hanukkah: the Maccabees found a jar containing a
one-day portion of liturgically pure oil for the Temple menorah and when they
rekindled it, it miraculously burnt for eight days until more oil had been purified.170
However, the vessel of pure sanctified oil also suggests the Messiah, literally the
“anointed one,” who would be anointed, according to a 4th-century Midrash on Exodus
16:33-34 from a flask of oil that would miraculously reappear with the other relics of
the Sanctuary just as the Hanukkah jar of oil had done.171 The use of the amphora of oil
as the base from which the branches of the eschatological menorah emerge, stresses the
miraculous and messianic nature of the Redemption, and the belief that it will lead to
the rebuilding of the Temple. At the same time, the non-extinguished light of the
Temple menorah may be identified with the Torah that is also associated with light.172
Consequently, the resemblance of the two emphasized spiraling handles of the amphora
to the two ends of an open spiraling scroll would symbolize the idea that both the Torah
and the Redemption emerge from the same Divine source. Since both the menorah and
———————————————————————————————————
169
Steven Fine and Leonard Victor Rutgers, “New Light on Judaism in Asia Minor
During Late Antiquity: Two Recently Identified Inscribed Menorahs,” Jewish Studies
Quarterly, 2 (1996), 1: 1-19. All the screens with spirals flanking the menorah’s stalk
appearing in reliefs from synagogues in Asia Minor are generally dated to a period from
the 4th to the 6th century as there is no clear indication of which of them are earlier
models or later versions of the iconographical scheme. Fine and Rutgers believe that the
menorah from Nicaea (ill. 104) is the original, complete iconographic model of the
menorah with the amphora in its center that later was abbreviated to curls flanking the
menorah.
170
Shabbat 21.
171
Mekhilta d’R. Ishmael, Beshalach (Ex. 13:17-17:14) 5; also Mekhilta d’R. Shimon
bar Yohai, Beshalach 12:1; Yoma 52b. A 9th or 10th-century Jewish exegesis on Psalms
132:17 (Midrash Tanhuma, Terumah [Ex. 25:1-27:19] 7) states that the oil for the light
(‫ )מאור‬of the Temple Menorah mentioned in Exodus 25:6 refers to the Messiah, the
Lord’s lamp (also ‫)מאור‬. For a hypothesis concerning the amphora of messianic oil and
its combination with a palm branch in Ancient Jewish art, see Roth, “Messianic
Symbols in Palestinian Archaeology,” 162-163 .
172
Prov. 6:23 states: “the commandment is a lamp; and the Torah – light.” See also
Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, 4: 90; Yarden, The Tree of Life, 49.
 63

the Torah are associated with the Tree of Life,173 the additional scroll-like branches,
which make the menorah resemble a plant, would suggest both these parables. Several
depictions of a menorah with branches and leaves growing from its stem in Hebrew
illuminated manuscripts dated to the second half of the 13th and 14th centuries (ills. 105-
108) demonstrate that this old motif survived in Jewish art for centuries both in the
Sephardic and Ashkenazi spheres, and that it was highly developed in the latter (ill.
108).
Such visual motifs and their symbolic interpretations could have made their way
from the Mediterranean synagogues to the Jewish communities of the Rhineland by
means of small objects with Jewish emblems, such as ancient coins, engraved stones
and glass vessels from the Holy Land brought back by pilgrims.174 As in previous
periods, the Jews in medieval Europe used traditional symbols in order to express their
essential beliefs, and at the same time to argue against the gentile point of view. As in
the Byzantine synagogues, in the synagogue of Worms the palm relief would also have
been an appropriate decoration on the partition separating the more sacred area of the
Torah shrine or the bimah where the Torah was read from the rest of the prayer hall, and
it would again have symbolized the Torah, the Redemption and the future Messianic
realm. However, in contrast to the situation in the early Christian period in the
Mediterranean area, the seven-branched candelabrum of the Jerusalem Temple was no
longer an appropriate decoration as it had became part of the standard church
furnishings of early medieval churches.175 Therefore, in this milieu, it could no longer
serve as a distinct national emblem. Although the Talmudic interdiction against making
a candelabrum like the Temple seven-branched menorah from any kind of metal176 had
———————————————————————————————————
173
This association is based on Prov. 3:18 stating that Wisdom is “a Tree of Life to
those who lay hold unto it” and the Talmud identifies Wisdom with the Torah in the
discussion of this verse in Berakhot 32b; cf. also Ta'anit 7a and Arakhin 15b. The 11th-
century Mahzor Vitry (‫ מחזור ויטרי‬no. 93) indicates that this verse from Proverbs was
already being said in the synagogue before the reading of the Torah at that time.
174
Note the testimony of the Rambam (‫ שו"ת רמב"ם‬no. 268). See also Mann, Jewish
Texts, 106-107; Dan Barag, “Glass Pilgrim Vessels from Jerusalem,” Journal of Glass
Studies, 12 (1970): 35-63; 13 (1971): 45-63.
175
The earliest extant seven-branched candelabrum, dated to ca. 1000, is found in the
Cathedral of Essen in the Rhineland. On this artistic tradition, see Peter Bloch,
“Siebenarmige Leuchter in christlichen Kirchen,” Wallraf-Richartz Jahrbuch, 23
(1961): 55-190; idem, “Seven-Branched Candelabra in Christian Churches,” JJA, 1
(1974): 44-49; Bianca Kühnel, “The Menorah and the Cross: The Seven-Branched
Candelabrum in the Church,” in Israeli, In the Light of the Menorah, 117-121.
176
Rosh Ha-shanah 24a-b; Avodah Zarah 43a; Menahot 28b.
 64

once had no effect on the very popular Jewish tradition of reproducing the seven-
branched menorah in various media, now, coupled with the practice of using the seven-
branched candelabra in Rhineland churches, it would prevent the Jews of the region
from having any volumetric likeness of the Temple menorah in the synagogue.
Instead, the Jewish patrons of the oldest synagogue in Worms decided to use a
parallel and equivalent image, the seven-branched palm tree that did not fall under the
prohibition of making an imitation of the Temple menorah or use Church imagery. The
seven branches, composite trunk and tripodal base of the palm tree they commissioned
(ills. 59, 81) also differs from the many-branched palms on the church chancel screens
(ills. 58, 84), in order to indicate that this is a Jewish national symbol of the future
Redemption and rebuilding of the Temple. The Jewish patron or programmer of the
synagogue decoration may well have known the emblem of the menorah with the added
scrolls, and in moving this imagery to his palm tree-menorah, he chose the pattern of the
branches spiraling downwards from the paradisiacal trees on pilgrim’s glass bottles and
church chancel screens (ills. 58, 84) as an appropriate model, thereby replacing the
symmetrical upwards spirals of the menorahs, which would look strange if adapted to a
tree. A more innovative trait of the palm tree from the Worms synagogue is that no
extra branches were added to the tree, but the outer pair of the seven leaves were
transformed into spirals.
Reading the combined image of the palm tree and the menorah in the changed
semantic context of the earliest synagogue of Worms, we may conclude that the formal
model of the paradisiacal palm whose spiral branches flank its trunk was apprehended
in the traditional terms of Jewish messianic symbols and was transformed into a
cumulative symbol of the eschatological Tree of Life alluding both to the Torah and to
the menorah of the Temple to be rebuilt in the messianic future. It is also possible that
the symbol of the Torah scrolls attached to a messianic palm tree appearing beneath the
text calling the congregation to remember Belette – donor of this part of the synagogue
decoration – for good, stressed the individual donor’s hope of redemption if she
devotedly fulfilled the Torah’s commandments. The Bible itself would provide a
constant reminder of this symbolism: the Torah is the “Tree of Life to those who lay
hold unto it” (Prov. 3:18) and the righteous “shall flourish like the palm tree” (Ps.
92:13).
An arboreal relief consisting of a trunk from which issue six asymmetric
branches on one end and seven asymmetric branches ending in small spirals on the
 65

other (ill. 110) was revealed in the southern façade of the synagogue in Rouen from ca.
1096-1116.177 The plant that seems to be a palm tree growing from large roots was
found in secondary use in the wall, turned 900 on its side (ill. 109). Maylis Baylé
showed that such long branches and spiraling edges were usual in decorative plant
reliefs of the Norman Romanesque around 1100.178 The style thus suggests that the
relief was produced when the synagogue was established, but the position of this stone
in the wall indicates that its use here is secondary. Bernhard Blumenkranz noted that if
one turns the relief clockwise, the upper part of the composition may be read as a
menorah lacking one its branches on the left, but he did not give any reason for such a
deviation from the seven-branched model.179 The identification of the palm tree relief
from Worms (ills. 81) with the arboreal menorah allows as to relate this allusion also to
the relief from Rouen: set counterclockwise (ill. 110), it forms a tree with seven leaves
and a ramose root that stresses the tree’s vitality. Thus the carver of the relief from
Rouen who somewhat crudely adopted the Norman Romanesque style, also reproduced
the symbolic palm tree, its seven leaves evoking the menorah and their spiraling edges
resembling Torah scrolls. In the synagogue of Rouen, the palm tree may have appeared
in the prayer hall, perhaps on the Ark or its forestructure, and was then turned on its side
to designate that the image was to be ignored. Although as part of the whole structure it
could not be destroyed or thrown away, it was taken out of the synagogue and built into
the southern façade in a barely perceptible spot close to the back wall of the entrance
staircase (ill. 109). As the relief does not protrude from the wall, it could easily have
been covered by plaster. This could have occurred as an iconoclastic act during the late
12th or early 13th century, at which time the arboreal image was removed and stored in
the genizah, which was sometimes situated between courses of stones in the synagogue
wall.180
In Worms, a second pier was also carved with a palm-tree relief (ills. 61, 83)181
whose composition is based on that of the first relief (ill. 81). This similar relief is also
found within a recessed rectangular panel (ill. 61). The two palm trees differ from each

———————————————————————————————————
177
Blumenkranz, “La synagogue à Rouen,” 41.
178
Maylis Baylé, “Les monuments juifs de Rouen et l’architecture romane ” in
Blumenkranz, Art et archéologie, 262-263.
179
Blumenkranz, “La synagogue à Rouen,” 41.
180
For an explanation of this date, see below, p. 73.
181
The pillar is ca. 33 cm high, 20 cm wide (in the bottom part - 28 cm wide) and 16 cm
deep. The left and rear surfaces of the pillar are crudely cut.
 66

other primarily in their proportions: the second one has only two roots, a shorter trunk
one-third of the tree’s height, and its leaves are thus more massive in shape and have a
broader fan-like spread. This heavier palm tree (ill. 83) seems later than its mate: it
resembles massive Romanesque palmettes, some of which also had seven leaves, such
as those found on the imposts and voussoirs of the northern portal of the synagogue
established in 1174-75 (ills. 42-43), and can thus be dated to the construction of the
second synagogue at that time. Although it probably retained the same symbolic
meaning as the first palm, care was no longer taken to stress the likeness of its
proportions to those of the Temple menorah. That this late Romanesque copy of the
1034 palm tree also appears on a pier suggests that it was part of the remodeling of the
interior that took place in the new synagogue.
This is borne out by the changes in the original pier and the supplementary
reliefs on the new pier. The tree reliefs that accompany the palm trees on the two piers
from the Worms synagogue demonstrate a further development in the arboreal
symbolism. On the side to the right of the 1034 dedication and palm tree (ill. 59), a
much larger tree with a bold wavy trunk supporting a grid of rhomboid leaves is carved
in flat relief (ill. 60). To the left of the same palm tree, a continuous relief of three
interlacing zigzag bands now covers the surface (ills. 59, 79). This is a wider, more
complex version of the two interlacing bands carved in 1174-75 on the portal’s imposts
(ills. 37-38) and on the capital of the eastern column (ill. 40). The zigzags on the pier
are to the right of what appears to be a colonette on a tripartite base (ill. 79). However,
when viewed full-face from the side opposite to the palm, and from an angle to the right
of the large tree, this shaft is seen to have been cut in a flat and crudely carved style
(ills. 80, 60). On the L-shaped side to the left of the later palm tree (ill. 61), a stem
bearing short branches ending in three-petaled leaves and round fruits is carved within a
shallow panel, to the left of which there is a section of a tripartite horizontal border (ill.
62).
The large tree on the right side of the early fragment (ill. 60) and the slim tree on
the later fragment (ill. 62) may be dated to the late Romanesque style of the late 12th or
early 13th century, as they resemble the trees on folio 64v in the Carmina Burana
illuminated in Upper Bavaria in the early 13th century (ill. 57). The two trees on either
side of the lower panel there have the same wide waving trunks; the left tree in the
upper panel has the same grid-like distribution of foliage, while the carved tree of the
shorter fragment (ill. 62) is similar to the tree with short branches, small sharpened
 67

leaves and round flowers depicted on the right in the upper panel. In contrast to that
tree, however, the round shapes on the tree relief are empty and may designate buds.
These two trees were most likely carved at the same time that the Romanesque copy of
the palm tree was executed (ill. 83). It is likely that the sculptor carved the thin
Romanesque tree and copied the old relief of the palm tree on a new pier, and than
added the waving Romanesque tree to the right of the old palm tree on the 1034 pier in
order to create a symmetrical composition of two similar palm trees and two other
contrasting arboreal images. This is borne out by the structural correspondences
between the two fragments: the similar distance between the lower side of the tree
panels and the bottom of the piers (ills. 59, 62), the unfinished lower section of the
waving tree (ill. 60) and the L-like profile of the later fragment suggest that the bottom
parts of both piers was inserted into a threshold or step, and that consequently the piers
flanked an aperture or passage. Consequently, the palms on the jambs faced each other,
while the two other trees appeared on the front, as is proposed in the reconstruction (ill.
111). The remaining section of a horizontal border to the left of the thin tree and the
broken left side of the L-shaped stone (ill. 62) suggests that this is a fragment of a wider
block. It is possible that in the synagogue these relatively low blocks served as parts of a
barrier before the Ark or around the bimah.
The similarity between the palm trees on piers from the Worms synagogue and
those on chancel screens in Byzantine synagogues and early medieval churches
reinforces this supposition (e.g., ills. 64, 85, 88). The concept of fencing off the sacred
area is Biblical,182 and partitions around the sacred area beyond which only a ritually
pure Jew could enter, were already present in the Temple in Jerusalem. However,
scholars believe that their reappearance in ancient synagogues was inspired by the
arrangement of Byzantine churches, where chancel screens in front of the apse and
around the altar separated the congregation from the clergy.183 Chancel screens
composed of stone plaques placed between pillars have been discovered in a number of
synagogues from the Byzantine period in the Holy Land and in the Diaspora, and these
partitions were placed in front of the eastern wall to separate the Ark, bimah and

———————————————————————————————————
182
Note God’s order to set bounds around Mount Sinai beyond which the Israelites
could not go (Ex. 19:12, 23).
183
Middot 2:3; Josephus Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, 15:417; S. G. Xydis, “The
Chancel Barrier, Solea and Ambo of Hagia Sofia,” The Art Bulletin, 29 (1947), 1-11;
Foerster, “Decorated Marble Chancel Screens,” 1809-20; Levine, The First Thousand
Years, 318.
 68

sometimes also seats for the elders from the rest of the prayer hall.184 One of the most
complete ancient chancel screens in front of the Ark known to us is that from the 5th or
the 6th century found in the synagogue in Susiya, southeast of Hebron (ill. 88).185
According to the reconstruction by Zeev Yeivin (ill. 112),186 the Ark stood on a stepped
platform protruding from the wall and consisted of a tripartite façade. In the center was
an apse for the Torah scrolls closed off by two doors, and in each lateral section there
was a smaller open apse housing a carved stone menorah. Before this façade, chancel
screens enclosed what may have been the area of the bimah, and a staircase in the center
of the platform led up to the Ark. This tradition could also have been known in the
European Diaspora.
In the Middle Ages, the Jewish communities of Italy, which had continuously
existed there from the 1st century B.C.E.,187 still practiced some old traditions, and
ancient synagogues and other Jewish monuments were still extant. The Jews of the
Rhineland, many of whom were immigrants from Italy, remained in close contact with
Italian Jewry, and may have imported ancient customs of synagogue planning and
decoration from there. Moreover, historical documents testify that during the first
centuries of their medieval settlement in Germany, the Jews also visited Jewish
communities in the northeast Mediterranean region and had connections with the Jews
in the Holy Land.188 Recent research on Jewish art has raised the hypothesis that some
———————————————————————————————————
184
Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art in Israel, 187-91; Joan R. Branham, “Sacred Space
under Erasure in Ancient Synagogues and Early Churches,” The Art Bulletin, 74
(1992), 3: 375-94; Levine, The First Thousand Years, 245, 317-18.
185
Zeev Yeivin, “Inscribed Marble Fragments from the Khirbet Sûsiya Synagogue,”
Israel Exploration Journal, 24 (1974): 201-209; idem, “Khirbet Susiya – the Bema
and Synagogue Ornamentation” in Rachel Hachlili, ed., Ancient Synagogues in Israel:
Third-Seventh Century C.E. (Oxford, 1989), 93-100; Shmarya Gutman, Zeev Yeivin
and Ehud Netzer, “Excavations in the Synagogue at Horvat Susiya,” in Levine, Ancient
Synagogue Revealed, 123-28; ‫ישראל‬-‫כנסת קדומים בארץ‬-‫ בתי‬,‫ אילן‬311-17;
"‫ "איקונוקלזם בבתי כנסת קדומים‬,‫ עמית‬6-19; ‫ "ח'רבת סוסיה" ציון‬,‫ זאב ספראי‬37 (1972): 231-36;
Habas, “The Bema and Chancel Screen in Synagogues,” 122 ff.
186
The reconstruction of the Ark in ill. 112 is a corrected version of Yeivin’s drawing
(Zeev Yeivin, “Khirbet Susiya,” plate LVII, fig. 5), showing the passage between the
Holy Ark and the pillars on the platform’s upper step in accordance with the ground
plan of the Ark and the platform in ibid., plate LI, fig. 3.
187
Cecil Roth, History of the Jews in Italy (Philadelphia, 1946); Attilio Milano, Storia
degli ebrei in Italia (Turin, 1963); [idem], “Italy,” EJ, 9: 1115-32.
188
Isaac ben Dorbelo, a 12th-century Jewish scholar wrote that he saw in Worms a letter
which Rhineland Jews sent to the Holy Land in 960, asking for verification of the
rumour that the Messiah had come, and until the period of the First Crusade, the Jews of
the Rhineland were engaged in trade with the East (A. Büchler, “Relation d’Isaac b.
 69

features of medieval Ashkenazi art can be traced back to artistic models in the Holy
Land and in the Mediterranean Diaspora. For instance, Elisabeth Revel-Neher
investigated the continuous development of the iconography of the Sanctuary objects
from the art of the ancient synagogues in the Holy Land through the Hebrew
manuscripts of medieval Egypt and Spain to Hebrew manuscripts produced in 14th-
century Germany (e.g., cf. ill. 97 vs. ills. 105-107, 113-114).189 Minor arts objects from
Israel also circulated among Sephardi Jews: Vivian Mann stressed that the Rambam
wrote that he had seen coins and engraved stones from the Holy Land, albeit without
specifying their images or period.190 The structural resemblance between the ancient
basilican synagogues of the Holy Land and the northern and eastern Mediterranean
region with the early basilican synagogues in medieval Germany suggests that similar
influences could also have been possible in the arrangement and decoration of the
partitions in the synagogues in the 11th century.
As we saw, such partitions were also used in Italian churches: for example, in St.
Peter’s in Rome, chancel screens set up before the shrine in 731-741 (ill. 85) were
decorated with the relief of an arcade resting on twisted columns and enclosing palm
trees. Actual twisted columns of the type believed to be from Solomon’s Temple
supported these chancel screens.191 Other church chancel screens were often decorated
with reliefs representing the cross, animals, trees and plants (e.g., ills. 58, 115). Both the
chancel screens of ancient synagogues and those between the supposed Temple columns
in St. Peter’s could have had an impact on Italian synagogues, so that those Jews who
emigrated from Italy to cities on the Rhine River would have known this tradition and
have brought it with them. Indeed, the foundations of the synagogue in Cologne
discovered in the stratum dated to 1096 suggest that it had a partition before the stone
platform of the Holy Ark (ill. 25a). Round depressions of 25 cm in diameter were made
in the stone pavement: two of them – indicated by black dots – are situated slightly
asymmetrically before the front corners of the platform, and two others were found to
———————————————————————————————————
Dorbelo sur une consultation envoyée par les Juifs du Rhin en l’an 960 aux
communautés de Palestine,” Revue des études juives [henceforth RÉJ] 44 [1902]: 238;
“Germany,” EJ, 7: 459-460).
189
Elisabeth Revel-Neher, Le signe de la rencontre: L’arche d’alliance dans l’art
juif et chrétien du second au dixième siècles (Paris, 1984); idem, Le témoignage de
l’absence: Les objets du sanctuaire à Byzance et dans l’art juif du XIe au XVe
siècle (Paris, 1998), passim.
190
‫ שו"ת רמב"ם‬no. 268 in Mann, Jewish Texts, 106-107.
191
Perkins, “The Shrine of St. Peter,” 21-33; 794 – Karl der Groβe, 150; 799-Kunst
und Kultur der Karolingerzeit, 617-19.
 70

the right of the platform closer to the east wall. Doppelfeld believed that the depressions
were the sockets of wooden pillars.192 In the ground plan, the location of these holes
traces an imaginary line that runs along the right section of the east wall, than protrudes
forward outlining the platform in the center. If there were once more such holes at the
northeastern section of the hall, these would continue the line parallel to the wall to the
north of the Ark. A rail or panels between the pillars standing in a line would complete
a chancel screen at a distance of 1.0 to 1.25 m from the east wall and from the Ark’s
platform (ill. 25b). As the bimah was in the middle of this synagogue, the platform in
front of the Ark was probably a place from which the Cohens blessed the
congregation,193 and the side wings of the barrier perhaps separated the seats of the
elders at the east wall from the rest of the hall. The use of the chancel screen may
already have been present in the 1034 synagogue of Worms. Certainly, in the 1174-75
———————————————————————————————————
192
Doppelfeld, “Die Ausgrabungen,” 125. Böcher assumed that the traces of piers
before the Ark related to an unidentified Ark construction (“Die Alte Synagoge,” 12-20,
n. 2a). Krinsky (Synagogues of Europe, 273-74) interpreted them as the frontal pair of
five pairs of cylindrical wooden piers that divided the 1096 building into three naves.
Since, these piers were 25 cm in diameter, they would have supported a light timber
ceiling. However, in Krinsky’s plan the colonnade does not include the depressions
between the southern corner of the Ark’s platform and and the southern wall, and the
latter is not on line with the southern colonnade. In her reconstruction, the bimah set
between the two rows of columns does not match the location of the bimah in
Doppelfeld’s ground plan (my ill. 25a, cf. also the comprehensive ground plan of the
excavations in his “Die Ausgrabungen,” facing p. 144). If one traces the colonnades
from the depressions in front of the Ark’s platform westwards, one or two central piers
in the northern colonnade would stand on the edge of the bimah. The function of a stone
quadrangular base (32x50 cm.) attached to the bench near the east wall, 1.2 m to the
right of the Holy Ark, and found in the same stratum (ill. 25a) is unknown, and may not
be unequivocally identified with fixtures such as the cantor’s stand, a base for a
menorah or the “seat of Moses” that was sometimes placed near the Holy Ark or the
east wall. A niche with an unidentified function is found in a similar position to the right
of the Holy Ark in the synagogues of Sopron (my ill. 116; Sándor [Alexandre] Scheiber,
“Une synagogue médiévale à Sopron,” RÉJ, 118 [1959-60]: 79-93, fig. 3).
193
The custom of the priestly benediction is ancient: it was instituted as a reminder of
the Temple after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Zeev Safrai stated
that in the ancient synagogues, the platform for the Cohens was based on the model of
the dukhan in the Temple (described in the Jerusalem Talmud, Sukkah 3, 53a) as an
elongated structure with three steps (Zeev Safrai, “Dukhan, Aron and Teva: How was
the Ancient Synagogue Furnished?” in Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues in Israel, 71).
There were different numbers of steps in ancient and medieval synagogues, thus it is
unclear whether the Talmudic description influenced those medieval Ark platforms
which had three steps (see, for example, my ills. 28, 30, 98). An early 16th-century
picture (my ill. 29) indicates that at that time the platform before the Holy Ark was also
the place where the Cohens stood to bless the congregation. The use of the platform and
steps before the Ark as the place for the priestly benediction remains the usual practice
in the synagogue service today.
 71

synagogue, the old tradition of screening off the Ark’s area conforms to the lack of a
need for an uninterrupted view of the Ark affirmed by the two-nave plan. It is probable
that a barrier, which was found at the front of the Ark’s platform until as late as the mid-
19th century (ills. 8, 10a), stood in the place of an earlier screen.
The two arboreal reliefs accompanying the palm trees on the two piers in the
1174-75 synagogue (ills. 60, 62) are new symbols that cannot be identified with the
traditional images of palm trees or vines. Yet, since they were the trees chosen to face
the congregation, they must have had a clear meaning for the Jewish community. The
thin tree with dry branches, small leaves and undeveloped buds (ills. 62) contrasts with
the bold tree with abundant foliage (ill. 60). This contrast suggests an association
between the two separate images, especially given their probable setting on both sides
of an entrance (ill. 111). Such a contrast between a flowering tree and an undeveloped
plant is found at each side of the Holy Ark in the 6th-century floor mosaic of the Beit
Alpha synagogue (ill. 95): the plant to the left has a thin stem with dry branches ending
with small blossoms shown in profile, while that at the right has a thicker stem that
resembles a tree trunk and branches with flowers and leaves. These two plants
appearing among the implements of the messianic Sanctuary are usually interpreted as
connected to Aaron’s rod. In the contest for the priesthood, Aaron’s rod miraculously
flowered while the rods of the other tribes of Israel remained barren. Aaron’s rod was
then placed before the Ark of the Testimony (Num. 17:18-25), and later became a
symbol of messianic revival: it was said to be one of the relics held within the lost Ark,
and it would be revealed in the future and given to the Messiah.194 Instead of depicting
any of the eleven sterile rods of the tribes of Israel, the artist in Beit Alpha had depicted
an initial and finishing situation of Aaron’s rod: the thin rod starts blooming, while the
full one has bloomed. The simultaneous depiction of Aaron’s rod in two different states
stresses the antithesis between the historical reality of the Exile of the people of Israel
and the miraculous realization of the Divine Promise of messianic Redemption in the
future.195

———————————————————————————————————
194
Yoma 52b, Pesakhim 54a. Jewish legends traced the history of this rod to Adam and
identify it with the scepter of the Patriarchs, the miraculous scepter of Moses, and stated
that it was in the hand of all the kings of Israel (Yalkut Shimoni 763; Pirke de Rabbi
Eliezer 40; Num. Rabba 18:23).
195
For different interpretations of these two plants, see E. L. Sukenik, The Ancient
Synagogue of Beth Alpha (Oxford, 1932); J. Leeven, The Hebrew Bible in Art
(London, 1944), 63; Rachel Wischnitzer, “The Meaning of the Beth Alpha Mosaic,”
Bulletin of the Israel Exploration Society, 18 (1954), 190-197; idem, “The Beth
 72

Later examples of such paired rods are present in the panels with the Temple
implements in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts from the 13th and 14th century in Spain.
One of these, from the Pentateuch produced in Catalonia ca. 1301 (ill. 107), represents a
pair of rods, each inscribed ‫“( מטה אהרון‬Aaron’s rod”), symmetrically set under the
menorah at each side of a jar: that at the left has a leaf in its top, and the one on the right
blossoms into flowers and leaves.196 As in the mosaic from Beit Alpha, the budding rod
expresses the belief that the first signs of salvation appear in the present, and the
flowering rod represents the Messianic future. The two contrasting trees from the late
12th-century Worms synagogue indicate that this ancient motif was also known in
medieval Ashkenazi art.
The use of this imagery in the Worms synagogue may have been in answer to
the reading of flowering and sterile rods in Christian art in the 12th-century. Christian
artists had also stressed the contrast between the blossoming rod, a traditional symbol of
Mary, and an infertile plant (e.g., ill. 431).197 They associated the blossoming rod with
the Tree of Life and Christianity, and the sterile rods with the Tree of Knowledge, the
fig tree cursed by Jesus (Matt. 21:19-21; Mark 11:13-14) and Judaism. They thus
interpreted this contrast as symbolizing the opposition between Christianity and
Judaism. In reply, the Jews interpreted the simultaneous display of the two stages in the
story of Aaron’s flowering rod in the synagogue as a symbol of God’s predisposition to
the people of Israel and not only to the Levites. Before reciting the weekly Torah
portion on Mondays and Thursdays the Jews affirmed that in spite of “the aliens” (i.e.,
Christians) saying that the people of Israel have become small and have no hope, God in
His mercy will fulfill His covenant and will redeem His people.198 This was also a
recommended Jewish response to Christians asserting that the oppressed position of the
———————————————————————————————————
Alpha Mosaic: A New Interpretation,” Jewish Social Studies, 17 (1955): 133-144;
Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, 1: 253; Bernard Goldman, The Sacred Portal (Detroit,
1966), 113; John Wilkinson, “The Beit Alpha Synagogue Mosaic: Towards an
Interpretation,” JJA, 5 (1978): 16-28; Marilyn J. Chiat, “Synagogues and Churches in
Byzantine Beit Shean,” JJA, 7 (1980): 6-24; Revel-Neher, Le signe de la rencontre,
126-131.
196
Revel-Neher, Le témoignage de l’absence, 67-71.
197
Dom B. Capelle, Typologie Mariale chez les Pères et dans la liturgie (Louvain,
1954), 225-249; Revel-Neher, Le témoignage de l’absence, 44-46. Cf. also Byzantine
paintings that closely followed the Biblical text, depicting only Aaron’s rod near the
Ark of the Covenant, or the flourishing rod versus eleven barren scepters of the princes
of Israel (see Revel-Neher, “Antiquus populus, novus populus,” 60-61; idem, Le
témoignage de l’absence, 28, 29, 45, 52, 59, pl. 6 and figs. 4, 46, 53).
198
‫ מחזור ויטרי‬no. 93.
 73

Jews proves that their faith is wrong.199 While Christians featured Judaism as a lifeless
relic of the past existing synchronically with the blossoming tree of Christianity, the
pair of trees from the Worms synagogue create a diachronic representation of the
vitality of contemporary Judaism and its flowering in the future realm of the Messiah,
who himself is associated with a “plant.”200 It is likely that in the synagogue of Worms,
as in the floor mosaic from the synagogue in Beit Alpha (ill. 95), the Holy Ark was seen
between these two contrasting trees that were set on the chancel screen.
This reconstruction ignores the colonette to the right of the large tree (ill. 60)
because this detail may have been added at a later date. The rugged surface of the
colonette (ills. 60, 80) suggests that it belonged to the rear side of a door frame or
opening, with the colonette’s round shaft and base is on its front. If so, the great tree (ill.
60) would have been concealed on the rear side of the barrier, whereas the zigzags and
the colonette’s round surface (ill.79) would have appeared on the pier’s façade. It thus
seems probable that the pier was remodelled a third time, and was turned around:
zigzags were carved on the new façade and the colonette was made to the left of it, so
that the palm tree on the side opposite to the colonette would have been attached to the
barrier. Since the relief of three interlacing zigzag bands (ills. 59, 79) is a wider version
of the interlacing pattern on the abacus of the western capital in the prayer hall (ill. 40)
and on the imposts of the synagogue’s portal (ill. 37-38), this side must still be
attributed to the Romanesque style. The remodeling was thus done in order to hide the
arboreal images rather than to replace an obsolete style. Seemingly, respect for the old
dedicatory inscription caused the synagogue officials to retain this pillar, but to change
its design, instead of removing it altogether, as was apparently done in the case of the L-
shaped pillar, that was not redecorated even though reliefs of trees covered only two of
its sides and the other two remained blank. Like the establishment of the women’s
annex in 1212-13 in order to adhere to a more strict separation of the sexes during
services, the change in attitude towards images in the synagogue was probably the
community’s reaction to the Crusader pogrom in 1196. The iconoclastic attitude could
have been inspired by the diatribe of Judah he-Hasid (ca. 1150-1217) against any
images in the visual environment of the Jews, or may have been influenced by a son of
Judah Kalonymus of Worms and a student of Judah he-Hasid, Eleazar Rokeah (ca.
1165- ca. 1230), a charismatic figure and the last major scholar of the Hasidei Ashkenaz

———————————————————————————————————
199
‫ ספר נצחון ישן‬,‫ ברויאר‬18 no. 266.
200
Isa. 4:2; Jer. 23:5, 33:15; Zech. 3:8, 6:12.
 74

movement, who spent most of his life in Worms.201 Their objection to arboreal reliefs is
echoed by their younger contemporary R. Isaac Or Zaru’a (ca. 1180- ca. 1250), who
clearly forbade depictions of trees in the synagogues. The prohibition was not all-
inclusive and perhaps depended on the location and stylization of the arboreal reliefs.
The ornamental vine and palmettes that continued to decorate the entrance portal and
the capitals of the two great columns in the prayer hall did not fall under a ban, whereas
the more naturalistic and full arboreal images on the piers that would have been exposed
to the congregation during services became objectionable and had to be hidden.
The Holy Ark in Early Ashkenazi Synagogues and the Zoomorphic
Reliefs from the Synagogue of Worms
Whereas the earliest reliefs on the two pier fragments suggests that in 1034,
1174-75 and perhaps during the 1212-13 restoration, the platform before the Holy Ark
of Worms was enclosed with a decorated parapet, there are no fragments from Worms
or from other Romanesque Arks that would give us clear information on their structure
and decoration. In fact, only one of the carved stone fragments from the Worms
synagogue that Böcher attributed to the Ark seems to date from the Romanesque Ark.
This is a fragment of a stone cornice with a moulding and vines (ills. 75 no. 13; 116-
17), where large clusters of grapes and five-petalled leaves are alternately set into
medallions, and additional small clusters of grapes are attached to the medallions from
outside. Although this design differs from the one carved on the original voussoir of the
north portal of the synagogue (ill. 42), which has a double line forming the medallions
and small leaves rather than clusters growing from them, the scheme is similar and may
date this fragment to the earliest stage of the decoration of the 1174-75 synagogue. As
in ancient Jewish art and also on the portal of the synagogue of Worms, the trailing vine
branch may allude to the vital nature of the Jewish people, Judaism and the Torah, and
to their eschatological triumph. The Midrash (Lev. Rabba 36:2) also gives a symbolic
interpretation of the vine with great and small clusters as the Jews, some of whom are
greater in their knowledge of the Torah and others less so. However, the secure
identification of this stone as a part of the Ark’s frame rather than as part of a door or
window jamb is impossible because of our lack of knowledge of the general layout of
the Ark in Romanesque synagogues. Thus before we can attribute any fragment to the
———————————————————————————————————
201
Scholem, Major Trends, 80-118; [Joseph Dan], “Eleazar ben Judah of Worms,” EJ,
6: 592-94; ‫ חיבוריהם ושיטתם‬,‫ תולדותיהם‬:‫ בעלי התוספות‬,‫ אורבך‬.‫( אפרים א‬Jerusalem, 1955),
321-41.
 75

Ark, we must clarify what the early Arks of the Worms synagogue could have looked
like. This question is plagued by the gap in our knowledge about Arks in European
synagogues from late Antiquity until the pictorial representations of medieval German
Arks in 13th century Hebrew illuminated manuscripts.202
The earliest tradition of the permanent repository of the Torah scroll in the
synagogue as revealed in excavations has been studied in depth.203 The Torah Arks that
have been discovered in ancient synagogues take the form of a niche, apse or
aedicula.204 Relief carvings sometimes adorned the stone gable above the niche for the
Torah scroll as in the 6th-century Arks from the synagogues of Nevoraya (Nabratein)
and of Dalton in the Upper Galilee.205 In Nevoraya (ill. 118), two heraldic rampant lions
surmount a triangular pediment containing open flowers in the corners of the triangle
and a conch in the top of the Torah niche. The lions serve as guardians of the synagogue
Ark instead of the Biblical cherubim surmounting the Holy Ark in the Sanctuary. Vines
were also depicted in relief in the ancient Arks: in Dalton (ill. 47), vines with clusters of
grapes parallel the lines of the gable, which also contains a conch above the Torah
niche, while an open flower appears in each upper corner of the stone panel. The
archeological finds also reveal that the stone shrine was placed on a podium or that a
niche for the Torah scrolls was built into the wall with steps ascending to it, and that it
often also had columns in front of it to form an aedicula. In such aediculae the Torah
scrolls were laid horizontally or stood diagonally on shelves (ills. 90, 119), or were
placed vertically in a round case or within the niche.206
Evidence of Holy Arks from the ancient European Diaspora is found in the
———————————————————————————————————
202
There are no known Hebrew manuscripts illuminated in Europe before the 1230s
(Bezalel Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts [Jerusalem, 1978], 29).
203
See the summation in "‫ "ממרכז קהילתי למקדש מעט‬,‫ לוין‬57-59.
204
Rachel Hachlili, “The Niche and the Ark in Ancient Synagogues,” Bulletin of the
American Schools of Oriental Research, 223 (1976): 43-53; idem, Ancient
Synagogues in Israel, 166-194; idem, Ancient Jewish Art – Diaspora, 292-304, 360-
73. See also"‫ "ממרכז קהילתי למקדש מעט‬,‫ לוין‬57-59.
205
E. M. Meyers and C. L. Meyers, “Ark in Art, A Ceramic Rendering of the Torah
Shrine from Nabratein,” Eretz-Israel, 1 (1982), 16: 176-85; -‫כנסת קדומים בארץ‬-‫ בתי‬,‫אילן‬
‫ ישראל‬28, 45-47.
206
The placement of the Torah scrolls in the Ancient Arks is discussed in ,‫ברכה יניב‬
‫ התיק לספר תורה ותולדותיו‬,‫( מעשה חושב‬Jerusalem, 1997), 15-37. See also Hachlili, “The
Niche and the Ark in Ancient Synagogues,” 43-53; idem, Ancient Synagogues in
Israel, 166-194; idem, Ancient Jewish Art – Diaspora, 292-304, 360-373; Carl H.
Kraeling, The Synagogue: The Excavations of Dura Europos, 8, Final Report, 1
(New York, 1979): 54-65; Revel-Neher, Le signe de la rencontre, 81-86; Levine, The
First Thousand Years, 43-53, 327-32.
 76

depictions of the Sanctuary in Jewish funeral art in Rome from the end of the 2nd to the
4th century C.E. Discussing depictions of the Holy Ark in Jewish catacomb paintings,
graffiti, and drawings on gold glass, researchers noticed that, in the words of Steven
Fine, “just as the Torah shrine was modeled upon the Temple in Jerusalem, the Temple
of Jerusalem came to be seen in terms of the synagogal Torah shrine.”207 The Ark is
represented with a triangular pediment and doors (e.g., ills. 90, 119).208 Floor mosaics
(e.g., ill. 95), reliefs from the synagogues in Israel, and the Ark and paintings from the
synagogue in Dura Europos (built in the second century C.E., expanded and redecorated
in 244-45, ill. 120) demonstrate that an aedicula alluding to the Temple of Jerusalem
was a common structure of the Torah shrine in ancient synagogues. Basing themselves
on these depictions, scholars reconstructed remnants of a stone Ark from the 4th century
in the synagogue of Ostia near Rome as a structure in which steps lead up to a chest
built into the apse with shelves for Torah scrolls (ill. 121).209 The columns flanking the
steps bear a pediment supported by marble corbels. Extant fragments of the corbels
demonstrate that the Ark was adorned with reliefs of a menorah, shofar, etrog and lulav,
symbols that relate to the Temple in Jerusalem (ill. 91).210 While the details of the
architectonic members and the arrangement of the repository of the Torah scrolls
differed, the façade-like appearance of the Ark was thus apparently a common feature in
ancient synagogues both in Israel and in the Diaspora.
The identification of the synagogue Ark with the Biblical Sanctuary, which was
found both in the ancient synagogues and in eschatological depictions of the Temple,
seems to have been continued into the Middle Ages. Therefore, the earliest known
depictions of the Temple in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts from the Ashkenazi
Diaspora can clarify what the early Ashkenazi Arks looked like. Several such examples
appear in the first volume of the so-called Worms Mahzor from 1272 (ills. 48, 122-23).
———————————————————————————————————
207
Fine, This Holy Place, 155.
208
Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, 4: 99-144; Revel-Neher, Le signe de la rencontre,
95 ff., figs. 17-28; Leonard Victor Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome:
Evidence of Cultural Integration in the Roman Diaspora (Leiden, 1995), 81-85;
Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art – Diaspora, 263-304.
209
E. M. Meyers and C. L. Meyers, “Finders of a Real Lost Ark,” Biblical
Archaeology Review, 7-6 (1981): 24-36; Steven Fine and M. Della Pergola, “The
Synagogue of Ostia Antica and its Torah Shrine” in The Jews of Ancient Rome
(Jerusalem, 1994), 42-57; Levine, The First Thousand Years, 327-36.
210
Squarciapino, “The Synagogue of Ostia,” 19-26; Wischnitzer, Architecture, 5-7;
Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art – Diaspora, 53-55, 216, 280, 409; Levine, The First
Thousand Years, 255-58.
 77

They are monumental semicircular arches resting on ornamented pillars set on the backs
of animals, sometimes flanked by turrets and accompanied by single figures or
figurative scenes.211 Flowers, birds, grotesque monsters and stars appear in the arches,
and undulating plants and rectangular frames decorate the pillars. In addition, a
grotesque figure appears on the capital of the left pillar and a stylized sun and moon are
set within the arch of the gateway in folio 39v (ill. 122). This manuscript was produced
in Würzburg by Simha ha-Sofer (“the scribe”), son of Judah the scribe of Nuremberg,
and Shemaiah ha-Tzarefati (“the Frenchman”), who may have been the artist. It must be
stressed that the name of Worms was given to the Mahzor only after the Jewish
community of Würzburg was destroyed in 1298 and refugees brought the manuscript to
Worms, where it was kept in the Old Synagogue from 1578 to 1938.212 Although
Shemaiah probably did not copy architectonic designs from the Worms synagogue, his
paintings are an early surviving witness to a type of decorated sacred portal designed in
an older style than that current in 1272. Bezalel Narkiss and Aliza Cohen-Mushlin have
noticed that whereas the windows and roof of the turrets flanking the arch in folio 151r
(ill. 48) have distinctly Gothic shapes and ornamentation, the arches on zoomorphic
supports resemble the great portals of Romanesque churches.213 Even the lintel
connecting the imposts on these pages is a true feature of Romanesque portals such as
that on the façade of the Cathedral of San Rufino in Assisi dated to 1140 (ill. 124). Like
the portals in the Worms Mahzor, the portal from San Rufino combines an arch with a
lintel, and its jambs are set on beasts and decorated with medallions containing open
flowers and symbolic animals. The pictures of portals in the 1272 Worms Mahzor
demonstrate that 12th-century Romanesque architectonic patterns were still being
depicted in Jewish art in Germany a century later, and that they could be merged with
contemporary Gothic imagery. This parallels the way the synagogue grew, adding new
elements to the old ones.
In the manuscript, the monumental portals derive their meaning from the text
and the accompanying images. In folio 39v (ill. 122), the man holding a great balance
within the arch and the text below refer to Sabbath Shekalim and the story of the
———————————————————————————————————
211
Since fols. 86v and 151r (my ills. 48, 123-24) have been cropped at the top and
bottom, only the lower parts of the scenes at the top of them are seen.
212
See Malachi Beit-Arié, “The Worms Mahzor: Its History and Its Palaeographic and
Codicological Characteristics,” and Bezalel Narkiss and Aliza Cohen-Mushlin, “The
Illumination of the Worms Mahzor,” in Worms Mahzor, Introductory volume, 13-35
and 79-89 respectively.
213
Narkiss and Cohen-Mushlin, “The Illumination of the Worms Mahzor,” 81.
 78

weighing of the shekels for payment in the Temple, so that the arch represents the
façade of the Temple.214 In folio 86v (ill. 123), the people at the Passover table depicted
above the arch and the piyyut about the “light of salvation” allude to the Divine
redemption promised in the Torah, so that the arch could imply the eschatological
“Lord’s gate of righteousness” (cf. Isa. 26:2, Ps. 118:19), which is mentioned in the
Haggadah. The third gate (ill. 48) frames the liturgical poem Adon Imnani (“The Lord
Was My Faithful Companion”) by Simeon bar Isaac ben Abun of Mainz (born ca. 950),
which is said on the first day of Shavuot.215 The poem is illustrated with a scene of the
giving of the Torah at the top of the page, and is surrounded by men holding banderoles
inscribed with the Ten Commandments.216 This gate thus implies the realm of Jewish
Law and may therefore refer to the original abode of the Ten Commandments in the Ark
of the Covenant or to that of the Torah in the synagogue Ark. If the Jews of Germany –
like those of ancient Italy and the Holy Land – identified the synagogue Ark with the
façade of the Biblical Sanctuary, the Romanesque portals in the Worms Mahzor reflect
the forms of Romanesque Torah Arks as well as the Temple and the heavenly gate. It is
also possible that some of the decorative motifs, including the lions, zoomorphic
monsters and plants, embellishing these gates in the Mahzor once appeared on the
architectonic frames of Holy Arks.
Two types of evidence of this practice exist at Worms: one written and one
visual. The “Customs of Worms Jewry” compiled by Juda Löw Kirchheim before the
pogrom in the synagogue in 1615 reports on a sculptured “head of a lion standing in the
eastern wall” (‫ )ראש הארי העומד בכותל של מזרח‬of the Worms synagogue.217 Although this
lion was lost perhaps as early as 1615, in the 19th century this side of the synagogue was
still called the Löwenseite.218 Kirchheim testified that in the course of the marriage

———————————————————————————————————
214
Ex. 30:11-16. The inscription on the bowls of the balance reads on the right “shekel”
and on the left “Israel.” On this picture, see also Rachel Wischnitzer, “The
Moneychanger with the Balance: A Topic of Jewish Iconography” in idem, From Dura
to Rembrandt, 120-24; Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts, 92.
215
Israel Davidson, Thesaurus of Mediaeval Hebrew Poetry, 1 (New York, 1970): 24
no. 484.
216
Gabrielle Sed-Rajna, Le Mahzor enluminé (Leiden, 1983), 24-25; Narkiss and
Cohen-Mushlin, “The Illumination of the Worms Mahzor;” Marc Epstein, Dreams of
Subversion, 62.
217
‫ מנהגות וורמייזא‬,‫ קירכום‬79.
218
David Kaufmann, Gesammelte Schriften, 1 (Frankfurt an Main, 1908): 97. No trace
of the lion was discovered in the excavations in the 1960s (Böcher, “Die Alte
Synagoge,” 35).
 79

ceremony at the entrance to the wedding hall, that is in the small square in front of the
Braut Haus to the south of the synagogue (ill. 7 no. 8), the bridegroom throws the glass
at the wall on the head of the lion and then immediately rushes back to the wedding
hall.219 When the bridegroom and his entourage entered the synagogue during the earlier
stages of the wedding ceremony, Kirchheim duely noted this fact, explaining that they
used a shortcut through the small door in the synagogue’s southern wall.220 Since
Kirchheim does not repeat this detail in relation to the breaking of the glass, it is more
likely that in Worms the lion was set on an outer wall, rather than that the bridegroom
threw the glass at the eastern wall inside the synagogue. Kirchheim’s account is not
clear on whether the head was part of a whole figure of lion or was only a head or a
mask, and whether it was made in relief or in the round. Instead, the text apparently
describes its use as a “wedding stone” on the outer wall of the synagogue for the
ceremony of breaking a glass that was customary among German Jews.221
The earliest clear evidence on the precise position of such wedding stones on the
exterior in other synagogues in Germany dates from the 18th century, and locates it at
the eastern corner on the northern wall of the synagogue.222 Shalom Sabar supposed that
the position of the wedding stone on the northern wall of synagogues was inspired by
———————————————————————————————————
219
‫ מנהגות וורמייזא‬,‫ קירכום‬76-79. The wall connecting the northern wall of the
synagogue and the southeastern corner of the synagogue (ills. 7, 13) and thus blocking
the shortest passage to the prayer hall through the small door was built after Kirchheim
wrote his memoirs.
220
Ibid., 77.
221
The custom of throwing a glass with wine at the wall in order to break it is described
in the 11th-century Mahzor Vitry (‫ מחזור ויטרי‬no. 470). On the wedding stone (also
‫שטיין‬-‫חופה‬, “huppah-stone”), see Joseph Gutmann, “Wedding Customs and Ceremonies
in Art” and Jacob Z. Lauterbach, “The Ceremony of Breaking a Glass at Weddings” in
Joseph Gutmann, ed., Beauty in Holiness: Studies in Jewish Customs and
Ceremonial Art (New York, 1970), 313-69; Joseph Gutmann, “Jewish Medieval
Marriage Customs in Art: Creativity and Adaptation” in D. Kraemer, ed., The Jewish
Family: Metaphor and Memory (Oxford, 1989), 47-62; ‫ "החופה במקורות‬,‫דוד שפרבר‬
"‫ ההלכה והאמנות‬in ‫ מנהגי ישראל‬,‫ דניאל שפרבר‬4: 136-78; Gerbern S. Oegema ,The History
of the Shield of David: The Birth of a Symbol (Frankfurt am Main, 1996), 93-97;
‫" רימונים‬,‫גבי חיתולים לספרי תורה מגרמניה‬-‫ "סצנות חתונה על‬,‫ שלום צבר‬6-7 (1999): 47-49.
222
For example, see pictures of the Old Synagogue in Fürth: J. A. Bitner of Nuremberg
1705 engraving (Helmut Eschwege, Die Synagoge in der deutschen Geschichte
[Dresden, 1980], 68 fig. 28) and two scenes of marriage and breaking a glass in P. Chr.
Kirchner’s Judisches Ceremoniell, Nuremberg, 1724, pl. 22-23 (Krautheimer,
Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 129 fig. 33; ‫" רימונים‬,‫ "מנהגי חופה באמנות יהודית‬,‫ דוד שפרבר‬6-7
[1999]: 60 fig. 14). The picture of this synagogue by Paul Nusbiegel of Nuremberg (in
J..C..G. Bodenschatz, Kirchliche Verfassung der Beutigen Juden [Erlang, 1748], 127
fig. XI; reproduced in Eschwege, Die Synagoge, 84 fig. 58) is a mirror remake of
Kirchner’s pl. 23 and thus is not true evidence on this point.
 80

the belief that breaking the glass scares off the demons that came from the North, as is
explained in the Bible, “Out of the North evil shall break forth” (Jer. 1:14).223 This idea
can also be used to explain the position of the wedding stone on the southern wall, as in
that case the glass would be thrown northwards, in the direction of the demons. Thus the
Maharil of Mainz (Jacob Möllin, ca. 1360-1427) advised the bridegroom breaking the
glass to turn northwards, suggesting that the bridegroom faced the wedding stone on the
synagogue’s southern wall.224 In Worms, the location of the lion “on the eastern wall”
of the synagogue would still conform to the same idea, since the wedding hall was
situated south of the synagogue, and since the eastern section of the northern wall there
was blocked by the women’s chamber built in 1212-13, and the western section of that
wall contained the monumental portal and great 1034 inscription (ills. 7-8). The actual
location may have been on the eastern wall between the window and the southern corner
(ill. 13), a distance of some twenty steps from the wedding hall (ills. 7-8). If so, the
bridegroom approached the synagogue facing north-northeast via a small plaza before
the hall (ill. 7), and threw the glass from the narrow Hintere Judengasse directly
northwards to the wedding stone on the eastern wall, in accordance with the Maharil’s
prescription.
However, the use of a lion or other zoomorphic image on a wedding stone that
usually bore only a star or a cornucopia is exceptional. The common practice of reusing
old synagogue decorations suggests that the lion from the Worms synagogue had
originally been a part of the interior decoration, perhaps – given its reuse on the eastern
wall – part of the Ark as in Nevoraia (ill. 118). In order to examine this possibility, we
must briefly review the use of lions in synagogue decorations from ancient times
through the medieval period. Sculptured lions were found in the synagogues of Late
Antiquity (see, for instance, ills. 118, 125-128). As we already saw in a responsum by
Eliakim ben Joseph from Mainz (born ca. 1070), “shapes of lions” were present in
synagogue decoration in Medieval Europe.225 His testimony is borne out by a lion relief
that was discovered in an upside-down position under a column on the southern façade
of the synagogue in Rouen (ill. 129). Baylé convincingly argued that this position and
the fact that the lion stands on an astragal and that the form of the stone on which it is
carved is more appropriate for a capital, all suggest that it was originally a capital and

———————————————————————————————————
223
"‫ "סצנות חתונה‬,‫ צבר‬49.
224
See Lauterbach, “The Ceremony of Breaking a Glass at Weddings,” 358.
225
See note 95 above.
 81

that it was later turned upside down for use as a column’s base.226 It is possible that – as
in the case of the palm tree relief from the same synagogue (ills. 109-10) – the inversion
of the lion relief and its transfer to a less visible place was made in order to hide the
image without discarding a part of the sacred synagogue building. Baylé also reported
that the lion seen on the photograph from Rouen has an additional body attached to its
head, attributing the scheme of “one head – two bodies” to the Norman Romanesque
sculpture of the early 12th century.227 Later this motif reappeared in Hebrew
manuscripts: such a lion and a bull with one head and two bodies support the pillars of
the arch depicted on fol. 127v in the Laud Mahzor from Southern Germany, ca. 1290
(ill. 130). They may have been inspired by the lions and oxen decorating the “bases of
brass” in Solomon’s Temple (I Kings 7:29).
Several Biblical references mention artistic renderings of lions: sculptured lions
not only decorated the bases (‫ )מכנות‬of brass in Solomon’s Temple (I Kings 7:29), but
sat on the steps leading to his throne and on its sides (I Kings 10:18-20). The universal
symbolism of the lion as the embodiment of power and kingship was emphasized in the
Bible and in the Talmud.228 Basing themselves on the image of Judah as “a lion’s
whelp” (Gen. 49:9), Jews associated the lion with the tribe of Judah and with King
David229 whose offspring would be the Messiah.230 Lions flanking the Holy Ark or
bimah in ancient synagogues (ills. 90, 95, 118, 125-26) have positive meanings as
mystical guardians and messianic signs. However, the concept of the lion in the Bible is
dual: the royal and messianic lion of Judah (Gen. 49:9) contrasts with the malevolent
lions that threaten Samson (Jugs. 14:5-6) and Daniel (Dan. 6:7-24), and these evil lions
are trampled by God (Ps. 91:13). Along with the benevolent lions that guard the Ark
(ill. 118), it is likely that the malevolent lions were also already used in synagogue Arks
in late Antiquity. According to Hachlili’s reconstruction, the sculptured lion’s forepart
on the stone from the synagogue in Ein Neshut (ill. 127) served as a support for the
columns of the Holy Ark (ill. 128). On a side of the slab is a human figure with raised
hands standing between two lions that represents Daniel in the lion’s den (Dan. 6:16-
———————————————————————————————————
226
Baylé, “Les monuments juifs,” 263-64.
227
Ibid. Cf. also Michael D. Gosten and Catherine Oakes, Romanesque Churches of
the Loire and Western France (Stroud, 2000), 112-13.
228
See Amos 3:8; Hagigah 13b.
229
See Rashi’s commentary on Ex. 49:9.
230
Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, 7: 78-81; [Jehuda Felix and Louis Isaac
Rabinowitz], “Lion,” EJ, 11: 262-76. Cf. also II Esdras 12:31, which states that the lion
“is the Messiah, [...] who will arise from the posterity of David.”
 82

24).231 Both of the lion motifs here seem to be part of the same semantic program: the
lions flanking the figure embody malevolent powers, and the volumetric lions that seem
to be trapped under the columns on the façade symbolize evil conquered by the Torah in
the spirit of Psalms 9:13. The same symbolism was used in medieval Christian art,
where Christ or a saint tread on a lion who symbolizes Satan (1 Pet. 5:8). Similarly,
lions placed under the columns of Romanesque and Gothic churches (e.g., ill. 131)
represent the evil which the Church defeats.232 This same idea may have inspired the
placement of the relief of the lion (ill. 129) under load-bearing architectonic elements as
a symbol of conquered evil. Moreover, in the Romanesque decoration dating to the
second or third quarter of the 12th century in Worms Cathedral, both types of lions
appear: the malevolent lions threaten Daniel in the den in a high relief on the southern
portal (ill. 132),233 and the lion in the round that survives at the southern side of the
Cathedral (ill. 133) was probably a benevolent guard.234
A pair of sculpted lions holding up an architectonic structure was a popular
motif in the medieval church architecture of Italy, France and Germany, and it
influenced depictions of portals in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts. A few examples
are found in the Worms Mahzor: the scene of weighing the shekels for payment in the
Temple (ill. 123; Ex. 30:11-16) alludes also to the weighting of the souls on the last day
of Judgment, and the lion under the right column symbolizes Satan trying to tip the
scales in his favour. Similarly, the lions snuggling under the pillars of the great gate on
folio 86v (ill. 123) can allegorize malicious forces trampled and as if blinded by the
“light of salvation” that is mentioned in the piyyut written within the gate. 235
From ca. 1200 on, the Christian parabolic interpretation of Solomon’s throne as
———————————————————————————————————
231
Z. Ma’oz, “The Art and Architecture of the Synagogues of the Golan” in Levine,
Ancient Synagogue Revealed, 111-12; Hachlili, Art and Archaeology – Israel, 277
fig. 24b, 321-23, pl. 26.
232
L. Réau, L’iconographie de l’Art Chrétien, 2/1 (Paris, 1956): 289; Schiller,
Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 3: 131-35; P. Bloch, “Löwe” in Kirschbaum,
ed., Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, 3: 112-19; Richard Bernheimer,
Romanische Tierplastik (Munich, 1931), 119; V. H. Débidour, Le Bestiaire Sculpté
du Moyen Age en France (Artaud, 1961), 64.
233
Eduard Sebald, “Neue Erkenntnisse zum Romanischen Südportal des Worms
Doms,“ Der Wormgau, 15 (1987-91): 90.
234
The lion’s body is too thin to bear a column or figure on its back, and there are no
clear traces on the back that could testify that this lion served as a support.
235
Wischnitzer, “The Moneychanger with the Balance;” Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated
Manuscripts, 92; Narkiss and Cohen-Mushlin, “The Illumination of the Worms
Mahzor,” 81.
 83

the sedes sapientiae (“Throne of Wisdom”) had inspired depictions of the Madonna
replacing Solomon on his throne in order to allude to the eternal wisdom which was
revealed by Christ.236 The Biblical model of Solomon’s throne was reproduced in royal
thrones and bishopric cathedrae resting on or flanked by lions (e.g., ill. 134).237 In the
Romanesque bishop’s throne in the Cathedral of Lund (ill. 135),238 the lions flanking the
chair were inspired by the model of Solomon’s throne, whereas the cherubim above
them belong to the Ark of the Covenant (Ex. 25:22), and, in this context, the columns
with richly ornamented capitals supporting the arch allude to the Sanctuary. This
combination of images expressed the symbolic parallel between Solomon’s throne as
the sedes sapientiae and the Ark above which God was said to sit (I Sam. 4:4).
Jewish exegesis also associated Solomon’s Throne with the Divine Throne of
Glory and the Ark of the Covenant and it could have inspired sculptures of lions in
synagogues. In discussing the Ark made by Bezalel, Midrash Tanhuma (Vayakhel 7)
states that the Ark corresponds to the celestial Throne of Glory, as the prophet said: “A
glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary” (Jer. 17:12). The
Bible also calls Solomon’s throne “the throne of the Lord” (I Chr. 29:23), and Exodus
Rabba (15:26) develops this parallel: Solomon sits on the seventh level above the six
steps, and God sits on the seventh heaven above the six celestial spheres. This source
also reinterprets the lions and oxen decorating the “bases of brass” in Solomon’s
Temple (I Kings 7:29) as embellishing his throne, and stresses that these animals also
appear in the Divine chariot (Ezek. 1:10, 10:14).239
The 13th-century Jews were familiar with Christian theological interpretations of
Solomon’s throne,240 and, as Shalev-Eyni suggested, the iconography of the sedes
sapientiae had its effect on the scene of the Judgment of Solomon from the Tripartite

———————————————————————————————————
236
Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, 1: 23-25.
237
Francis Wormald, “The Throne of Solomon and St. Edward’s Chair,” Essays in
Honour of Erwin Panofsky: De Artibus opuscula, 40 (New York, 1961): 532-39;
Andreas Alföldi, “Des Geschichte des Throntabernakels,” La Nouvelle Clio, 1-2 (1949-
50): 535-66.
238
Aron Andersson, L’Art Scandinave, 2 (La Pierre-qui-Vire, 1968): 41-45; Anthony
Blunt, “The Temple of Solomon with Special Reference to South Italian Baroque Art”
in Artur Rosenauer and Gerold Weber, eds., Kunsthistorische Forschungen. Otto
Pächt zu zeinem 70. Geburtstag (Salzburg, 1972), 259.
239
Cf. also Song of Songs Rabba 3:4.
240
Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages, 166 (English
Section), 105 (Hebrew Section).
 84

Mahzor (ill. 136).241 In the illumination, Solomon points at the scroll of the Torah, the
source of his wisdom, contained in the turret of his throne. These contents make the
turret resemble a tower-like Gothic Ark (e.g., ill. 288). In his choice of the animals on
the steps of the throne and above the king’s head, the artist of the Tripartite Mahzor
departed from the Biblical account of seven pairs of lions (I Kings 10:20) and followed
the Midrash that tells of six pairs of different animals on the steps and golden lions and
eagles beside the throne.242 A golden lion opposing a golden ox on the first step alludes
to the parallel between Solomon’s throne and the Divine Chariot in Exodus Rabba
15:26. As a result, in this picture Solomon’s Throne of Wisdom is supplied with lions,
serves as the Holy Ark containing the Law, and is an earthy parallel to the heavenly
Divine Throne.243
From this examination of the use and meaning of lions in the synagogue and
their connection to the Ark, it now seems probable that the lion’s head on the eastern
wall was part of the decoration of the Ark at Worms. Moreover, although we do not
have the actual object and thus cannot judge its style, it seems likely that the lion was
part of the decoration from 1174-75, paralleling the lions of the Cathedral.244 As with
the iconoclastic trends of the late 12th and early 13th century that led to the hiding of the
trees, it is possible that during the 1212-13 restoration, those of the synagogue’s patrons
who pursued the strictest fulfillment of the halakhah and built the northern annex to
house the female congregation, also transferred the lion to the outside of the synagogue,
building it into the eastern wall and then adopting it as a wedding stone.
Aside from the written evidence, two remnants of the zoomorphic sculpture
decorating the Worms synagogue have survived. Both of them are dragons. One (ill. 55)
is known to us only from a photograph taken during the excavations of the synagogue in
1953, but it is absent in Böcher’s list of the surviving carved stones,245 and I could not
find it in Worms. For these reasons, its measurements are unknown and it is not clear
whether or how its other sides were decorated and what was the function of the
———————————————————————————————————
241
"‫ "המחזור המשולש‬,‫עיני‬-‫( שרית שלו‬Ph. D. Thesis; Jerusalem, 2001), 175-92.
242
See Hayim Nahman Bialik and Yehoshua Hana Ravnitzky, The Book of Legends
(New York, 1992), 126-27.
243
"‫ "המחזור המשולש‬,‫עיני‬-‫ שלו‬175-92.
244
It cannot be attributed to the 1355 design as that was still in place when Kirchheim
wrote his book before 1615. See discussion below.
245
Negative no. M 6966 dated from April 16, 1953, Stadtarchiv, Worms; Böcher, “Die
Alte Synagoge,” 73-74 nn. 328-328a.
 85

recession with two bosses in the shadowed section under the dragon’s legs. The most
convincing position of the photograph is when the dragon is set on a light diagonal with
its head at the bottom left. Consequently, the dragon appears at the bottom of a shallow
panel, the left border of which slightly inclines or curves inwards. There is a groove
with bosses on the bottom of the block below the frame, and a fragment of a projection
from this area is seen at the bottom right. The rounded section with an angular
outgrowth protruding on the right above this fragment may be a remnant of a trefoil
arch (cf. ill. 137). If we reconstruct such an arch along with the dragon fragment (ill.
138), the result will resemble the lower left section of an arch with a lintel between
imposts such as that in the portal from the Worms Mahzor also decorated with a dragon
in just this area (ill. 48), while the bosses recall the flowers on the lintel of another such
page (ill. 123). However, the trefoil arch make it clear that we are not dealing with a
Romanesque structure. Instead, it resembles the arches with a lintel in the upper tier of
the Gothic bimah in the synagogue of Worms (ill. 18).
The dragon is depicted with a long tongue sticking out from the open mouth, a
small “horned” head on a neck growing from its belly, two bird-like legs, wings and a
coiled tail ending with a wide tassel. A similar dragon with a coiled tail, wings, more
clearly bird-like legs and a neck growing from its belly, is found in a 13th-century
Hebrew Bible (ill. 52, on the upper left), and dragons with sharpened muzzles and ears,
protruding tongues and a wide leaf at the end of the tail appear, for instance, on folio
202v in the Double Mahzor from ca. 1290 (ill. 49). The picturesque outline and free
placement of the dragon within the frame are also in accord with the Gothic style of the
second half of the 13th century (cf., e.g., ill. 53). Such dragons from 13th-century
Hebrew illuminated manuscripts clearly parallel the dragon reliefs found in the
synagogue.
The rear part of another dragon in a different style is found on the right spandrel
of an arch (ill. 56). The remaining fragment is 34 cm wide, 43 cm high and
approximately 14 cm deep, i.e., it is about a third of the arch opening that could have
enclosed the 1-meter-wide niche of the Holy Ark.246 Böcher reported on two other
fragments belonging to the same arch, one of which was a remnant of the left spandrel
with a dragon’s tail,247 but their current location is unknown and there seem to be no
photographs of them. The lack of these parts does not allow us to confirm Böcher’s

———————————————————————————————————
246
Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 73 n. 328 no. 10.
247
Ibid., 74 n. 328 nos. 33-34.
 86

reconstruction of the arch as representing two dragons (ill. 2), rather than a dragon
opposite some other animal as above the Hebrew calendar of ca. 1300 from Toledo (ill.
52). The surviving dragon relief does not match the style of the fragment of the other
dragon (ill. 55). In German Christian art, similar dragons striding on the rounded side of
spandrels are found in the Romanesque period: for instance, they decorate the
Romanesque towers symbolizing the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem in the 11th-century
monumental circular lamp from Hildesheim Cathedral (ills. 50, 139-40).248 The earliest
dragon relief in a synagogue known to us was found in Rouen (ill. 54). It is a creature
with a lion’s head and serpent-like coiled tail carved on the base of a half-column in the
southern façade. Noticing the close resemblance between the dragon from Rouen and
the dragon imagery in Anglo-Norman churches of the late 11th century, Baylé dated it to
between ca. 1096 and 1116, the period the Rouen synagogue was established,249 so that
it is roughly contemporary with the Hildesheim lamp. Dragons such as that from Rouen
are found in Jewish manuscripts, albeit from a later period. A dragon like that in Rouen
with a turning head and coiled tail may have inspired the dragon from the 1272 Worms
Mahzor (ill. 53), although the styles of these dragons are different. However, the style,
talons and the sharpened wing feathers of this same striding dragon in the Worms
Mahzor do resemble the extant dragon from the synagogue of Worms (ill. 55), while the
latter’s pose is almost a copy of the dragon striding on the arch in the Sephardi Bible
from ca. 1300 (ill. 52).
The size of the striding dragon and that of the arch on which it stands indicate
that the fragment was part of a heraldic composition above the arch of the Holy Ark,
and its style suggests that it would have most likely originated in the great
reconstruction of the synagogue in 1355. The use of zoomorphic images on the Holy
Ark would have been impossible in the late 12th or the early 13th centuries when the
arboreal patterns that were once set on the screens in front of it had been removed. The
fact that such images could now be used indicates that in the course of time the
influence of iconoclastic interdicts on the practice of synagogue art had decreased. This
occurred also in the Hebrew manuscripts in the European Diaspora: no illustrated
exemplar has survived from the period before the 1230s, but this art flourished from the

———————————————————————————————————
248
Willmuth Arenhövel, Der Hezilo-Radleuchter im Dom zu Hildesheim. Beiträge
zur Hildesheimer Kunst des 11. Jahrhunderts unter besonderer Berücksichtigung
der Ornamentik (Berlin, 1975). For a much earlier Christian church relief with beasts
with coiled tails with a fan-like ending, see ill. 115.
249
Baylé, “Les monuments juifs de Rouen,” 272-73.
 87

second half of the 13th century on.250 Probably only after the dragon had became usual
in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts (e.g., ills. 48-49, 52-53, 98, 101), could this image
have been accepted in the synagogue interior, especially on the Ark.
Dragons such as those in the reliefs in the Worms synagogue had no developed
tradition in Jewish Late Antique art, as had the other images used here,251 but were
frequent in Christian art during the Romanesque and Gothic period (e.g., cf. ills. 50-51).
Jewish textual sources discussed the dragon, identifying it with the Biblical serpents,
monsters such as tannin (‫ )תנין‬or the Leviathan ,(‫ )לויתן‬and with the celestial
constellation of Draco (‫ )תלי‬.252 It is possible that the astronomical association caused
the depiction of the dragon above the rotatable circle of a calendar in the 13th-century
Sephardi Bible (ill. 52).253 In contrast with the Jewish interpretations of the other images
used in the Worms synagogue that all have a limited scope of agreed meanings, the
multiple and often ambivalent interpretations of the dragon may not be as easily applied
to the diverse depictions of dragons in medieval Jewish art. The specific formal features
of the two dragon reliefs from the Worms synagogue will therefore be a starting point in
our research on how the semantic aspects of Jewish textual discourse were expressed in
their symbolism and what was borrowed from the dragons of Christian art.
If our foregoing suppositions are correct, both dragon reliefs were once situated
in spandrels: one dragon faced down away from the arch (ills. 55, 138), probably on the
Bimah’s enclosure, while the other moves towards the apex of the arch of the Holy Ark
(ill. 56). These compositional arrangements differentiate between the passive dragon
with drooping legs that seems to be falling, escaping or being ejected (ill. 55), and an
active image of a steadily striding dragon. Both types are found in Christian medieval
art. An oppressed dragon often appeared there as an emblem of defeated evil in
portrayals of Jesus, the Archangel Michael and St. George. Identifying God the Saviour
———————————————————————————————————
250
Cf. Narkiss, “Zoocephalic Phenomenon.”
251
The reliefs of monsters surviving in a bad condition on the base of the seven-
branched lamp in the relief on the Arch of Titus in Rome (ill. 141) may not be used as
evidence of a Jewish tradition, as this base (ill. 142) is a later addition to the original
structure of the Temple menorah (Sperber, “Between Jerusalem and Rome”). However,
the Jews of medieval Italy may well have known this image and believed it to be a true
representation of the Temple’s menorah. The monsters with coiled tails might have
legitimized the representation of dragons with coiled tails in the synagogue.
252
See a review of these sources in Marc Epstein, Dreams of Subversion, 70-95.
253
Thérèse and Mendel Metzger, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages (New York, 1982),
244; Gabrielle Sed-Rajna and Sonia Fellous, Les manuscrits Hébreux enluminés des
bibliothèques de France (Louvain, 1994), 38-39.
 88

in Psalms 91:13 with Christ, the early theologians and the Fathers of the Church
associated the tannin trampled underfoot together with the asp and the lions with the
dragon and interpreted them all as Satan, or an allegory of the sins and of the
unfaithful.254 It is possible that the dragon carved under a column on the façade of the
synagogue in Rouen (ill. 54) also symbolizes a victory over evil.255 The circular lamp
from Hildesheim Cathedral exemplifies the ambivalent meanings of the dragons. Some
of the striding dragons symmetrically set in spandrels above entrances into the lamp’s
towers have closed wings and bite a fruitful plant (e.g., ill. 50), while the others spread
their wings (e.g., ill. 51). The lamp represents the walls and tower gates of the Heavenly
Jerusalem (ills. 139-40), and the dragons allude to the satanic powers that reach up to
the gates of the holy city and even attempt to destroy the fruitful plant symbolizing
Christianity, but cannot enter the Heavenly Jerusalem. A Gothic version of this motif is
found in the tympanum from the 1260s above the door of the sacristy in the monastery
of Vyšší Brod in Bohemia (ill. 143a-b): two dark dragons with coiled tails that are
hidden in the foliage threaten the fruitful vine tree that is blessed by God’s hand. In
contrast, the dragons with open wings above the gates of the Heavenly Jerusalem (ill.
51) look like guardians rather than enemies. This aspect of dragon imagery may be
traced back to earlier eschatological compositions on church chancel screens. A winged
lion and an eagle-headed griffin on the relief from Cividale (ill. 58) and winged animals
having a pair of legs and serpent-like tails with petaled tassels on the screen from Pavia
(ill. 115), both from the 8th-century, flank a vine tree containing animal heads. The tree
from Cividale has a cross-like trunk and is situated under a great cross. Scholars assume
that these trees, probably copied from oriental models, represent the Tree of Life.256 In
this context, the winged monsters could have represented celestial guardians such as the
cherubim whom God stationed at the entrance of the Garden of Eden to guard the way
to the Tree of Life (Gen. 3:24).257 None of the variant descriptions of cherubim in the
———————————————————————————————————
254
See Origen and St. Augustine of Hippo on Ps. 93. The Hebrew tannin (‫ )תנין‬is
translated as δράκων in the Septuagint and draco in the Vulgate.
255
Baylé, “Les monuments juifs de Rouen,” 273.
256
Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 3: 182; 799-Kunst und Kultur der
Karolingerzeit, 81. Cf. also Garrett Bliss, “Griffins in Medieval Art: Survival and
Adaptation” in Survival of the Gods: Classical Mythology in Medieval Art, an
exhibition, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, February 28 - March 29, 1987
(Providence, 1987), 133-39.
257
It is also possible that the tree with animal heads is Aaron’s rod being transformed
into a tannin as described in Ex. 7:9-12, before it miraculously flowered to symbolize
the sanctity of the Levites and then was stored in the Holy Ark (Num. 17:18-25). If so,
 89

Bible explicitly feature them as dragons, serpents or griffins. However Ezekiel’s vision
representing them as composite creatures with the faces of a lion, eagle, ox and man
(Ezek. 10:14)258 would imply that lion- or eagle-headed hybrids could be reinterpreted
as Biblical cherubim. It is likely that the association of dragons with celestial guardians
in the Christian milieu had its effect on Jewish art.259
In Worms, the striding dragon turning to the center of the arch (ill. 56) as part of
a heraldic composition surmounting the niche of the Torah scrolls may thus be
interpreted as a guardian animal. As Scholem has explained, the Hasidei Ashkenaz
believed that the cherub could take on every form of angel, man or beast.260 In Jewish
art, the cherubim above the Holy Ark were depicted as birds (ill. 95), birds with human
heads (ills. 107, 144), angels (ill. 107), wings261 or nonfigurative patterns such as a
semicircle.262 In his responsum on synagogue decorations Eliakim of Mainz mentioned
the cherubim on Jewish carved tombstones from the 11th or 12th century: “someone
would be inspired to ask, ‘Don’t we find images in the cemeteries – cherubim and other
images (‫ ?)כרובים ושאר צורות‬If it is permissible there, is it not permissible in the
synagogues?’” Perhaps, these cherubim looked like dragons and griffins and thus
resembled both the “snakes” and the lions that he forbade in the synagogues.263 These
conventions, which could have been known also to the Jews of Worms, allow us to
assume that the dragons above the Torah shrine in the Worms synagogue symbolized

———————————————————————————————————
the two beasts flanking the rod represent the two cherubim above the Holy Ark in the
Tabernacle (Ex. 25:18-20, 37:7-9) and in Solomon’s Temple (I Sam. 4:4, II Sam. 6:2; II
Kings 19:15; Isa. 37:16).
258
Cf. Ezek. 1:10. See also [Shalom M. Paul], “Cherub, Description,” EJ, 5: 398;
‫ישראל‬-‫" ארץ‬,‫ "הארון והכרובים‬,‫ מנחם הרן‬5 (1959): 30-98.
259
On the identification of the dragon with the griffin in 11th-century France and several
depictions of dragon-like griffins from 13th-century Jewish art in France and Germany,
see Victor Klagsbald, A l’Ombre de Dieu: Dix Essais sur la Symbolique dans l’Art
Juif (Louvain, 1997), 94-97 figs. 80-83. These examples and the griffins in Ashkenazi
illuminated manuscripts indicate a tradition that preceded the depiction of the griffins as
cherubim in Jewish art from the 18th-century onwards (cf. Bracha Yaniv, “The
Cherubim on the Torah Ark Valances,” Assaph, [Section B, Studies in Art History], 4
[1999]: 162-63).
260
Scholem, Major Trends, 114.
261
See, for example, the Sarajevo Haggadah, Spain, Barcelona (?), 14th century,
Sarajevo National Museum, fol. 32r (Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts, 60,
pl. 10).
262
See Revel-Neher, Le signe de la rencontre, passim; idem, Le témoignage de
l’absence, passim.
263
‫ מחקרים‬,‫ כהנא‬353; Mann, Jewish Texts, 75.
 90

the cherubim above the Ark of the Covenant.

On the other hand, in the popular iconographical schemes representing dragons
or lions under supports of a portal (ills. 45, 48-49, 54, 122-23) in medieval Ashkenazi
illuminated manuscripts and in Rouen, the dragons are malevolent beasts. This is based
on Romanesque and Gothic images depicting trampled dragons, serpents, asps and lions
under the feet of Christ and Ecclesia, and therefore also under the supports of church
portals and pulpits as symbols of satanic powers defeated by the True Faith.264 Since the
supporting dragons are often depicted in Hebrew manuscripts not only as being
trampled, but also as biting the foundations of the pillars (e.g., ill. 49), one may read
them as a symbol of the malevolent persecutors that continuously threatened the Jewish
people, its Covenant with God and the Torah. The Jew blowing a shofar near the Holy
Ark from the late 13th-century Ashkenazi Mahzor for Rosh Ha-shanah (ill. 98) puts the
image of dragon in the context of worship in the synagogue. The Talmud (Rosh Ha-
shanah 16b) states that sounds of the shofar scare off Satan who is here represented by
the dragon behind the worshipper.265 The position of the man, with one foot on a
support to ensure his steady stance while blowing the shofar, was believed to prevent
the devil from confusing the blower who expresses the penitence of the whole
congregation.266 The retreating dragon from the Worms synagogue (ill. 55) might
therefore also visualize the same belief that the power of the Torah repels the satanic
forces and thus the image could have been placed on the enclosure of the Bimah were
the Torah is read.267

———————————————————————————————————
264
Narkiss and Cohen-Mushlin, “The Illumination of the Worms Mahzor,” 81; Schiller,
Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 3: 131-35; P. Bloch, “Löwe” in Kirschbaum,
Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, 3: 112-19.
265
The vertical position of the dragon could have reflected Eleazar Rokeah’s descriptions
of the Biblical dragon-like serpents such as the Leviathan standing on its tail before God
(‫ פירוש רוקח על התורה‬,‫ אלעזר רוקח‬1 [Bnei Braq, 1986]: 64) or of the brazen serpent (Num.
21:8-9), that was thrown up and stood miraculously in the atmosphere of the world in
Num .Rabbah 19:23 (Eleazar quoted this Midrash in ‫ פירוש רוקח על התורה‬3:80). Cf. Marc
Epstein (Dreams of Subversion, 78), who used this commentary for a discussion of
dragons in medieval rabbinical sources.
266
[Albert L. Lewis], “Shofar,” EJ, 14: 1442-47.
267
The concept of the Torah preventing the entrance of evil spirits is used in the mezuzah,
a container with a piece of parchment inscribed with the Biblical passages Deut. 6:4-9 and
11:13-21. Jews affix the mezuzah to the doorframes of Jewish houses and synagogues to
observe the prescription to write these verses “on the doorposts of thy house and within thy
gates” (Deut. 11:20). A protective power in warding off evil spirits was attributed to the
mezuzah from Talmudic times on (e.g., see Menakhot 33b, Gen. Rabba 35). See also V.
Aptowitzer, “Les noms de Dieu el des anges dans la mezouza. Contributions a l’histoire de
 91

The Jews of Worms also knew the folk etymology of the city’s name, according
to which the name of the town as well as the dragon and keys on the city’s coat-of-arm
derived from the lint wurm, a monstrous dragon that threatened the town but was killed
by a brave locksmith. Juspa the Shammash recorded a version of this toponymic tale,
describing the dragon as a monster with two legs and a snake-like rear body268 like
those he might have seen on the synagogue reliefs before the 1620s.269 Böcher,
mistakenly dating the supposed relief of two heraldic dragons above the Ark in the
Worms synagogue (ill. 2) to 1623-24, believed that they were inspired by this story and
by the Worms coat-of-arms, several 16th-century versions of which contained a pair of
dragons.270 It is more likely that much earlier tales about malicious dragons penetrated
into Jewish folklore together with numerous stories about devils from the medieval
German legends that influenced the demonology and magic in the esoteric teachings of
the Hasidei Ashkenaz.271 The Jewish identification of malevolent dragons with Biblical
monsters is explicit in the comment by Eleazar Rokeah of Worms (ca. 1165- ca. 1230)
on Genesis 1:21.272 He described the tanninim as dragons, writing that they are “great,
simple (‫ פשוטים‬- peshutim) and long creatures, and fire emerges from their mouths,” and
identified the Leviathan with a huge sea serpent that supports the world. During the
eschatological ultimate fight, the Leviathan will be on the side of the malevolent powers
challenging God: Eleazar wrote that when God will send the Archangels Michael and
Gabriel to hunt the Leviathan, it will stand on its tail before them, and its head will
reach the Divine Throne of Glory. The Leviathan will kill the tanninim, and it in turn
will be defeated by the angels, who will give its meat to “the people of Truth that deal
with the True Torah” as is prophesied in Psalms 74:13-14.273 The Biblical vision of the
feast of the righteous consuming God’s animal enemy gives an eschatological
perspective to the dualistic concept of contemporary society in the teachings of Hasidei

———————————————————————————————————
la mystique et de la cabbale,” RÉJ, 60 (1910): 39-52.
268
Eidelberg, R. Juspa, 82-84 no. 15.
269
Wischnitzer supposed that Juspa’s chronicle inspired the painting of the great worm-
like dragon under the town labeled as Worms in the 1740 murals of the synagogue in
Mogilev on the Dnieper (Wischnitzer, “The Wise Men of Worms,” 10-12).
270
Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 76-77.
271
Ibid., 1379; Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk
Religion (New York, 1970), 40, 257.
272
‫ פירוש רוקח על התורה‬,‫ אלעזר רוקח‬1:64.
273
“You smashed the heads of the tanninim” and “crushed the heads of Leviathan, and
gave him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.”
 92

Ashkenaz. They divided the people into two antithetical parties, associating themselves
with the “pious” (‫ חסידים‬- hasidim), who together with the “righteous” (‫ )צדיקים‬and the
“good” (‫ )טובים‬oppose the groups consisting of “evil ones” (‫ )רעים‬and “simple ones”
(‫ פשוטים‬- peshutim),274 the adjective that Eleazar had used for the tanninim. Moreover,
Eleazar quoted the passage stating that Leviathan is “a king over all the children of
pride” (Job 41:26). Such scholarly discourse on dragons in the form of tanninim and
Leviathan would be accepted in a somewhat more popularized form by Jewish
laypeople. When renovating the synagogue after it was seriously damaged during the
1349 pogrom, they might have used the popular dragon imagery in order to express a
hope that God would protect the Torah by means of His most powerful servants and that
evil would be defeated by the Torah and recede from the righteous.
The Bimah: Visual Documentation and Other Evidence
Another focal structure of the synagogue interior is the bimah to which the
Torah scroll was brought during the service in order to read from it. A note in the early
12th-century Mahzor Vitry and a record from 1188 about the synagogue of Mainz refer
to the bimah as ‫( מגדל עץ‬migdal etz), “a tower of wood”, recalling the Biblical account
of the wooden platform called migdal etz from which Ezra read the Torah to the people
of Jerusalem (Neh. 8:4).275 This source clearly served to legitimize the raised position of
the bimah. Although none of these “wooden towers” have survived, the stone
foundations in the center of the prayer hall in the 11th-century synagogue of Cologne
(ill. 23),276 and the 70-cm high masonry platform in the center of the prayer hall of the
late 11th or early 12th-century synagogue of Regensburg (ill. 26)277 suggest that the
bimah was built on a raised stone or masonry platform. In his commentary on the
Talmudic description of the bimah in the center of the prayer hall of the synagogue in
Alexandria, Rashi identified this structure with “our almembra-bimah.”278 This remark
———————————————————————————————————
274
“Hasidei Ashkenaz,” EJ, 7: 1380
275
‫ מחזור ויטרי‬no. 93; Siegmund Salfeld, “Zur Geschichte der Mainzer Synagogen,”
Mainzer Zeitschrift, 3 (1908): 106-110; cf. also Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche
Synagogen, 121.
276
In the building of ca. 1000, a wide transverse masonry platform was situated
between the first and second pair of columns in the central nave (ill. 23). In the
renovation of 1096 (ill. 25a), a narrower but longer bimah was placed in the center of
the hall. After the hall was turned into a two-nave space during the 1372 reconstruction
(ill. 145), the bimah was located between the axial columns as in the other two-nave
synagogues (Doppelfeld, “Die Ausgrabungen,” passim).
277
Codreanu-Windauer, “The Medieval Jewish Quarter of Regensburg,” 143.
278
Rashi’s comment on Sukkah 51b. The account first appeared in the early 3rd-century
 93

reinforces the assumption that this position of the bimah was customary in the early
Ashkenazi synagogues. Illuminations from medieval Ashkenazi manuscripts indicate
that during the synagogue service, the Torah scroll was placed on a large table with an
inclined top, a handy fixture for opening and reading a large scroll (ills. 146-47). A
massive table for the bimah is also found in views of a synagogue from German
antisemitic books (ills. 28-30).279 It is therefore likely that such a table stood on the
platform of the bimah.
The masonry platform or stone table for reading the Torah may have been
inherited from the type of central bimah in a number of synagogues from the Roman-
Byzantine period rather than have been inspired by the textual model of a “wooden
tower.”280 For instance, a marble table adorned with eagle reliefs and flanked by
sculptural lions served a bimah in the synagogue of Sardis that was in use until 616 (ill.
125). Post-Biblical textual sources provide a symbolic association of the platform or
table for reading the Torah with the Temple: the Mishnah informs us that a functionary
standing by the altar’s “horn” in the Temple waved a kerchief in order to signal when
the congregation should respond “Amen” for each benediction, and according to the
description of the synagogue of Alexandria in the Tosefta, the cantor standing on the
bimah performed the same function.281 Two other factors may have played a suggestive
role in the symbolic association of the reader’s table in the synagogue with the altar in
the Tabernacle and in the Temple in Jerusalem. First of all, there is a tradition stating
that prayer in the synagogue was substituted for the sacrifices after the Temple in
———————————————————————————————————
Tosefta to Sukkah 4:6 and was cited also in the Jerusalem Talmud, Sukkah 5, 1, 55a-b.
On the term almembra for the bimah in medieval Ashkenazi synagogues, see
Wischnitzer, Synagogue, 48. In Worms, this term was in constant use: in his 1901
article, Abraham Epstein called the bimah an almambro (“Die nach Rachi benannten
Gebäude in Worms,” 28 n. 1).
279
A large table with an inclined stand on its top and a Gothic finial attached to its rear
side appears in front of a group of Jews in the Leipzig (Lipsiae) Mahzor from Germany,
ca. 1320 (ill. 148). As there is an open book but not a scroll on the stand, it is unclear
whether this is a bimah like that depicted in ill. 146, or a cantor’s pulpit on a barrier
before the Ark such as that in ill. 101.
280
In the Holy Land synagogues from the Roman-Byzantine period, the bimah could be
set anywhere in the prayer hall, and sometimes stood at the wall opposite the Jerusalem
orientation. For a review of bimot in synagogues from the Hellenistic and Roman-
Byzantine period, see Zeev Safrai, “Dukhan, Aron and Teva,” 74-77; Levine, The First
Thousand Years, 245-47, 319-23, figs. 47-49.
281
Tosefta to Sukkah 4:6; Tamid 7:3, later repeated by Rambam ( ‫ "הלכות תמידין‬,‫רמב"ם‬
‫" משנה תורה‬,‫ ומוספין‬6:6). See also Samuel Krauss, Synagogale Altertümer (Berlin,
1922), 261-263; Wischnitzer, Architecture, 10; Levine, The First Thousand Years,
84-89.
 94

Jerusalem had been destroyed.282 It is thus probable that the pinnacles with finials at the
four corners of the Gothic bimah depicted by an illuminator from the Rhineland in
1427-28 (ill. 147) were made to remind the congregation of the “horns” of the altar in
the Temple.283 Secondly, the position of the bimah in the center of the synagogue hall in
front of the Holy Ark corresponds to that of the altar in the center of the hall before the
Holy of Holies or in the center of the courtyard before the façade of the Sanctuary (cf.
ill. 144). Such structural allusions to the plan of the Temple may be even more complex,
continuing the symbolic parallel between the synagogue Torah shrine and the Ark in the
Holy of Holies: if the bimah symbolically corresponded to the large altar in the
courtyard,284 the position of the cantor’s stand in Worms at the center of the Holy Ark
may parallel that of the lesser altar before the entrance to the Holy of Holies.285
Discussing the question of what the earliest bimah in the Worms synagogue
looked like, Böcher asserted that a wooden barrier enclosed the bimah already in the
12th century, and also made a graphical reconstruction of this structure (ill. 73). In his
drawing, Böcher based himself on the definition of the medieval bimah from Mainz as a
“wooden tower” and on the only stone fragment that, as he believed, remained from the
Romanesque bimah (ill. 149).286 In his opinion, the construction consisted of an
openwork wooden parapet that rose from about 35 cm above the floor to a height of 1.2
m and connected 3-meters-high poles resting on stone bases in the four corners.
Although the evidence is really too scanty and uncertain for such a detailed
reconstruction of the bimah,287 his supposition that there was an enclosure around the
———————————————————————————————————
282
Berakhot 26b, see also Idelsohn, Jewish Liturgy, 26 ff.
283
Cf. also the horns of the altars in the Tabernacle designed as leafy Gothic finials in
the 1399 illumination to Rashi’s commentary on the Torah (ill. 144).
284
Ex. 27:1-8; 38:1-7; I Kings 9:28; 8:64; 16:14-15; Ezek. 43:13-17.
285
Ex. 30:3; 38:39; 40:5, 26; Num. 4:11; I Kings 6:20-22, 7:48; I Chron. 28:18; II
Chron. 4:19.
286
Böcher “Die Alte Synagoge,” 78-79.
287
In Böcher’s reconstruction, the height of the parapet and the poles is arbitrary and the
function of these high poles is unclear. He may have imitated a structure consisting of a
lattice-work barrier with high poles connected on top by a horizontal bar from the
“Sister” to the Golden Haggadah illuminated in Spain in the 14th century (ill. 150): a
picture with a similar high box of the bimah is reproduced in the book by Krautheimer
(Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 95 fig. 18), which Böcher frequently cited. The design
consisting of repeating bosses along these poles and the balusters in the parapet derives
from his belief that the legs with such bosses depicted in two chairs above the arch in
the Worms Mahzor (ill. 123) represent typical wooden Romanesque supports.
Discussing the remaining stone with a Romanesque ornamentation which may be
related to the bimah (ill. 149), Böcher supposed that in the original construction the
 95

Romanesque bimah is reinforced by Silvia Godreanu-Windauer who found impressions

of wooden beams, obviously part of a wooden balustrade, on the masonry platform of
the bimah in the early 12th-century synagogue of Regensburg.288 Moreover, in his Or
Zaru’a, R. Isaac ben Moses (ca. 1180- ca. 1250) mentioned the ‫( לווחין‬sic! - “panels”) of
the bimah. It is likely that in quoting this rare Talmudic term that may have meant
screens fencing off the bimah, this scholar, a follower of the Hasidei Ashkenaz from
Worms, reflected contemporary practice.289
A bimah’s stone enclosure is recorded in one of the two etchings made by
Albrecht Altdorfer before the demolition of the Regensburg synagogue in 1519. The
arcade surrounding the middle column in a two-nave prayer hall is set on a masonry
parapet that supports a heavy cornice with a leafy rim on its top (ill. 32). Codreanu-
Windauer’s recent research suggesting a date in the early 13th century revised the
attribution of this arcade to the early Renaissance style in Germany.290 Her opinion is
based on a stone colonette and the remnant of an arch and cornice (ill. 151) that were
found during excavations close to the site of the synagogue.291 A row of small arches
protruding from a deeply sunken background decorates the fragment of a cornice. On a
remnant of the arcade, there is a fragment of a double semicircular arch with Gothic
tracery inside. The completely surviving slim colonette would have supported the
springing of the arch. A lower half of a flower was set above the arches, and a full
flower appeared between the arches. Codreanu-Windauer’s identified these carvings
with the bimah’s enclosure, and noticing their resemblance to the Early Gothic northern
portal of the St. Emmeram Cloister from 1220-35 in Regensburg, attributed them to the
period of the turning of the synagogue into a two-nave building in the early 13th

———————————————————————————————————
ornamented body was turned down, and a salience projecting from its flat side entered
into a socket in the bottom edge of the wooden poles (note the bottom of the poles in ill.
73). However, resting on its rounded surface, such a base may not have been steady
enough to support a wooden pole of ca. 20-centimeters diameter and at least 1.2-meters
in height that in turn supported a parapet or screens. This carved stone could equally
well have been a finial of a stone pier (cf. the piers with finials in ill. 88).
288
Codreanu-Windauer, “The Medieval Jewish Quarter of Regensburg,” 143.
289
‫" אור זרוע‬,‫ "הלכות בית הכנסת ודברי קדושה‬,‫ יצחק בן משה‬no. 386. The passage discussing
the “panels of the bimah” originates from the Jerusalem Talmud) Megillah 83d). For
comments and interpretation, see Zeev Safrai, “Dukhan, Aron and Teva,” 77.
290
Cf. Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 122-24; Wischnitzer (“Mutual
Influences,” 32; idem, Synagogues, 49, as opposed to Codreanu-Windauer, “The
Medieval Jewish Quarter of Regensburg,” 147.
291
Codreanu-Windauer, “The Medieval Jewish Quarter of Regensburg,” 147.
 96

century.292 Indeed, Altdorfer’s engraving (ill. 32) shows similar vertical proportions of
the colonettes and arches around the bimah, a circle – probably, a flower – above the
colonettes, and the bases with small balls in the corners on the right that are identical
with the base of the surviving colonette (ill. 151). In the drawing, the arches differ in
their width: the one that appears above the steps at the entrance to the bimah is wider
than those seen to the left of the column. Altdorfer, however, did not draw the twin arch
that has survived (cf. ill. 32 vs. ill. 151). Such twin arches may have been set between
the single arches on the enclosure’s lateral sides opposite the central architectural
column, or on the east side facing the Ark. He also barely hinted at the tracery under the
semicircular arches, and this perhaps caused Krautheimer to attribute the enclosure to
the Renaissance.293
A box-like Gothic wooden enclosure of the bimah stands near the wall on the
right opposite the Holy Ark in the picture of a synagogue interior from a late-13th
century German Mahzor (ill. 101).294 This structure stands on short legs and consists of
a screen of intersecting diagonal bars and a high trefoil arcade supporting another
smaller arcade. Neu’s lithograph (ill. 18) and Hoffmann’s watercolour (ill. 19) depict a
more massive version of such tiered Gothic arcades of the bimah on the raised platform
in the Worms synagogue before this enclosure was dismantled in 1842. Böcher believed
that the Gothic bimah was built after the 1349 riots and was completely lost in the
course of the pogrom of 1615, after which David Oppenheim donated a new bimah that
was based on the old model.295 Krautheimer and Cahn stated that Oppenheim

———————————————————————————————————
292
Ibid.
293
Krautheimer doubted that the Renaissance style had been adopted in Regensburg in
the early 16th century, and supposed that Altdorfer brought the style of the arcade up-to-
date in his engraving (Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 122-24, 177-80). Wischnitzer also
discussed the documentary evidence of the engravings, which were based on sketches in
situ and completed in the studio (Architecture, 48-50). Their conclusions have been
ignored in more recent publications concerning Altdorfer’s views of the synagogue in
Regensburg (Christiane Andersson, “Albert Altdorfer: Works on Paper,” Burlington
Magazine, 130 (1988): 486-87; Kathleen Biddick, “Paper Jews: Inscription/ Ethnicity/
Ethnography,” Art Bulletin, 78 (1996), 4: 594-99).
294
The artist may have drawn the bimah at the right side of the frame because the
central area was occupied by the word ‫כל‬, rather than meaning to depict an untypical
synagogue with the bimah at the west wall. A quadrangular plate seen within the arcade
of the bimah may not be unequivocally identified as a table because its position at the
back of the bimah controverts the custom that during the reading of the Torah the reader
turns to the Holy Ark. It may be an additional lesser table standing on the bimah as that
seen in Altdorfer’s drawing of the Regensburg synagogue (ill. 32).
295
Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 79-82.
 97

reconstructed the old bimah.296 There is no extant depiction of the bimah before this
reconstruction nor of the one that stood in the Worms synagogue from its foundation in
1174-75 until the pogrom in 1349. It is most likely that in 1623-24 the original
composition of the bimah’s stone enclosure was not significantly changed, and that in
1355 it was built after an earlier, probably wooden model, like the one in the Mahzor.
Although Neu distorted the proportions and the linear perspective, his picture (ill. 18) is
truer in its details than that of Hoffmann (ill. 19), who omitted the small obelisks on the
corners of the bimah’s enclosure and the Ark’s pediment, and “restored” the enclosure’s
lower part with Gothic quatrefoils instead of the balusters that would have been part of
Oppenheim’s reconstruction.
The origins of the high arcade around the bimah in German synagogues during
the medieval period are puzzling. Scholars have noted that the Gothic cage-like bimah
had no precedents in ancient Jewish architecture, nor was such an enclosure raised on
short legs or a few steps influenced by the bimah in Sephardi synagogues (ill. 150),
where the wooden platform was elevated on a high arcade or columns, and a lattice-
work screen enclosed only the lower part, while the upper tier was formed only by slim
corner pillars or was entirely open, allowing the congregation to observe the Torah
reader from various directions.297
However, the importation of the high Gothic enclosure into the synagogue
interior in order to separate the bimah from the prayer hall may have stemmed from the
tradition discussed above of screen barriers that delimited the holy area in front of the
Holy Ark in ancient synagogues. An inscription found in the 5th to 7th-century
synagogue at Syracuse suggests that such a screen was also built around the bimah.298
On a formal level, Cahn saw an architectural parallel to the quadrangular enclosure of
the Worms bimah in the Gothic chantry chapels of English churches. Discussing the
———————————————————————————————————
296
Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 174-175; Cahn, “Bîmah,” 266-267.
297
Wischnitzer, Architecture, 49; Cahn, “Bîmah,” 267. None of the Sephardi bimot
have survived. See Bezalel Narkiss, “The Heikhal, Bimah, and Teivah in Sephardi
Synagogues,” JA, 18 (1992): 30-47, figs. 19, 20 and the list of the other known
depictions of Sephardi synagogues in illuminated manuscripts there (36 n. 8).
298
The inscription recorded by Baruch Lifschitz (“Donateurs et fondateurs dans les
synagogues juives,”, 83-84 no. 102) is /
, “In order to protect the bimah, Zacharias
circumscribed the [place] coated with well-arranged marble.” Lifschitz noticed that
σεπτòν is a translation from Latin saeptum (ibid., 84) a derivate of saepio that means
also “to fence,” so that the whole structure would have been a screen or barrier
surrounding the marble platform of the bimah. On the synagogue in Syracuse being
extant in the 7th century, see Aronius, Regesten, 310 n. 2.
 98

probable meaning of the chantry-like form in the synagogue, he proposed a drawing of

the House of the Forest of Lebanon (I Kings 7:1-5) as a two-tiered screen in Nycolas de
Lyra’s Postillae as a clue for reading the bimah as a Solomonic gloss like that of the
two pillars on either side of this bimah that allude to the Solomonic pillars Jachin and
Boaz.299 However no hint of a symbolic interpretation of the bimah as the House of the
Forest of Lebanon is found in Jewish textual sources, nor is such a parallel part of the
practice of projecting descriptions of the Temple onto the synagogue. On the other
hand, the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre dating from the end of the 13th century in the St.
Maurice rotunda of the cloisters of Constance Cathedral (ill. 152) demonstrates that a
structure enclosed by an openwork Gothic arcade in a church interior could imitate a
sacred building in the Holy Land.300
In Gothic painting, e.g., in the mid-13th century Anglo-Norman Trinity College
Apocalypse (ill. 153), a tiered arcaded structure represents God’s altar, and from one of
its corners a face emerges symbolizing the voice issuing from its four horns (Rev. 9:13).
In another scene (ill. 154), the illuminator added an additional arcade below the altar to
house the souls of the martyrs who were found under the altar (Rev. 6:9). The artist also
sets a similar altar-like structure amidst those who object to Christianity: under the vial
of the “fifth angel” at the left part of the picture on folio 19r (ill. 155). Here, a structure
with an arcade in the middle tier and high finials at the four corners depicts “the seat of
the beast” surrounded by heretics who “gnawed their tongues for pain” (Rev. 16:10).
These heretics have the same physiognomy as those in the group represented on the left
under the trumpet of the “fourth angel,” who are associated in the commentary near the
picture with the Jews.301 Since, as we saw, the bimah may have been seen by the Jews
as a parallel to the altar, the artist seem to have depicted an actual synagogue bimah as
“the seat of the beast.”302 The compositional affinity of this structure with the “altar of
God” suggests that it too is an altar, albeit of the heretics, who, in this case, are
equivalent to the Jews.
Moreover, since the late 13th century, Ashkenazi Jews could obtain a clear
summary – often accompanied by graphic schemes – of varying Biblical and Talmudic
———————————————————————————————————
299
Tours, Bibliothèque Municipale, Ms. 52, fol. 236; Cahn, “Bîmah.”
300
Marcel Aubert, High Gothic Art (London, 1964), 144-145.
301
The Trinity College Apocalypse (facsimile edition), ed. Peter H. Brieger (London,
1967), 40.
302
The mid-13th century artist could have seen a synagogue bimah in England, where
the Jews lived until Edward I expelled them in 1290.
 99

accounts of the altar from the Rambam’s Mishneh Torah.303 For example, a scheme
from the 1295-96 Kaufmann Mishneh Torah from Northeastern France or the Rhineland
(ill. 156) shows a plan of the rectangular altar’s parapet around the square spot for the
sacrifice that could reinforce its symbolic parallel to a rectangular enclosure around the
bimah in the synagogue. This scheme follows the statement in the Talmud (Zevakhim
54a) that one corner of the altar had no base, perhaps, to allow the corner entrance to the
parapet. This may have caused the omission of the corner support at the steps of the
Early Gothic bimah’s enclosure in Regensburg (ill. 32), as well as the placement of the
open entrance to the Worms bimah at the corner (ills. 18-19). In addition, the tiered
Gothic enclosure in the Mahzor from the early 14th-century (ill. 101) and the actual
structure from 1355 in the synagogue of Worms (ill. 18) allude to the Talmud’s and the
Rambam’s description of the altar as a structure consisting of three different tiers (ill.
157).304 The obelisks that appear on the four corners of the Gothic enclosure of the
bimah from Worms seen in Neu’s lithograph (ill. 18) obviously parallel the “horns” of
the altar, but it is not clear whether they replaced old Gothic finials or were added
during the reconstruction of 1623-24. An earlier example of such “horns” on the
bimah’s enclosure is seen in the Spanish “Sister” to the Golden Haggadah from the 14th
century (ill. 150).
Solomon’s dedicatory prayer for the Temple (I Kings 8:44, 48) proclaims that
the prayers of Jews, even those in foreign lands, passes through the Temple in
Jerusalem and from there ascends heavenward. As he said these words while kneeling at
the altar (ibid., 8:54), this was believed to be the place where human prayer reached
Heaven, so that the synagogue bimah, a symbolic substitute for the altar, could be
considered the place where prayers turn heavenward, as they do near the Ark. The
custom of a high partition rather than a lower chancel screen dividing the place where
the Torah is read from the congregation may have been inspired by the concept in
Berakhot 32b that after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem all the “gates of
Heaven” except the “Tearful Gate” were closed for human prayers and that an iron wall
divided the people of Israel from God. In order to reach Heaven, the devotional prayer
must penetrate this wall and pass through the “Tearful Gate.” Such a mystical spirit and

———————————————————————————————————
303
‫" משנה תורה‬,‫ "הלכות בית הבחירה‬,‫ רמב"ם‬2:1-18. See also Codex Maimuni: Moses
Maimonides’ Code of Law. The Illuminated Pages of the Kaufmann Mishneh
Torah [Budapest, 1984], 103, pl. XXXIV.
304
Zevakhim 54a; ‫" משנה תורה‬,‫ "הלכות בית הבחירה‬,‫ רמב"ם‬2:1-10. See also Codex
Maimuni, 103, pl. XXXIV (details in my ill. 155).
 100

intimate attitude to prayer were characteristic of the Shoom communities in the period
of the first Crusades and had, as we saw, inspired the adoption of the two-nave structure
for the synagogue. The same atmosphere might also have led to the development of the
parapet around the bimah into a higher enclosure with large “gate-like” openings, but
not a ceiling or baldachin above it, as an expression of the idea that one’s prayer pass
through them to reach the place for the Torah reading that substitutes for the sacrifices
on the altar, and from there ascend to heaven. Similarly, the Ark’s 1355 grid door (ill.
154) was a safe but penetrable barrier between the worshipper and the Torah scrolls in
the Ark, towards which prayers were directed.
A stone with a fragment of tracery, a slim column and a flower in the spandrel
(ill. 137) was found during the 1957 excavations in the Worms synagogue.305 The
carving has the complex structure of a Gothic arch: the column is attached to the
spandrel so that the arch arises from another support to the right of the column’s shaft.
In addition to the flower in the spandrel, the arch itself is decorated with small crocket-
like bosses, three of which are seen in the remaining fragment. The segment growing
from the lower surface and the pointed projection at the lower side of this segment
suggest that the whole composition within the arch consisted of one or two inner arches
and a trefoil tracery (cf. ill. 152). The column’s capital with two rows of bold rounded
leaves in an elaborated Gothic arch may be dated to the late 13th or the first half of the
14th century (e.g., cf. ill. 159). Böcher assumed that this is a remnant of the 1355 Holy
Ark,306 but the arch with the openwork tracery of this fragment does not match the
massive arch with the dragon (ill. 56) that was part of that Ark. Instead, the more
complex arch could have framed an entrance to the 1355 bimah enclosure.
Other carved stone fragments of Gothic arches and trefoils (ills. 160-61) and of
long cornices from the synagogue of Worms are also remnants of the 1355 bimah’s
enclosure renovated in 1623-24 and dismantled in 1842. Similar Gothic tracery
consisting of repeating pointed and trefoil arches, clearly seen in Neu’s lithograph (ill.
18), had been produced in Worms at least since the late 13th century: a monumental
example of such work is found above the southern portal of the Cathedral built in ca.
1289-1325 (ill. 162). The pointed trefoil arches and the trefoil with long pointed petals
in the spandrel that decorate a tombstone from 1375 in the Old Jewish cemetery of

———————————————————————————————————
305
The negative of the photograph (my ill. 137, the Stadtarchiv Worms no. M 10017) is
dated from November 11, 1957. The current location of this remnant is unknown.
306
Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 73.
 101

Worms (ill. 163)307 are almost identical with those of the lower arcade seen in Neu’s
picture (ill. 18). This relief would have been influenced by the Gothic bimah in the
synagogue and thus reinforces the supposition that it already existed at that time.
Numerous remnants of sections (ills. 75 nos. 1-8; 164-66) and the corner of a cornice
(ill. 167) also bear reliefs that represent quatrefoil leaves on a trailing vine with long
wavy curves from which clusters of grapes grow.308 The leaves and clusters partially
overlap the taenia. This ornament (ills. 164-67) demonstrates a well-modulated carving
of delicately shaped leaves, a volumetric relief of the clusters and a naturalistic form of
the vine that may be attributed to the Gothic period of the synagogue decoration.309
Another vine relief is found on a cornice, both on regular sections (ill. 169), and on
sections with protruding corner parts (ills. 170-71).310 The trefoil shape of smaller
leaves and clusters touching but not overlapping the taenia differ from those in the
ornamental vine with quatrefoils, but the profile of the cornice and the leaves set
directly on the branch make these types similar. A comprehensive comparative analysis
of the workshops here cannot be made because of the bad condition of these reliefs.
However, the numerous mouldings with the trefoils and quatrefoils on the waving vine
could have originated from the two long cornices that run along the perimeter of the
bimah’s Gothic enclosure as is shown in Böcher’s drawing (ill. 74), rather than being
remnants of shorter cornices of the Ark as in his reconstruction of the Ark (ill. 2). The
fragments of a moulding with protruding corners and a relief of trefoil vine leaves (ills.
169-71) and a similar corner stone (note ill. 167) can be identified with protruding
———————————————————————————————————
307
The date on the tombstone is Hoshanah Rabba, [5]136, i.e., September 26, 1375.
308
In the art of the period, the shape of a vine leaf was represented in several ways: the
most common was a five-petalled maple-like leaf, but a quatrefoil was also depicted
(e.g., see the vine tree in Lambert of Saint-Omer’s Liber Floridus, before 1121, Ghent,
Centrale Bibliotheek van de Rijksuniversiteit Cod. 1125(92), fol. 140r, my ill. 168).
309
Böcher recorded eighteen fragments of a carved moulding (“Die Alte Synagoge,”
73-74 n. 328 nos. 1-8, 20-29). Böcher’s nos. 1-8 are seen on a photograph from July 25,
1956 (negative no. F 1787/26, Stadtarchiv, Worms; my ill. 75 nos. 1-8). They are all
reliefs of the vine with four-petaled leaves. Concerning his nos. 20-29 which are “like
nos. 1-8,” he noticed that they included two mouldings with a protruding corner section,
a 62-cm-long left section, and a 80-cm-long right section of a cornice (my ills. 170-71)
and a small corner stone “without a protrusion” (my ill. 164).
310
Böcher (“Die Alte Synagoge,” 74 n. 328) classed these two stones with a protruding
corner section (two of his nos. 20-29, my ills. 170-71), along with those discussed
above (his nos. 1-8), but in my classification they belong to another group. Böcher did
not specify what the other seven fragments were, so they may not be unequivocally
identified with a greater number of reliefs belonging to these two groups that are in the
synagogue and in the Rashi House Jewish Museum in Worms.
 102

corners of the upper cornice of the enclosure, and the mouldings with quatrefoils (ills.
156-58) are parts of the cornices between the two tiers of arcades as seen in Neu’s 1842
picture (ill. 18).311 The fragment of a pillar with tracery on one side and a relief of vines
within a sunken panel on two of its sides and tracery projecting from its third side (ills.
172-73) is a remnant from one of those pillars that in Neu’s lithograph (ill. 18) are seen
in the corner of the arcade enclosing the bimah, as Böcher suggested (ill. 74). The
somewhat irregularly undulating branch, the geometrically designed clusters of grapes
and the dotted background of this vine relief resemble carvings that, as will be shown
below, date from 1623-24 (e.g., cf. ills. 67-69, 174-75). This pillar was obviously made
in order to complete a fragment of Gothic tracery of the bimah that was destroyed
during the 1615 pogrom, and the vines were copied in a new style from the bimah’s old
parts. On the Gothic bimah again, as in the 1174-75 entrance, the vine would allude to
the Jews as God’s chosen people, while the vitality of the Torah that expels evil was
symbolized by the falling dragon.
The Remodeling of the Medieval Ark and Bimah in Worms
Certain details on the extant dragon relief and other fragments force us to
examine how long the Ark and bimah of 1355 existed in the Worms synagogue, how
they were remodelled and when they were finally replaced. The right side of the block
with the striding dragon is elaborated with repeating W-shaped strips protruding against
a dotted background (ill. 78), similar to the flat chevrons and zigzags projecting against
a sunken dotted background on the pillars of the reader’s desk seen in the drawing (ill.
65) and on fragments of stone piers that have similar ornamental reliefs recalling beaten
metal bands (ills. 67-69, 176-77). These resemble the style of architectonic decorations
in Worms in the late 16th and the early 17th century (ills. 178-80) and would thus have
been produced during the reconstruction in 1623-24. On the back of the dragon relief
(ills. 76-77), there is a large open flower composed of two concentric six-petalled
flowers and a whirling central circle. The flower partially overlaps a moulded border
running along the upper and left side and the rounded arch to the right of the slab, and
there are remnants of the last letters of two rows of a Hebrew inscription to the right of
the flower.312 It is probable that the inscription was situated between two flowers

———————————————————————————————————
311
Böcher incorrectly drew capitals in the top of the corner piers of the high arcade and
made the corner piers in the upper tier too narrow (cf. ill. 18 vs. ill. 74).
312
In the upper row the left part of the letter ‫ ח‬appears, and in the lower row, two barely
discernable traces may be the ends of the letter ‫ב‬, ‫ כ‬or ‫נ‬, and the last letter is ‫י‬. The space
on the arch allows for the placing of a few words in each row. The inscriptions known
 103

symmetrically placed in the spandrels. The sculptural treatment of the rosette resembles
that of the petalled rosettes on the arched portal into the Rashi chamber datable to 1623-
24 (ill. 70-71). This last example has its parallel in contemporary architectonic
decoration in Worms: for instance, two concentric flowers are seen above the portal
from 1610 on Stelzen Street (ills. 178-79).
Seemingly, at that time the arch had been turned round and the rear part was
decorated with a more neutral or acceptable design. This would explain why the two
opposite faces of the same arch wall were decorated in different periods, although only
one of them would be exposed while the other would face the wall of the Torah
niche.313 The concealment of the dragons in the synagogue during its 1623-24
reconstruction proves that a new wave of aniconic views arose then in Worms. It is
possible that as in the Holy Land during the period of Byzantine iconoclasm and in
Worms and Rouen during the rise of Cistercian asceticism, in early 16th-century Worms
the objection to zoomorphic images after a long period of their use in the synagogue
was caused by the growth of iconophoby in the surrounding society. The severe attitude
to images in a place of worship could now be inspired by the Protestantism that had
deep roots in the city. After Martin Luther (1483-1546) was summoned before Emperor
Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521, and in spite of the fact that he was condemned

———————————————————————————————————
to us from synagogues do not answer these conditions. Böcher’s supposition that these
characters are a remnant of the inscription ‫“( הנני שולח \ מלאכי‬Behold, I will send my
angel,” Mal. 3:1; Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge 119 ”,no. XIII) is possible. As most such
inscriptions are Biblical quotations, reconstruction of this text can be concentrated on
the search for a short Biblical phrase consisting of two parts, each having one to three
words, so that the first part ends with ‫ח‬, and the second with ‫כי‬, ‫בי‬, or ‫ני‬. The search of
the Bible through the Bar-Ilan University Responsa Project (CD) database in
accordance with these criteria gives more than one hundred such combinations, but only
the above mentioned words of Malachi 3:1 form a complete semantic unit that may be
related to the context of the synagogue interior. These initial words of the verse could
have appeared above the Holy Ark in order to allude to the rest of the text that
prophesies the forthcoming Redemption: the angel “shall prepare the way before me:
and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his Temple, even the angel
(messenger) of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord
of hosts.”
313
A small rectangular depression, now barely discernable in the stone at the left side
under the flower relief (ill. 77) could have been used to house a hanger of the parokhet
(Ark curtain). Such curtains had been used in synagogues since Late Antiquity and were
usually associated with the parokhet that veiled the Holy of Holies in the Tabermacle
(Ex. 26:33; Goodenough, Jewish Symbols; 4: 135, 139; Hachlili, Art and
Archaeology – Israel, 191-92). Such a curtain usually hangs before the frame of the
Ark’s niche (e.g., see my ill. 22), and not within the niche as in Böcher’s drawing (my
ill. 2).
 104

there, in 1525 the people of Worms adopted Luther's teachings. During the renovation
of the synagogue in 1623-24, the period of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), the city
was a Protestant stronghold. Luther’s polemic against worshipping images as idolatry,
in particular his statements that the Biblical Israelites had abolished idols, and the
austere Protestant practices of church decoration314 might have reinforced the fear of the
Jews that zoomorphic images, especially those appearing on the Holy Ark, could look
like idols. As a result, the dragon reliefs were replaced by rosettes which were
seemingly merely decorative, but traditionally had deep meaning.
A flower on an arch’s spandrels or voussoir is a usual motif of architectonic
decoration in medieval Jewish art. For example, such flowers decorate the corners
above the Ark’s pediment from the 6th-century synagogues of Dalton (ill. 47) and the
pediment itself in Nevoraya (ill. 118), as well as the early Gothic arcade from the early
13th-century synagogue in Regensburg (ill. 151), the arches depicted in the first volume
of the Worms Mahzor (ills. 48, 123) and a fragment of a Gothic arch from the
synagogue of Worms (ill. 137). As Böcher already noted, the two large concentric
flowers on the back of the dragon relief (ill. 77) most closely resemble the twin
blossoms in a panel from the additional volume of the Worms Mahzor (ill. 181).315
Although in the Worms Mahzor the petals are set in three rows and their shape is ogee
in contrast to the relief’s flower, the proportions of this flower to the frame, the wide
shape and number of petals – six, and not anywhere between five to ten as in the
examples above mentioned (ills. 48, 71, 123-24, 179) – make the twin flowers in this
painting (ill. 181) seem to be the closest model for the flower on the arch’s fragment.
Since the manuscript came into the possession of the Worms community in 1578,316 it is
possible that the flowers from the Worms Mahzor were reworked in the current style
and copied onto the back of the arch with dragons when the synagogue was renovated in
1623-24.
Rosettes such as these have a long history in Jewish art. A composition of two
six-petalled rosettes separated by a lily is found on Jewish carved ossuaries from Judea
dated to the 1st century B.C.E. or the 1st century C.E. (e.g., ill. 182). Erwin Goodenough

———————————————————————————————————
314
Sergiusz Michalski, Protestanci a sztuka. Spór o obrazy w Europie Nowożytnej
(Warsaw, 1989), passim. This book gives more details that its English edition, Sergiusz
Michalski, The Reformation and the Visual Ats: The Protestant Image Question in
Western and Eastern Europe (London, 1993).
315
Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 75-76.
316
See note 212 above.
 105

believed that in ancient Jewish art concentric images symbolized the Deity “as the unit
embracing all complexity and the center from which all life radiates,”317 and Patrik
Reuterswärd explained that both the lily and concentric rosettes or ornaments served as a
symbol of God in Medieval Christian art.318 A piyyut for the additional service of the
Day of Atonement – “The Flower (‫ שושן‬- shoshan) of the Valleys was frightened, to
keep the Day of Atonement”319 – is written under the two great flowers in the second
volume of the Worms Mahzor (ill. 181).320 This suggests that the two large flowers and
the small fleur-de-lis between them above the word ‫( שושן‬shoshan), variously interpreted
as “flower,” “lily” or “rose” are derived from Song of Songs 2:1, “I am the havatzelet
(‫חבצלת‬, “lily” or “rose”) of Sharon, the shoshanah (“flower” or “rose”) of the valleys.”321
The shoshanah in the Song of Songs is an epithet of the poet’s beloved (cf. 2:2), which
in the rabbinical literature is commonly associated with “God’s bride, the people of
Israel.”322 In the piyyut for the Day of Atonement, as in other contemporary liturgical
poetry of Ashkenazi Jews, the shoshan (or shoshanah) is an allegory of Israel as God’s
chosen people.323 The 4th-century Song of Songs Rabba 2:3 makes a parallel between the
people of Israel doing good deeds and the flowering shoshanah, and gives this allegory
an eschatological perspective, stating that just as the orchard will be saved for the sake
of the shoshanah, the entire world will be redeemed because of merits of the Torah and
those who study it. This meaning of shoshanah might have caused the depiction of open
flowers above the entrance to synagogues or yeshivahs, on the bimah’s enclosure, and
on the Holy Ark.
———————————————————————————————————
317
Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, 3: 197.
318
Reuterswärd, The Visible and Invisible in Art, 83 ff., 138 ff.
319
Idelsohn, Jewish Liturgy, 242-243.
320
This additional volume, perhaps a little later in date, was attached instead of the lost
original second part of the Mahzor (Aliza Cohen-Mushlin, “Later Addition to the
Worms Mahzor” in Worms Mahzor, Introductory volume, 94-96).
321
Song of Songs Rabba 2:3 explains that after the havatzelet has flourished it turns into
a shoshanah. It further states (according R. Azariah, 2: 3) that the flower (shoshanah) of
the rose is the people of Israel (‫)שושנה של ורד אלו ישראל‬.
322
For example, Ex. Rabba 4:10; Song of Songs Rabba (Vilna edition) 1:1-2. See also
Gershom G. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic
Tradition (New York, 1965), 119. On this allegory in the Hebrew illuminated
manuscripts from Germany, see Naomi Feuchtwanger, “The Coronation of the Virgin
and of the Bride,” Jewish Art, 12-13 (1986-87): 213-24; ",‫ "אתי מלבנון כלה‬,‫עיני‬-‫שרית שלו‬
‫ רימונים‬6-7 (1999): 6-20.
323
In the Ma’oz Tzur hymn for Hanukkah composed by Mordechai ben Isaac, the verse
‫“( נעשה נס לשושנים‬a miracle was wrought for the shoshanim”) means it was wrought for
the people of Israel (Idelsohn, Jewish Liturgy, 162).
 106

Victor Klagsbald proposed another interpretation of the symbolic open flowers

based on the similar sound of the initial syllable of the word shosh-anah with the
number ‫( שש‬shesh, “six”), and on the identification of the shoshanah with the
havatzelet. He stated that like they are both six-petalled lilies depicted either in profile
as a fleur-de-lis (havatzelet) or enface as a six-petalled flower or rosette (shoshana), and
that they are the origin of the symbol of the Magen David (the Shield of David) as a
hexagram.324 Indeed, for Jews the sum of the petals in each of the six-petalled
concentric flowers has a meaning: the three concentric circles in each flower from the
Worms Mahzor (ill. 181) gives a total of eighteen, the number that in Hebrew letters can
be written as ‫“( חי‬life”) which is often used as an apotropaic symbol, while the twelve
petals in the flower on the arch from the Worms synagogue (ill. 77) would be easily
connected to the Tribes of Israel. But this assumed numerical symbolism explains
neither the varying number of petals in other symbolic flowers in medieval synagogues
or in Hebrew manuscripts, nor the double representation of the flower in the Worms
Mahzor (ill. 181) and likely above the Ark from 1623-24 (ill. 77).
Twin open flowers above an arch can also be derived from ancient solar images
that in Christian art were used to denote the sun and moon flanking the cross. The same
circular ornaments sometimes symbolized both celestial lights, as in the two large open
flowers above the cross in the relief from Cividale (ill. 58).325 As a six-pointed star in a
circle is a usual symbol of the sun in medieval Jewish art,326 one may read the two
examples of this image coloured in yellow and red in the arch enclosing the word ‫אור‬
(“light”) on fol. 86v of the Worms Mahzor (ill. 123) as the messianic symbol of the sun
and moon casting the “light of salvation” mentioned in the piyyut below. If the reading
of the remnants of Hebrew letters near the flower on the Ark’s arch from Worms as “I
will send my angel” (Mal. 3:1) is correct, the twin flowers stressed its messianic
meaning. The medieval meaning of such twin circular images would have been known
in Worms in the early 16th century when they were reproduced in the form of concentric

———————————————————————————————————
324
Klagsbald, A l’Ombre de Dieu, 25-38. Sometimes a fleur-de-lis accompanied a
hexagram on Jewish seals in medieval France (e.g., see a late 14th-century seal of
Shlomo bar Gedalyah in Brigitte Bedos, “Les sceaux” in Blumenkranz, Art et
archéologie, 209 fig. 4), but the semantics of the two images and their combination on
these seals has not yet been studied in depth.
325
Reuterswärd, The Visible and Invisible in Art, 57, 59 fig. 49, 73 fig. 67; Schiller,
Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 4/1: figs. 108, 110-11, 435. The sun-and-moon
motif in medieval art will be discussed below.
326
For instance, see Klagsbald, A l’Ombre de Dieu, 52 figs. 44-45, 56 fig. 46.
 107

flowers on the portal at Stelzen Street (ill. 178-79) and above the door of the Rashi
chamber (ills. 70-71), and were copied from the Worms Mahzor onto the arch of the
Holy Ark in the synagogue.
At the same time, in 1623-24, new supports were made for the Ark as is
indicated by two fragments of pilasters. On one, a vine growing from a vase is carved
against a similar dotted background in the sunken panel (ills. 75 no. 12). Currently, the
left side of this fragment cannot be seen as it is built into a panel in the Rashi House
Jewish Museum in Worms (ill. 183), but Böcher reported that the left side is decorated
with zigzag bands,327 which may be of the same type as those on the left side of the
block with the dragon (ill. 78). The same ornamental vine with alternating leaves and
clusters carved against a dotted background within the panel is found on another
fragment (ills. 174-75). The corner depression inside this fragment suggests that it was
built in to the left side of the Ark’s aperture. On both fragments, the panels are of the
same width, have the same margins and slanted frame. Since this vine ends with two
clusters and a small tripartite leaf on top, it may have been the upper part of another of
the Ark’s supports. It, however, has a panel of interlaced bands on a dotted background
on its right side, rather than zigzags. A similar design with undulated vines on the
supports and flowers on the arch of a portal is depicted on the frontispiece of the
“Custom Book of Worms” by Juspa the Shammash of Worms (1604-78; ill. 100).328
The heavy proportions of this portal and especially its stepped base that resembles rows
of blocks or bricks give the impression of a stone construction. Even if the illuminator
did not intend to copy the Ark from Worms exactly, he knew it well and may have
reproduced in his drawing its familiar vines and flowers. Both the vines and the
shoshanim on the Ark were symbols of Israel and of the messianic Redemption. The
solar connotation of open flowers set above the vines suggested the celestial source of
Redemption: the heavenly light gives life and fertility to vine just as God will give the
light of Salvation to His vineyard, which then will flourish and yield fruits.
After the bimah’s enclosure was damaged – perhaps thrown down – in 1615, the
old arches were mended and set on a new two-tiered stone balustrade.329 Some parts of

———————————————————————————————————
327
Height – 43 cm, width – 23 cm, length – 16 cm (Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 73 n.
328 no. 12).
328
Oxford, the Bodleian Library, Ms. Opp. 751, fol. 5b. The manuscript, compiled from
ca. 1648 through to ca. 1678, is written by a 17th-century Ashkenazi hand (Eidelberg, R.
Juspa, 9-45 and a facsimile).
329
Cf. Cahn, “Bîmah,” 266-67.
 108

tracery had to be made anew in order to complete the lost sections. This may explain the
fact that the surviving fragments of the arches are made of different kinds of sandstone
(ills. 160-61, 172-73): some originated from the medieval arcade, and others date from
the period of the reconstruction. If, as we supposed, the escaping dragon was a part of
the 1355 enclosure, it was not reused just as the striding dragon on the Ark was then
concealed.
The bimah’s enclosure built in 1355 and renovated in 1623-24 existed in the
Worms synagogue until the 1842 reconstruction. Several later drawings and
photographs (ills. 10a, 11-12, 17) indicate that after that year, an openwork low iron
parapet had been made around the stone reader’s table with its inclined top in place of
the tiered stone arcade. Although disagreeing on the proportions of different parts and in
the inclination of the desk’s top, two pictures that depict this table in detail (ills. 65-66)
represent it as a simple rectangular top set on richly ornamented front and rear supports,
with unelaborated rectangular bases beneath the front legs. The combination of different
designs for the supports as well as the way the design is truncated on the rear legs
resulted from a secondary use of the carved stones in this structure. Obviously, the table
was built after the dismantling of the bimah in 1842 from remnants of various old
synagogue fixtures. The style of the vines parallel to the ones on the Ark, and the
Baroque nature of the scrolls on the front supports suggest that these parts are dated to
the 1623-24 reconstruction.330
Conclusions
Although this reexamination of the carved stone fragments did not result in a
comprehensive reconstruction of the fixtures set in the synagogue from the foundation
of the oldest building in 1034 until the dismantling of the medieval decorations in the
1620s and 1840s, it allows us to come to several conclusions. A number of symbolic
and architectonic motifs such as menorah-shaped palms and decorated barriers in the
prayer hall had been inherited from Jewish art of the late Antique and Byzantine
periods. These traditional patterns were designed in accordance with their contemporary
versions. The vine images widely used in ancient Jewish art and omnipresent in church
ornamentation were continuously reproduced in the synagogue of Worms during the
periods under discussion. In contrast, the dragons were a new motif that penetrated into
———————————————————————————————————
330
Presently in the synagogue, there is a reader’s table reconstructed in accordance with
the drawing reproduced here in ill. 65. Since paint and plaster cover the surface of this
table, a visual examination of it could not reveal whether it consists of any extant
original parts.
 109

the synagogue and also into Hebrew illuminated manuscripts from local Romanesque
and Gothic Christian art. Memoirs about the synagogue in Worms suggest that a
sculptured lion was once situated within the synagogue, and was later moved outdoors.
Since there are no material proofs for this hypothesis, it will be further examined in the
light of evidence from other synagogues to be discussed below. Reliefs of arboreal and
zoomorphic images were present in the prayer hall for long periods of time until some
of them were removed, transferred or turned around so as to be hidden. These changes
indicate periods during which images of trees and dragons caused protests in the
community. The above analysis prompts us to date the first such period to the very late
12th or the early 13th century, influenced by the trauma of the 1196 pogrom and by the
austere Hasidei Ashkenaz movement that echoed the aniconic trends in the Catholic
Church. These iconoclastic measures were neither all-inclusive nor long-termed: during
the 1355 reconstruction dragons were added to the decorations in the Worms
synagogue. These were in turn removed in 1623-24 under the influence of the Lutheran
movement. This supposition will be re-examined below in the context of the art of that
period in Poland.
In spite of numerous lacunae, the material and documental evidence on the
earliest synagogue art in Worms is the most complete in comparison to the finds and the
data from other early Ashkenazi synagogues. As a result, this monument can be used as
a model for the analysis of much poorer remnants of the structure, furnishings and
sculptural decoration from the Romanesque synagogues in Rouen and Cologne and the
Early Gothic synagogue in Regensburg, whose spatial composition followed the two-
nave composition of the synagogue of Worms. The fortunate survival of the Gothic
Altneu Synagogue in Prague, also built on a similar two-nave plan, will provide a model
for the further development of sculptural adornment in Ashkenazi synagogues.
 110

Chapter II
The Decorations from Medieval Synagogues in Prague
in Comparison to Other Contemporary Synagogues
Whereas our information on the volumetric decoration of early synagogues in
the German lands consists of separate remnants, most of which were removed from
their original location, and on pictorial and indirect textual evidence, the Altneuschul of
Prague represents the almost complete Gothic adornment of a synagogue surviving in
situ, albeit after certain renovations or changes. An analysis of this decoration can throw
light on the development of synagogue art when it moved eastwards.
In the Middle Ages, Prague developed under the protection of the castle founded
in the second half of the 9th century in the Malá Strana (literally “Small Side”) on the
west bank of the river Vltava (Moldau). The city grew in the 13th century with the
establishment of German communities by Wenceslas I, king of Bohemia. In 1232, the
German colonists established the Altstadt (Staré Mĕsto, “Old Town,” later also
Josefstadt or Josefov), a trading center opposite the Malá Strana on the east bank of the
river, and a century later, the Neustadt (Nové Mĕsto, “New Town”) to the southeast.1
From the outset, Prague had opened routes for Jewish trade connecting the French and
Rhineland cities, via Regensburg, with Poland and Russia, and a Jewish population
appeared in the town in the early 10th century. The earliest known mention of a
synagogue is dated from 1124 and referred probably to a building that was situated in
the Malá Strana and was destroyed by fire in 1142.2 Seemingly already in 1142, and
then again in the 1190s and after 1232, Jews moved in the Old Town to the site which
later became known as the Judenstadt (Židovske Mĕsto, “Jewish Town”).3 From the
mid-13th century, the official position of Bohemian Jews became somewhat stabilized.
In 1254, King Přemysl Ottokar II (reigned 1253-1278) issued a privilege that denied the
blood libel, prohibited violence against Jews and their property, forbade the disturbance
of Jewish festivals, damage to Jewish cemeteries or synagogues, and forcible baptism,
———————————————————————————————————
1
Oskar Schürer, Prag: Kultur, Kunst, Geschichte (Vienna, 1930).
2
Münzer, “Die Altneusynagoge in Prag,” 88 n. 69.
3
Benedikt Foges and David J. Podiebrad, Altertümer der Prager Josefstadt, 1-3
(Prague, 1855-1870); Ignát Herrmann, Josef Teige and Zikmunt Winter, Das Prager
Ghetto, Prague, 1903; Václav Ryneš, “L’incendie de la synagogue du faubourg du
château de Prague en 1142,” Judaica Bohemiae, 1 (1965): 9-25; Vilímková, “Seven
Hundred Years;” idem, The Prague Ghetto (Prague, 1993), 110-14; Zdenka Münzer,
“Die Altneusynagoge in Prag;” Pařik and Štecha, The Jewish Town of Prague, 4-7.
Jews settled also in the Vyšegrad (“High Town”) to the south of the Nové Mĕsto, but no
old synagogue is known to have been built in this area.
 111

and allowed Jews to deal in moneylending and pawnbroking.

The first great synagogue established in the new colony in the late 12th or the
early 13th century was the Altschul (“Old Synagogue”). This building was burnt down
in 1389, and a new synagogue was built on this site in the late 15th century, perhaps by
Jewish exiles from Spain and Portugal. An engraving from 1835 (ill. 184) depicting the
ceremony mourning the death of Emperor Franz I in the Altschul shows a single-nave
hall spanned by Gothic groin vaults, lit by means of long Gothic windows beginning
high on the walls. The Ark is a Neo-Classical structure framed by Doric fluted columns
bearing a semicircular pediment that is decorated by a sun-like pattern, a flattened form
also reminiscent of a conch shell. Five steps lead up to the Ark, and a parapet is seen to
their right. The rectangular pavilion in front of the Ark is the bimah, which is
surrounded by Neo-Classical columns. It is decorated with garlands, lit by candles set
on its parapet, and covered by a dark baldachin with a royal crown on its top and the
Emperor’s two-headed eagles decorating its bottom. In the 1840s the synagogue’s
interior was renovated in the Neo-Gothic style. An engraving produced by V. Popelík
and published by B. Foges and D. J. Podiebrad in 1855 (ill. 185)4 testifies that a barrel
spanning with pointed pseudo-Gothic lunettes replaced the old groin vaults. The Ark
was now rearranged as a monumental Gothic portal set before a large rose window, and
smaller ogee arches with tracery were set on each side of the Ark. The bimah was
moved to the east end, and an openwork metal barrier was set around the bimah instead
of the old cage-like enclosure. In 1868 the architects Ignác Ullman and Josef Niklas
replaced the Altschul by a new synagogue built in the Moorish style.5
The Structure and Decoration of the Altneuschul
When the late 12th or early 13th-century Altschul became too small to house all
the area’s Jewish inhabitants, another masonry synagogue was built in the 1230s in the
Judenstadt and was called the Neue Schul (ill. 186). When newer synagogues were
added in the Jewish quarter in the early 16th century, the “Neue” was defined as the “alte
neue Schul” (literally, the “old new synagogue”), or Altneuschul.6 In the 1960s,
explorations of the synagogue’s structure led Vilímková to the assumption that the

———————————————————————————————————
4
Foges and Podiebrad, Altertümer der Prager Josefstadt, 1 (1855), facing p. 43.
5
Vilímková, The Prague Ghetto, 11, 16 ff., 105-110; Pařik and Štecha, The Jewish
Town of Prague, 72-73.
6
Münzer, “Die Altneusynagoge in Prag,” 87-93. The belief that the Altneuschul was
built on the site of an ancient synagogue from 592 has not been proved (cf. Loukomski,
Jewish Art, 43).
 112

Altneuschul consisted of two synagogues: at some point in the last quarter of the 13th
century, the large two-nave hall had been attached to an older single-nave synagogue
from about the 1230s (ill. 187).7 The erection of the 1174-75 two-nave prayer hall
abutting on the small 1034 synagogue in Worms gives some grounds for this
hypothesis.8 In Prague, an entrance was opened from the low building into the
southwestern bay of the high prayer hall, so that the old synagogue was turned into the
southern vestibule of the new structure (ills. 188-89). This entrance was given the form
of a Gothic perspective portal with a symmetric grapevine ornamentation carved on the
tympanum (ills. 190-91). In the early 17th century and in the 18th century, low annexes
were added at the other sides of the main hall (ill. 188), and a number of renovations of
the synagogue complex were undertaken from 1483 to 1966-67.9
The two-nave hall, measuring 8.7 x 14.3 m and about 9.3 m in height is oriented
from west to east and is spanned by six Gothic groin vaults. In each vault, the keystone
connects four diagonal ribs and a fifth rib perpendicular to a lateral wall (ills. 192-93).
The vaults rest on two octagonal piers on the central axis of the building, and on
attached colonettes and corbels on the walls (ills. 193-97). On the axial piers, corbels
fastened to the top of the eight facets support the ribs (ills. 194-97). At the south, west
and north side, the corbels under the diagonal ribs lie on half-round wall colonettes that
are supported by additional corbels at about 2.4 meters above the floor (ills. 194-95).
Wall colonettes are absent under the vault’s fifth rib, and in the upper center of the
eastern wall, where the ribs are supported only by a corbel (ill. 194). In the case of the
eastern wall, this omission was obviously in order to allow space for the high pediment
of the Holy Ark.
Carved foliate patterns decorate all the vault keystones (ills. 198-201), the
capitals of the attached colonettes (ills. 202-205) and the corbels (ills. 206-11), and a
relief of a vine with clusters of grapes adorns the pediment of the Ark (ill. 212). Almost
all the different patterns have close parallels in the relief decorations of German and
Bohemian churches in the 13th century, but several of them must be dated from the
period of the renovation of the synagogue directed by Emmanuel Brand and Joseph
———————————————————————————————————
7
Vilímková, “Seven Hundred Years,” 77.
8
The building of the synagogues one after another seems reliable rather than
Vilímková’s more recent alternative assumption that the builders had started both
structures simultaneously, but finished the vestibule first and half a century later
completed the two-nave hall (The Prague Ghetto, 112-13).
9
Münzer, “Die Altneusynagoge in Prag;” Vilímková, “Seven Hundred Years;” Krinsky,
Synagogues of Europe, 169-75.
 113

Mocker in 1883-87.10 It is not known which of the corbels and capitals were replaced at
that time. The fact that Brand and Mocker based the reconstruction on their preparatory
research on the synagogue in 1882-83 suggests that the newly made parts were modeled
after the old fragments that had remained in situ, or were copied from one of the
surviving reliefs nearby. If the latter was the case, the repeated ornament with convex
trefoil leaves with sharpened edges (see the outer ring of leaves in ills. 198b, 209a, and
a pair of identical corbels in ill. 206) may be supposed to be the work of a carver who
completed missing or damaged carvings in the 1880s. The patterns of the reliefs
currently present in the Altneuschul may be original, but when discussing their location
and artistic execution, both possible dates must be taken into consideration. For
example, it is possible that a pair of undecorated corbels on both octagonal piers were
replaced in the 1880s (ills. 186-87), but they also may originally have been left blank as
a token of mourning for the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.11
The foliate reliefs vary in their composition. The symmetrical scheme of the
vine tree in the entrance tympanum (ill. 1) contrasts with the asymmetric vine in the
pediment of the Holy Ark (ill. 212). Two branches with three vine leaves loosely
embrace the capitals of the entrance portal (ill. 213), while on most of the capitals and
corbels of the prayer hall, the leaves densely cover the surface, sometimes overlapping
each other. On some capitals and corbels, the leaves grow vertically from the same stem
in two rows (e.g., ills. 209f, 202b-d), and on others, separate leaves are arranged in one,
two or three rows (e.g., ills. 202a, 209a-e). On the southeastern keystone (ill. 198b), two
concentric cinquefoil flowers are set on six radial leaves to form a hexagram and are
placed in the middle of a circle of trefoils. This contrasts with the other keystones
whose centers are empty or not stressed (ills. 198a, c-d; 199).
The reliefs also demonstrate different levels of artistic execution. For example,
in the pediment of the Holy Ark and on the keystone in the center of the north nave, the
spherical grapes protrude from rounded clusters (ills. 202, 212), whereas on the entrance
tympanum and on one of the capitals the grapes are designated by an octagonal grid of
lines incised on lentil-shaped clusters (ills. 1, 204). The simple shape of the flattened
leaves such as those on the capital placed on the south wall opposite the great eastern
pier (ill. 203) differ from the dynamic outline and modulated form of the plants on most
of the keystones (e.g., ills. 199-200). While this variety of compositional schemes was

———————————————————————————————————
10
Münzer, “Die Altneusynagoge in Prag,” 85; Vilímková, “Seven Hundred Years,” 81.
11
Cf. Goldman-Ida, “Black on the White – a Remembrance of Jerusalem.”
 114

usual in Gothic architectonic decoration of the period, the differences in the execution
suggest that there were several craftsmen working at the Altneuschul. Münzer assumed
that a carver practicing a simplified version of an obsolete Romanesque style made the
simpler reliefs, whereas another sculptor, more experienced in the contemporary Gothic
decorations, made the more sculptural reliefs.12
Although the earliest documentary evidence relating to the Altneuschul is from
13
1342, the comparative analysis of this two-nave building and its decorations with
medieval Bohemian architecture suggests a 13th-century date. In 1871, Bernhard
Grueber noticed the stylistic affinity of the Gothic hall and foliate decorations of the
Altneuschul with the early Gothic buildings from the second half of the 13th century in
the St. Agnes monastery of the Clares in Prague and in two Cistercian convents, the
Zlatá Koruna (Goldenkron) near Český Krumlow (Böhmisch Budweis), and the
monastery in Vyšší Brod (Hohenfurth).14 In her meticulous research on the Altneuschul
in the context of Bohemian architecture, Münzer noticed that the two-nave structure was
used in the chapter houses of the Cistercian convents in Zlatá Koruna, Vyšší Brod, Osek
(Osseg) and Tišnov (Tischnowitz, Porta Coeli), and found close parallels to the
synagogue’s portal frame, vault ribs, wall cornices and supports, octagonal piers, and
stone carvings in the 13th and the early 14th-century monastic and church architecture in
Prague, in the rest of Bohemia and beyond.15 Researchers commonly agree that the
Altneuschul’s vault construction supported by a combination of attached colonettes or
wall piers and corbels (ills. 194-95) is akin to the structure of the St. Salvator church of
the 1260s in the St. Agnes monastery (ill. 214),16 and to the hall on the ground floor of
the chapel of the Guardian Angels built in the third quarter of the 13th century in the
Zlatá Koruna monastery (ill. 215-16).17 The relief on the keystone of the central vault in
the northern nave of the Altneuschul (ill. 200) is a somewhat simplified version of the
vine leaves and clusters of grapes decorating a keystone from ca. 1250 in the Cathedral
———————————————————————————————————
12
Münzer, “Die Altneusynagoge in Prag,” 84-86.
13
Ibid., 65 n. 15, 90 n. 79.
14
Grueber, Die Kunst des Mittelalters in Böhmen, 32.
15
Münzer, “Die Altneusynagoge in Prag,” 74-87.
16
Helena Soukupová, Anežský klášter v Praze (Prague, 1989), 127-74.
17
Albert Kutal, České gotické umĕní (Prague, 1972), 9-11; Jiří Kuthan, Die
mittelalterliche Baukunst der Zisterzienser in Böhmen and Mähren (Munich,
1982), 228-33; idem, Česká architektura v dobĕ posledních Přemyslovců (Prague,
1994), 482 ff. Pařik and Štecha (The Jewish Town of Prague, 21) also noticed
constructive similarities to the Bezdež castle and the parish church in Kolín.
 115

of Naumburg (ill. 217), which in 1261 were copied on the capital of the St. Salvator
church in the St. Agnes monastery (ill. 218). The shape of the leaves and the modulation
of the relief on the capitals of the entrance portals of both St. Salvator (ill. 219) and the
Altneuschul (ill. 213) are also similar. The synagogue, the Guardian Angels chapel and
the monastery in Vyšší Brod from the 1260s all have in common a foliate pattern as the
main image on the tympanum and plant carvings on capitals, brackets and vault key-
stones (cf. ills. 1, 198-211, 213 vs. ills. 143a, 220-22).18 These constructive and stylistic
affinities confirm the dating of the Altneuschul to the late 1260s or to the last quarter of
the 13th century.19 This period falls under the reign of Přemysl Ottokar II (1253-78),
whose privilege from 1254 advanced the economical progress of the Jewish community
in Prague, and allowed them to collect enough means to reconstruct their modest prayer
hall into a monumental synagogue. The same stonemasons who followed the Gothic
tradition of German church architecture and knew the Cistercian type of ornamental
decoration, were employed at the Cistercian monasteries in Southern Bohemia, as well
as at the St. Agnes monastery and the Altneuschul that are situated near each other in
the Altstadt of Prague.20

———————————————————————————————————
18
The foliate decoration of these architectural members was typical in Cistercian
buildings in Bohemia in the second part of the 13th century (Münzer, “Die
Altneusynagoge in Prag,” 74-87). In particular, note the main portal of the monastery in
Hradiútě nad Jizerou, the southern pier in the Capital Hall, curved key-stones and
brackets in the Osek monastery, the capitals in the Royal Chapel of the Plasy
monastery, the pier of the Royal Chapel in the monastery of Vyšší Brod (Kuthan, Die
mittelalterliche Baukunst der Zisterzienser, figs. 1.3-9, 4.6, 4.10-11, 4.17, 4.20, 4.24-
25, 5.5-8, 10.14). I thank Dr. Kuthan who kindly supplied me with useful sources in the
Czech language and a clear photograph and drawing of the portal from Vyšší Brod.
19
The principal sources discussing the date of the Altneuschul are Grotte, Deutshe,
böhmische und polnische Synagogentypen, 25-26; E. Poche, “Něco o staronové
synagoze v Praze,” Kalendář česko-židovský, 1929-1930, 49 (Prague, 1929): 123-27;
Kutal, České gotické umĕní, 11; Vilímková, “Seven Hundred Years,” 72-83; Pařik and
Štecha, The Jewish Town of Prague, 72-73; Krinsky, Synagogues of Europe, 169-75.
The estimations on the date in the early sources are discussed in Münzer, “Die
Altneusynagoge in Prag,” 63-67; idem, “The Old-New Synagogue in Prague,” 523-25.
In contrast to more recent researches that commonly accept the period from 1270 to
1290, the early sources had proposed a wider span of time varying from the second
quarter of the 13th century (Münzer, "Die Altneusynagoge in Prag," 64-65, nn. 9-10) to
the first quarter of the 14th century (Krautheimer, Mittelalterische Synagogen, 211).
20
Vilímková attributed the Altneuschul to Cistercian builders (“Seven Hundred Years,”
77). However, in the 13th century the plant ornamentation and cross symbols typical to
Cistercian architecture were also a common decoration of parochial churches and other
monasteries in Germany (ills. 223-24; and numerous other examples in Behling, Die
Pflanzenwelt; Friedrich and Helga Möbius, Bauornament im Mittelalter [Vienna,
1978]) and in Central Europe (Zygmunt Świechowski, “Drzewo życia w
 116

The late 13th-century Gothic construction and Cistercian building techniques of

the Altneuschul reproduce the two-nave composition of German synagogues such as the
1174-75 Romanesque synagogue of Worms (ill. 8) or the early 13th-century synagogue
of Regensburg (ills. 31-32). The choice of these models indicates the continuity of
Jewish culture from Germany to Bohemia. Isaac Or Zaru’a (ca. 1180- ca. 1250), whose
negative attitude to plant images in the synagogue was discussed above, is the best
known Jewish scholar active in Prague in the early 13th century. He exemplifies the
wide range of connections between Bohemian Jews and the Jewish communities in the
West. Born in Bohemia, he studied under Rabbi Jacob ben Isaac ha-Lavan of Prague
and Rabbi Abraham ben Azriel of Bohemia.21 The latter had a deep knowledge of the
writings of Rashi, and was a follower of the leaders of Hasidei Ashkenaz, Rabbi Judah
ben Samuel he-Hasid and Rabbi Eleazar Kalonymus Rokeah, who were both from
Worms. Moreover, Abraham ben Azriel was the first of the Ashkenazi scholars to make
full use of all of the Rambam’s works, and he familiarized his pupils with other
rabbinical literature composed in Spain and France.22 Or Zaru’a later visited
Regensburg and met Judah he-Hasid, his teacher’s teacher. He then studied in Germany
under Simhah ben Samuel of Speyer and Jonathan ben Isaac of Würzburg, and in
France under Judah ben Isaac Leon of Paris and Samson of Coucy. He kept in contact
with the Jews of Bohemia from abroad and in his halakhic rulings referred to their local
problems.23 Isaac’s contemporaries in Prague built the single-hall synagogue, now the
southern vestibule of the Altneuschul, and the next generation of Prague’s Jews were
responsible for the foundation of the great prayer hall of the Altneuschul based on the
two-nave type of German synagogue. That generation maintained the same range of
contacts, so that other Jews from Prague, many of whom were immigrants from German
———————————————————————————————————
monumentalnej rzeżbie romańskiej Polski,” Księga ku czci Władysława Podlachy.
Wrocławskie Towarzystwo Naukowe. Rozprawy Komisji Historii Sztuki, 1
[Wroclaw, 1957]: 113-18, 227-32). Leroux-Dhuys explained that lay master builders
and wage-earning workers, not monks and lay brothers, worked at the Cistercian sites
(Leroux-Dhuys, Cistercian Abbeys, 41-43). Thus the same stonemasons produced
carved ornamentation for Cistercian convents, other monasteries and parochial
churches, and the synagogue.
21
J. Wellesz, “Über R. Isaac b. Mose’s ‘Or Zarua’,” Jahrbuch der jüdisch-
literarischen Gesellschaft, 4 (Frankfurt am Main, 1906): 75-124. For an outline of his
biography and bibliography, see also [Shlomoh Zalman Havlin], "Isaac ben Moses of
Vienna," EJ, 9: 25-27.
22
Abraham ben Azriel is the author of the book Arugat ha-Bosem ("Spice Garden," ca.
1234). For his biography and main bibliography, see “Abraham ben Azriel,” EJ, 2: 135.
23
[Havlin], “Isaac ben Moses of Vienna,” 26.
 117

lands, also visited western synagogues such as that of Worms or Regensburg. They also
followed the same artistic models in the arrangement of the focal structures of the
synagogue space.
The Holy Ark of the Altneuschul is a stone architectonic structure framing an
elevated niche for the Torah scrolls in the center of the east wall (ill. 225). Four shorter
steps slightly moved to the left side lead up to the fifth wide step at the bottom of the
architectonic frame (ills. 225-27).24 A stone pulpit for the cantor abuts on the shorter
steps on the right, and a small stone bench is attached perpendicular to the left side of
the two bottom steps (ills. 188, 225-26). The steps and pulpit are flanked by a
freestanding trefoil stone arcade set between corner piers (ills. 228-29). The two
semicircular arches of the left arcade (ill. 227-28) and the obelisk-shaped candleholders
on the corner piers (ills. 226, 228) probably date to the 16th century reconstruction.25
The sides of the piers and obelisks are similarly decorated with a blind shallow trefoil
arch (ills. 226-28). Such an arcade supporting candles near the Holy Ark is depicted in
the Mahzor from Germany of ca. 1300 (ill. 101). If the supposition made above about
the stone partitions before the Holy Ark in early Ashkenazi synagogues is correct, then
the lateral stone parapets consisting of corner piers and an arcade could be a Gothic
version of the Romanesque barriers (ill. 111).
The general architectonic layout of the extant Holy Ark consisting of an
architectonic frame around the Torah niche with a pediment at the top is original, but
several details have been changed. The triangular pediment (ill. 212) is decorated with
carved grapevines while foliate crockets run along the slopes up to the finial. Aside
from the section of the apex and the finial, which was clearly reconstructed, this part
belongs to the earliest construction and its style fits the Gothic structure and decoration
of the two-nave hall. However, the medieval frame and doors (ill. 225) have been
altered. The diamond-pointed stones below high voluted brackets at the sides of the
blind panel below the aperture, and the ornamented half-colonettes resting on these
brackets and flanking the niche, were designed in the late 16th century or during the
repair of 1618.26 A bronze column divides the aperture into two parts, each of which is
———————————————————————————————————
24
On the ground plan from 1922, Masák erroneously showed four steps (ill. 188,
published in Münzer, “Die Altneusynagoge in Prag,” fig. 1, see also a variant of the
plan in Krinsky, Synagogues of Europe, 172 fig. 50).
25
The obelisk at the front of the right parapet is absent, and was later replaced with a
bronze menorah (ill. 227).
26
Münzer, “Die Altneusynagoge in Prag,” 70-71, Vilímková, “Seven Hundred Years,”
79.
 118

closed with a bronze door. These replaced the carved and gilt doors of the Holy Ark that
disappeared when the Jews were expelled from Prague between 1745 and 1748.27
The rectangular platform of the bimah (ills. 188, 194-97) rests on three steps and
occupies the space between the octagonal pillars. It is surrounded by a 1.3-meter-high
stone barrier with apertures at the north side of the east pillar and the south side of the
west pillar. On the barrier, there is a wrought-iron grille consisting of an ogee arcade
whose supporting posts rise high above the arches and alternate with equally high posts
that rise from the apex of the arches. Two horizontal bars that form the upper tier of the
grille cross these vertical poles, and the posts end with ball-shaped finials above stylized
leaves set at a uniform level. A wrought metal grille door was hung at both entrances to
the bimah (ills. 195, 197). The grille with ogee-shaped arches, faceted bosses on the
vertical bars and finials with leaves (ill. 195) is a linear reproduction of Late Gothic
tracery and may date to the period of the repair of the synagogue after the pogrom in
1483. The north section of the grille had been stolen after the exile in 1745 and was
remade after the return of the Jews to Prague in 1748 (ill. 197).28
The layout of the grille consisting of a high arcade bearing a low tier and finials
is similar to the upper part of the cage-like bimah enclosure from 1355 in the synagogue
of Worms (ill. 18) or that depicted in the German Mahzor from ca. 1300 (ill. 101). As
we saw, texts on the “wooden tower” of the bimah in 12th-century Rhineland
synagogues29 and finds in the early 12th-century synagogue of Regensburg30 suggest that
the bimah was at first surrounded by a wooden parapet, while the early 13th century
bimah enclosure there (ills. 32, 151) and that from 1355 in the synagogue of Worms
(ills. 18, 74, 161-62, 172-73) were of stone. These allow us to suppose that in the late
15th-century, the grille in the Altneuschul was made instead of an earlier stone or
wooden arcade rising from the barrier around the bimah. In contrast to the bimah’s
massive stone enclosures from Worms and Regensburg, the linear grille arcade in the
Altneuschul does not obstruct the view. In Prague of the late 15th century, the Jews no
longer shared the mystical atmosphere of prayer of the Hasidei Ashkenaz whose stress
on personal devotion probably caused the adaptation of the two-nave plan and partition
around the bimah in German synagogues in the 12th century. It is likely that the
———————————————————————————————————
27
Vilímková, “Seven Hundred Years,” 80.
28
Ibid., 78-80
29
‫ מחזור ויטרי‬no. 93; Salfeld, “Zur Geschichte der Mainzer Synagogen,” 106-110;
Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 121.
30
Codreanu-Windauer, “The Medieval Jewish Quarter of Regensburg,” 143.
 119

replacement of the stone arcade with a transparent grille was intended to make the
synagogue space more united and to give a less individual and more communal
character to the worship. The iron grille would also evoke an association with the “iron
wall” mentioned in Berakhot 32b, through which prayers must penetrate.
The direction of the seats in the Altneuschul remained, however, ununified: two
rows of seats and pulpits faced each other along the walls and around the bimah, and
seats were placed along the parapet flanking the Holy Ark (ills. 196-97, 226).
Examination of the building in the 1920s revealed that the wooden bench that runs
along the walls and around the bimah hides the built-in stone step that formed an older
bench.31 Such an arrangement of seats was typical in the early Ashkenazi synagogues
and resembles the stone built-in benches along the longitudinal walls and supposedly at
the east wall that were discovered in the Old Synagogue of Cologne (ill. 25a),32 and the
rows of seats set along all the walls and around the bimah in the synagogue of Worms
until 1842 (ill. 18). The visual documents demonstrate that in the course of time the
traditional order of seats was almost unchanged. A lectern in front of a seat with a high
back panel surmounted by a six-pointed star to the right of the Holy Ark at the east wall
is an honoured seat, likely that of a rabbi (ill. 197). The seat of honour at the east wall
indicates the continued existence of the medieval custom that the senior members’ seats
faced the congregation, as was found in the synagogues of Cologne and Worms.33 As in
the early Ashkenazi synagogues, some worshippers did not face the Holy Ark while
sitting along three sides of the bimah and along the parapets near the Ark. Moreover, the
Altneuschul demonstrates a surviving complex of the synagogue’s structure, fixtures
and sculptural decoration that may shed light on the approach to the synagogue as a
semantic whole.
The Symbolism of the Structure and Decoration in the Altneuschul
The Altneuschul, a landmark of Jewish life in Bohemia for centuries and a pulpit
for many prominent rabbis, inspired sentiments of veneration and numerous legends.34

———————————————————————————————————
31
Münzer reported only on the stone benches at the south and north side of the hall
(“Die Altneusynagoge in Prag,” 70), however in his ground plan and sections of the
Altneuschul from 1922, Maśak also drew the built-in step along the west wall, at both
sides of the Ark on the east wall and around the bimah (ill. 188).
32
Doppelfeld, “Die Ausgrabungen,” 126.
33
For the same custom in medieval Sephardi synagogues, see ‫ "הלכות תפילה ונשיאת‬,‫רמב"ם‬
‫" משנה תורה‬,‫ כפים‬11:4.
34
See Wilhelm Klein, Die Altneuschule in Prag in Sage, Wirklichkeit und
auβergottesdienstlicher Verwendung (Prague, 1932); Otto Muneles, “Die Rabbiner
 120

In the legends that influenced earlier publications on the Altneuschul, some features of
the synagogue’s structure were interpreted symbolically. Recent researchers have not
accepted such interpretations as reliable evidence for the intentions of the builders, and
propose different explanations of the synagogue’s structure. For example, the vault’s
fifth rib (ills. 192-93) was said to have been made to prevent the cross-like shape of the
intersecting members.35 Wischnitzer, Vilímková and Krinsky denied the polemical
intention of using the fifth rib to avoid the symbol of Christianity in a synagogue. They
argued, on the one hand, that the fifth rib was in use in Gothic church architecture, and
on the other, that synagogues elsewhere had four ribs.36
The oxymoronic name of the Altneuschul was misinterpreted and explained as a
symbolic link between the synagogue, Jerusalem and the Messianic Temple. The
German or Yiddish adjective alt-neu or ‫נױ‬-‫( אַלט‬alt-noy, “old-new”) was pronounced in
Hebrew as ‫( על תנאי‬al tnay, “on condition”). Tales explained that the synagogue utilized
stones from the destroyed Temple of Jerusalem. The stones were given “on condition”
that in messianic times they would be returned to the Temple to Come.37 These tales
reflect the concept of the synagogue as a “lesser Temple,” a temporary substitute for the
Sanctuary in Jerusalem until it is rebuilt in the messianic future. Although such folklore
that tends to read unusual features of the synagogue a posteriori as meaningful symbols
is undoubtedly unreliable as evidence for the symbolic intentions of the patrons,
programmers or builders of the synagogue, the tales do reveal the popular hermeneutic
approaches that may well have influenced the synagogue’s design. For instance, modern
researchers have given a symbolic interpretation akin to the folk explanations to the
number of high lancet windows in the prayer hall and to the slight irregularity in their
placement on the walls. The vault ribs divide the longitudinal walls into six parts on
each side, producing twelve sections. A narrow roundheaded window is set in each of
ten sections, while two sections on either side next to the western wall have no
windows. Two more such windows are found on the western wall in order to observe
———————————————————————————————————
der Altneuschul,” Judaica Bohemiae, 5 (1969), 2: 92-107.
35
Grotte, Deutshe, böhmische und polnische Synagogentypen, 26.
36
Wischnitzer, The Architecture of the European Synagogues, 53-54; Vilímková,
“Seven Hundred Years,” 76-77; Krinsky, Synagogues of Europe, 172. For a review of
other interpretations of the fifth rib, see Rudolf Klein, “Major Synagogues: Eastern and
Central Europe” in Sed-Rajna, Jewish Art, 589-90.
37
Münzer, “Die Altneusynagoge in Prag,” 87-93. On Jewish folk tales about the use of
the Temple’s stones in a synagogue, see ‫" מחניים‬,‫ "בית הכנסת באגדות העם‬,‫ חיים שוורצבוים‬95
(1964): 63.
 121

the coming of twilight at the end of the Sabbath, so that the total number of these
windows is twelve (ills. 192, 194).38 If the number of windows was insignificant, the
setting of twelve windows in the twelve sections on the longitudinal walls would have
been more logical in order to complete the layout, and the total number would have
reached fourteen.39 Vilímková therefore interpreted the twelve windows as a symbol of
the twelve tribes of Israel, supposing that the western section on the longitudinal walls
was left blind in order to arrive at the desired number.40 Krinsky denied this numerical
symbolism, although she did not give an alternate convincing explanation for their
placement.41 It should be added in favour of Vilímková’s hypothesis that the Zohar,
which appeared in the late 13th century, i.e. in the period of the building of the main
hall of the Altneuschul, specifically recommended that the synagogue have twelve
windows.42 The denotation of the windows as the tribes of Israel also plays a part in a
wider symbolic content. The Bible provides an archetypal model of the spatial
arrangement of the tribes of Israel around the sanctuary.43 Although the Biblical model

———————————————————————————————————
38
The two additional round windows on the eastern wall were pierced in the 16th or 17th
century, and traces of one small window were revealed above the Ark (Vilímková, The
Prague Ghetto, 110-111). Masák’s ground plan (ill. 175, reproduced also in
Wischnitzer, The Architecture of the European Synagogues, 53 fig. 44; Krinsky,
Synagogues of Europe, 172 fig. 50; Rudolf Klein, “Major Synagogues,” 589 fig. 752)
shows the windows only on the south and west wall of the prayer hall, while the
horizontal section of the east and north wall is made at the level of the door and the
niche of the Holy Ark, and thus does not represent the windows higher on the wall.
39
It is likely that this sense of architectonic uniformity caused the confusion found in
several published technical drawings concerning the great narrow windows in the
Altneuschul. In the ground plan reproduced by Grotte (Deutshe, böhmische und
polnische Synagogentypen, 25 fig. 10b) and in the section published by Krautheimer
(Mittelalterische Synagogen, 205, fig. 74), the sixth window is erroneously drawn on
the longitudinal wall.
40
Vilímková, “Seven Hundred Years,” 77.
41
Krinsky, Synagogues of Europe, 173.
42
‫" ספר הזהר‬,‫ "רעיא מהימנא‬2: 59(1). It is likely that the demand was based on some
earlier conceptions or reflected some existing practice. In the mid-15th century, Joseph
Caro, who summarized the medieval halakhic rules, considered in his Shulkhan Arukh
that “it would be well if there will be twelve windows in the synagogue” ‫ "אורך‬,‫יוסף קארו‬
‫"( שולחן ערוך‬,‫ הלכות תפלה‬,‫ חיים‬90:4). See also ‫" מחנים‬,‫ "בית הכנסת בהלכה ובאגדה‬,‫מרדכי הכהן‬
95 (1964): 20-21.
43
The tribes encamped around the Tabernacle with the Ark of the Covenant in the
wilderness (Num. 2); in the Land of Israel, the tribes settled around Jerusalem (Josh. 13-
21), and Ezekiel prophesied that each of the twelve tribes would have access to
Jerusalem and the Temple to Come through its own gate in the town’s walls (Ezek.
48:30-35). Christian architects or builders were also aware of this symbolism and the
Tabernacle surrounded by the twelve tribes became a motif in medieval Christian art
 122

of three tribes on each of the four sides of the Sanctuary is not maintained here, the
windows symbolizing the twelve tribes in the Altneuschul would stress a parallel
between the synagogue built around the Ark containing the Torah scrolls and the
encampment of Israel around the Ark of the Covenant.
In like manner, while foliate carvings on the capitals and brackets of the
Altneuschul are commonly accepted as merely architectural decoration imported from
the artistic milieu, the reliefs on the tympanum and on the Ark’s pediment (ills. 1, 212)
inspired assumptions on their possible meanings. As was mentioned above, the portico
of the Second Temple in Jerusalem was decorated with a sculptured vine with clusters
of grapes, and this inspired the use of this motif in ancient Jewish art and in the
synagogue of Worms. Additional meanings for the vine tree on the tympanum of the
entrance portal were suggested by other scholars. Vilímková counted twelve grape
clusters on the tree and read the hillock bearing the stem of this vine tree as having
twelve roots, and therefore explained them as other symbols of the twelve tribes of
Israel.44 Krinsky, who also discerned twelve roots at the bottom of this vine tree and
thought that there were twelve vine shoots in the grapevines of the carved pediment of
the Holy Ark, also interpreted these plant images as representing the twelve tribes.45 On
the other hand, Ameisenowa read the relief over the entrance portal as the Tree of Life
and the hillock under it as “a spring of water” alluding to the Fountain of Life (ill. 1),
without mentioning the number of strands involved. Although this allusion differs from
the Talmud’s identification of a vine with the Tree of Knowledge,46 she compared the
Prague motif to a full-page symmetrical painting of a grapevine from a Jewish
Provençal Bible illuminated about 1300 (ill. 232), which she also interpreted as the Tree
of Life.47
———————————————————————————————————
linked to the prototype of the Heavenly Jerusalem which is accessed by twelve gates
bearing the names of the tribes of Israel and the apostles in the Revelation of John (note
esp. 21:12-14). These gates were centered around images of Christ, the Lamb and/or the
Temple (e.g., ill. 230). See Bianca Kühnel, “Jewish Symbolism of the Temple and the
Tabernacle and Christian Symbolism of the Holy Sepulchre and the Heavenly
Tabernacle,” Jewish Art, 12-13 (1986-87): 147-68, note especially the chapter “The
Second Type” and figs. 5-10.
44
Vilímková, “Seven Hundred Years,” 77. The same interpretation is found also in
Pařik and Štecha, The Jewish Town of Prague, 24.
45
Krinsky, Synagogues of Europe, 173-74.
46
Berakhot 40a, Sanhedrin 70a.
47
Ameisenowa, “The Tree of Life in Jewish Iconography,” 341. It is possible that her
interpretation of the hillock under the fruitful tree as water was suggested by
illustrations of the “pure river of water of life […] proceeding out of the throne of God
 123

To arrive at a fuller interpretation of these reliefs, a precise definition of the

visual motifs and their state of restoration must first be undertaken. The Gothic
tympanum of the entrance portal (ill. 1) contains an almost symmetrical tree with leaves
and clusters of grapes. Its trunk is separated into two at its ogee-shaped base of twelve
roots, but the left root is split into two, so that there are actually thirteen ends to the
roots. The short straight trunk rising from this base splits into two branches, one of
which overlaps the other. Both branches then curve outward and split again, so that the
two lower branches spiral outward and downward, filling the areas at both sides of the
trunk, and the upper two branches coil inward, occupying the space above the trunk and
meeting on the central axis of the tympanum. There are thirteen grape clusters on the
tympanum, twelve clusters that are symmetrically divided and a thirteenth cluster that
was added at the middle of the far right side of the arch to form a double cluster. Above
the Holy Ark (ill. 212), the trunk of the vine tree with leaves and clusters of grapes rises
from the bottom center and then divides into three serpentine branches directed to the
three corners of the triangular pediment and holding six clusters, two to the left and four
to the right.
The current number of roots and grape clusters on the entrance tympanum may
not be original: in 1883-87, the southern portal was somewhat changed in the course of
work directed by Emmanuel Brand and Joseph Mocker.48 The engraving by Hellich
from 1860 records the condition of the portal before the reconstruction (ill. 235).
Although the artist does not render the proportions correctly,49 he accurately depicted
certain details of the portal. They suggest that the lower left section of the tympanum
relief had been badly damaged, the area near the tympanum’s left corner had been
broken, and the door in a wooden frame seems to have been set asymmetrically, closer
to the right side, perhaps because the left-hand lower sections of the arches had also
———————————————————————————————————
[…], and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner
of fruits” (Rev. 22:1-2). All these elements are seen in the painting on fol. 25v of the
Anglo-Norman Trinity College Apocalypse of ca. 1250 (ill. 231), but the river
stemming through the Tree’s trunk does not resemble a hillock. The twelve-strand river
in the shape of a hillock around an empty thirteenth section is found as a depiction of
the Jordan River in 13th-century German art (ill. 233). A similar shape is also given to
the clouds from which Christ appears (ill. 234).
48
Vilímková, “Seven Hundred Years,” 81.
49
For instance, cf. the remaining original upper part of the relief (ill. 1) versus Hellich’s
asymmetrical drawing of the tree’s branches and leaves, and the enlarged size and lower
number of his leaves in the tympanum. Note also the corner instead of the low vault to
the upper right side of the arch (cf. ills. 190-91). The lectern to the right of the portal is
also too large in proportion to the figure sitting on the left.
 124

been broken. The photograph published by Neuwirth in 1901 (ill. 236)50 and close
examination in situ show that during the works of 1883-87 the broken area at the left
was renovated, the aperture was broadened to the left in order to set the door
symmetrically, and a wide stone lintel was set above the door. Attaching this stone to
the bottom side of the carved tympanum, the masons had left the original tree’s roots
and a crudely cut rectangular section under them unchanged, so that this old part
protrudes from the center of the new lintel (ills. 236-37). It is likely that in order to
restore the lower left section of the vine tree, the carvers just copied the surviving
symmetrical section with three clusters at the right, and thus reached the number of
thirteen clusters. Although Brand and Mocker based their renovation of the Altneuschul
on their investigations of the building in 1882-83, they also had to adapt their
professional recommendations to the popular beliefs of the Jewish community about the
synagogue.51 If the community heads were aware of the interpretation of the clusters as
symbolizing the twelve tribes, they would have demanded that the number twelve be
maintained in the renovated section. Thus either the number of clusters and roots had no
sense, or the number thirteen was meaningful in the entrance tympanum, as were the six
clusters of grapes above the Holy Ark. This hypothesis must be examined in the artistic
and ideological context of the late 13th century.
The Tympanum of the Entrance Portal: The Tree of Synagoga
The image of a vine tree set above the synagogue’s entrance or Holy Ark differs
from the motif of trailing vine branches that was commonly used in synagogue art and
in the synagogue of Worms. An antique example of a monumental tree in synagogue
decoration is found in the early fresco layer above the Holy Ark in Dura Europos, 244-
245 C.E. (ill. 238). Discussing the meaning of this motif, Herbert Kessler and Elisabeth
Revel-Neher based their interpretations on several specific formal traits of the image.
Kessler identified the tree with spiraling branches with a vine tree, but noted that the

———————————————————————————————————
50
Joseph Neuwirth, Prag (Leipzig, 1901), 72 fig. 48.
51
For example, Vilímková informs us that two of Avigdor Kara’s selihot (“elegies”)
describing the murder of Jews in the Altschul during the pogrom in Prague in 1389 had
their effect on the restoration of the Altneuschul in 1883-87. Popular legend confused
the two synagogues, and stated that the blood of Jewish martyrs bespattered the walls of
the Altneuschul. In 1882-83, Brand and Mocker found some traces of medieval
paintings under the plaster from 1618 on the synagogue walls, and proposed to disclose
the early decorations. The elders of the Jewish community, believing in the legend and
disregarding the date of the upper layer, did not allow Brand and Mocker to remove the
plaster, arguing that the traces of blood of the martyrs should not be damaged
(Vilímková, “Seven Hundred Years,” 77-79).
 125

vine in the synagogue painting is fruitless in contrast to the fruitful grapevine that was a
symbol of the Dionysian cult. For this reason, Kessler invalidated the identification of
the vine with the Tree of Life and interpreted it, in the spirit of the prophecies of Isaiah
(4:2) and Zechariah (8:12), as the vine of Israel that is forsaken after the destruction of
the Temple, but would yield fruits at the time of the coming of the Messiah.52 He also
suggested that it alluded to the biblical notions of the Messiah as the tsemach (“scion”)
of the Lord.53 Revel-Neher noticed that the tree consists of two great branches stemming
from the top of a short trunk, and associated it with the messianic tree from Ezekiel’s
eschatological prophecy (37:15-28). This text tells about the “tree (‫ )עץ‬for Judah” and
the “tree (‫ )עץ‬for Joseph,” which will be joined one to another into one tree, just as God
“will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will
gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land” (37:21).54 To be sure,
the Dura frescoes in no way affected the Altneuschul reliefs, but Jews encoded biblical
parables on the messianic tree into visual images over and over again, adopting its
appearance to contemporary religious and artistic conventions.
In medieval Europe, the fruitful vine tree was no longer associated with a pagan
cult, and Christianity used both the fruitful and the fruitless vine (e.g., ills. 143a, 223) as
religious symbols. Jews would therefore not consider grapeclusters in the depiction of a
vine tree as indicative of Christian symbolism, and could use it without fear of idolatry.
By representing the fruitful vine of Israel, medieval Jewish art created an eschatological
vision rather than a symbol of the historical reality of the Jews in Exile. For instance,
the fruitful vine tree in the illumination from the Hebrew Provençal Bible of ca. 1300
———————————————————————————————————
52
Weitzmann and Kessler, The Frescoes of the Dura Europos Synagogue, 157-60,
178-83. Contemporary Christian art also employed a similar polemical symbolism of
the fruitless vine to compete with Dionysian symbolism (ibid.).
53
Isa. 4:2; Jer. 23:5, 33:15; Zech. 3:8, 6:12. See Weitzmann and Kessler, The Frescoes
of the Dura Europos Synagogue, 158-59.
54
Elisheva Revel-Neher, “‘Now Bring the Two Together…’ – Dura Europos
Revisited,” a lecture delivered at the Thirteenth World Congress of Jewish Studies,
Jerusalem, August 2001. An earlier example of the combination of a messianic vision
with the motif of the fruitful vine is found in a Jewish pseudo-epigraph from about 150
B.C.E.,
And then shall the whole earth be filled in righteousness,
And shall all be planted with trees and be full of blessing.
And all the desirable trees shall be planted on it,
And they shall plant vines on it
Which shall yield wine in abundance (I Enoch 10:18)
Note also a similar verse in II Baruch 29 from the 1st century C.E. Both verses are
translated into English in Raphael Patai, The Messiah Texts [Detroit, 1979], 231.
 126

(ill. 232) belongs to a series of messianic depictions concerning the Temple to come: the
vine on folio 25r follows and is set opposite the depiction of the breastplate of the High
Priest on folio 24v and precedes double full-page illustrations of the Temple
implements.55 A closer formal parallel can be found in a full-page painting on the
frontispiece of the Hispano-Moresque Haggadah illuminated in Castile in the late 13th or
the early 14th century (ill. 239).56 It represents a fruitful vine tree whose bold trunk
consists of two stems that intertwine above the roots and below the branches, thus
alluding to Ezekiel’s two trees joining together into one messianic tree. The Passover
Haggadah is full of messianic hopes and explicitly expresses a desire for the early
coming of the Messiah.57 Placed at the beginning of the manuscript – symbolically at its
“entrance” – it is a structural parallel to the vine carved above the entrance to the
synagogue or the Torah shrine.58
One of the most suggestive parallels for our discussion is the vine tree on folio
85v in the Tripartite Mahzor, vol. I, illuminated in South Germany about 1320 (ill.
240).59 Although produced somewhat later than the Altneuschul reliefs, the illumination
———————————————————————————————————
55
Ameisenowa, “The Tree of Life in Jewish Iconography,” 340-41. See also Georg
Swarzenski and Rosy Schilling, Die illuminierten Handschriften und
Einzelminiaturen des Mittelalters und die Renaissance in Frankfurter Besitz
(Frankfurt am Main, 1929): 50-51 no. 48. On the painted panels with Temple
implements as a messianic motif in Hebrew manuscripts, see Joseph Gutmann, “When
the Kingdom Comes: Messianic Themes in Mediaeval Jewish Art,” Art Journal, 27
(1967-1968): 168-75; Thérèse Metzger, “Les objets du culte, le Sanctuaire de Désert et
le Temple de Jérusalem, dans les Bibles hébraïques médiévales enluminées, en Orient et
en Espagne,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 52 (1969-1970): 397-436; Michel
Garel, “The Foa Bible,” JJA, 6 (1979): 78-85; Revel-Neher, Le signe de la rencontre,
passim; idem, Le témoignage de l’absence, passim.
56
British Museum, Or. 2737, folio 1, see Bezalel Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated
Manuscripts in the British Isles: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1 (Jerusalem, 1982): 45-51.
57
For the Redemption that is to occur in Nissan, the month of the Passover, see Rosh
ha-Shanah 6a; Ex. Rabba 10:11 (on Ex. 12:2) and 15:12; cf. Micah 7:15 and the
commentary of Rashi on Ex. 12:2. See also Abba Hillel Silver, A History of Messianic
Speculation in Israel from the First through the Seventeenth Centuries (Gloucester,
1978), 22.
58
It is also noticeable that in the Sephardi tradition, the Bible was called ‫מקדשיה‬
(mikdashiya), the term alluding to ‫( מקדש‬mikdash, “sanctuary;” see Revel-Neher, Le
témoignage de l’absence, 64 n. 10, 78 n. 69). The arrangement of the codex and the
Hebrew terminology relating to the components of its structure and decoration alluded
to an architectonic structure or to the Temple itself (Leila Avrin, “Architectural
Decoration and Hebrew Manuscripts,” Manuscripta, 22 [1979]: 64-74).
59
Budapest, Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Kaufmann Collection, Ms.
A384, see Bezalel Narkiss, “A Tripartite Illuminated Mahzor from a South German
School of Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts around 1300,” Fourth World Congress of
 127

included several visual motifs taken from the art of an earlier period. The vine adorns
the initial word ‫“( אות‬sign”) of the piyyut “Sign of the month,” for the month Nissan.60
Two trefoil arches enclose a vine tree, which rises between the letters of the initial
world and then splits into two interlaced stems that in turn spread to the sides into four
greater and a number of lesser branches in a manner recalling the Prague entrance
tympanum. The trunk and branches bear vine leaves and clusters of grapes, at which a
small bird on the bottom left is pecking. Above the arches, the sun and the moon occupy
the corner spandrels, and six big shining stars appear in the central spandrel. Despite the
Talmud’s proscribing of the depiction of the sun, moon and stars,61 the illumination of
the piyyut “Sign of the month” with this motif was usual in Hebrew manuscripts
produced in Germany in the second part of the 13th century and the first decades of the
14th century.62 Occasionally, the motif of the sun and moon also appeared in other
illustrations,63 and it is found on several hitherto unresearched medieval tombstones in
the Old Jewish Cemetery in Worms (e.g., ill. 241). The piyyut is read on the “Sabbath
of the Month” that precedes, or falls on the first day of Nissan. The additional Torah
portion that is read on this Sabbath states that the month of Nissan “shall be unto you
the beginning of the months [of the Jewish year]” (Ex. 12:2). The word ‫ אות‬connotes
———————————————————————————————————
Jewish Studies. Papers, 2 (Jerusalem, 1968): 129-33; idem, Hebrew Illuminated
Manuscripts, 106; Sed-Rajna, Le Mahzor enluminé, 16-17, 19-21, 71-74; Bezalel
Narkiss and Gabrielle Sed-Rajna, Index of Jewish Art. Iconographical Index of
Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts, 4, Illuminated Manuscripts of the Kaufmann
Collection (Jerusalem, 1988), cards 1-41.
60
Davidson, Thesaurus of Mediaeval Hebrew Poetry, 1: 95 no. 2051. The text of the
piyyut “Sign of this month” is reproduced in ‫( אוצר התפלות‬Vilna, 1923), 214-16.
61
Rosh ha-Shana 24b.
62
Cf. the Michael Mahzor, 1258 (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Michael 617, folio 26);
the Laud Mahzor, ca. 1290 (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms, Laud Or. 321, folio 57v);
the Worms Mahzor, 1272 (Jerusalem, The National and University Library, Ms. Heb.
4781/1, folio 64v); an Ashkenazi Mahzor (Budapest, Library of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences, Kaufmann Collection, Ms. A388, fol. 90); the Darmstadt
Mahzor, 1348 (Darmstadt, Hessische Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek, Cod. Or. 13,
folio 60); and see Sed-Rajna, Le Mahzor enluminé, 19-20; ‫ "המחזור‬,‫עיני‬-‫שרית שלו‬
"‫ המשולש‬88-98, 179 ff.
63
For example, the sun and the moon appear in the illustration for the pericope
Shekalim (Ex. 30:11-16) in the Worms Mahzor (ill. 122); in a full-page panel for
Shavuot in the Laud Mahzor, ca. 1290 (ill. 130), Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms, Laud
Or. 321, folio 127v; above Mount Sinai in the Double Mahzor, I, ca. 1290, Dresden,
Sächsische Landesbibliothek, Ms. A 46a, folio 202v; above the depiction of Paradise in
the Birds’ Head Haggadah, c. 1300, Jerusalem, Israel Museum, Ms. 180/57, folio 33;
and in an initial-word panel for the Song of Songs in the Tripartite Mahzor, I, ca. 1320,
Budapest, Academy of the Sciences, Ms. A384, fol. 183v.
 128

also an “astronomical sign” and thus the literal explanation draws the celestial bodies as
signs of the new moon and the new year.64 Referring to the text of the piyyut “Sign of
this month” and to the Midrashim, Klagsbald interpreted the celestial bodies for their
exegetic meaning. “To renew” is a key verb of the verse, and the piyyut expresses the
midrashic expectations that the Redemption will occur in the month of Nissan, the
month of Passover and the exodus from Egypt. At that time the world, the sun and the
moon will be renewed,65 and their light will intensify in accordance with the messianic
prophecy of Isaiah 30:26: “the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the
light of the sun shall be sevenfold as the light of seven days, in the days that the Lord
binds up the hurt of his people, and cures the bruise of their wound” (30:26). Klagsbald
reasonably concluded: the sun and the moon in the picture are thereby signs of the
Messiah’s coming.66
The marginal astrological symbols accompanying a major image of an almost
cruciform vine tree, make the whole composition in the Tripartite Mahzor similar to
such eschatological scenes in Christian art, such as the Crucifixion on the patten of the
chalice from Trzemeszno (Tremessen) of ca. 1170 (ill. 242).67 In such works, the
celestial bodies usually symbolize the darkened sun, the extinguished moon and fallen
———————————————————————————————————
64
Sed-Rajna, Le Mahzor enluminé, 19-20; Klagsbald, A l’Ombre de Dieu, 52-57;
"‫ "המחזור המשולש‬,‫עיני‬-‫ שלו‬88-98.
65
Isa. 60:19-20; Mal. 3:20; Ps. 72:6, 89:37-38 and Klagsbald, A l’Ombre de Dieu, 57-
58. The concept of the eschatological renovation of a “new heaven and new earth” can
be traced back to Isa. 66:22.
66
Klagsbald, A l’Ombre de Dieu, 57-58. For a discussion of the messianic meaning of
the stars, see below in the text. These eschatological signs from Isaiah’s prophesy had
become a subject for painting already in the Dura Europos synagogue: the sun at the left
and the moon with seven stars at the right are painted in a celestial vault above a figure
of prophet to the left of the focal composition above the Torah Shrine (Kraeling, The
Synagogue: The Excavations of Dura Europos, 235, fig. 61). Basing himself on
several verses from Isaiah 60 that describe the everlasting light of the sun and the moon
in the eschatological future, Kessler identified the prophet with Isaiah. Since stars are
not mentioned in this chapter, Kessler accepted Kraeling’s interpretation of the seven
stars as seven planets that were placed near the moon in order to stress the contrast of
day and night, light and darkness (Herbert L. Kessler, Studies in Pictorial Narrative
[London, 1994], 349-51). It is possible as well that the picture illustrates the verse
30:26, and the number of stars, although also not mentioned in this passage, was
inspired by the description of the sun which will shine “sevenfold as the light of seven
days.” The Talmud elucidates that these seven days are the days of the Messiah
(Sanhedrin 91b).
67
In the miniature from the Tripartite Mahzor, the original painting of the sun has been
badly erased and no traces of a face in its center remain, but the inner circle with
sharpened rays are still discernable and they correspond to the shape of the sun on the
chalice from Trzemeszno.
 129

stars that, according to the Gospels, shall designate Christ’s coming at the end of the
world.68 This Crucifixion represents the Christian concept of human history, in which
Christ replaced the Old Testament with a new covenant: the figure of Ecclesia stands at
his right side collecting his blood that turns into the wine of the Eucharist, as Christ is
“the true vine” (John 15:1-5), while the blind Synagoga is the allegory of Judaism
rejecting Christ. In the Tripartite Mahzor, the scheme is polemically reconsidered: the
fruitful vine tree is now the messianic vine of Israel symbolizing Judaism, the messianic
signs of specifically shining celestial lights based on Isaiah 30:26 contrast with the
falling stars of Christian iconography, and the eucharistic symbol of a bird pecking at
grapes (e.g., ills. 224, 243)69 turns into an allegory of a righteous person deserving to eat
the fruits of the Tree of Life at the messianic feast (ill. 240).70 The picture from the
Tripartite Mahzor suggests that just as the whole iconographic scheme was a reaction to
a Christian scene, the separate image of the vine tree could have had its Christian
———————————————————————————————————
68
Matt. 24:3, 29; Mark 13:24; Luke 21:25, cf. Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen
Kunst, 4/1: figs. 108, 110-11, 435. Isaiah also described the times when “the stars of
heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened
in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine” (13:10, see also Joel
3:4).
69
A bird pecking at grapes as an allegory of the faithful partaking Eucharistic wine is a
common motif in the ecclesiastic art of the late 13th century, as seen, for example, in
these two works from Germany.
70
See Num. Rabba 21:21. Mellinkoff stated that the four grotesque heads in the corners
of the ornamental frame here have no relation to the text and the picture, believing that
they were put there to disparage the Jews (Ruth Mellinkoff, Antisemitic Hate Signs in
Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts from Medieval Germany [Jerusalem, 1999]: 28-
29). It is possible instead that they are caricatures of the four Evangelists (e.g., cf. the
four Evangelists’ symbols in the corners of the ornamental frame around the crux
florida in ill. 244), expressing the ironic spirit that was often a feature of Jewish
arguments in anti-Christian polemics such as those compiled in the books of Nizzahon
and Toledot Yeshu (Krauss, Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen; Enelow, A
Jewish View of Jesus; Jacobs, Jesus as Others Saw Him; Berger, The Jewish-
Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages; ‫ ספר יוסף המקנא‬,‫ ספר נצחון ;רוזנטל‬,‫ברויאר‬
‫)ישן‬. The four heads may also stand for the winds at the four corners of the world that
will be renovated with the coming of the Messiah in the End of the Days. This motif
was widely used in Apocalypses illuminated in North Spain and South France from the
10th century on (e.g., note folio 77 from Beatus’ Apocalypse of Las Hueglas, 1220, New
York, Pierpont Morgan Library, Ms. 429 in W. Neuss, Die Apokalypse des Hl.
Johannes in der altspanischen und altschristlichen Bibel-illustration [Münster,
1988], fig. 122) that also inspired Hebrew illuminated manuscripts from the same area.
In the Barcelona Haggadah from the mid-14th century (London, British Museum, Add.
Ms. 14761, folio 61), the motif of four winds appears in combination with Passover
symbols. Four naked winds blow trumpets in the corners around the great Passover
mazzah, which, according to Bezalel Narkiss, represents the roundel of the world
(Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts, 64).
 130

model, which was reinterpreted in a Jewish context.

In the Christian art of Western Europe, the images of the crux florida
(“flourishing cross”) sporadically occurred from the 11th century on (e.g., ill. 245), and
also appear in the carved stone tympana of German churches (e.g., ill. 246). The tree
growing along each side of the cross was usually designed as a symmetrical plant split
into two stems and four branches that spiral in different directions (e. g., ills. 244-46).
Such a cruciform plant, arbor crucis, sometimes substituted for the cross (e. g., ill.
224).71 The Cistercians, who condemned human and animal images in ecclesiastic art,
had adopted the non-figurative representation of the eschatological vine-shaped arbor
crucis in the tympana as almost the only decoration of their churches. Tympana with a
vine tree or covered with vine leaves were also made for other churches in Germany and
Central Europe (e.g., ill. 143a).72
The closest formal parallel between the Cistercian arbor crucis reliefs from
Bohemia and the entrance tympanum in the Altneuschul is the carved vine tree dated to
the 1260s above the door of the sacristy (ill. 143a) in the Vyšší Brod monastery, ca. 170
km from Prague down the Vltava River. Here, two large grape clusters grow
symmetrically from a short trunk, and two branches rise from the trunk, one overlapping
the other. Those branches bear leaves that spread almost symmetrically to fill the trefoil
frame within the Gothic arch. Several figurative elements of this relief indicate some
abatement of the pure Cistercian iconoclasm and impart a narrative aspect to the vine-
tree symbol. God’s hand appears from a cloud to bless the fruitful vine, and two fox-like
dragons with coiled tails are hidden in the foliage at both sides of the hand (ill. 143b).
Kuthan connected the whole image with Bernard of Clairvaux’s commentary on the
Song of Songs (2:15): “Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vineyards, for
our vineyards are in blossom.” Bernard interpreted the vine as a metaphor for the soul,

———————————————————————————————————
71
Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, 2 [London, 1972], 133-36.
72
Hanno Hahn, Die frühe Kirchenbaukunst der Zisterzienser (Berlin, 1957);
Georges Duby, The Europe of the Cathedrals, 1140-1280 (Geneva, 1966), 57-62;
idem, Saint Bernard: L’art cistercien (Paris, 1979); Anselme Dimier, L’art
cistercien, hors de France (La Pierre-qui-Vire, 1971); Braunfels, Monasteries of
Western Europe, 67-110; Leroux-Dhuys, Cistercian Abbeys, 39-40. For Cistercian
architecture and decoration in Bohemia and Moravia, see Kuthan, Die mittelalterliche
Baukunst der Zisterzienser. The relief tympana with the crux florida and arbor crucis
motifs produced by Cistercian workshops or under their influence in Silesia are
discussed in Świechowski’s “Drzewo życia w monumentalnej rzeżbie romańskiej
Polski.”
 131

while the foxes symbolized vices. 73 In his letter to Bernard on the neo-Manichean
heresy from about 1144, Everlin of Steinfeld re-interpreted the parable of the vines as a
symbol of Christ and his Church, while the foxes are the heretics.74 In the relief, the
satanic foxes are represented as dragons and the vine tree is accepted as a symbol of the
True Faith threatened by Evil. The ornament along the lateral sides of the trefoil
consisting of a row of flowers at the left and clover trefoils at the right are symbols of
the Madonna and they accent the christological allusions of the vine.75 While taking the
vine tree of the Cistercian tympana as a model, the Jews in the Altneuschul reinterpreted
it as a symbol of the living faith of Judaism in the same way as the messianic vine had
been re-appropriated in the Tripartite Mahzor.
In medieval Christian art, the vine tree could be identified with the Tree of Life
whether it consisted of two branches growing along each side of the cross (e. g., ills.
245-46), two separate plants flanking the cross (ill. 244), a cruciform tree without the
cross (e.g., that from 1220-30 in the Cathedral in Magdeburg, ill. 224), or an
asymmetric vine tree such as the one placed in the tympanum of St. Elisabeth’s in
Marburg after 1250 (ill. 223).76 This meaning caused the painter of the Anglo-Norman
Apocalypse from Trinity College of 1230-50 to represent the eschatological Tree of Life
in the center of the celestial Jerusalem as a similar cruciform tree with curved branches,
and a short trunk split into two stems overlapping each other (ill. 231). As in Christian
art, the messianic tree in the entrance tympanum of the Altneuschul that has a similar
split stem and four spiraling branches can be associated with the Tree of Life.
———————————————————————————————————
73
Kuthan, Die mittelalterliche Baukunst der Zisterzienser, 190-191; The Works of
Bernard of Clairvaux, 3, On the Song of Songs, 3, translated by Kilian Walsh
(Kalamazoo, 1976): 118 (Sermon 30:7).
74
Jean Leclerq, “Introduction,” in The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, 3, On the
Song of Songs, 2: xi-xii. Cf. a similar composition with dragons at the trunk and a face
in the top of the arbor crucis in ill. 224, and see also Walter Cahn, “Heresy and the
Interpretation of Romanesque Art” in Romanesque and Gothic: Essays for George
Zarnecki, 1: 27-33, esp. fig. 1; Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries, 62-71.
75
Kuthan, Die mittelalterliche Baukunst der Zisterzienser, 190.
76
In the mosaic of ca. 1125 in the apse in San Clemente of Rome (ill. 245), the ancient
Roman image of the vines in gardens of the Golden Age (ill. 247; Paul Zanker, The
Power of Images in the Age of Augustus [Michigan, 1988], 179-83) was applied to
the Crucifixion as a symbol of the Faith revived by Christ. The inscription on this
mosaic explains that the Church of Christ is likened to the vine, which the Law [i.e.,
Judaism] causes to wither, while the Cross gives it life (Walter Oakenshott, The
Mosaics of Rome from the Third to the Fourteenth Centuries [London, 1967], 250).
Schiller noted that the identification of the Cross and the Tree of Life was reactivated in
the 1250s by St. Bonaventura (1221-74) who in his Tractatus qui lignum vitae dicitur
described the Cross as a tree (Iconography of Christian Art, 2: 133-36, esp. n. 80).
 132

The Golgotha under the crux florida on the Maas reliquary (ill. 244) also
resembles the hillock with the vine tree’s waving roots above the entrance to the
Altneuschul (ill. 237). The same pattern of roots appears in Christian art in the context
of the polemical opposition between Christianity and Judaism: in the double-page
illumination in the Liber Floridus representing the “Good Tree of the Faithful Church”
against the “Bad Tree of the Synagogue,” both monumental trees grow from divided
roots (ill. 248).77 The big roots of the flowering Arbor Bona stress the vitality of
Christianity (ill. 248a), while two axes strike at the roots of the tree of Synagoga to
show that they are killing the withered tree cursed by Jesus (ill. 248b). In such a context,
the large roots of the vine tree in the entrance tympanum of the Altneuschul indicate a
polemical reconsideration of the Christian tree symbolism: the relief suggests to the
synagogue visitor that it is sprecifically the “true vine” of Judaism that is a vital, well-
rooted Tree of Life, and that it is not a weak Arbor Mala. The image of roots issuing
from the plant also reminds us that the scion growing from such roots is a metaphor of
the Messiah (Isaiah 11:1).78
The double illumination of the Liber Floridus also suggests the reason for the
use of the number thirteen: each of the two symbolic trees bears thirteen medallions. On
the Arbor Bona (ill. 248a), the medallions are “fruits of the Spirit” represented by the
allegorical figures of the virtues. Eleven virtues on the branches grow around Spes
(“Faith”), and they all stem from Karitas (“Charity”), whose medallion is placed just
above the roots.79 The fruits on the branches of the Arbor Mala (ill. 248b) are twelve
vices originating from Cupidity in the thirteenth circle, which is situated, like Charity,

———————————————————————————————————
77
Ghent, Centrale Bibliotheek van de Rijksuniversiteit Cod. 1125 (92). See Lamberti
S. Avdomari Canonici Liber Floridus, (a facsimile edition), Alberto Derolez, ed.,
Ghent, 1968; Behling, Die Pflanzenwelt, 33-49; Walter Cahn, Romanesque
Manuscripts: The Twelfth Century, 2, Catalogue (London, 1996): 119-21. On the
double-page illumination on folia 231v and 232, see Adolf Katzenellenbogen,
Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Mediaeval Art (New York, 1964), 65-66;
Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 4/1: 67-68; Jennifer O’Reilly, Studies
in the Iconography of the Virtues and Vices in the Middle Ages (New York, 1988),
334-36; Andreina Contessa, “’Arbor Bona.’ Dalla menorah alla Vergine: la metafore
arborea, segno della redenzione,” Cahiers Ratisbonne, 1 (Jerusalem, 1996): 67-71. I
thank Prof. Elisabeth Revel-Neher and Dr. Andreina Contessa for their helpful
suggestions.
78
See Rashi’s commentary on this verse.
79
The inscription near the Arbor Bona runs, “Sicut ex una arboris radice multi rami
prodeunt, sic multe uirtues ex una karitate generantur” (“Like from the single tree's
root many branches grow, so many virtues are generated from the single Charity”).
 133

just above the roots.80 The thirteen vices declare that the Synagoga, which “by the
horrifying homicide [of Christ] generated [its] eternal desperate life,”81 is evil, and that
this evil is aggravated by moral failing, and hence has no chance for the future
Redemption. The number of roots of the Arbor Mala is also thirteen, whereas the
rightmost root of the Arbor Bona splits into two, so that the number of the root ends is
fourteen. In the Christian context, the number thirteen evoked ambivalent associations:
whereas there are some positive connotations of thirteen in Catholic thought,82 a
widespread superstition held that thirteen was an unlucky number and a sign of the
devil. It is usually related to a popular belief that Judas Iscariot was the thirteenth
person in the group of Jesus with his twelve disciples at the Last Supper. It is possible
that the number of thirteen roots and thirteen vices in the depiction of the Arbor Mala
reflected the belief that this is a satanic number, appropriate to Judas and to the Jews
who rejected Jesus.
The reconsideration of the number thirteen along with the Christian symbols of
the fruitful vine, the Tree of Life and the Arbor Bona from the Jewish point of view
yields far different results. As the tribe of Joseph split into the tribes of Ephraim and
Manasseh (Num. 1:10; 26:36), the split root and the double cluster of grapes of the vine
tree in the Altneuschul (ill. 1) may symbolize the tribes of Israel, but this interpretation
is unusual in Jewish art and thought. In Judaism, the number thirteen also refers to the
number of the attributes of God’s mercy derived from Exodus 34:5-6.83 Following the
———————————————————————————————————
80
The assortment of the virtues and vices originated from the “fruits of the Spirit”
versus the “works of the flesh” listed in Gal. 5:16-25 (see the bibliography in note 77
above).
81
Homicidium horrorem uel desperationem uitę eternę generat is inscribed in the upper
left circle.
82
René Allendy, Le symbolisme des nombres (Paris, 1948), 359; Jean Chevalier,
Alain Gheerbrant, A Dictionary of Symbols (Oxford, 1994), 988-89. Bernard of
Clairvaux stated that twelve monks, thirteen including the abbot, are to be sent out to
(found) new monasteries (see Braunfels, Monasteries of Western Europe, 243, no. XI
Ch. 12). Becker stated that in Christian thought, thirteen was sometimes accepted also
as the sum of the Ten Commandments and the Trinity (Udo Becker, The Continuum
Encyclopedia of Symbols [New York, 1994], 298). Walsh described that a candle
symbolizing Christ in the top of a triangular candelabrum together with twelve candles
at its sides, probably standing for the twelve apostles, were lit on the high altar during
the ceremony of the Tenebræ in Catholic churches (William S. Walsh, Curiosities of
Popular Customs and of Rites: Ceremonies, Observances and Miscellaneous
Antiquities [Philadelphia, 1897], 913-14).
83
See the lengthy explanation of this biblical account as thirteen attributes in the
“longer version” of the commentary of Ibn Ezra’s (ca. 1055- after 1135) on Ex. 34:6.
For this reading in the Rhineland communities, see Judah he-Hasid’s commentary on
 134

opinion of the Talmudic sage Rabbi Judah, medieval Jewish exegetes stated that God
revealed to Moses the attributes of His mercy together with the giving of the Tablets of
the Covenant to affirm His part in the covenant with Israel.84 The Mahzor Vitry
indicates that in the 12th century the verses comprising the thirteen attributes were
inserted as a plea for God’s mercy into the public prayer service in Ashkenazi
synagogues.85 The popular method of gematria, the use of arithmetical calculations for
symbolic interpretations of Hebrew texts, provided an argument against any possible
anxiety that ascribing multiple attributes to God may compromise His unity since
thirteen is the sum of the numerical values of the letters composing the word ‫אחד‬
(“one”). Other widely known constructs consisting of thirteen articles that had also been
included into the prayer service, are the hermeneutic rules of Rabbi Ishmael (2nd half of
the 1st century – 1st third of the 2nd century C.E.) by means of which the Torah is
expounded,86 and Rambam’s principles of faith.87 The Hebrew terminology used for
religious principles alludes to arboreal images: Eleazar Rokeah of Worms called the
principles of Hasidism ‫“( שורשים‬roots”),88 and Rambam’s articles are named ‫עיקרים‬
(ikkarim) that also mean roots.89 Amplifying the adage from Proverbs 3:18, Rambam
connected the strict fulfillment of the laws of Judaism with the Redemption by means of
the metaphor of the Tree of Life: “the Holy One blessed be He gave us the Torah, it is
the Tree of Life, and everybody doing all that is written in it and knowing it perfectly

———————————————————————————————————
the same verse (‫ עורך יצחק שמשון לנגה‬,‫[ פרושי התורה לר' יהודה החסיד‬Jerusalem, 1975],
126).
84
Rosh Ha-Shana 17b, Rashi’s commentary on Ta’anit 20a, and Ravi’ah
(‫ הלכות תענית‬,‫ ראבי"ה‬3: no. 849).
85
‫ מחזור ויטרי‬no. 171.
86
The rules are contained in Rabbi Ishmael’s baraita in the introduction to the Sifra
Midrashim, and are included in the morning prayer for weekdays.
87
Rambam’s commentary on the Mishnah, Sanhedrin 10. The thirteen principles of
faith inspired many poetic versions, of which the most popular is the Yigdal hymn,
which had been compiled about 1330, and was adopted in practically all Jewish
communities (Idelsohn, Jewish Liturgy, 74, 166; [A. Altmann], “Articles of Faith:
Maimonides,” EJ, 3: 655-56; [Aaron Rothkoff], “Yigdal,” EJ, 16: 833-34).
88
Eleazar counted twelve “roots” of Hasidism, but he also accented the number thirteen,
mentioning “thirteen places in the Torah admonishing us to the love of God” in the
beginning of the first article, and “thirteen places in the Torah admonishing us to the
fear of God” in the beginning of the third article (‫ ספר הרוקח הגדול‬,‫אלעזר מגרמיזא‬
[Jerusalem, 1967], 5-6).
89
Writing in Arabic, Rambam presented these principles as (“roots”) and
(“fundamentals”). See [Altmann], “Articles of Faith,” 655.
 135

and correctly, deserves to live in the world to come.”90

The denotation of thirteen as the number of the fundamentals of Judaism
inspired the polemic reconsideration of the symbol of the Synagoga as a cursed lifeless
tree with thirteen roots that yield thirteen vices. Thus the vine tree with thirteen roots
and thirteen fruits in the entrance tympanum of the Altneuschul is the vision of the “true
vine” of Israel interpreted as the eschatological Tree of Life stemming from the vital
sources of faith and bearing fruits, which implies that God will reveal His attributes of
Mercy and bring about the Redemption. A carved tombstone of Moses ben Israel Tchoř
the Levite (died 1656) at the Old Jewish Cemetery in the Jewish quarter of Prague
demonstrates a later example of the Tree of Life growing from thirteen roots (ills. 249-
50). As the last name Tchoř means “foumart” in Czech, the rampant animals flanking
the tree are meant to be foumarts symbolizing the deceased, and their proximity to the
Tree of Life stemming from the “roots of faith” expresses the hope that Moses’ soul will
deserve “to live in the world to come.” This relief suggests that the Jews of Prague
knew the meaning of the symbol of the tree with thirteen roots over a long period and
this continuous tradition explains the maintaining of thirteen grapes in the
reconstruction of the entrance tympanum of the Altneuschul in the 1860s.
Like the 1174-75 inscription above the entrance of the Worms synagogue based
on Isaiah 26:2 and dealing with the gates to the Lord through which the righteous shall
enter, the tree of Judaism above the entrance to the Altneuschul evoked for the Jews the
promise that their piety would lead them to the messianic Redemption. Since charitable
deeds were considered as a righteous act which would ensure that “the gate of God’s
mercy” would open for the contributor’s prayer, an alms box was set at the synagogue’s
entrance, a practice that continues in Ashkenazi synagogues to the present. The custom
of giving alms while entering the synagogue may be traced back to an ancient tradition
in the Second Temple in Jerusalem.91 Since the alms box before the right jamb of the

———————————————————————————————————
90
‫" משנה תורה‬,‫ "הלכות תשובה‬,‫ רמב"ם‬9:1. Popular Jewish associations of numbers from
one to thirteen are found in the Passover song ‫“( אחד מי יודע‬Who Knows One”)
consisting of thirteen stanzas. This song begins and ends with a mention of God: the
first stanza states, “one is our God in heaven and earth,” and the final one explains,
“thirteen are the attributes of God.” The text originated in Germany in the 15th century
and was first found in Ashkenazi Haggadahs of the 16th century. It later became an
integral part of the Passover ceremony and was well-known elsewhere in Jewish
communities (“Ehad mi Yode’a,” EJ, 6: 503-504). The song “Who Knows One”
indicates the Jews’ widespread knowledge of the symbolic association of thirteen as the
number of the attributes of the Only One.
91
The Mishnah (Shekalim 2:1; 6:1, 5) mentions ‫“( שופרות‬horns”) used for collecting
 136

entrance portal in the Altneuschul (ill. 189-91) is absent in Hellich’s engraving from
1860 (ill. 235), it must have been placed there during the reconstruction of the
synagogue in the 1880s. However after entering the portal, one finds a stone stepped
parapet to the right of the stairs leading down into the prayer hall, and it contains a
small metal door with a slot that is set into and closes a depression that is still used as an
alms box (ill. 251). The shallow ogee panel above this alms box consists of a delicate
trefoil tracery and large Hebrew characters. This pattern suggests that it was carried out
during the restoration of the synagogue after the pogrom in 1483, when the grille with
similar ogee arches was set around the bimah (ill. 196). The engraved characters – ‫מביא‬
– mean “he brings” and are also an abbreviation of the phrase ‫“( מתן בסתר יכפה אף‬A gift
in secret pacifieth anger,” Prov. 21:14), suggesting a belief that charity may prevent
adversity.92 A small niche seen to the right above this inscription (ill. 251) may be a
remnant of a former alms box.
Although no datable evidence on a Romanesque alms box has remained in the
reconstructed synagogue of Worms, the issue of charity influenced the arrangement of
the entrance to the prayer hall from 1174-75: the monumental inscription about the
donors who “honoured the Lord to please Him with their wealth” and “merited
acquiring an eternal name” was set close to the perspective portal in a spot that is clearly
seen by everybody entering the door (ills. 9, 21). It is possible that this stone tablet,
which is dated 1034 and had been transferred from the earliest synagogue, was also
originally situated near the entrance door of the synagogue. Whereas the monumental
portal and its sculptural decoration marked the transition from the earthly realm to the
sacred space of the synagogue and evoked a meditation on the righteousness of the
congregation, the donor’s dedication or alms box in a visible place at the entrance called
on the faithful to actually be righteous and to practice charity in the earthly realm. This
injunction of the Caritas of the Arbor Bona, is an antithesis to the Cupidity that was at
the root of the thirteen vices of the Arbor Mala.
The Pediment of the Holy Ark: The Tree of the Torah
Like the painted vine tree above the Holy Ark in the synagogue of Dura Europos
(ill. 238), the relief vine tree in the pediment of the Ark (ill. 212) alludes to the simile
———————————————————————————————————
alms in the Temple.
92
“A gift in secret” is also a halakhic term for a high level of charity, see Bava Batra
9b; 10a. According to the Rambam’s classification, there are eight ways of giving alms
which are progressively more virtuous, and the seventh of them is dispersing alms “in
secret” when one does not know to whom one gives, and the recipient does not know
who the donor is (‫" משנה תורה‬,‫ "הלכות מתנות עניים‬,‫ רמב"ם‬10: 7-12).
 137

that the Torah is a “Tree of Life to those who lay hold unto it” (Prov. 3:18), the verse
recited by the congregation while the reader picks up the scrolls during the reading of
the weekly Torah portion.93 In this context, the crockets along the frame of the pediment
emphasize the vital power of the tree inside. Although the roots are not represented, the
symbolic fruitful vine tree rising from the niche of the scrolls seems to grow directly
from the Torah itself (ill. 225), which is associated with the whole body of Jewish
teachings.94 In contrast to the bold trunk, four symmetrically spiraling branches and
thirteen clusters of the vine on the entrance tympanum (ill. 1), the vine tree in the
pediment of the Holy Ark has freely spreading branches and six clusters of grapes (ill.
212). The Mahzor Vitry indicates a symbolic approach to the number six related to the
biblical Ark of the Covenant. Just before the ceremony described above, when opening
the Holy Ark and transferring the Torah scrolls to the bimah, the congregation
declaimed Psalms 34:4 consisting of six words – ‫“( גדלו ליי אתי ונרוממה שמו יחדו‬Magnify
the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together”) – in order to allude to the sets of
six paces that the bearers of the Ark made when bringing it to Jerusalem (II Sam.
6:13).95
Six is also a symbolic number in the context of Jewish eschatology.96 This
number is a key-point of the cosmogonic picture traced out in the Talmud: “The world
will exist 6000 years. The first 2000 years were those of chaos [that is without the
Torah], the second 2000 years were those under the Torah, and the last 2000 years are
the days of the Messiah.”97 The 13th century was marked by a new wave of messianic
hopes among the Jews brought on by the disasters that befell them, from the Crusades
that brought successive tragedies upon Jewish communities in northwestern Europe, and
from Christian headway against the Muslims in Spain that inspired the growth of
religious intolerance. All these calamities led to a belief that the end of human history
was approaching along with the messianic Redemption. Some Jewish scholars turned to
———————————————————————————————————
93
‫ מחזור ויטרי‬no. 93.
94
Cf. Shabbat 31a, see also [Louis Jacobs], “Judaism. Definition: The Term ‘Torah’,”
EJ, 10: 383-84.
95
‫ מחזור ויטרי‬no. 93.
96
Six, the basic number of Babylonian computation, was the number of sections or
“Orders” of the Mishnah, the essential part of the Oral Law. Although six clusters of
grapes on the tree stemming from the Ark of the Altneuschul can evoke the Mishnah
stemming from the Torah, it is not likely that this meaning inspired the number of the
clusters that are seen above the Ark, since this may be read in an undesirable way as
showing that the Oral Law surpasses the Torah.
97
Avodah Zarah 9a.
 138

the Talmudic concept of the six millennia of the world, and foresaw the coming of the
Messiah early in the “sixth millennium of the Creation.” Conclusions on a specific date
of the Redemption differed, but most calculations placed the year of the Messiah at
some point from the first decades of the 13th century to the 15th century. Some pointed
to the year 1240 that corresponded to the year 5000 in the Jewish calendar, the end of
the fifth millennium from the Creation. These Jews believed that they had entered the
messianic sixth day of the world.98 The millenarian eschatology of the “sixth day of the
world” beginning in 1240 spread among Spanish, French and German Jews.99 Such
messianic expectations would have been reinforced by a similar eschatological concept
in Christian thought, such as that set out by the Liber Floridus, which speaks of the six
ages of the world. Christian mystics of Italy and South France foretold that the
Apocalypse and the beginning of the age of the Holy Spirit would begin in 1260.100
Although Rabbi Joshua ibn Shoeib, who was active in Spain in the first half of
the 14 century,101 could not have influenced the late 13th-century adornment of the
th

Altneuschul, his exegesis clearly proves that in the Jewish mind millennium
expectations were combined with the messianic symbolism of the fruitful vine. In his
commentary on the Song of Songs (8:11-12), he interpreted Solomon’s vineyard in
———————————————————————————————————
98
Silver, A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel, 81-101. Rabbi Abraham bar
Hiyya (1070, Barcelona - 1136, Provence) pioneered a vast and comprehensive
Messianic speculation in this period. According to him, the Messiah will come at the
close of the sixthmillennial day, preceding the Millennial Sabbath, and his coming may
occur from the year 1230 on (ibid., 69-74). Rambam (1135-1204) also used the model
of the Millennial Week (in his commentary on Gen. 2:3). Isaac ben Judah Ha-Levi
(Sens, France, the second half of the 13th century) calculated that the end of the “sixth
day” will be in 1383 (ibid., 85-87). The Zohar (published in Spain in the last decades of
the 13th century), gives a series of dates, several of which utilize the number six (e.g.,
the commentary on Lev. 25:3 in ‫" ספר הזהר‬,‫ "פרשת פנחס‬251a-252b). Bahya ben Asher of
Saragossa (d. 1340) stated that “we are now in the 51st year of the [sixth] millennium”
(that is, 5051, or the year 1291 C.E.), and asserted, that “the Messiah will appear very
early in the sixth millennium” (cited after the translation in Silver, A History of
Messianic Speculation in Israel, 96).
99
In particular, Eleazar Rokeah of Worms was aware of the messianic expectations at
the beginning of the sixth millennium (Scholem, Major Trends, 80-84). See more
examples of counting the messianic date of 1240 by Ashkenazi rabbis in ,‫עיני‬-‫שלו‬
"‫ "המחזור המשולש‬92-93.
100
Silver, A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel, 88.
101
Rabbi Joshua ibn Shoeib was a pupil of the Rashba of Barcelona where he was a
fellow student with Bahya ben Asher, and a follower of Rabbi Moses ben Nahman
(Ramban or Nahmanides, 1194-1270). Ibn Shoeib continued the path of messianic
evaluations developed by several generations of Jewish scholars in Spain and France
(ibid., 69-74, 94, 97-98).
 139

Baal-Hammon as a symbol of the Jewish people in exile, and the flourishing vine is the
symbol of Israel redeemed. Accordingly, “My vineyard, which is mine, is before me”
(8:12a) means that God will remember his people, and “Thou, O Solomon, must have a
thousand” (8:12b) refers to the sixth millennium. Hence the Messiah should come after
the year 5000, that is 1240 C.E. In fact, Ibn Shoeib believed that he lived already in the
Messianic age. In his opinion, the verse “and those that keep the fruit thereof two
hundred” (8:12c) alludes to the fact that the resurrection of the dead would take place
two hundred years later, that is in 1440. Ibn Shoeib delivered his interpretation in the
form of a public sermon held on the last day of Passover, to stress the traditional
symbolic connection between the biblical exodus from Egypt and the Redemption of
Israel that should come in the month of Nissan.
These scholarly messianic evaluations were widely propagated among the Jews
and were encoded in their art. For instance, in the illumination relating to the month of
Nissan in the Tripartite Mahzor, six large stars appear in the triangle directly above the
trunk of the messianic vine tree (ill. 240), are set beside the throne on which King
Solomon sits under the sun and the moon (ill. 136), and are situated between the
messianic symbol of the sun and the moon in the Double Mahzor (ill. 49).102 In
Christian art, a similar emphasis on six stars in the sky is found in christological images:
for example, a group of six large stars appear in the center around the figure of Christ in
the retable from the third quarter of the 12th century in St. Mary’s Cathedral of Erfurt
(ill. 234) and on the embroidered antependium from Rupertsberg of 1210-20 where
Christ sits enthroned between the sun, the moon and the apocalyptic letters alpha and
omega (ill. 252).103 The reading of the six stars as symbolic of the messianic age is in
accord with the messianic meaning of this last picture and with those in Jewish
Mahzors, and this fact speaks in favour of the supposition that this number is symbolic
rather than accidental.
The combination of this meaning with an eschatological tree is reinforced by
———————————————————————————————————
102
Sarit Shalev-Eyni ("‫ "המחזור המשולש‬,‫עיני‬-‫ שלו‬175-92) connects the six stars with the
six steps of Solomon’s Throne of Wisdom (cf. Ex. Rabba 18). Though consistent with
the context of this specific illumination, this explanatory model does not clarify the
meaning of six stars in combination with the sun and the moon in the other pictures.
103
The six stars in the antependium from Rupertsberg are accompanied by smaller ones
around Christ’s throne. The six stars should not be identified with the seven spirits, six
of which were sometimes depicted in medallions around the figure of Christ, while the
seventh was placed his breast, since there is no star on his breast. Cf. Schiller,
Ikonographie der Christlichen Kunst, 4/1: figs. 88, 89; and other symbolic
associations in Chevalier and Gheerbrant, A Dictionary of Symbols, 884-86.
 140

Isaiah 65:22: “like the days of a tree are the days of my people.” This idea may have
influenced the depiction of the arbor mundi in the Liber Floridus (ill. 253), which is
depicted near an explanation of the six mundane ages. The tree with six leaves at its
sides and a seventh, especially elaborate leaf at the top, is an emblem of the six periods
of human history leading to the seventh, ultimate age of the Holy Spirit. However, the
Midrash on this verse of Isaiah again identifies the eschatological tree of Israel with the
Tree of Life and the Torah.104 The vine tree, that is the “true Israel” and the Tree of Life
of the Torah, depicted on the first page of the Hispano-Moresque Haggadah from the
late 13th or the early 14th century (ill. 239) provides us with an additional example
corroborating the symbolic interpretation of the messianic vine tree’s leaves and fruits:
its six grape clusters stand for the millennial days of the mundane word, while the
thirteen leaves recall the attributes of Divine mercy and the principles of Faith. It is
placed in a key position on the frontispiece of the illuminated Haggadah to stress the
messianic expectations expressed in the text. In like manner, the six grape clusters in the
more or less contemporary pediment of the Ark in the Altneuschul (ill. 212) completes
the thirteen clusters and roots in the tympanum above the entrance (ill. 1), to convey the
popular belief that the people of Israel had already reached the sixth day of the world
and are on the threshold of the Redemption when the Scion of the Messiah, himself
likened to a tree,105 will have blossomed and those who lay hold unto the Torah will
deserve to partake of the fruits of the Tree of Life.
The Sense of the Marginal Ornamentation
A variety of marginal carvings accompanied the two great reliefs of vine trees in
the Altneuschul. The foliate carvings on the capitals of the entrance portal, those of the
attached colonettes and pillars, the corbels on the walls and the keystones in the vaults
(ills. 198-211, 213) represent a great diversity of species. However only a vine and an
oak are usually mentioned in the literature on the Altneuschul,106 because one may
easily recognize clusters of grapes or acorns. An examination of the foliate carvings,
especially in comparison to vegetative reliefs in 13th-century German and Bohemian
churches, will allow us to identify additional species. The type of vine with five-petaled
leaves and clusters of grapes on the middle keystone in the northern nave (ills. 198c,
200) resembles the one in the Altneuschul’s entrance tympanum (ill. 1). It also
———————————————————————————————————
104
“[‘The days of a tree,’ Isa. 65:22]: “Not a tree but the Torah, as it is said: it is a Tree
of Life to those who lay hold unto it [Prov. 3:18]” (Sifre [4th century C.E.], Deut. 47).
105
Isa. 4:2; Jer. 23:5, 33:15; Zech. 3:8, 6:12.
106
Münzer, “Die Altneusynagoge in Prag,” 69.
 141

resembles the vine on a keystone from ca. 1250 in the Cathedral of Naumburg (ill. 217),
and that on a capital of 1261 in the St. Salvator church in the St. Agnes monastery in
Prague (ill. 218). Similar five-petaled leaves with sharpened edges, but without the
grapes, decorate the southwestern keystone (ill. 199); like those on the St. Salvator
entrance portal (ill. 219), they perhaps represent a fruitless vine. The five-petaled
flowers decorating the northeastern keystone (ills. 198a, 201) resemble the flowers of
the narcissus.107 A plant on the middle keystone in the southern nave (ill. 198d) is
similar to the whitethorn in the relief of ca. 1260 in the Cathedral in Reims (ill. 254).
The concentric flowers in the center of the southeastern keystone (ill. 198b) resemble
the shoshanim depicted in the second volume of the Worms Mahzor of ca. 1280-90 (ill.
181a), while the flowers around it with three leaves recall the lily that appears as a fleur-
de-lis between them. An oak branch with leaves and acorns is featured on the capital in
the southwestern corner of the prayer hall (ill. 205d). In comparison to Gothic plant
reliefs, several carvings in the synagogue look like clover trefoils (cf. ill. 211 vs. 255),
wormwood (cf. ill. 209d vs. 256-57), ivy (cf. ill. 202c vs. 258), hops with catkins (cf.
ills. 202b, 204 vs. 259), fig leaves with fruits (cf. ill. 209b vs. ill. 260), maple leaves (cf.
ill. 209f vs. ill. 261), bryony (cf. ill. 205b vs. ill. 256) and bindweed (cf. ills. 205a, 209e
vs. 262). Others more remotely resemble chestnut leaves (ill. 202a), beech or sallow
leaves (ill. 202d) and schematically outlined oak leaves (ill. 206).
The surviving remnants of the Gothic sculptural decoration from ca. 1270 in the
synagogue of Cologne demonstrate similar plant ornamentation. One of the fragments is
a capital decorated with oak leaves and acorns (ill. 63 nos. 1a-1b). Large leaves (ill. 63
no. 2), or leaves with a spherical fruit, possibly a vine leaf with grapes (ill. 63 no. 3) and
what seems to be a bird’s head (ill. 63 no. 4) are discernable on the other broken stones.
The bird motif was also present in church reliefs (ill. 243) and Hebrew illuminated
manuscripts (ill. 240), but is absent in the Altneuschul where the reliefs are purely
vegetal. This comparison of the marginal ornaments in the Altneuschul and on the
fragments surviving from the contemporary synagogue in Cologne suggests that
although the reliefs in the Altneuschul are the only extant complex of Gothic plant
reliefs on the capitals and corbels of a synagogue, this type of decoration was used in
other Ashkenazi synagogues of this period. The question is whether this great variety of
plants played a semantic role in synagogue decoration?

———————————————————————————————————
107
This and the following identifications are based on Gothic plant sculptures classified
in Behling, Die Pflanzenwelt.
 142

Since we cannot unequivocally recognize each of these plants and its original
location, and since some of them are 19th-century copies or substitutions for the original
carvings, a reliable interpretation of each plant cannot be achieved. However, even the
approximate identification of the species found above shows a typology that may
suggest the decoration’s semantics. The assortment of the plants in the synagogue
reliefs matches neither the four species of Sukkoth, nor the seven species with which the
Holy Land was blessed.108 Vines, oaks, fig trees, nut trees and thorns are, however,
mentioned in the Bible and the rabbinical literature,109 while several other plants such as
maple or bryony are native to Europe, and have no known symbolic context in ancient
and medieval Jewish legends. As was stated above, in the Altneuschul reliefs the native
species were copied together with biblical plants from contemporary Christian models,
where Christian theology gave almost every one of these species one or several, often
ambivalent, religious meanings. Many of the plants were used as attributes of holy
persons, and their various combinations carved on the architectonic members of Gothic
churches turned them into visual symbols of the “flowering Ecclesia.” 110
It is therefore likely that the Jewish patrons, who had given Jewish meaning to
other Christian motifs in the Altneuschul, also applied the iconography of the plants as a
“flowering sanctuary” to the synagogue. In the context of Jewish thought, the
“flowering synagogue” may also allude to the orchard as a symbol of the realm of the
Torah. This concept is based on the Talmudic story of the four sages who entered the
orchard of hidden wisdom,111 and is derived from the reading of the Hebrew word ‫פרדס‬
(pardess) meaning an “orchard” as the initial letters of the four methods of biblical
interpretation.112 As only one sage succeeded in leaving the heavenly orchard
peacefully, the Midrash was usually understood as a parable on the danger of the

———————————————————————————————————
108
“A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of
oil olive, and honey” (Deut. 8:8).
109
For a short review, see [Judah Feliks], “Fig,” “Oak,” “Thistles and Thorns” in EJ, 6:
1272-74, 12: 1293-94, 16: 1118-21 (respectively).
110
Behling, Die Pflanzenwelt, 50-85. The Liber Floridus provides numerous
associations between different plants and fundamental Christian concepts and is thus an
important source for this floral symbolism (ills. 248, 253; Behling, Die Pflanzenwelt,
33-49). A comprehensive review of the symbolic connotations of floral images in
Christian art with references to the Bible and medieval theological texts can be found in
Levi d’Ancona, The Garden of the Renaissance.
111
Hagigah 14b.
112
‫( פשט‬peshat) – the plain meaning, ‫( רמז‬remez) – a hint or allusion, ‫( דרש‬derash) – the
homiletic or allegorical interpretation, and ‫( סוד‬sod) – the esoteric meaning.
 143

esoteric study of the Torah, but sometimes the story was connected to Torah study in
the synagogue. Thus the Midrash states that Rabbi Abuyah was injured because he
“chopped seedlings” in the orchard, and Song of Songs Rabba (1:1 on Song of Songs
1:4) explains that this means that he criticized younger Torah students in the
synagogues and houses of study. The later use of the synagogue’s plant reliefs in
sermons could have pointed out other eschatological allusions: for example, a preacher
describing the peaceful and secure life in the days of the Messiah could cite the biblical
prophesy that the people of Israel “shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig
tree, and none shall make them afraid” (Micah 4:4),113 while pointing at the carved vine
and fig leaves that are actually found above the heads of the congregation. We may also
suppose that the depictions of native plants occasionally inspired popular symbolic
interpretations, which circulated in the oral folklore, since a few late examples have
been recorded.114

The Synagogue Adornment in the Context of the Religious

Encounter
In the above discussion of the ornaments of the Altneuschul, two elements were
stressed which must now be investigated so as to reinforce the argumentation: the
Christian-Jewish polemic and the Cistercian influence. Following the first Crusades, the
opposition of the Christians to the Jewish religious minority became aggravated,
varying in the forms of its expression from aggressive anti-Jewish riots to scholarly
arguments against Judaism by Christian theologians.115 Bernard of Clairvaux preached
the non-violent way of converting the Jews to Christianity, and German Jews knew of

———————————————————————————————————
113
Cf. also I Kings 5:5, Joel 2:22.
114
For example, note a late 19th-century Jewish folk legend representing the synagogue
as a wonderful garden, which was recorded by Zmitrok Byadulya (Samuil Plavnik,
1886-1941), a Byelorussian writer of Jewish origin. While studying at a yeshiva in a
Jewish village in the region of Vilna, he heard about a carver who, when working in a
synagogue, first miraculously turned the interior into a flowering orchard inhabited by
lions and eagles, and then caused the plants and animals to become fossilized into
sculptures. The mystical sculptor was identified with Elijah the Prophet (Змитрок
Бядуля, “В дремучих лесах,” in Соловей. В дремучих лесах [Minsk, 1971], 225-
30). The legend reflects the tradition of abundant carved decoration in Polish and
Lithuanian synagogues from the 18th and 19th century (see numerous examples in
Piechotka, Bóżnice drewniane).
115
Frederick M. Schweitzer, “Medieval Perceptions of Jews and Judaism” in Marvin
Perry and Frederick M. Schweitzer, eds., Jewish-Christian Encounters over the
Centuries (New York, 1994), 131-168.
 144

his appeal to avoid massacres.116 The Jews of Prague would also have known some of
the Cistercian ideas: the order, which experienced the peak of its economical and
political power from the mid-12th century to the 1260s, expanded eastward, establishing
several great cloisters in Bohemia and Moravia in the course of the 13th century.117 With
the development of Scholasticism and the rise of the Dominican order in 1215, public
disputation became the central method of learned religious argument. The Jewish-
Christian theological encounter culminated in public disputations performed in the
presence of royalty and high dignitaries of the clergy. The most significant ones were
the disputations in Paris in 1240 and in Barcelona in 1263, and several sessions were
held in synagogues. The Barcelona disputation was famous because of the participation
of the Ramban and the presence of King James of Aragon, who allowed a relatively
liberal tone in the discussion, thus opening the way for a relatively free Jewish
argumentation.118
The Christian arguments in religious debate and the verbal images they used had
a number of topical points and parabolic figures that were negated by the basic
messages encoded in synagogue decoration. The Franciscan preacher Berthold of
Regensburg (active from the 1240s until 1272), likened Christendom to the Temple of
Solomon, stating that only Christians may enter the inner Sanctuary, whereas Jews and
heathens have to stay in the outer courts.119 The same concept of the sacred place that
may only be entered by the righteous is denoted in the synagogue portal, which
symbolizes the gate to the Lord. However, in the Jewish interpretation, righteousness is
a result of a devotion to the Torah that opens the heavenly Gate of Mercy before the
Jews and this devotion will lead to their being gathered into the messianic Temple. In
like manner, Bernard of Clairvaux frequently compared Judaism to a fruitless tree or
withered plant, and stipulated that the Salvation of the Jews hinged on their conversion
———————————————————————————————————
116
Bernard wrote, “Is it not a far better triumph for the Church to convince and convert
the Jews than to put them all to the sword?” (David Berger, “The Attitude of St.
Bernard of Clairvaux Toward the Jews,” Proceedings of the American Academy for
Jewish Research, 40 [1972]: 92). On medieval Jewish writers in Germany who
mentioned Bernard’s activity on behalf of the Jews, see ibid., 92-93.
117
Kuthan, Die mittelalterliche Baukunst der Zisterzienser, passim; Leroux-Dhuys,
Cistercian Abbeys, 93-111, 282-85, 332-33, 366-69, 384-87, 390-91.
118
[Hayim Hillel Ben-Sasson], “Disputations and Polemics,” EJ, 6: 91-92; Jeremy
Cohen, “Mendicants, the Medieval Church and the Jews: Dominican and Franciscan
Attitudes toward the Jews in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries” (Ithaca, 1978);
Hyam Maccoby, Judaism on Trial: Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle
Ages (Rutherford, 1982), esp. 19-81, 97-167.
119
Jeremy Cohen, “Mendicants, the Medieval Church and the Jews,” 345.
 145

to Christianity.120 The images from the synagogue implied the contrary belief: the
people of Israel is a fruitful vine and will deserve Redemption if they “lay hold unto” or
remain faithful to the Torah.
The issue of the nature and eschatological role of the Redeemer was in the center
of Christian argumentation at the public discussions with the Jews, and the aim of the
Barcelona disputation was to prove “that the Messiah (of which the interpretation is
‘Christ’) whom the Jews expect, has undoubtedly come.” The reply of the Ramban, who
represented the Jewish side, was determined by the goals of the Christian argument:
“The Messiah is not fundamental for our religion. [...] Nevertheless, let us speak of the
Messiah too, as this is your wish.”121 Similarly, the decoration of the synagogue was
almost a mirror reflection of Christian images: the Jews seemed to say: “Since you
represent the cross as a flowering tree contrasting with the withered plant of Synagoga,
we will demonstrate that Judaism is the true Tree of Life.” The Ramban’s Italian
contemporary, Solomon ben Moses de’ Rossi, suggested that to avoid anything that
might be offensive in the religious debate, Jewish polemists concentrate their discussion
on “the coming of the Messiah, the signs of his time, the commandments of the Torah,
and the words of the prophets.”122 The images in synagogue art that allude to the Torah,
the messianic days of world history, and the prophecy about the Messiah as the
flowering scion of David, correspond to the pivotal points of the theological encounter.
The correlation of Jewish art with Christian tradition embraced not only
particular subjects and motifs but also the general attitude to visual images. Already in
the 12th century, the ascetic atmosphere of the mendicant orders fostered the theology of
Hasidei Ashkenaz, and the austere views of Bernard of Clairvaux on art influenced their
strict iconoclastic position. The analysis of sculptural synagogue decorations in the last
chapter demonstrated that this austere attitude prevailed and caused the concealment of
images in Worms and Rouen in the late 12th or the early 13th century, and a minimalist
decoration in the early 12th-century Regensburg synagogue (ills. 32-33, 151). When
Bernard established the austere principles of Cistercian art, he stated that the sumptuous
church architecture reminded him of the ancient rite of the Jews.123 According to Cahn’s
reasonable supposition, the target of Bernard’s scorn was the Temple as described in the
———————————————————————————————————
120
Berger, “The Attitude of St. Bernard of Clairvaux Toward the Jews,” 90.
121
Maccoby, Judaism on Trial, 119-20, 147.
122
Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages, 22 (English
Section).
123
Apologia ad Guillelmum (Braunfels, Monasteries of Western Europe, 241).
 146

Bible,124 rather than the real appearance of Jewish sanctuaries, which were not more
sumptuous than Romanesque churches and cloisters. Bernard’s argument also reflects
the idea that the Christian ideal of spiritual treasures should be opposed to the Jewish
craving for material prosperity.125 Since the Jewish patrons apparently wished to
implement in the Altneuschul the ascetic spirit inherited from Hasidei Ashkenaz, they
chose masons who were experienced in Cistercian decorations that could not be accused
of opulent luxury or of being an obstacle to prayer.
In fact, the pure plant images in the synagogue are even more restrained than
contemporary Cistercian reliefs in Bohemia, such as the tree with animals in the
tympanum from Vyšší Brod (ill. 143a-b), or the human caryatids under the tympanum
of the Chapel of the Guardian Angels (ills. 220-21). The Gothic carvings of the
Altneuschul reproduce the whole complex of Cistercian non-figurative decoration, but
are still at odds with the halakhic interdiction against using arboreal images in the
synagogue issued by Isaac Or Zaru’a (ca. 1180- ca. 1250) who originated from
Bohemia.126 Here again the rabbinical prohibitions on images in the synagogue did not
stop the use of plant decoration, and even of a bird image in the 1270 synagogue of
Cologne. The desire to constantly declare their religious and ideological views in spite
of pressure by the Christian majority led the Jews of Prague to merge the tradition of the
Romanesque synagogues to the West of Bohemia with local Cistercian art in the
Altneuschul reliefs. This desire also caused other combinations of the Jewish heritage
with Gothic artistic models in other synagogues of the Ashkenazi Diaspora.
Gothic Synagogues Arks: Developments of the Tradition
In contrast to the situation concerning Arks from Romanesque synagogues, and
in addition to the almost completely surviving decoration of the Altneuschul,
information on Gothic synagogues have focused mainly on synagogue Arks. This data
is available both from the remnants of Gothic Arks found in Ashkenazi areas, and from
depictions of synagogue Arks in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts and early printed
books. The material and pictorial evidence on Arks in synagogues of that time in Italy
and Spain facilitates the discussion on both similarities and differences in the design of
synagogue Arks in these parts of the Jewish Diaspora. For the sake of a closer
examination of the development of each of the Ark’s structural elements, they will be

———————————————————————————————————
124
Cahn “Solomonic Elements in Romanesque Art,” 58.
125
Note Cupidity as the root-vice of the Arbor Mala - Synagoga (ill. 248b).
126
‫" אור זרוע‬,‫ "עבודה זרה‬,‫ יצחק בן משה‬no. 203.
 147

discussed consecutively from the top parts down to the supporting ones and to the Ark’s
forestructure.
Although Altdorfer’s 1519 drawing of the early 13th-century synagogue in
Regensburg (ill. 32) does not provide us with a clear view of the Ark that is partially
concealed by the bimah and blurred in the shadowy background, the visible details
suggest its general structure. The Ark was situated in the center of the eastern wall
under the attached colonettes supporting the vault; paired columns standing on a square
base and bearing an entablature that supported a low triangular pediment with crockets
on its slopes flanked the Ark’s aperture. The pediment consisted of a large arched niche
in the center, and a roundel is seen in its corner to the right of the niche. The
combination of the triangular pediment with an arched niche inside recalls the triangular
pediments containing a conch in the synagogue Arks of the Byzantine period (e.g., ills.
47, 95, 118), but also might be an earlier version of a Gothic pediment with an arched
niche such as that surviving in Miltenberg (ill. 263) from a period approximately
contemporary to the Altneuschul. A row of small vine leaves run under the frame of the
pediment, and smaller cordate leaves outline the trefoil niche in the tympanum. The
tympanum also contains an oculus filled with flowers, supposedly roses, and a small
rosette is set above the trefoil niche. Carved vine leaves rise along the slopes of this
pediment toward a finial at the top, but the present finial with the Star of David is a later
addition.127 The date is based on the opinion of Krautheimer, who convincingly
analyzed the style of the carvings,128 stating that they are typical of the last decades of
the 13th century. The date is corroborated by the resemblance of the scheme of the vault
ribs here (ill. 264) to that in the Altneuschul (ill. 192). The small single-nave hall in
Miltenberg served as a synagogue from the 13th century until the Christians confiscated
it in 1429. It returned to the possession of the Jews and was again used as a synagogue
in 1752, at which time the Gothic Ark’s pediment was probably reused for the Holy
Ark. In 1851, when the synagogue was appropriated again, the pediment was transferred
to the newer synagogue, where it also surmounted the Holy Ark.129 A Hebrew
inscription running in a line under the oculus on the Miltenberg Ark (ill. 263) reads,
“Know before Whom you stand,” calling on the faithful to be God-fearing during their

———————————————————————————————————
127
Cf. Eschwege, Die Synagoge in der deutschen Geschichte, 63 fig. 17.
128
Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 189-92.
129
It was later moved to the Municipal Museum of Miltenberg (Ulrich Debler, Die
jüdische Gemeinde von Miltenberg [Miltenberg, 1995], 56).
 148

prayers.130 Whereas the incised letters may not be unequivocally identified with a
medieval Ashkenazi script, and could have been made at some later time, perhaps after
1851, the supposition that there was an inscription or ornamentation in this section
explains the placement of the oculus high in the niche. The emblematic language here
recalls that of Prague: like the carvings in the Altneuschul, the plant ornaments on the
Miltenberg Ark symbolized a living Judaism, and here too Christian symbolism was
used to promote a Jewish message. Thus the oculus with its “roses” resembles a rose
window, and together with the trefoil arch and the pediment, suggests an architectonic
composition similar to those on the façades of 13th-century Gothic churches. At that
time, the Gothic church façade was usually associated with the gate of heaven,131 and
this would have reinforced the similar understanding of the synagogue Ark by the Jews.
Remnants of carved decoration from Arks were found in two 14th-century
synagogues in Sopron (Ödenburg), a town in northwest Hungary near the Austrian
border. The Jews of Hungary had continuous contacts with German Jews, in particular
from the Rhineland, and the synagogues of Sopron were constructed according to the
models of Gothic synagogue building in Germany.132 In the Sopron synagogue at Új
Street no. 22-24 dated to ca. 1300, a border ornamented with vine leaves alternating
with clusters on a zigzagging branch outlines the triangular pediment and the sides of
———————————————————————————————————
130
The Hebrew text ‫ דע לפני מי אתה עומד‬paraphrases the verse from Berakhot 28b that is
formulated in the plural and reads, ‫וכשאתם מתפללים דעו לפני מי שאתם עומדים ובשביל כך תזכו‬
‫“( לחיי העולם הבא‬And when you pray know before Whom you stand, and for this you
will win life in the world to come”). For an interpretation, see Rashi’s commentary on
this Talmudic verse.
131
Otto von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral (Princeton, 1980), 110 ff.
132
In Sopron, the first synagogue was built at Új Street no. 22-24 in ca. 1300, and about
1350 another one was established not far from it at no. 11. Both synagogues were
abandoned when the Jews were expelled from the town in 1526. The single-nave prayer
hall at no. 22-24 with an entrance at the west section of the northern wall – as in the
Rhineland – belongs to the type of German synagogues in which groin vaults are
combined with additional ribs in the east and west walls of the spanning. It has a
parallel in the vaulting of several domestic chapels in Regensburg. The plan of the
single-nave synagogue at no. 11 with the entrance at the west side is similar to the
synagogue in Miltenberg (ill. 273). See Sándor [Alexandre] Scheiber, “Une synagogue
médiévale à Sopron,” Revue des études juives, 118 (1959-60), 79-93; idem,
Magyarországi zsidó feliratok (Budapest, 1960), 68-71; idem, A Soproni középkori
zsinagóga (Sopron, 1963); Imre Heller and Zsigmond Vajda, The Synagogues of
Hungary: An Album (New York, 1968), 14-16; László Gerő, ed., Magyarországi
zsinagógák (Budapest, 1989), 141-45; Ferenc Dávid, Sopron, Old Synagogue
(Budapest, 1994); Krinsky, Synagogues of Europe, 143-45. On the contacts between
Hungarian and German Jews, see Raphael Patai, The Jews of Hungary: History,
Culture, Psychology (Detroit, 1996), 31-40, 54-60.
 149

the framed rectangular niche for the Torah scrolls (ill. 265-66).133 The relief on the
frame below the niche has not survived. This simple triangular pediment topped by a
finial resembles the outline of the pediments of the Altneuschul and Miltenberg Arks
(ills. 212, 263). The whirling six-petaled flower within the pediment from Sopron also
recalls the flowers in the oculus of the pediment from Miltenberg (ill. 263), and vine
reliefs decorate all three pediments.
The continuous border of the Ark from the Sopron synagogue of ca. 1300
provides an example of the Gothic design at the sides of the Ark’s niche, which has not
survived in the Altneuschul and in Miltenberg. In the Altneuschul, the short vertical
sections at both lower corners of the pediment’s frame suggest that they originally
continued downwards to form the frame at each side of the Ark’s doors, which in ca.
1618 was replaced by two attached columns bearing a broken cornice (ill. 225).
However, the composition of the tree emphasizes the specifically triangular shape of the
pediment (ill. 212). The Miltenberg Ark’s pediment (ill. 263) was also set on a new
entablature, but the trefoil arch inside could have surmounted a niche between the
original supports that continued the arch downwards. However, the slopes of the
pediment were not merged into the structure beneath: small horizontal sections on their
lower edge indicate that the row of the vine leaves did not continue downwards. Instead,
this truncation of the pediment’s frame emphasizes the triangular shape of the pediment.
A similar combination of the slopes with a trefoil arch beneath is depicted in the Ark in
the German Mahzor from the first quarter of the 14th century (ill. 98). The supports that
flow upwards to form a pointed or trefoil arch under the slopes of a pediment are usual
in the Gothic architecture of the late 13th and the early 14th century (e.g., ill. 162),
whereas fully triangular pediments, as a rule of high proportions, are relatively
infrequent (e.g., ill. 152). In contrast, a clearly underlined, equilateral or obtuse triangle
seems to be a regular shape of Ark pediments of that time. For example, in the Ark
depicted in an Ashkenazi Mahzor of ca. 1300 from Germany (ill. 101), the triangular
pediment is clearly outlined and does not incorporate the trefoil arch of the Ark’s door.
This pediment with finials at its top and corners, and crockets on the slopes closely
resembles the shape of that in the Altneuschul Ark (ill. 212). A low triangular pediment
with finials is also the most elaborated part of the Ark depicted in front of a praying
cantor in the Mahzor produced in France in 1304 (ill. 267), and the pediment contains a

———————————————————————————————————
133
Dávid, Sopron; Gerő, ed., Magyarországi zsinagógák, 141-45; Krinsky,
Synagogues of Europe, 1996, 143-45.
 150

plantlike trefoil shape. This type of the Ark is given a more pronouncedly Gothic form
with higher pinnacles in the Mahzor of ca. 1390 from Bavaria (ill. 268), but without
losing the triangular shape of the pediment. The Ark here is depicted as a cabinet that
stands on a wide low base and is surmounted by a massive pediment consisting of a
triangle with slightly concave sides, great crockets on the slopes, a high finial on the
apex and tall pinnacles at the outer angles. Two late examples of this type are depicted
in the German Haggadah of 1462-70 (ills. 269-70).
It may have been a symbolic meaning that prompted the continuing use of the
now anachronistic triangular pediment in Gothic synagogues. In ancient Jewish art, a
triangular pediment surmounted synagogue Arks and was given to depictions of the
messianic Sanctuary. In Jewish art of the 3rd to the 6th century from the catacombs in
Rome, a façade crowned by a low triangular pediment with a round finial on its top
represents the messianic Ark (e. g., ills. 90, 119). Remnants of the 4th-century
synagogue in Ostia near Rome have allowed the reconstruction of its Ark as an aedicula
with a simple triangular pediment (ill. 121). Similar triangular pediments, but with a
conch and often almost equilateral or tall proportions, topped synagogue Arks in of the
Byzantine period in the Holy Land (e.g., ills. 47, 95, 118). It seems that the classical
pediment of pagan temples was adopted as a sign for the Jewish sanctuary. Jewish
immigrants from Italy could have brought this model to Ashkenazi areas. However, this
symbolism was not limited to these countries. Sephardi Jews also used Arks with a
triangular top and a finial at its apex. In the 14th-century “Sister” to the “Golden
Haggadah” from Spain (ill. 150), the simple triangular shape of the top of the Ark that is
capped by a finial contrasts with the Gothic style of the pointed trefoil arch spanning the
space above the Ark in this picture, as well as with the rounded arch of the Ark’s niche.
Rounded arches are used as a the niche opening in the Ark, and as the shape of the
entrance and the windows of the synagogue depicted in the 14th-century Spanish
Sarajevo Haggadah (ill. 271), but the rounded arch of the Ark in the 14th-century
“Sister” to the “Golden Haggadah” presents no compositional or structural rationale for
the triangular form above it. It also differs from the mudéjar arched apertures of the
Arks in the 1315 synagogue in Cordova, and in the Samuel Ha-Levi Synagogue of ca.
1357 in Toledo.134 Like the triangular pediments of Gothic Arks in Ashkenazi
synagogues, this simple sloping top of the Ark in the Sephardi synagogue is unusual in
the context of local contemporary architecture, and seem to be a traditional symbolic
———————————————————————————————————
134
See Cantera Burgos, Sinagogas Españolas, figs. 5, 16b.
 151

form.
The connection of the triangular pediment to the Temple also influenced
medieval Christian art. Carol Krinsky has found several depictions of the Temple in
Jerusalem with a triangular pediment in Italian, German and English paintings from the
11th and 12th century. One of her examples is the scene of the presentation of Mary in
the Lectionary of Henry II (973-1024) decorated in southern Germany (ill. 272).135
Behind Mary and the figures accompanying her, there is a tetrastyle façade bearing a
low triangular pediment with a finial in its apex and acroteria at the outer angles. Here a
classical façade was given to the Temple where the presentation was performed (Luke
2:27) in order to represent it as a non-Christian place of worship. It is probable that the
iconography of the Temple as an antique structure originated in Italy and arrived in
Germany due to the contacts between artists of different parts of the Holy Roman
Empire that would have been intensive, for example, under the rule of Emperor Henry
II, a German king who was also duke of Bavaria, king of Lombardy and ruler of most of
Italy.
In Italian churches, a triangular pediment was sometimes set in front of the
dome of Gothic ciboriums placed above altars. These were often called tabernaculi to
associate them with the Biblical Tabernacle and the Temple. A well-known example in
Orsanmichele in Florence was made by Andrea Orcagna in 1349-59 (ill. 273). The
triangular pediment flanked by pinnacles is set here in front of a cupola. Orcagna may
have been prompted to insert the unattached pediment before the drum of the cupola
because of the symbolic connection between the pedimented façade and the Biblical
Tabernacle. In this context, where the baldachin frames a painting of the Madonna, the
superstructure may also evoke the “tower” that was one of Mary’s epithets 136
Depictions of Arks in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts from Italy suggest that
the meaning of the pediment prevailed there well into the 16th century, even when the

———————————————————————————————————
135
Carol Herselle Krinsky, “Representations of the Temple of Jerusalem before 1500,”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 33 [1970]: 8-9.
136
Barbara G. Lane, The Altar and the Altarpiece: Sacramental Themes in Early
Netherlandish Painting (New York, 1984), 32. A precedent for the use of the cupola
above the Ark of the Covenant is found in German Michaelbeuern Bible from the
second quarter of the 12th century (ill. 289), where the Israelites crossing the Jordan
carry the Ark on their shoulders. Despite the Biblical text describing the Holy Ark as
the chest (Ex. 25:10; 37:1-9) the Ark’s rectangular base is crowned here with a tiered
and domed tower resembling a church. In the 15th-century church tabernaculi, the Host
receptacles that alluded to the biblical Ark, were often designed as a tower to evoke this
association.
 152

Ark was a free-standing cupboard. An example is found in the Jerusalem Mishne Torah
illuminated in Perugia in ca. 1400137 (ill. 274): a worshiper faces a cabinet-like Ark
surmounted by a four-sided pyramid. Crockets run along the ribs of the roof to
emphasize the resemblance of each its side to a Gothic triangular pediment. The
pyramid gives the cabinet a tower-like appearance. The triangular shape of the pediment
is even more pronounced in a much later full-page illumination from a Mahzor from
Italy (ills. 275-76). Although in the black-and-white photograph of this illumination that
is published in Adler’s 1930 “Jewish Travellers” several details are not clear enough,
this is the only reproduction of the manuscript from E. Bicart-Sée’s collection, whose
current location is not known to me.138 The richly decorated page that contains the word
‫ שומע‬is likely an initial panel of the ‫[“( שומע תפילה‬He] hears [the] prayer”), the sixteenth
benediction of the Amidah prayer, in which the worshipers ask God “Who hears prayers
and supplications” to harken to their voice and to accept their prayer.139 In the upper
panel, the Ark stands between two figures in the center of what looks like a three-aisled
hall. It is likely that the two maidens140 standing in the lateral aisles turn to the Holy Ark
in order to ask that their plea be heard. Since the Renaissance style of the painting, the
drawings in the medallions and the plant ornamentation in the miniature are similar to
those in the illuminations from a 1520 prayerbook of the Norsa family, probably
produced in Ferrara,141 the Bicart-Sée manuscript would appear to be related to the same
region and period. Since the painter most probably depicted an Ark familiar to him, it
would have been an Italian Ark of the late 15th or the early 16th century. In the painting
(ill. 276), the Ark is again a freestanding wooden cabinet resting on a base and
supporting a triangular pediment. Here, as before, the classical pedimented façade
would have alluded to the Ark in the Temple in Jerusalem. This is borne out by the
illustration of the “Presentation in the Temple” from Gershom Soncino’s 1507 edition
of the Decachordum cristianum (ill. 277). The great arched vault spanning the

———————————————————————————————————
137
Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts, 134.
138
Elkan Nathan Adler, ed., Jewish Travellers [London, 1930], pl. I (on the
frontispiece).
139
Idelsohn, Jewish Liturgy, 105 no. 16. Cf. also the initial ‫ שומע תפילה‬in Gershom
Soncino’s Mahzor of the Roman rite (David Werner Amram, The Makers of Hebrew
Books in Italy [Philadelphia, 1909], 93).
140
Cf. their uncovered heads vs. the men wearing skullcaps depicted in the panel below.
141
Cf. Mahzor and Siddur, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Fondation Smith-Lesouef, Ms.
250, fol. 5r (reproduced in Sed-Rajna and Fellous, Les manuscrits Hébreux
enluminés, 385).
 153

foreground designates the Temple, while the structure with a half-open door, a pair of
pilasters and the triangular pediment in the background represents the Ark of the
Covenant. However, as compared to this Renaissance rendering of the Ark, the
appearance of the Ark’s pediment in the Bicart-Sée manuscript (ill. 276) with its flower-
like finial at its apex, spherical finials on the cornice, and the symmetrical plant that is
discernable within the pediment at each side of the pediment, indicates that this Ark still
has Gothic elements.
Several late 15th-century depictions of Italian synagogue Arks show a
disconnected combination of pediments with pinnacles and a roof or a dome that
resembles Orcagna’s tabernaculum in Orsanmichele (ill. 273). For instance, a similarly
composed superstructure is found on the Ark – a tall cabinet of elegant proportions –
that appears on folio 105v of the Rothschild Miscellany of ca. 1470 (ill. 278). A
massive base bears the tall, curtained section of the Torah repository, which supports a
simplified entablature. The superstructure consists of a triangular gable with pinnacles
at the corners set before a dome and topped by a tall lantern. On the other hand, a
different combination is visible on folio 12v in Jacob ben Asher’s Arba’ah Turim from
Mantua, ca. 1435 (ill. 279). The Ark here is a tall cabinet with a two-tiered design on
the front and side, consisting of blind arcades flanked with slim colonettes that rise into
pinnacles. The open doors at the front show that the compartment for the Torah scrolls
is situated in the upper, smaller tier. Each of the façades supports a pointed ogee
pediment that partially screens the Ark’s pyramidal top with its defined triangular
sections. A three-petalled centric pattern is discernable in the pediment seen on the left,
and a plant pattern fills the right pediment.
The origins of these manuscripts differ: the Jerusalem Mishne Torah manuscript
(ill. 274) was written in Spain before 1351, then brought to Perugia in Central Italy and
illuminated there in the workshop of the Italian artist Matteo di Ser Cambio in ca. 1400.
Jacob ben Asher’s Arba’ah Turim of ca. 1435 (ill. 279) written in Mantua in Italian
Hebrew script, and the Rothschild Miscellany of ca. 1470 from Ferrara (ill. 278), both
come from North Italy and include prayers of the Ashkenazi rite. This group of images
corroborates the supposition that in Italy, where classic pedimented temples were
constantly present, the traditional iconography of the triangular pediment found in Ostia
(ill. 120) and in the Jewish catacombs (ill. 119, 121, 280), remained as a living symbol
of the Tabernacle, even when – because of the free-standing Ark – the pediment
developed into a pyramidal shape. Only one late example (ill. 278) used a domed Ark,
 154

and even then it was fronted by a triangular pediment.

In Ashkenazi synagogues to the North of Italy from the mid-15th century on,
there were also increasing Gothic influences on the Ark’s design. This more Gothic
tendency led to the choice of more flowing, curvilinear shapes for Ark pediments
alongside the simple geometrical triangle which continued to be used. This is
exemplified by a lancet-shaped Ark’s pediment with a shallow trefoil that was
discovered in the synagogue of ca. 1350 at no. 11 Új Street in Sopron (ill. 281). A
horizontal recession in the bottom part of the trefoil niche was probably intended to
hold a plaque with an inscription. This pediment as well as the triangular one would
have borne connotations of the Temple: the same lancet pediment surmounts the Ark of
the Covenant in the 14th-century Foa Bible from Catalonia (ill. 113).
A few other examples from the 15th century show an even deeper unification of
the Ark’s design with common Gothic architecture. For example, the remnant of a Holy
Ark from an old synagogue in Nuremberg (ill. 282) was acquired by the Jewish
community and installed in a new synagogue in 1909. The arch may have originated
from the synagogue on Wunderburg Street no. 8 built in 1352 to replace the oldest
known synagogue of the city that had been established in 1296 and destroyed in 1349.
In 1451, the new synagogue was damaged by fire, and in 1499 it was sold to Christian
owners, who altered the building.142 Krautheimer’s supposition that the arch was made
after the 1451 fire is acceptable: the late Gothic style of the arch, its crockets and finial,
and the Ashkenazi script with a dot on the vertical strokes are similar to those in the
picture of an open Holy Ark from the Bavarian Mahzor of 1459 (ill. 284). Courses of
bricks or stones depicted as a grid in the brown area at the bottom of that Ark’s right-
hand door surely indicate a masonry construction. In this picture, a green band
containing leaves runs from the Ark’s top down along each side of the Ark’s opening,
recalling the ornamental band with a vine framing the Sopron Holy Ark of ca. 1300 (ill.
266). Despite the use of traditional decorative elements, the composition of the Ark in
this painting stresses the arch rather than emphasizing the small triangular tympanum
containing a trefoil flower directly above the niche.
The photograph published by Krautheimer in 1927 (ill. 283) shows the Gothic
arch from Nuremberg in its new situation above the aperture of a niche for the Torah
scrolls. The inscription in German above the round-arched door states that this stone

———————————————————————————————————
142
The pediment is now in the Altstadtmuseum of Nuremberg (Krautheimer,
Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 250-252; Eschwege, Die Synagoge, 63; EJ, 12: 1275).
 155

remained after the Jews were expelled from the town in 1499.143 The text may have
been added to establish continuity in the Jewish settlement in the town. A rectangular
moulded frame encloses the ogee arch from above, and the words ‫“( כתר תורה‬Crown of
the Torah”) are carved in low relief in the spandrels. Within the arch, a rose is carved in
the bottom center and is framed by a delicate tracery with fleur-de-lis-like endings that
adorns the underside of the pediment, while leafy crockets run along its upper sides and
a finial with the same leaves crowns the top (ill. 282). In the vocabulary of Gothic
architectonic designs, the ogee arch with a trefoil tracery that is set within a rectangular
moulding sometimes was a sign of holiness. For example, the Ark’s panel with the ogee
arch from the Nuremberg synagogue resembles the frame of a 15th-century aumbry from
St. Vérone in Leefdael (ill. 285). The function of an aumbry – a recess in a church wall
containing the consecrated Host, sacred vessels, vestments or books – is similar to that
of the niche of the synagogue Ark that houses the sacred scrolls.144 In synagogues, such
arches as well as other architectonic ornamentations would again have been
reinterpreted for their Jewish meaning.
Most of these pediments or arches of Ashkenazi Gothic Arks contain an image
consisting of six or three elements issuing from the same center. A whirling six-petalled
flower is carved on the pediment of the Ark of ca. 1300 in the synagogue at Új Street
no. 22-24 in Sopron (ill. 266) and a similar three-petaled flower is found in the Gothic
Ark depicted in the German Haggadah of 1462-70 (ill. 269). Six roses are set around the
seventh in the oculus of the Ark’s pediment from Miltenberg (ill. 263), and a six-
petalled rose appears in the arch from Nuremberg (ill. 282). A three-petalled flower is
seen above the niche with Torah scrolls in the Bavarian Mahzor from 1459 (ill. 284).
Three triquetra fill the corners in the pediment from the ca. 1300 synagogue in Sopron
(ill. 266), and a triquetrum decorates the Arks in two Ashkenazi Mahzors: one of ca.
1300 (ill. 101), and the other of 1304 (ill. 267). A trefoil niche resembling a triquetrum
appears in the Ark’s pediments in Miltenberg (ill. 263) and in the mid-14th century
Sopron synagogue (ill. 281). Trefoil arches span the Ark’s opening in the Ashkenazi
Mahzor of ca. 1300 (ill. 101), and in that of the first quarter of the 14th century (ill. 98).
Researchers on medieval Christian symbols noted that the rose windows, open

———————————————————————————————————
143
“Dieser Stein ist(?) nach den Juden blieben, als sie wurden von Nürnberg vertrieben,
von Hauβ, Trauf und Gassen, führwahr im Tausendvierhundertneunzigsten Jahr”
(Eschwege, Die Synagoge, 63). The text published by Krautheimer (Mittelalterliche
Synagogen, 252) has several omissions.
144
See Lane, The Altar and the Altarpiece, 32-35.
 156

flowers, rosettes, stars, whirls and trefoils, often set at the top of a composition in
churches, were solar signs used as emblems of Divine Light and the heavenly realm,145
while the spread of all the elements from the same center symbolized the monotheistic
nature of the Deity in the world. If Jews were familiar with this formal language, they
would also have used such circular ornaments above the Ark to symbolize the Divine
source of the Torah, reinterpreting the numbers six and three in Jewish contexts. The six
roses surrounding the seventh in the oculus of the Miltenberg Ark (ill. 263) may thus be
read as an emblem of the six mundane days of the world and the sabbatical millennium,
especially as a 13th-century Midrash also mentioned the seventh “sabbatical”
millennium and stressed the symbolic correspondence between the millennia and the
seven days of Creation.146 Instead of the trinitarian content in Christian art, the number
three would been given the kind of Jewish symbolism that it had for a Jewish polemist
who, arguing against reading the three vine branches mentioned in Genesis 40:10 as a
prefiguration of the Trinity, explained them as suggesting the Temple, the King and the
High Priest,147 thus alluding to “God’s true vine” as the Sanctuary, and the Jewish
secular and religious authorities, who balance each other in carrying out God’s will.
This idea is based on the Talmud (Yoma 72b), which suggests that the Torah, Kingship
and Priesthood will be reunited in the Messianic times. A few other symbolic
explications of the trefoil symbols might have derived from Jewish sources such as, for
example, Avot 2:1 which states that the Torah, worship and charity are the three
fundamentals of the world, whereas the prayers frequently mention the three patriarchs,
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who entered into the covenant with God.
The inscription “Torah Crown” in the tympanum of the Nuremberg Ark
develops the association of the synagogue Torah shrine with the Ark of the Covenant.
The Bible suggests that a ‫( זר זהב‬zer zahav), literally a “wreath of gold,” was set around
the Ark (Ex. 25:11, 37:2) as a sort of cornice running along its upper perimeter.148 This
description explains the wreath of leaves above and inside the ogee arch above the
Nuremberg Ark (ill. 282), the rows of flowers inside the pediment from the Miltenberg
Ark (ill. 263) and the crockets on the slopes of the pediment from the Altneuschul (ill.
———————————————————————————————————
145
Helen J. Dow, “The Rose-Window,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes, 20 (1957): 248-97; R. Cowen, Rose Windows (London, 1987);
Reuterswärd, The Visible and Invisible in Art, 57-76, 87-91, 104-106, 120-36.
146
Yalkut Shimoni 888.
147
‫ ספר נצחון ישן‬,‫ ברויאר‬44-45 no. 25.
148
Ex. 25:11; 37:2.
 157

212). Yoma 72b interpreted the biblical zer zahav as a crown. Since the Vulgate also
translates it as corona aurea, the illuminator of the 11th-century Lobbes Bible represents
the golden wreath as a crown hovering above the Ark of the Covenant (ill. 286).149
Moreover, the Talmud associated the Crown of the Ark with the Crown of the Torah,
expounding that Aaron possessed the priestly crown and David the royal crown, but that
the Crown of the Torah was available to anyone.150 This was also emphasized by both
Rashi and the Rambam who explained that the Crown of the Torah is available to all the
people of Israel, just like the Torah itself.151 According to the Midrash, the crown was
made to glorify the Ark “because the Torah was put there,”152 and the Crown of the
Torah is the uppermost value: “Everybody who deserves the Torah, deserves also the
Kingship and the Priesthood, as it is said, ‘By me kings rule’ (Prov. 8:15).”153 Thus, the
words the “Crown of the Torah” at the top of the Holy Ark from Nuremberg (ill. 282)
draws a parallel to the Talmudic description of the golden wreath as the crown
surmounting the Ark of the Covenant to glorify the Torah that lies inside. It also alludes
to the idea that Mosaic Law prevails over the power of the priest and that of the

———————————————————————————————————
149
On this picture, see P. Bloch, “Nachwirkungen des Alten Bundes in der christlichen
Kunst” in Monumenta Judaica, Handbuch, 735-781, fig. 102; Cahn, Romanesque
Bible Illumination, 126 fig. 80; Elisabeth Revel-Neher, “Antiquus populus, novus
populus: Jerusalem and the People of God in the Germigny-des-Prés Carolingian
Mosaic,” JA, 23-24, The Real and Ideal Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian and Islamic
Art (1997-98): 60-61 fig. 4. For a general review of the crown’s symbolism, see
Chevalier and Gheebrant, A Dictionary of Symbols, 262-66.
150
The text states, “[The outer box of the Ark] is eleven [handbreadths] and a bit. And
what is “a bit” - [it is] a wreath. […] Rabbi Johanan said, there are three wreaths: [the
wreath] of the Altar, [the wreath] of the Ark and [the wreath] of the Table [of
showbread]. [The wreath] of the Altar - Aharon merited possession of it, [the wreath] of
the Table - David merited possession of it, [and the wreath] of the Ark is still at rest,
anyone who wishes to possess [it] may come and take [it]. Lest you should say that this
[the wreath of the Torah], is inferior [to the other wreaths], learn to say, “By me kings
rule” [Prov. 8:15] (Yoma 72b).”
151
Rashi’s commentary on Yoma 72b; ‫" משנה תורה‬,‫ "הלכות תלמוד תורה‬,‫ רמב"ם‬3:1.
152
Midrash Tanhuma, Vayakhel (Ex. 35:1-38:20) 7.
153
Num. Rabba 4:13. The concept that the Crown of the Torah prevails over that of the
crowns of Kingship and Priesthood should not be confused with the scheme of the three
equal crowns of the Torah, Kingship and Priesthood surmounted by the Crown of a
Good Name that is described in Avot 4:13. The combination in the Worms synagogue of
a big crown with three smaller crowns beneath it in the superstructure of the
18th-century Ark (ill. 22) and perhaps also in that of 1623-24 (ill. 2, and note the
fragment of two smaller crowns, ill. 72) illustrates the adage from Avot, but is not found
in medieval synagogue art.
 158

mundane ruler.154 In contrast with the Christian images of the crowned Ecclesia
opposing Synagoga who has lost her crown (ills. 242, 287), the inscription “Crown of
the Torah” above the synagogue Ark demonstrated the belief that the Torah is the
ultimate power and glory of the world. Taking the Torah scroll out of the Holy Ark
during prayers might have been understood as bringing the Torah’s crown to the people.
The depictions of Gothic pedimented or arched Arks from Ashkenazi
manuscripts demonstrate that the traditional identification of the synagogue Ark with
the biblical Sanctuary and the heavenly gate was translated into contemporary
architectonic designs. For example, the Gothic Ark from the Mahzor of 1459 from
Germany (ill. 284) appears behind the words, “Blessed be the Lord our God, King of
the Universe, who opens to us the gates [of mercy].” This is the initial phrase of a
prayer recited on the Day of Atonement, conveying the idea that prayers reach God’s
Throne through the heavenly gates of mercy.155 In the picture, the emphasized word
‫“( הפותח‬who opens”) is placed around the open doors, and in practice, the Ark is opened
when such prayers are said. Thus opening the doors of the Ark not only exposes the
Torah to the worshipper’s view, but also creates a direct channel through which the
prayer of the congregation rises to Heaven. In the German Haggadah from 1462-70 (ill.
269), the Hebrew inscription ‫“( זה השער‬this is the gate”) identifies the Gothic Holy Ark
whose Torah scrolls are seen through its open doors with the verse “this is the gate of
the Lord, into which the righteous shall enter” (Ps. 118:20), which appears in the text
beside the picture near the bottom of the page. This image unequivocally identifies the
Holy Ark as the Lord’s gate leading the righteous to the sacred realm of the Torah,
whereas the earlier mentions – the 1174-75 inscription above the entrance to the Worms
synagogue and the commentary to the Haggadah of Eleazar Rokeah from Worms –
related it to the entrance into the synagogue.
This identification also explains another architectonic feature that was found in
some Arks. In a painting decorating the Adon Imnani poem in the German Double
Mahzor from ca. 1290 (ill. 49), a tower-like structure in the lower center can be

———————————————————————————————————
154
For instance, this emerges from Rashi’s comment on the verse from Proverbs 8:15 in
the context of the discussion of three wreaths in Yoma 72b.
155
Cf. the whole text of the benediction in ill. 255, and the related prayer “Our Father,
our King, open the gates of heaven unto our prayer” in the Avinu Malkenu prayer on the
Day of Atonement. Pesikta 25:157b states that the heavenly Gates of Repentance
always remain open for one’s prayer. See also Wischnitzer, From Dura to Rembrandt,
70-75; Bracha Yaniv, “The Origins of the ‘Two-Column Motif’ in European Parokhot,”
JA, 15 (1989): 26-43.
 159

identified as an Ark. Moses receives the Tablets of the Law in the upper panel and gives
it to the Israelites who gather at the sides of the lower panel and raise their arms to
receive it. Under the word Adon, in the center, one Israelite stretches his hands instead
towards a tower with crenellated parapets that surmount a lancet aperture with open
doors. This may signify both the Ark of the Covenant and the synagogue Ark, the
earthly receptacles of the Law. A medallion from a late-14th century Ashkenazi Siddur
reinforces this interpretation: it represents a seemingly free-standing synagogue Ark as a
tower with a trefoil-shaped opening and a crenellated parapet (ill. 288). We already saw
an earlier Christian interpretation of the Ark as a tower in the 12th-century
Michaelbeuern Bible (ill. 289). Jewish representations of the Ark as a tower could rely
on a biblical metaphor for God’s name that is a “strong tower” (‫)מגדל עוז‬, which
provides shelter for the righteous (Prov. 18:10). This idea inspired the fortress-like
design of the synagogue Ark as a gate fortified with turrets and crenellated walls: it
became the “stronghold” or “strong tower” housing the Torah scrolls, which were given
by God and contain His name. In like a manner, turrets flanking the aperture and
additional tower-like structures above the arch make the Gothic Ark in the late 13th-
century Mahzor (ill. 98) similar to castle’s gate. Such turrets and pinnacles at the sides
of Gothic Arks (eg., ills. 268-70, 278, 284) might thus add the meaning of the “strong
tower” to the repository of Torah scrolls rather than merely copying stylistic Gothic
elements.
Features of a stronghold were also given to the images of the Temple and Gates
of Heaven. Thus in the Worms Mahzor of 1272, the façade of the Temple is a fortified
Romanesque gate with a crenellated wall above the arch and turrets at each side (ill.
122). In the Bird’s Head Haggadah of ca. 1300, crenellated turrets flank the arched gate
leading to Jerusalem and a crenellated wall surmounts its Gothic arch (ill. 290).156
Crenellations also appears above the entrance to Paradise in the same manuscript (ill.
44). Despite the wide use of this motif in Ashkenazi manuscripts, there is no material
evidence of tower-like or free-standing Arks from medieval synagogues in Ashkenazi
areas, but the tower-like Arks in Hebrew manuscripts from Italy mentioned above (ills.
273, 277, 279) and the surviving wooden carved Holy Ark of 1471-72 from Modena
(ill. 291)157 suggest that these types of Arks were used there during the 15th century.

———————————————————————————————————
156
The structure is labelled “Jerusalem” in Hebrew.
157
Victor A. Klagsbald, Catalogue Raisonné de la Collection Juive du Musée de
Cluny (Paris, 1981), 94; idem, Jewish Treasures from Paris: From the Collections of
 160

Massive cornices divide the Modena Ark into two tiers, while the twisted corner
colonettes in each tier and the crenellated parapet in the top reinforce the structure’s
architectonic character and enchance its resemblance to a tower. Although Ercole d’Este
of Ferrara, suzerain of Modena, granted his Jewish subjects the right to build
synagogues according to their rites in 1473,158 the date 1471-72 recorded on the
Modena Ark159 testifies that a synagogue was built there before this official permit. As
in other Italian towns of that period, the Jewish community in Modena was comprised
of native Italian Jews and groups of immigrants. In the 1470s, before the exile from
Spain and Portugal, the leading group of the Jewish immigrants who lived beside the
native Jewish community in Modena were Jews of Ashkenazi descent. Unfortunately,
the surviving documents do not allow us to specify for which of the Modena
synagogues and for which group this wooden Ark (ill. 291) was produced.
Admittedly, there is no clue to the allusion to a tower in the known inscriptions
on such wooden Arks from Italy, nor was the term ‫( מגדל‬migdal, “tower”) for the Holy
Ark traditional in the medieval nomenclature of synagogue furnishings. On the contrary,
the Holy Ark in Sephardi synagogues was usually named ‫( תיבה‬tevah, a “case” or “box”)
or ‫( היכל‬heikhal, literally a “palace”), while in Ashkenazi and Sephardi synagogues, the
migdal etz (“wooden tower”), a platform for the public Torah reading mentioned in
Nehemiah 8:4, corresponded to the bimah.160 For example, a dedicatory inscription in

———————————————————————————————————
the Cluny Museum and Consistoire, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Catalogue
(Jerusalem, 1982): 12-13 no. 1.
158
Vincenza Maugeri, “Anciennes synagogues de Modena (XVIe–XIXe siècle)” in
Borrás and Sáenz-Badillos, Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, 2:
148.
159
The date is encoded the inscription on the lower frieze that runs from the right
around the front to left side:
‫ארון ברית נעשה לכבוד רם ונ]שא[ \ לאלפי חמישה שנת ב'ר'כ'י' נפשי את ה' הללויה \ אלחנן בכמ"ר דניאל‬
[‫ת']הי[ נ']שמתו[ צ']רורה[ ב']צרור[ ה']חיים‬
“Ark of Covenant was made in honour of the High and Lofty One. To the five
thousands, in the year ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul’ [Ps. 104:1], Halleluiah. Elkhanan
Raphael, son of the honourable R. Daniel, ‘may his soul be bound up in the bond of life’
[a paraphrase of I Sam. 25:29].” The letters marked for their numerical value give a sum
of 232 to the “five thousands,” i.e. 5232, that is the year 1472 (see Klagsbald,
Cataloque Raisonné, 94).
160
On the terms for the bimah and the Holy Ark in Sephardi synagogues, see Cantera
Burgos, Sinagogas Españolas, 28-29; Wischnitzer, Architecture, 29, 34-39; Narkiss,
“The Heikhal, Bimah and Teivah in Sephardi Synagogues.” Yom-Tov Assis noted that
in Sephardi synagogues the bimah and not the Ark was sometimes called the tevah
(“Synagogues in Mediaeval Spain,” 18, 26). Reporting on the wooden platform he saw
in the center of the synagogue in Palermo, Ovadiah di Bartenura used the term tevah
 161

the El Tránsito synagogue of ca. 1357 in Toledo apparently calls the migdal etz the
structure “for reading the Law inside”.161 A bimah that can be associated with a
“wooden tower” is depicted, for example, in the 14th-century “Sister” to the “Golden
Haggadah” from Spain (ill. 150): it consists of a platform raised on high posts, and the
bars connecting the posts at their top bear crenellations.
However, as Klagsbald has noted, in Mishnaic Hebrew, migdal also meant “a
cabinet.”162 In 15th-century Germany and Italy, Jews may have re-applied this
connotation to their tower-shaped cupboards (e.g., ills. 292-293) and thus also to the
similarly-shaped synagogue Arks (e.g., 273, 277, 279, 284, 291) to associate them with
the “Strong Tower” that is “the name of the Lord into which the righteous [man] runs,
and is safe” (Prov. 18:10).
An unequivocal proof for the identification of this verse with a crenellated tower
in the mind of Italian Jews, although from a date later than the Modena Ark, is found in
the decoration of books published by Gershom ben Moses Soncino (active from 1489-
died ca. 1533), the foremost Hebrew printer in the late 15th century and the first decades
of the 16th century. He chose the citation of Proverbs 18:10 as the motto for his printer’s
mark that shows a bulky tower rising behind a massive crenellated wall with a locked
door (ill. 294).163 Since researchers believe that Gershom Soncino received his
additional name Menzlein because he learned the art of printing in Mainz,164 he may
have seen there depictions of crenellated gates (e.g., ills. 44, 122, 289) and tower-like
Arks doors (e.g., ills. 49, 288) at least in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts, and perhaps
even such synagogue Arks. The locked door in Soncino’s fortress evidently contrasts
———————————————————————————————————
and migdal etz as synonyms (‫ אגרות ארץ ישראל‬,‫ יערי‬105). The known sources are thus at
odds with Klagsbald’s supposition that the Ark-tevah was occasionally called migdal etz
(Catalogue Raisonné, 94-96).
161
‫( מגדל עץ למקרא דת בתוכה‬Francisco Cantera Burgos, Sinagogas Españolas [Madrid,
1955], 97, fig. 20).
162
Kelim 18:3, note also parallels in ibid., 15:1; 20:5; 24:6 (Klagsbald, Catalogue
Raisonné, 94-96).
163
See Amram, The Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy, 70-145; Raphael Posner and
Israel Ta-Shema, eds., The Hebrew Book: An Historical Survey (Jerusalem, 1975),
162-63; Marvin J. Heller, Printing the Talmud: A History of the Earliest Printed
Editions of the Talmud (New York, 1992), 51-73; ‫ המדפיסים בני‬,‫אברהם מאיר הברמן‬
‫ תולדותיהם ורשימת הספרים העברים שנדפסו על ידיהם‬.‫( שונצינו‬Vienna, 1933); ,‫אברהם יערי‬
‫עשרה‬-‫ דגלי המדפיסים העבריים מראשית הדפוס העברי ועד סוף המאה התשע‬4-5 (Jerusalem,
1944): nos. 5-6; ‫פורטוגליה‬-‫ אספמיה‬,‫תולדות הדפוס העברי במדינות איטליה‬, ‫חיים דב פרידברג‬
‫( ותורגמה שמלפנים‬Tel Aviv, 1956); ‫ שערי ספרים עבריים‬,‫( אברהם מאיר הברמן‬Safed, 1969),
30-32.
164
Posner and Ta-Shema, Hebrew Book, 162-163.
 162

with the iconography of synagogue Arks in Ashkenazi manuscripts that usually depicted
the Ark’s doors open (e.g., ills. 269, 284), or clearly visible (e.g., ills. 49, 98, 101, 267,
288) to visualize the concept of the people’s prayer ascending to the heaven through the
celestial gates. Soncino’s mark reinforces the meaning suggested above that the Gothic
tower-like cabinet with crenellations at their tops conveyed the idea that the Ark was a
migdal, a “strong tower of the Torah,” a form of the “stronghold of the name of the
Lord,” a safe shelter from enemies.
In 1487, Ovadiah Jaré from Bertinoro in Emilia Romagna, called Ovadiah of
Bartenura, a distinguished Italian rabbi of the late 15th century, mentioned ceremonies
during which Jews actually entered the Ark-heikhal built as an indoor stone structure
having no aperture on its façade. It was “a beautiful stone building like a chapel” with
“two doors, one towards the south, and one towards the north” on the eastern side of the
synagogue in Palermo in Sicily.165 He noted that the Torah scrolls were not housed in
the ‫“( ארון‬chest-like Ark”) as in his native land, but they were placed on a wooden shelf
in this heikhal. He stated also that on the eve of the Day of Atonement and on
Hoshanah Rabba, the seventh day of Sukkot, women entered in family groups into the
Ark by one door, prostrated themselves there before the Torah scroll, and then went out
through the other door.166 It is probable that this Ark prompted the belief that
worshippers expressing their plea in the immediate proximity of the Torah scrolls might
consider themselves in the spirit of Proverbs 18:10 as “running into it, and are safe.”167
The custom of entering the Ark in Palermo recall medieval synagogues in Spain,
where the Jews also actually entered the Ark-heikhal that contained a moveable tevah, a
chest for the Torah scroll. Such a heikhal was a small room, somewhat raised

———————————————————————————————————
165
‫[ ולהיכל שני פתחים נגבה וצפונה‬...] ‫ בניין של אבנים יפה מעין קפילה‬,‫ההיכל‬. The Hebrew text is
cited after ‫ אגרות ארץ ישראל שכתבו היהודים היושבים בארץ לאחיהם שבגולה מימי‬,‫אברהם יערי‬
‫( גלות בבל ועד שיבת ציון שבימינו‬Tel Aviv, 1943), 105. The word ‫ קפילה‬here is a Hebrew
transliteration for Italian cappella (see ibid., 105 n. 11), so that the translations of it as
“a dome” (Adler, Jewish Travellers, 211), or as “a domed structure” (Yaakov Dovid
Shulman, Pathway to Jerusalem: The Travel Letters of Rabbi Ovadiah of
Bartenura Written between 1488-1490 during His Journey to the Holy Land [New
Jersey, 1992], 18) rather than “a chapel” are incorrect. The text thus describes an indoor
structure rather than a cupola rising from the synagogue’s roof as David Cassuto drew
in his graphical reconstruction of the Palermo synagogue (“La sinagoga in Italia” in
Corrado Vivanti, ed., Storia di Italia, 11, Gli ebrei in Italia, 1 [1996]: 326, fig. 5).
166
‫ אגרות ארץ ישראל‬,‫ יערי‬105-106.
167
On beliefs in the magical power of the Torah scrolls, see ‫ "תורה ומגיה; ספר‬,‫ שלום‬,‫צבר‬
‫" פעמים‬,‫ התורה ואבזריו כחפצים מגיים בתרבות ישראל באירופה ובארצות האסלאם‬85 (2001): 149-
79.
 163

above floor level, that was attached to the outside of the synagogue’s eastern wall. The
entrance to the heikhal was possible through an aperture in the wall of the prayer hall.168
The height and steps in front of the door of the Ark in the 14th-century “Sister” to the
“Golden Haggadah” (ill. 150) may indicate that people could have entered inside it.169
In contrast to the usual heikhals attached to the synagogue, this Ark seems to be a
structure protruding into the prayer hall. As a result, the bulk of this structure,
emphasized by the massive stonework, may have evoked the association of the Ark with
the “strong tower.” The Ark in Palermo may thus have belonged to the same type of
massive indoor Arks alluding to a stronghold, and the blind façade of the Palermo Ark
stressed its mass and strength even more. It seems that this tradition was not limited to
Spain and Sicily.
A similar interpretation of the Arks in Central and Northern Italy as closed
strong towers is borne out by the composition that “hides” the Ark’s doors. In the
Mishneh Torah of ca. 1400 from Perugia (ill. 274), the Ark’s two sides are identical,
and only the position of a worshipper suggests that the side he faces would have been
the façade with its doors. This is also true of the Ark with almost identical sides in the
Arba’ah Turim of ca. 1435 from Mantua (ill. 279). In a similar way, when the Ark from
Modena is closed, the compartment for the Torah scrolls is barely seen due to the
regular Gothic grid with evenly distributed panels that covers the entire façade and
camouflages the doors (ill. 291).
A similar symbolic approach to the other parts of the Ark may also yield results.
Let us take as an example the motif of the three legs that support the Ark or Sanctuary
in several Hebrew manuscripts from Spain, Italy and the Ashkenazi areas. In the painted
panel from the Ashkenazi Mahzor of ca. 1300 (ill. 101), a tall cabinet-like Ark is raised

———————————————————————————————————
168
Narkiss, “The Heikhal, Bimah, and Teivah in Sephardi Synagogues,” passim.
Bezalel Narkiss assumed that this plan evolved from the apse in early Byzantine
synagogues (ibid., 45-46), and inspired room-like Arks in synagogues in Provence and
Piemonte (ibid., 31-36). The interior of a Sephardi synagogue in the 14th-century
Sarajevo Haggadah (ill. 271) shows the niche for the Torah scrolls highly elevated, so
that one may not enter it. This Ark closed by a pair of doors resembles Ashkenazi Arks
that were usually built as an elevated niche closed by doors (e.g., ill. 284).
169
Although the picture obviously conveys realistic details, the proportions of objects
are conventional. E.g., the head, shoulders and a hand of the reader on the bimah are too
large, so his complete figure would have been much higher than the barrier that partially
conceals him. Because the people in the foreground seem to be similarly enlarged, the
fact that the Ark’s door is lower than they are may not controvert the assumption that
they can enter it. Cf. Bezalel Narkiss, who supposed that this “gabled brick wall with a
small arched door” depicted “the outer entrance, or the door of the heikhal” (ibid., 36).
 164

on three long legs. Three similar legs are depicted under the Ark of the Covenant seen
within the Messianic Temple in the 14th-century Sarajevo Haggadah from Spain (ill.
295).170 This picture suggests the supposition that the three-legged base was not
random, and that the reason for adding a central support was not merely constructive.
This is borne out by an illustration in an Ashkenazi Mahzor of the first quarter of the
14th century (ill. 98), where the three steps that serve as a base for the Ark are strangely
set on three additional supports that look like paws. In the drawing of the Temple in the
1515 Haggadah from Ferrara (ill. 99), Abraham Farissol set each column on three lion’s
paws, while the illustrator of Juspa’s “Custom Book of Worms” of ca. 1648- ca. 1678
(ill. 100) drew three small legs under the stepped base. As we already saw, the ancient
tradition of designing the menorah’s three legs as lion’s paws (e.g., ill. 87) reappeared
in the Hebrew Regensburg Bible of ca. 1300 (ill. 97), where the menorah stands
between two rampant guarding lions. The possible identification of the lion’s paws with
the motif of oppressed evil may explain why these paws appear under the Ark or the
Temple, but it does not explain why there are three such paws.
The picture representing a Jew blowing a shofar on the Day of Atonement (ill.
98) suggests a meaning for the three legs. As we mentioned, the dragon here is the devil
who wants to stifle the sound of the shofar that voiced the repentance of the
congregation. Customarily, the blower put his foot on a steady stool in order to prevent
the devil’s attempts to shove him.171 Several Hebrew illuminated manuscripts drew the
shofar-blower putting his leg on a three-legged stool, the most efficacious furniture to
serve as an immovable support.172 Thérèse and Mendel Metzger assumed that Jews
accepted these three legs as an apotropaic element that thwarts the transmission of the
devil’s influence from the earth, the abode of the satanic powers, to the stool.173
However, it is more probable that, like the other tripartite elements of the Ark, the three
supports were associated with one or all of the following ideas: the Torah, worship and
charity on which the world rests (Avot 2:1); the Torah or the Temple, Kingship and
Priesthood which are the three supports of Judaism and will be reunited in messianic
times;174 or the three patriarchs because of whose merits God protects the Jewish
———————————————————————————————————
170
Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts, 60; Revel-Neher, Le témoignage de
l’absence, 94-95.
171
[Albert L. Lewis], “Shofar,” EJ, 14: 1442-47.
172
Metzger, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, 245 n. 52, 246 fig. 362.
173
Ibid., 245 nn. 52, 53.
174
Yoma 72b; ‫ ספר נצחון ישן‬,‫ ברויאר‬44-45 no. 25.
 165

people. In all these cases, these underlying tenets of Judaism could be symbolized by
the three legs that actually support the Ark or column (ills. 98-101). The paw-like shape
of some of these legs (ills. 98-99), adds the power of guardian lions, which prevents the
infernal powers from affecting the Ark.
Although this hypothesis about the three-legged Arks is based only on pictures
as no such Ark has survived, the documentary value of this evidence cannot be ignored,
especially as other Ark forestructures of medieval Ashkenazi synagogues that have
survived parallel those depicted in medieval Ashkenazi manuscripts. In front of the Ark
in the Altneuschul (ills. 228-229), there is a stone platform flanked by barriers, with a
cantor’s pulpit on the inner side of the right platform and steps leading to the Holy Ark
between the pulpit and the left parapet. The arrangement of such a platform flanked by
arched parapets is a Gothic version of the tradition of delimiting the chancel area in
ancient synagogues that was continued in the Romanesque synagogues in Cologne and
Worms. The type of the Altneuschul Ark’s forestructure spread to other Ashkenazi
synagogues. A simpler combination of a stepped platform with an openwork barrier or a
low wall attached to both of its sides remains in the synagogue in Sopron of ca. 1300
(ill. 265), and the model of the Altneuschul Ark’s forestructure was repeated in a
smaller version in front of the 1520 Ark in the Pinchas synagogue in Prague (ill. 296).175
Similar parapets are also depicted before the Holy Ark in illuminations from Ashkenazi
manuscripts. The painting of ca. 1300 (ill. 101) has a low Gothic arcade, bearing a row
of candles, attached to the right side of the wooden Holy Ark and a cantor’s pulpit rising
from the right post of the arcade. In terms of medieval conventions of pictorial space,
this can be read as a depiction of the Ark facing the prayer hall, the arcade flanking the
way up to the Ark, and the cantor’s pulpit standing by the right arcade. In the picture the
Ark is turned frontally, the left arcade is omitted and the cantor’s book is raised in order
to be more clearly visible. This Ark’s forestructure is thus composed just like the stone
one remaining in the Altneuschul in Prague (ill. 226). A clearer suggestion of the
parapet flanking the Ark’s platform is found in the depiction of the masonry Ark in the
German Mahzor of 1459 (ill. 284): the green band is continued downwards, in a darker
tint, to form a perspective representation of stone parapets with a pinnacle at their front,
flanking the way to the Ark. In the German Haggadah from 1462-70, a parapet resting
on a stepped base and supporting candles is to the right of the Ark, which is shown in a
sharp foreshortening (ill. 270).
———————————————————————————————————
175
Hana Volavková, The Pinkas Synagogue (Prague, 1955), 46, 60-63.
 166

The Ark’s forestructure in the Altneuschul clearly indicates the position of the
cantor’s stone pulpit on the right side of the Ark between the steps and the right arcade
(ill. 225). The asymmetric layout of the Ark’s forestructure with the steps at the left
rather than in the middle could have originated in the two-nave synagogues where the
central part of the Ark was blocked by the axial columns and the bimah. The practical
reasons were obviously coupled with symbolic ones. The place of the cantor at the right
side of the Holy Ark reflects the belief that this side is considered to be positive.176 In
the course of time, it became a traditional model that was used also in single-nave
prayer halls such as the Pinchas Synagogue in Prague (ill. 296), the Remah Synagogue
in Kazimierz near Cracow (ill. 380), and the Szydłów synagogue (ill. 648). The tradition
is also reflected in the illuminated manuscripts. In the Ashkenazi Mahzor of ca. 1300
(ill. 101), as we have seen, the cantor’s pulpit is attached to the frontal post of the right
arcade. In the picture from the 1462-70 German Haggadah (ill. 270), the cantor facing
the Ark recites from a prayer book resting on a pulpit. The position of the cantor’s legs
in front of the base and the pulpit’s situation beside the parapet suggest that the position
of the pulpit is also close to the right barrier. In both these examples and in the Bird’s
Head Haggadah (e.g., ill. 297),177 the pulpit consists of an inclined top on a single
columnar leg.
The forestructure of Gothic Arks played a complex role in the synagogue
interior. The cantor standing on the floor near the steps “went down before the Ark” as
is prescribed in the Mishnah.178 There are no obstacles between him and the Ark, so that
the public prayer that he leads may immediately reach the “Heavenly Gate” of the Ark.
———————————————————————————————————
176
Originating in very ancient times, the contrast between the right side considered to
be positive, good, divine etc., and the left side, seen as evil, was common in the
medieval mind. In medieval Christian art, the “good side” is usually found to the right
of the Deity depicted in a picture or sculpture, that is to the left of the spectator
(R..Hertz, “The Pre-Eminence of the Right Hand: a Study in Religious Polarity” in
Death and the Right Hand [Abergeen, 1960], 89-113; E. Dinkler and V. Schubert,
“Rechts und Links” in Engelbert Kirschbaum, ed., Lexikon der christlichen
Ikonographie, 3 [Rome, 1970], 511-15; B. A. Uspensky, “‘Left’ and ‘Right’ in Icon
Painting” in Semiotica, 13 [1975], 1: 33-39). Mira Friedman noticed that in ancient and
medieval Jewish art, the positive side directly related to the right of the spectator not the
Deity (“More on ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ in Painting,” Assaph, B-1 [1980]: 127-30).
Similarly, the cantor’s pulpit in the synagogue is to the right of the worshippers praying
towards the East, rather than to the right of the Ark itself.
177
Note also three other similar pulpits depicted in this manuscript (The Bird’s Head
Haggadah of the Bezalel National Art Museum in Jerusalem, Complete Facsimile,
ed. Moshe Spitzer, [Jerusalem, 1968], 63, 66, 79).
178
Ta’anit 2:2, Rosh ha-Shana 34b.
 167

The steps allow one to ascend to the niche containing the Torah scrolls and to remove
one of them to be read on the bimah in the prayer hall. The barrier flanking the platform
delimits the more sacred space near the Torah scrolls, which is also the area from which
the Cohens bless the congregation. The candles on the barriers (ills. 101, 270)
illuminate the Ark and the cantor’s prayer book on the pulpit. In addition, the massive
forestructure, the light of the candles and the cantor’s loud voice reciting the prayers
emphasize that the Ark is a focal point of the synagogue service.
Later pictorial representations of medieval Ashkenazi synagogue interiors are
found in illustrations from Johannes Pfefferkorn’s Büchlin der Judenbeicht (Cologne,
1508, ill. 28) and Antonius Margharita’s Der gantz jüdisch Glaub (Augsburg, 1530, ills.
29-30), whose text and illustrations are modelled on Pfefferkorn’s book.179 These
illustrations are not absolutely reliable documents of the synagogue decoration as the
books ridicule Jewish customs. For example, Christian graphic artists who depicted the
scrolls of the Torah as a sort of a tube in the hand of the rabbi sitting in his chair at a
table in the center of the hall (ill. 28 and its mirror copy, ill. 30), did not know how to
portray Jewish ritual objects. The writers, however, were Jewish apostates converted to
Christianity: both Pfefferkorn (1469-after 1521) who lived in Prague and Cologne, and
Margharita (born ca. 1490), son of Rabbi Samuel ben Jacob Margolioth of Regensburg,
would have seen synagogues in these towns and could have given the artists specific
explanations of the synagogue interior and its arrangement. A number of features are
conventional in such depictions of an interior: the point of view is high so that the floor
takes up most of the space, and the artist enlarged the human figures, and especially the
men to stress their more important role in the scene, causing the room and several
details of the furniture to seem small. A few features of the pictures in Pfefferkorn’s and
Margharita’s books were caused by ideological reasons: two horizontal strokes on the
faces of the people designate the veiled eyes of the Jews and thus recall the motif of
synagoga blindae alluding to the idea that they were blind to the truth of Christianity,
and the austerity of the interior would reflect the belief that the Jews avoided any kind
of images and decoration.
Yet several other details may reflect reality, imparting to the books some
documentary evidence. Sections of an arch resting on wall brackets (ills. 29, 30) or
columns (ill. 28) create the impression of medieval vaulting. The layout of the hall

———————————————————————————————————
179
“Margharita (Margalita), Anton,” EJ, 11: 958-59; “Pfefferkorn, Johannes (Joseph),”
EJ, 13: 355-57.
 168

corresponds to the layout of German single-hall synagogues: there are three steps
leading to the raised niche of the Holy Ark on the wall in the background, the cantor’s
pulpit is set near these steps, the table for reading the Torah is in the center and the door
is in the western section of a side wall. Wischnitzer considered the ledge for candles
running along the lateral walls and the screens separating the female congregation from
the men’s hall, to be reliable features.180 The depictions of the Holy Ark, although it has
none of the adornment we have seen, may be structurally correct. In one woodcut from
Margharita’s book (ill. 30), the opening of the curtains forms an ogee shape, perhaps
influenced by late Gothic Arks (cf. ills. 282, 284), and in another (ill. 29), there is a
crenellated section above the grid like those in actual “fortified” Arks and in their
depictions in Ashkenazi manuscripts (cf. ills. 291, 288). In Pfefferkorn’s book (ill. 28),
doors with an iron lock and hinges enclose the built-in chest of the Holy Ark that is
veiled with a curtain: it is drawn transparently just like the transparent fillets on the eyes
of the Jews here. In contrast, the Arks in Margharita’s book (ills. 29-30) are closed with
a diagonal grid behind an open curtain. A pair of such metal grid doors with a lock has
been in the Stadtmuseum of Worms since the 1950s (ill. 158): it closed the aperture of
the 18th-century Ark until it was destroyed in 1938. Böcher dated these doors to the 14th
century, attributing them to the Gothic Ark of 1355 in the Worms Synagogue.181 The
pictures corroborate the supposition that such grids were part of Gothic Arks, and also
that a rhomboid rather than a rectangular grid was preferred in order to prevent the cross
patterns at the intersections from dominating the Torah scrolls behind the grid. The
cantor’s pulpit standing in front of the Ark (ills. 28, 30) is similar to that in the Jewish
manuscripts (e.g., ills. 267, 270, 297).
The surviving pictorial and material evidence thus corroborates that the
Altneuschul’s Ark with its stone frame around the built-in niche for the Torah scrolls, as
well as its platform with parapets and a cantor’s pulpit, was characteristic of many
Gothic Arks in Ashkenazi synagogues. This evidence also substantiates interpretations
of the Ark’s architectonic elements as symbolic, broadens the iconography involved,
and suggests that additional types of Gothic Arks were in use at this time. The ancient
tradition that accepted the Ark’s pediment as a sign evoking the Biblical sanctuary
———————————————————————————————————
180
She supposed that the synagogue in Cologne inspired the depiction of the interior in
Pfefferkorn’s book (Wischnitzer, Architecture, 50-51). It must be noted however that
Pfefferkorn, born in 1469, did not see the Old Synagogue in Cologne in use because it
had been converted into the Town Councillors’ Chapel of St. Maria-in-Jerusalem in
1426 (Doppelfeld, “Die Ausgrabungen,” 130).
181
Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 73.
 169

continuously influenced the design of Ashkenazi Arks, even though it was superceded
in certain synagogues by pointed arches or tower-like structures under the impact of late
Gothic art during the 15th century. This tradition of the pedimented Ark can also be
found in Sephardi synagogues (e.g., ill. 150), as well as in Italy, the country where
ancient pedimented structures were constantly present (ills. 274, 276, 278-79). As in the
Altneuschul’s Ark, the decorations in Ark pediments and arches added to the symbolic
content of the structure.
Illuminations in Hebrew manuscripts coupled with Jewish exegesis and customs
suggest that the Arks were associated with the heavenly gates or with the “strong tower”
inspired by Proverbs 18:10, and prompt symbolic and apotropaic interpretations of the
three legs occasionally depicted under the Ark. Although the conception of the “strong
tower” was implemented in paintings in 13th and 14th century Ashkenazi manuscripts in
the form of a tower with crenellated walls (ills. 49, 288), it left no traces in the
preserved Arks in medieval Ashkenazi synagogues, perhaps because such cabinet-like
freestanding Arks were made of wood, which is of a highly perishable nature. These
tower-like Arks were also illustrated in Italian manuscripts (ills. 274, 278-79), and one
such Ark from Modena (ill. 291) has survived, complete with its crenellated cornice. As
neither this Ark nor the other depictions of tower-like Arks in Hebrew manuscripts from
Italy can be definitely attributed to one of the various rites practiced by Italian Jews, the
origins and circulation of this motif in different Jewish communities cannot be traced
with certainty.
The Arks, the most sacred fixture in the synagogue, are almost the only
remnants left - and almost the only objects drawn in manuscripts – from the destroyed
or remodelled Gothic synagogues in the Ashkenazi areas. However, our knowledge on
the Arks and the evidence from Worms and from Prague will allow us to make
deductions on the general composition of decorations in these synagogue.
Principles of Decoration in the Medieval Ashkenazi Synagogue
The almost undamaged set of Gothic carvings surviving in their original location
in the Altneuschul allows us to substantiate the conclusions on the compositional
principles of the decoration of the medieval Ashkenazi synagogue, that we deduced
concerning Worms. The entrance into the prayer hall, emphasized by its large size, an
elaborate architectonic frame, a monumental inscription and/or a relief in the
tympanum, is an immediate focus of attention in medieval Ashkenazi synagogues. This
monumental portal set in a lateral wall of the prayer hall is already found in the
 170

Romanesque synagogue of Worms (ill. 9), and is repeated in the great Gothic portal of
the Regensburg synagogue from the early 13th century that contrasts with the smaller
door of the vestibule in Altdorfer’s drawing (ill. 33),182 and by the similarly positioned
Gothic portal in Prague (ills. 190-91).
Discussing the mezuzah that mark the doors in Jewish houses, the Rambam
stressed that the entrance is an appropriate place for the delivering of religious
messages: “By the commandment of the mezuzah man is reminded, when coming or
going, of the unity of God, and is aroused to the love of Him. He is awakened from his
slumber and his vain worldly thoughts to the knowledge that nothing endures in eternity
like the knowledge of the Rock of the World. This contemplation brings him back to
himself and leads him on the right path.”183 In like manner, ideological and didactic
associations were given to the entrance of synagogues. As we saw above, the 1174-75
inscription atop the entrance to the Worms synagogue that this is the gate which the
“righteous nation that keeps the truth will enter,”184 and other evidence testifies that the
entrance into the prayer hall was symbolically associated with the gate of the righteous
to the Lord. The donor’s inscription in Worms and the alms box placed at the entrance
in Prague prompted the congregation to righteous deeds of charity. The tympanum
above the entrance to the prayer hall of the Altneuschul demonstrates that the symbolic
interpretation of the passage into the sacred area could be delivered not only by an
inscription or symbolic ornamental decoration on keystones and capitals, but also by a
monumental image. This new medium is more assertive: in contrast to a text that
demands that one pause before the inscription to read it, the image in the tympanum is
constantly exposed to the view of everyone entering the door. It also had a polemical
connotation, controverting the popular 13th-century concept of the church’s façade as
the heavenly gate.185 Even if this message was delivered by a Hebrew inscription, as it
was in Worms, those of the Christian clergy who read Hebrew could reveal that it
sharply contradicted the Christian view of Judaism. This message was therefore hidden
———————————————————————————————————
182
The tympanum of the monumental perspective portal leading from the vestibule into
the prayer hall in the synagogue of ca. 1300 at Új street 22-24 in Sopron (ill. 298; see,
Dávid, Sopron, 8, 25) can not be discussed in this context: the dense composition of
great cross-shaped quatrefoils and a row of small trefoil arches that roughly fit the frame
and each other more likely results from a badly remodeling of the relief after the Jews
left the synagogue.
183
‫" משנה תורה‬,‫ "הלכות תפילין ומזוזה וספר תורה‬,‫ רמב"ם‬6:13.
184
A. Epstein, Jüdische Altertümer, 7 no. 4; Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche
Synagogen, 162, 268 n. 160; Böcher, “Die Alte Synagoge,” 100-101.
185
Simson, The Gothic Cathedral, 110 ff.
 171

from most Christian eyes. In contrast to the façades of Gothic churches that manifestly
display their emblems and allegories on the street as a means of Christian propaganda,
the entrance tympanum of the Altneuschul (ill. 190) and other known monumental
portals in medieval Ashkenazi synagogues faced a vestibule (e.g, ill. 33), or a courtyard
(ill. 9), and only an ordinary door was seen from the street. Since the symbolic apologia
for Judaism – such as that above the entrance portal of the Altneuschul – was encoded
in contemporary images that might have been clear to a Christian spectator, the hiding
of the monumental portal from the eyes of passers-by indicates the community’s anxiety
that their visual anti-Christian, pro-Jewish polemics might incite hostile townsfolk to do
violence to the Jews.186 The synagogue’s modest exterior contrasts in the Altneuschul
not only with the monumental portal, but with the interior decorated by numerous plants
that metaphorically transformed the synagogue into the flowering orchard of the Torah.
Here, too, there is a parallel to Worms where the Gothic fixtures of 1355 were richly
decorated by plant and zoomorphic images.
The entrance portal marks the passage from the secular world into the sacred
space of the synagogue, and thence along the bimah where the Torah is read to the most
holy place containing the Torah scrolls. This alludes to the worshiper’s symbolic
ascension to the realm of the Torah, a concept reflected in the term ‫עלייה‬, literally
“ascension,” the name given to the reading by a worshipper of part of the weekly Torah
portion from the raised bimah in the center of the synagogue. This concept is also
stressed by setting stairs in a platform before the Holy Ark. The barriers around the
bimah and before the Ark partitioned these more sacred areas. The paradigm of
increasing hierarchical holiness is based on that practiced in the Temple of Jerusalem
where the level of sanctity gradually increased from the entrance through the altar area
to the Holy of Holies, and could have been inspired by the Talmudic identification of
the synagogue as the “lesser Temple” (Megillah 29a).187

———————————————————————————————————
186
In Wischnitzer’s opinion, a fear of being accused of extravagance by the political
authorities dictated the austerity of synagogue decoration (The Architecture, 52).
However, this may not have been the principal factor in the Jewish approach to the
interior decoration of the synagogue for two main reasons: first, as she herself
mentioned (ibid., 51-52), not all the medieval Ashkenazi synagogues were austere, and
second, the anxiety was caused by the mobs, who normally saw the synagogue only
from the outside.
187
For a review of this concept, see Fine, This Holy Place, 10-23. See also
"‫ "ממרכז קהילתי למקדש מעט‬,‫ לוין‬76-84; Branham, “Sacred Space under Erasure in Ancient
Synagogues and Early Churches,” 375-94. Cf. Lihi Habas (“The Bema and Chancel
Screen in Synagogues,” 129) who believes that in the Byzantine period, sanctity “was
 172

The Holy Ark is the focal point of this development from Late Antiquity on, as
it alludes to the biblical Ark of the Covenant covered by the Divine Presence and
containing the Tablets of the Law.188 The Torah shrine in the synagogue implied both
aspects of the Ark of the Covenant: when closed, its pediment or arch, especially when
adorned by symbolic ornaments and inscriptions, indicated the holiness of the Torah
inside, and when opened, it was a channel conducting one’s prayer to the Divine
Presence. This idea was already expressed in the early 12th-century Mahzor Vitry that
suggested that opening the Holy Ark in the course of the synagogue service was
accompanied by pleas to God for mercy and forgiveness, as through the celestial gate
had opened for human prayer.189
Like the decorations of the early Ashkenazi synagogues in the Rhineland and
their Late Antique predecessors, the reliefs from the Altneuschul make sense in a dual
context: on the one hand, they may be explained in the light of traditional Jewish
symbolism; on the other hand, the same images were used to oppose Christian emblems
with anti-Jewish connotations. The wide-scale treatment of Gothic decoration in the
synagogue indicates that the Jews knew the contemporary artistic language of the
Christian milieu, but they employed it to glorify the Torah and as a constant reminder of
the Temple to be re-established in Jerusalem. It thus created a demonstrative expression
of the Jewish arguments against Christian statements about the invalidity of the Old
Testament and the concept that the Messiah had already come. More or less developed
versions of Gothic adornment, whose most complete ensemble survived in the
Altneuschul, were produced in the Ashkenazi synagogues from the second half of the
13th century to the early 16th century, when the innovations of the Italian Renaissance
reached Central Europe and made an impact on Jewish art.
From the Gothic to the Renaissance in the Pinchas Synagogue in Prague
Whereas in early 16th century Italy, the nest and headquarters of Renaissance art
and Humanistic ideology, the Jews saw Renaissance architecture everywhere around
them,190 the Jews of Bohemia could see it mainly at the royal court, where the new art
———————————————————————————————————
attributed to the synagogue as a whole” in contrast to the hierarchic sanctity in the
church that was accepted “as a microcosm of the divine and heavenly kingdom or as the
heavenly Jerusalem.”
188
Ex. 25:21-22, see also a commentary on this account in Midrash Tanhuma, Vayakhel
(Ex. 35:1-38:20) 7.
189
‫ מחזור ויטרי‬no. 93.
190
See Roth, The History of the Jews in Italy, 153-227; idem, The Jews in the
Renaissance (Philadelphia, 1977); Moses A. Shulvass, The Jews in the World of the
 173

was still taking its first steps. The early Italian impact of humanistic interests and
Renaissance style occurred in Hungary in the mid-15th century, and in the second half of
the 15th century King Matthias Corvinus (ruled 1458-90) turned his court in Buda into a
prominent Renaissance center.191 After the death of Corvinus, Vladislav (Ulaszlo) II of
Bohemia (since 1471), a son of Casimir IV of Poland and Lithuania, was elected as the
king of Hungary (1490-1516), so that all these countries fell under the reign of the
Jagellonian dynasty. Impressed by the Italianized monuments he found in Buda,
Vladislav decided to display the new splendour in Prague, the old capital of his
kingdom. To attain this aim, Vladislav called his architect Benedict Ried (Rejt, ca.
1454-1534) to come to Buda in order to learn the new style and then to transplant it to
Prague. In the huge Vladislav Hall that Ried built at the Hradčany Royal Castle of
Prague in 1493-1502 (ill. 299), he synthetically merged his experience in Late Gothic
architecture with Renaissance impressions from Buda: he set Late Gothic ribs in the
spanning, but used Renaissance schemes in the design of architectonic frames for the
doors and windows. Ried’s portals utilize a simple entablature and a non-classical use
of the frame: the fluted Renaissance pilasters flanking the passage from the Hall to the
Parliament room (ill. 300) are bent around their vertical axes.192 That Hall and Ried’s
other works, eclectic in style but magnificent in their artistic expression, represented the
Renaissance as an innovative and solemn art of the king and aristocracy. It would have
been known to those Jews who were in contact with royal officials and could visit
Hradčany Castle.
The Jews of Prague were also exposed to Renaissance imagery through the
graphics of books they could easily have obtained. The first dated Hebrew book printed
north of the Alps was the prayer book produced in Prague by Gershom ben Solomon
———————————————————————————————————
Renaissance (Chicago, 1973); David B. Ruderman, “At the Intersection of Cultures” in
Vivian B. Mann, Gardens and Ghettos: The Art of Jewish Life in Italy (Berkeley,
1989), 12-16.
191
Jolán Balogh, A művészet Mátyás király udvarában, 1-2 (Budapest, 1966); idem,
Die Anfänge der Renaissance in Ungarn: Matthias Corvinus und die Kunst (Graz,
1975); Jan Białostocki, The Art of the Renaissance in Eastern Europe (Oxford,
1976), 7-9.
192
“Benedikt” in Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon für bildende
Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 3 (Leipzig, [1909]): 318-21; O. Pollack,
“Studien zur Geschichte der Architektur Prags: 1520-1600,” Jahrbuch der
Kunstsammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses, 29 (1910), 2: 85-170. G. Fehr,
Benedikt Ried. Ein deutscher Baumeister zwischen Gotik und Renaissance in
Böhmen (Munich, 1961); J. Hořejší, Vladislavský sál Prazškého hradu (Prague,
1973); Białostocki, The Art of the Renaissance, 15-17.
 174

Ha-Cohen and his companions in 1512 (ill. 302).193 Gershom usually commissioned
woodcuts for decorating his books from Jewish scribes who dealt with Hebrew letters,
and from Christian artists, who ornamented Hebrew initials and designed the other
ornaments. Illustrations in his books often copied Renaissance designs of contemporary
books from Augsburg and Nuremberg, and sometimes actually reused woodcut blocks
prepared by other printers in Germany and Bohemia.194 As a result, the Hebrew printed
books from Prague utilized Gothic architectonic forms along with figurative images
from the German Renaissance, including such all’ antica pagan figures as nude putti
and naked nymphs (ill. 301). The combination of Gothic and Renaissance designs in
Gershom Ha-Cohen’s books parallels the hybrid style of Ried’s architecture.
Bohemian architecture and interpretations of German graphics in Hebrew
printed books rather than Italian art created the Renaissance background when the so-
called Pinchas Synagogue near the burial ground of the Horowitz family in the Jewish
quarter of Prague195 was considerably reconstructed and redecorated in the 1520s and in
1535. We will concentrate here only on the Renaissance works in this synagogue, which
was often redecorated during its long history. The earliest documentary mention of the
1492.196 Based on the 1950-52 excavations, Hana Volavková stated that a synagogue
was built on this site in the first half of the 13th century; it was burnt down in the late
———————————————————————————————————
193
S. H. Lieben, “Der hebräische Buchdruck in Prag im 16. Jahrhundert” in Die Juden in Prag
(Prague, 1927), 88-106; ‫ דגלי המדפיסים העבריים‬,‫ יערי‬7 figs. 9-10, 126-27; Otto Muneles,
Vladimír Sadek, “The Prague Jewish Community in the Sixteenth Century (Spiritual Life)” in
Otto Muneles, ed., Prague Ghetto in the Renaissance Period (Prague, 1965), 65 ff.; Charles
Wengrov, Haggadah and Woodcut: An Introduction to the Passover Haggadah
Completed by Gershom Cohen in Prague, Sunday, 26 Teveth 5287 = December 30, 1526,
to Accompany Its Facsimile Edition (New York, 1976), 9-23.
194
Wengrov, Haggadah and Woodcut, 77-90; Waldemar Deluga, “Woodcut Illustrations in
Hebrew Books from Prague and Artistic Links with the Orthodox editions of Franciszek
Skoryna,” a paper delivered at the Sixth International Seminar on Jewish Art, Jerusalem, June
13-17, 1999.
195
By the end of the 16th century, this ground was attached to the neighbouring Old Jewish
Cemetery (Jan Heřman, “The Prague Jewish Community before the Expulsion of 1541” in
Muneles, Prague Ghetto in the Renaissance Period, 32).
196
The record from 1492 reports that a synagogue was situated in the U erbů house (also Zum
Wappen, “At the Coat of Arms”) on the site later occupied by the Pinchas Synagogue. The first
written mention of the name ‫“( פנחס שול‬Pinchas Synagogue”) appeared on the tombstone of a
synagogue shammes (“beadle”) Abraham, son of Zechariah, who died in 1601, and of his wife,
who died in 1602 (Volavková, The Pinkas Synagogue, 36-37, fig. 31). Although Volavková
stressed that “Pinchas” is here a proper name that may not be confused with the Hebrew word
‫( פנקס‬pinkas, “book of records,” ibid., 37), she and more recent authors of publications on this
synagogue in English yet called it “Pinkas”, using the Czech spelling for Pinchas. I prefer here
an English spelling which clearly shows that the name of the synagogue is derived from the
personal name “Pinchas”. It is however not clear after which specific Pinchas the synagogue
was named, and Volavková’s assumptions that the synagogue was called “Pinchas” in the 15th
century (ibid., 33 ff.) are unsubstantiated (cf. Vilímková, The Prague Ghetto, 114).
 175

13th century, and rebuilt in the 14th century. After the two Renaissance reconstructions,
the synagogue was rebuilt between 1607 and 1618 by Judah Tzoref (“goldsmith”) de
Herz (d. 1625), and then renovated again after the exile of the Jews in 1744-48, and
after the floods of 1771 and 1860.197 The damage and renovations changed the
synagogue’s building and interiors, but several Renaissance sculptural decorations have
survived in the prayer hall and others were discovered in the excavations.
The patron of the works of the 1520s and in 1530 was Aaron Meshulam Zalman
Ha-Levi Horowitz or Munka (1470-1545), who inherited the synagogue after the death
of his father Isaiah Ha-Levi Horowitz in 1519. As Volavková’s research shows, the
prayer hall mentioned in the 1492 record was a small room situated under a residential
floor on the site of the existing synagogue, perhaps on its western side, but the precise
layout of this building is unknown.198 After Aaron Meshulam’s first reconstruction, the
synagogue consisted of a high longitudinal hall with an entrance vestibule at the western
section of the southern wall (ill. 303). From the 1950-52 investigations of the masonry,
Volavková concluded that the foundations of the rectangular bimah in the center of the
hall (ill. 304) and the cantor’s pulpit attached to the right side of the steps in front of the
Holy Ark (ill. 296) dated to the 1520s. The upper parts of these structures were
considerably changed in the course of the reconstructions of 1758 and 1771, but their
original foundations were buried in the ground when the floor of the synagogue was
raised in the 1860s.199 The surviving parts of the synagogue from the 1520s indicate the
medieval traits of its adornment and spatial composition. The longitudinal plan of the
hall, an entrance from a vestibule at the western section of a lateral wall, a cantor’s
pulpit attached to the Ark’s platform and a rectangular bimah are known to us from the
larger two-nave synagogues of Worms (ill. 18) and the Altneuschul (ill. 188). The
passages to the Pinchas synagogue’s bimah from the southwestern and the northeastern
corner of the surrounding enclosure (ill. 305) resemble the entrance from the corner of
———————————————————————————————————
197
Volavková, The Pinkas Synagogue, passim. Helena Olmerová reported on more
recent excavations in the synagogue’s cellar that revealed a 13th-century water cistern
that perhaps served as a ritual bath (Helena Olmerová, “Ritualbad bei in der Pinkas-
Synagoge in der Prager Altstadt,” Judaica Bohemiae, 27 [1991] 1-2: 69-78). See also
Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 234-239; Wischnitzer, Architecture, 78-81;
Arno Pařik, The Prague Synagogues in Paintings, Engravings and Photographs
[Prague, 1986], [s. p.]; Pařik and Štecha, Jewish Town of Prague, 30-35; Vilímková,
The Prague Ghetto, 114-20; Rudolf Klein, “Major Synagogues: Eastern and Central
Europe” in Sed-Rajna, Jewish Art, 590-91.
198
Volavková, The Pinkas Synagogue, 48-51.
199
Ibid., 52 ff., figs. 21, 49.
 176

the bimah’s enclosure in the early 13th-century Regensburg synagogue (ill. 32) and
allude to Rambam’s account of the Temple’s altar (cf. ill. 156).
A Gothic ogee arch near a pier decorated by simple mouldings was discovered
under the plaster on the inner side of the bimah’s northern parapet (ills. 304, 306).
Probably, this enclosure was originally designed as an arcade, remnants of which were
later walled up. Remnants of Gothic pinnacles, probably from the Ark, were found
under the niche for the Torah scrolls (ills. 307-308). As in many other cases discussed
above, disused parts of a Holy Ark were buried or walled up in the synagogue. The
remnants of picturesque pinnacles are too fragmentary to reconstruct the whole
structure, but they suggest that the Ark had a Gothic pediment like those depicted in
Ashkenazi illuminated manuscripts of the 14th and the mid-15th century (ills. 98, 268-
70).
The synagogue of the 1520s was spanned by a vault consisting of three bays and
reinforced by intersecting ribs that are supported by cut fluted colonettes on the wall
piers (ills. 309, 312). In 1535 the western wall of the synagogue was removed and the
prayer hall was extended westward (ill. 310). The vault ribs supported by colonettes
were continued into the two new bays. As the piers remaining from the removed
western wall were wider than those in the eastern bays, the builder set a fluted pilaster
on them (ill. 311) instead of a colonette (e.g., ill. 312). The old entrance, now situated at
the middle bay, was walled up and the vestibule removed. Instead, a larger vestibule
with a new entrance was opened in the western bay of the southern wall and framed by
a monumental portal (ill. 313). When in the 1860s the synagogue’s floor was raised ca.
1.5 meters, the portal that consisted of a ca. 2.20-meters-high aperture was
disassembled. Its fragments were found during the 1950-52 excavations, and were
reassembled between the piers flanking the entrance. The portal was set facing the
prayer hall, despite the fact that its reconstruction on the opposite side, which was
possible as well, would have resulted in the traditional medieval arrangement of the
monumental portal facing the vestibule as did that in the Altneuschul (ill. 190).
A rhymed inscription commemorating the patron and his wife and containing the
date 1535 was produced in relief on a monumental tablet that has been set into the
western wall of the prayer hall (ills. 315-16).200 These additions did not demand that

———————————————————————————————————
200
The inscription reads:
[‫הלך איש מבית לוי ושמו אהרן משלם \ למעלת רוח הנדיבה עלה בסלם \ הלך בעקבי]ות[ אבות הנסיכי']ם‬
\ ‫והסגנים \ ובנה בית הכנסת בית הכנסת הזה תפאר']ת[ בנינים \ עם אשתו בת ר' מנחם ז'ל' מר']ת[ נחמה‬
[‫לעזר כנגדו בעבור זכרון הנשמה \ שנת ר'צ'ה' ל'פ~ק החלה מלאכה ונגמרה \ לכבוד השם יתעל']ה‬
 177

Aaron Meshulam move the Ark and the bimah, and he added the decoration in the new
section rather than changing the expensive fixtures he had built a few years before.
The context for the 1535 enlargement and the redecoration only about a decade
after he had renovated the synagogue could have been to demonstrate Aaron
Meshulam’s claim to the privileged status his family had maintained in the community.
The exclusive royal privileges granted to the Horowitz family had raised an increasing
protest from the other influential Jewish families in Prague, and in the early 1530s the
community split into two contending groups. The situation was so acute, that Abraham
ben Avigdor, the head of the rabbinical court in Prague and rabbinical authorities
beyond Bohemia, worried by the situation in Prague, turned to an external arbiter,
Joseph (Josel) ben Gershon (ca. 1478-1554) of Rosheim in Germany, to settle the
conflict. Arriving to Prague in 1534, Josel proposed measures that deprived the
Horowitz family of its exclusive position. Horowitz, however, provoked a violent revolt
in the community against the reform, attempted to assassinate the arbiter, and finally
made him leave town.201 To stress his position, he now chose the Renaissance style
favoured by the King.
The planning of the 1520s Pinchas Synagogue (ill. 303) is still rooted in
medieval tradition, the use of vault ribs and cut wall colonettes (ill. 309) resembles the
spanning of the Altneuschul (e.g., ill. 196) and its Ark and bimah were late Gothic (cf.
ills. 306-308). On the other hand, the design of the ceiling ribs and the carvings in the
newer bays give the vault a somewhat Renaissance look: the fluted design of these
colonettes, the rosettes set between the ribs on the axis of the ceiling and the plant
———————————————————————————————————
‫ולכבו']ד[ התורה \ פה קהלת הקדוש' פראג המעטיר' \ עיני יי' עליה זכירה עם שמירה \ אהרן משלם ב'ה‬
‫ישעיה הלוי ז'ל' \ המכונה זלמן הורוויץ‬
“A man went from the house of Levi and his name is Aaron Meshulam, / up to the level
of the benevolent spirit he ascended on the ladder, / he went in the steps of his fathers,
princes and rulers / and he built this synagogue, the splendour of buildings, / together
with his wife, daughter of Rabbi Menachem of blessed memory, Mrs. Nechamah / “a
helpmate for him” [Gen. 2:18], for the sake of the memory of the soul. / In the year 295
to the lesser counting [i.e. 1535] the work began and was completed to the honour of
God, Who will be the highest one, and in honour of the Torah, / here in the holy
community of Prague [that] pleases / the eyes of God [that are] upon it, memory
together with protection, / Aaron Meshulam, son of Rabbi Isaiah Levi called Zalman
Horovitz of blessed memory.” Krautheimer’s dating of the tablet to the mid-18th century
is obviously wrong (Krautheimer, Mittelalterlische Synagogen, 272 n. 196).
201
Ludwig Feilchenfeld, Rabbi Josel von Rosheim, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der
Juden in Deutschland im Reformationszeitalter (Strassburg, 1898), 166; Selma
Stern, Josel of Rosheim in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation ([n. p.],
1965), 141-45; Heřman, “The Prague Jewish Community before the Expulsion of
1541,” 29-32.
 178

version of the egg-and-dart ornament running along the ribs (ill. 309). The sandstone
entrance to the prayer hall (ill. 313-14) consists of fluted pilasters bearing an
entablature, flanking an arch, as in Renaissance portals, but the disks instead of standard
volutes on the capitals and the bent sides of the synagogue’s portal testify to an
abnormal interpretation of classical Renaissance models. The pairs of parallel bands
forming squares in their intersections that enclose the entrance arch are similar to the
parallel ribs with almost square rhombs in their intersections on the synagogue’s ceiling
(ill. 309) and to the parallel lines surrounding Aaron Meshulam’s dedicatory inscription
(ills. 315-16). The pattern reinforces the attribution of all these carvings to the same
time and workshop.
Volavková noticed a stylistic affinity of the architectural decorations from 1535
with the works of Ried and his immediate followers that are marked by merging
Renaissance elements into Gothic architecture.202 In addition to the use of the network
of ribs on the ceiling of the Vladislav Hall (ill. 299), non-classic interpretations of
monumental Renaissance portals are found there (ill. 300) and in other works of his
workshop at Hradčany. Ried’s portals facing the Vladislav Hall have flattened, simply
profiled mouldings at the top, rosettes instead volutes in the capitals, and unusually
transformed supports. Although Ried’s followers did not make such idiosyncratic
transformations, they continued an artistic play with the sides of classical portals that is
demonstrated in the diagonal jambs connecting the outer portico and the portal of ca.
1520 in the southern façade of St. George’s Church at the Hradčany Castle (ill. 317).
The entablature and architectonic reliefs of the synagogue’s portal (ills. 313-14) recalls
Ried’s style, and the diagonal construction of the portal’s sides in the works of his
workshop could have inspired the synagogue’s architect to create as grand an entrance
as possible in the free space around the entrance by attaching fluted pilasters at an angle
to the arch, thus attaining the illusion of a wider portal. It is likely that Aaron
Meshulam’s continuous contacts with Lev of Rožmitál, the Burggrave (“keeper of the
castle”) of Prague, allowed the synagogue patron to have seen works by Ried and his
assistants at the Castle, or to have met Ried during the 1520s, when that architect built
Lev’s new palace in Blatná.203
A distinctive feature of the synagogue’s portal is the relief in the frieze (ill. 314)
comprised of roundels containing a jug on either side, designating the donor as a

———————————————————————————————————
202
Volavková, Pinkas Synagogue, 61.
203
Ibid., 55, 61.
 179

Levite.204 In the center, there is a hexagram containing a bell-like image, that is set

between the letters: '‫צ'י'ב‬ '‫ז'ה'ל‬, the acronym for ‫“( זה השער לה' צדיקים יבאו בו‬this is the
gate to the Lord, into which the righteous shall enter,” Ps. 118:20). As we saw, this
inscription traditionally marked the passage to the sacred area, so that the portal
containing it would originally have lead from the vestibule to the prayer hall rather than
framed the exit from there as in the current reconstruction. The symbolism of the
hexagram, the focal symbol of the frieze, as the Magen David (“Shield of David”) in
Jewish Prague of the first half of the 16th century is explained by the frontispiece and
the colophon of the 1512 Prayer Book (ill. 302).205 The colophon states that Gershom
Ha-Cohen, his three companions and two backers “are recorded after their names, every
man under the banner of his father’s house,”206 and the picture represents the six names
written within banderoles and a shield, while other shields bear heraldic depictions that
were chosen according to the person’s name or rank and served as conventional “coats-
of-arms” of Jews in medieval Spain and Renaissance Italy. The colophon explains that
the great hexagram “on which all the engraver’s signs are hung” is the Shield of David,
and discloses the symbolism of that arrangement: those who “cling to the Shield of
David” – obviously those whose signs surround it – will be rewarded with prosperity.
Six faces in the corners of the hexagram may have been another allegory for the six
companions that “cling to the shield.”207 The earlier notation in the colophon –
———————————————————————————————————
204
The symbolism of the jug was inspired by the custom that the Levites pour water
over the hands of the Cohens before the latter bless the congregation. This custom can
be traced back to the Zohar, Num. 146b, cf. the commentary of Menachem Recanati
(late 13th century – early 14th century) on the pericope Naso (Num. 4:21-7:89) and Caro,
Shulkhan Arukh, Orah Hayyim, 128:6.
205
From 1492, a hexagram appeared as a printers sign in Hebrew books published in
Lisbon and Constantinople. On the hexagram and its varied meaning in earlier periods,
see Gershom Scholem, “The Star of David: History of a Symbol” in idem, The
Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays (New York, 1971), 257-81; idem,
“Magen David,” EJ, 11: 687-97. For a bibliography, including more recent works on
the symbol of hexagram, with critical notes, see Joaneath Spicer, “The Star of David
and Jewish Culture in Prague around 1600, Reflected in Drawings of Roelandt Savery
and Paulus van Vianen,” The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery, 54 (1996): 221-22
n. 45. On the frontispiece of the 1512 prayer book from Prague, see S. H. Lieben, “Der
hebräische Buchdruck in Prag im 16. Jahrhundert” in Die Juden in Prag, 88-106, fig.
1; ‫ דגלי המדפיסים העבריים‬,‫ יערי‬6 fig. 7, 124-26; Alexandr Putík, “The Origin of the
Symbols of the Prague Jewish Town: The Banner of the Old-New Synagogue, David’s
Shield and the ‘Swedish’ Hat,” Judaica Bohemiae, 29 (1993): 33.
206
The colophon is seen on the left page in ill. 365, and its text is quoted in
‫ דגלי המדפיסים העבריים‬,‫ יערי‬124.
207
Yaari’s interpretation of the Shield of David as a symbol of Meir bar David because
 180

‫“( כמעט ר'ג'ע' עד יעבור זעם‬almost a moment before anger will pass”) – contains the
numerological record of the date208 and discloses that the printers believed they were
living on the eve of the messianic Redemption, which will terminate the danger of
persecutions that threatened the Jews of Prague for centuries. The crown in the top and
another in the bottom of the hexagram on the frontispiece of the Prayer Book can thus
have demonstrated that the King Messiah, a scion of David, will inherit also David’s
magical shield to protect his people.
In the architectonic design on the initial page of the Book of Exodus in the 1518
Pentateuch printed by Gershom Cohen (ill. 301), the Shield of David that appears in a
heraldic shield on the left side of the arch also refers to the printers, but seems as well to
be a sign of the Prague Jewish community as a whole as it is set vis-à-vis Prague’s coat-
of-arms. The eagle and lion under the shields are emblems of Bohemia, and the whole
composition in the arch may have represented the printers as being to Jews “in exile, in
the land of Bohemia, in Prague the capital,” as they wrote in the colophon on the last
page of this Pentateuch.209 The image within the hexagram looks like a Judenhut that is
sometimes depicted as consisting of a flattened crown and long narrow cone
surmounted by a ball, and supplied with a tie. This hat was introduced by the 4th Lateran
Council in 1215 as obligatory headwear for Jews to distinguish them from Christians,
leading Jews to use it as a heraldic symbol to designate their belonging to the Jewish
people (e.g., ill. 318).210 In the 1518 Pentateuch (ill. 301), the Judenhut thus emphasized
the connotation of the Shield of David as a Jewish national symbol. The pattern within
the hexagram above the portal in the Pinchas Synagogue could also be Judenhat. From
that time on, this combination of the two symbols was widely used as the coat-of-arms
of the Jewish community in Prague in architectonic decoration and the applied arts.211
Aaron Meshulam, the patron of the reconstructions of the Pinchas synagogue in
the 1520s and in 1535, was a son of Isaiah Ha-Levi Horowitz, one of the six publishers
———————————————————————————————————
he was the key person in establishing the Hebrew press in Prague ( ‫ דגלי המדפיסים‬,‫יערי‬
‫ העבריים‬125) is inconclusive. The great hexagram does not relate especially to Meir’s
name, while the central place within the Magen David is taken by the name of
Mordechai Sofer of Prague (cf. also Wengrov, Haggadah and Woodcut, 68).
208
The year is enciphered in the word ‫“( רגע‬moment”). The numerical value of the
letters is 273, i.e. the year 5273, and, according to the colophon, the book was issued on
the eve of Hanukkah, that is in 1512 C.E. See also ‫ דגלי המדפיסים העבריים‬,‫ יערי‬124-25.
209
Wengrov, Haggadah and Woodcut, 16, 66, 92, 127.
210
“Seal,” EJ, 14: 1077; Metzger, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, 145-46; Putík,
“The Origin of the Symbols,” 34.
211
Ibid., 27-34.
 181

of the 1512 Prayer Book. He thus would have known the meaning of these images when
he commissioned the portal adorned with the jugs and the hexagram containing the
Judenhut. He may have used the Judenhut in the Shield of David that had became a
symbol of Jewish Prague to express his claim to the leadership of this community after
he had supressed the opposition and expelled Josel of Rosheim. The reason for inserting
the Shield of David between the letters of a quotation identifying the entrance to the
synagogue as the gate to the Lord from Psalms 118:20 (ill. 314) is also symbolic. The
hexagram is engraved between the preposition ‫“( ל‬of” in “of the Lord”) and the initial
letter ‫ צ‬for ‫“( צדיקים‬righteous people”). As a result, one may decipher the hexagram as a
hieroglyph for the Messiah, who has or is David’s Shield, and thus read the sequence, as
“this is the gate to the Messiah, into which the righteous shall enter.”
The emphasized messianic aspect in Aaron Meshulam’s decoration could have
represented his propensity towards the messianic movement that was widespread among
Bohemian Jews. The inscriptions “clinging to the Shield of David” and “almost a
moment before anger will pass” in the 1512 Prayer Book (ill. 302), demonstrates that
Jews in Prague, including Aaron Meshulam’s father, used messianic rhetoric and
symbols even before the first news about the assertions of David Reubeni (ca. 1490-
after 1535) and Solomon Molcho (Diogo Pires, ca. 1500-32) that they were Jewish
kings and redeemers reached there in 1523.212 Claiming descent from the tribe of Judah
and compiling a pedigree tracing his ancestry back to King David, David Reubeni used
the Shield of David, which Putík assumed to be a hexagram, on his banners and
shields.213 Since 1529, that is at the time when news of the pseudo-Messiahs had arrived
in Prague, the hexagram was used on tombstones of the Old Jewish cemetery in
Prague.214 This sign was associated there with the names of David and Menahem,
literally a “comforter” and also a name for the Messiah, the comforter of the Jewish
people, corroborating the reading of the six-pointed Shield of David as both a messianic
and protective symbol.215 Some of the Jews of Prague followed Solomon Molcho when
he went to meet Emperor Charles V at Regensburg in 1532. After Molcho was burned
———————————————————————————————————
212
Silver, A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel, 133-135; [Shmuel Ettinger],
“Reubeni, David,” EJ, 14: 114-16. Putík, “The Origin of the Symbols of the Prague
Jewish Town,” 33 n. 203.
213
See a later report by Joseph Sambari in Scholem, “The Star of David,” 270, and
Putík, “The Origin of the Symbols of the Prague Jewish Town,” 33.
214
Putík, “The Origin of the Symbols of the Prague Jewish Town,” 33.
215
V. Sadek, “David’s Star (Magen David) on the Tombstones of the Old Jewish
Cemetery in Prague,” Judaica Bohemiae, 27 (1991): 81.
 182

at the stake in Mantua later that year, his mantle and a banner with Hebrew inscriptions
– but without any symbols – that was believed to be the flag that Molcho carried on his
mission to Regensburg, were brought to the Pinchas Synagogue. Irrespective of whether
either article was an authentic relic that had been acquired by Aaron Meshulam soon
after the death of Molcho, or whether they were attained at some later point in the 16th
or the early 17th century, the fact that they were kept in the synagogue and that
Molcho’s flag was hanging near the Holy Ark suggests that it was in this synagogue,
and not in the Altneuschul, that the devotees of Molcho assembled in Prague.216
The conflict between the Horowitz family and its opponents over their exclusive
privileges in the Jewish community of Prague thus likely had also an ideological aspect.
Seemingly, those who believed that harbingers of the Messiah had already come,
gathered around Aaron Meshulam, whereas those led by Abraham ben Avigdor, the
head of the rabbinical court at the Altneuschul and those who supported the measures
proposed by Josel of Rosheim, agreed also with Josel’s abstention from active
messianic speculations.217 It is thus possible that enlarging the building in 1535, Aaron
Meshulam not only demonstrated his power in the community, but also arranged an
alternative place of public prayer for his supporters. The new portal, differing in its style
from the decorated portal in the Altneuschul, expressed a homage to the “herald of the
Jewish King and redeemer” killed a couple of years before, and the eager belief that the
Messiah would nevertheless come soon.
The 1535 decoration of the Pinchas Synagogue, the earliest known evidence of
the Renaissance impact on synagogues north of the Alps, was not connected to genuine
Renaissance models in Italy. Bohemian Jews accepted the new style in a reflected form,
either in its mixture with Late Gothic architecture or through the Renaissance woodcuts
from Germany that were reused or copied in Hebrew books along with the bookplates
that were made originally in Prague with specific Jewish symbolism. Despite stylistic
change from Gothic to Renaissance, the semantic approach to the ornamental and
architectonic decorations in the synagogue remained.
Aaron Meshulam introduced the new style in his private prayer house. This case
———————————————————————————————————
216
Currently, the flag and the mantle are held in the State Jewish Museum of Prague
(Volavková, Pinkas Synagogue, 58; Heřman, “The Prague Jewish Community before
the Expulsion of 1541,” 32-34 figs. 15-16; Pařik and Štecha, Jewish Town of Prague,
30). The flag attributed to Molcho should not be confused with the Jewish flags in
Prague decorated by the Shield of David, that all are dated to later periods (Putík, “The
Origin of the Symbols of the Prague Jewish Town,” passim).
217
Stern, Josel of Rosheim, 131-37.
 183

differs from the Worms synagogue that was decorated and repeatedly redecorated
through efforts by both individuals and the community, and also from the Altneuschul
that was established by the whole community. Although this kind of artistic patronage
of synagogues is not known in Ashkenazi areas from the periods before the Pinchas
Synagogue, it has its roots in ancient customs, and has precedents in medieval Sephardi
culture and parallels in contemporary Italy.
The Private Patronage of Synagogue Art in Medieval Spain and in
15th-century Italy
The Greek inscription of the late 1st century B.C.E. or the early 1st century C.E.
from Jerusalem stating that Theodotos, son of Vettenos, built (likely actually
reconstructed) the synagogue established by “his father with the elders and Simonidus”
proves that the patronage of synagogue building by individuals or by a family was
practiced while the Second Temple was still standing. The text proves that such
synagogue and their facilities were open to the community and to pilgrims.218 Between
165 and 200 C.E., a private residence was transformed into the communal synagogue in
Dura Europos.219 Many sources testify that in Jewish communities of medieval Spain
there were private synagogues, apart from one or more synagogues for the whole
community, and also synagogues of confraternities and those of different local rites.220
As we saw, Jacob ben David and his wife Rachel had built the community synagogue in
Worms in 1034 “from their wealth.” Yet, except for the Pinchas Synagogue, no
evidence remaining from the Ashkenazi areas records the existence of private family
synagogues during the medieval period, while individuals or families did contribute to
the establishment or adornment of the communal synagogue. It is however possible that
the private synagogues there, like most of those in medieval Spain, have not survived or
cannot be identified because they were modest prayer halls established in the founder’s
houses. The mentions of synagogues established by private donors found by Yom-Tov
Assis in rabbinical responsa from Spain suggest that a number of them were large and

———————————————————————————————————
218
“Theodotus, son of Vettenos, the priest and son of an archisynagogos, and grandson
of an archisynagogos, who had this synagogue built for the reciting of the Law and the
study of its commandments, and also to function as a hostel, with chambers and water
installations to serve the needs of travelers from abroad, and whose father, with the
elders and Simonidus, founded this synagogue” (Lee I. Levine, “The Second Temple
Synagogue: The Formative Years,” 17; -‫ הכתובות היווניות מבתי הכנסת בארץ‬,‫גרסון‬-‫רוט‬
‫ ישראל‬76-77).
219
Sed-Rajna, Jewish Art, 115.
220
See an analytic review in Assis, “Synagogues in Mediaeval Spain,” 12-14.
 184

richly embellished rooms.221 One of them, founded by Samuel Ha-Levi Abulafia (d.
1360 or 1361) in ca. 1357, has survived in Toledo. Following the expulsion of the Jews
from Toledo, the building was converted into the Chapel of the Dormition of the Virgin
(el Tránsito de Nuestra Señora), and in 1887 it was declared a national monument. The
synagogue was partially restored in 1880-83.222
Samuel Abulafia’s synagogue was built adjoining his residence and is composed
of a single-nave prayer hall, adjoining annexes on the northern and southern sides, and
loggias for women on the upper floor of the southern annex, which also had a passage to
his private apartments. Stucco carpet-like panels have remained only on the eastern
wall, while the frieze supporting an arcade with blind sections and windows is still
present here and on the other walls (ill. 319). The dense ornaments filling the panels
consist of vegetal and geometrical patterns, heraldic emblems and Hebrew inscriptions.
Esther Goldman convincingly demonstrated that the style of the stucco ornamentation
imitated the mudéjar decorations made in the years 1350-69, during the reign of King
Pedro I of Castile in his Alcazar Palace in Seville (ill. 320).223 Abulafia served as Chief
Treasurer to Pedro I and could have seen the mudéjar stuccos in the Alcazar. In the
royal palace (e.g., ill. 321, in the upper corners), the royal coats-of-arms consisting of
the heraldic rampant lions of Leon and the towers of Castile were inserted between the
mudéjar decorations. In like manner, they appear in the synagogue on either side of the
Ark on the eastern wall and of the windows on the western wall, and in the frieze on the
side walls (e.g., ill. 322). These heraldic lions are the only known examples of
zoomorphic images in the Spanish synagogues. The mentions of the king and the king’s
name stressed by enlarged characters and ornamentally underlined in the dedicatory
inscription to the right of the Ark, demonstrated Abulafia’s loyalty. Only the king’s
protection would have allowed Abulafia to establish so large and sumptuously
decorated a synagogue that obviously contradicted the rules of the church, which
usually imposed restrictions on the size of the synagogue: Abulafia’s prayer hall that is
ca. 23 m long, 9.50 m wide and 17 m high surpasses the maximum of the 16-meters
———————————————————————————————————
221
Ibid., 13, 17.
222
Cantera Burgos, Sinagogas Españolas, 65-149; Wischnitzer, Architecture, 30-35;
Santiago Palomero Plaza, Ana Maria López Alvarez and Yasmina Alvarez Delgado,
“Excavations around the Samuel Halevi Synagogue (Del Tránsito) in Toledo” and
Esther W. Goldman, “Samuel Halevi Abulafia’s Synagogue (El Tránsito) in Toledo,”
Jewish Art, 18 (1992): 49-57 and 58-69 respectively.
223
Esther Goldman, “Samuel Halevi Abulafia’s Synagogue (El Tránsito) in Toledo,” 64
ff.
 185

length and the 12-meters height that was permitted by the church in the early 14th-
century synagogues in Tarrega and Játiva.224 The relatively large size of the prayer hall
in the Abulafia Synagogue suggests that its congregation not only included the patron’s
family and servants, but also other worshippers from the neighbourhood, as often
occurred in other private synagogues in Spain.225
The contemporary style of court art demonstrated to the community that the
patron enjoyed the king’s favour. The appearance of the royal coat-of-arms (e.g., ill.
322) not only glorified the synagogue patron’s high status: the monumental Hebrew
inscription near the Holy Ark allows one to read the numerous heraldic towers and lions
on the walls in Jewish terms. The inscription praises Abulafia as “the stronghold and
tower that since the day of the exile of Ariel [“Jerusalem,” literally “the “lion of God”]
there was none like him in Israel.”226 As was usual in ancient and medieval synagogues,
the dedicatory inscriptions were set here to commemorate the patron, to record the date
of the building and to stress the symbolic parallel between the synagogue and the
Biblical Sanctuary.227 The epithets cited above and many other laudatory inscriptions
give a sense of Abulafia’s haughtiness.228 This tone was characteristic of royal
dedicatory inscriptions,229 but when used in the synagogue, it boldly stressed the
patron’s claim for his extraordinary position in the Jewish community. Indeed, such a
wealthy individual who built a family synagogue adjoining his private residence on a
parcel of land he owned and without the financial support of the community, would feel
completely independent in his choice of designs and inscriptions. He felt free to imitate
the decorations of a royal palace rather than that of old synagogues, and to use
zoomorphic images near the Holy Ark.
Another case of artistic patronage in which the patron felt free to set his personal
———————————————————————————————————
224
Assis, “Synagogues in Mediaeval Spain,” 17.
225
Ibid., 13.
226
See Cantera Burgos, Sinagogas Españolas, 106, figs. 24, 25a line 2. It is possible
that the rampant lions of Leon, tripartite towers of Castile or single towers that were
frequently depicted on Jewish seals from the 13th and the 14th century from Spain as
heraldic signs of individuals (Daniel M. Friedenberg, “A Bonanza of Spanish Jewish
Pre-Expulsion Seals,” JA, 18 [1992]: 105-108) also had a similar laudatory connotation.
227
See the full texts in Cantera Burgos, Sinagogas Españolas, 96-124.
228
E.g., note also the prases calling Abulafia ‫“( נשיא נשיאי הלוי‬prince of princes of Levi,”
ibid., fig. 25a line 7), and stating that ‫[ הרים את כסאו מעל כל השרים‬...] ‫“( המלך‬the king [...]
raised his [Abulafia’s] throne over all the ministers,” ibid., fig. 25a line 7).
229
Cf. the 1364 dedicatory inscription of Pedro I on the facade of the Alcazar in Seville
in Esther Goldman, “Samuel Halevi Abulafia’s Synagogue (El Tránsito) in Toledo,” 68-
69.
 186

emblem in a synagogue occurred in the Ashkenazi community in Padua in the late 15th
or early 16th century. It is recorded in rabbinical responsa because, unlike the heraldry in
the synagogues in Toledo and Prague, it provoked protests from the congregation. As in
other Italian cities from the second half of the 15th century on, the Ashkenazi Jews or
tedeschi, formed a separate group in the Jewish population of Padua that was comprised
also of Jews of Italian and Sicilian descent, Spanish-Portuguese exiles and Ottoman
subjects. As a rule, each group, referred to as a “nation,” had a synagogue where the
service was managed in accordance with its rite. The tedeschi predominated among the
Jewish “nations” in Padua.230 The persons involved in the conflict in Padua were Judah
ben Eliezer Ha-Levi Mintz (ca. 1408-1508), a prominent Ashkenazi rabbi who left
Mainz for Italy presumably in 1462,231 and Naphtali Hertz Wertheim (died 1509), a rich
banker, had built a synagogue in his private house in Padua. An account of the
developments in Padua is found in the responsum of Rabbi Joseph ben Ephraim Caro
(1488-1575):
And now let me to tell what happened here in Padua in the days of the old man,
the light of the Diaspora, our rabbi Judah Mintz of eternal memory. [...] There
was a rich and powerful man, Hertz Wertheim by name, and his name was
known in the gates [he was famous, cf. Prov. 31:23], and he was always in
confrontation with [...] Rabbi Judah Mintz and his son [...] Rabbi Abraham
Mintz of eternal memory. And he [Wertheim] made a very nice parokhet
[curtain for the Holy Ark] embroidered with pearls, and embroidered on it a
figure of a deer that was his arma, and the figure protruded because of the
pearls. And he wished to put it into the synagogue on the holidays, and the old
man [Judah Mintz] opposed him, and as he [Wertheim] was an aggressive
person, he did not obey him [the rabbi], and through his wealth he found rabbis
who aided him and made available to him a proof from the Talmud permitting
it.232 [...] And he forcibly placed it in the synagogue, and the old man left the
synagogue in anger, and the quarrels increased greatly because of these events.
And nevertheless now at this time, the heirs of the honorable eminent lord, the
above-mentioned Hertz, were going to put it [the parokhet] into the synagogue,
but did not want to do [this] without my permission, and I ordered them to cover
that form with paper, and they obeyed me, may they and their taste be blessed.233
———————————————————————————————————
230
Shulvass, The Jews in the World of the Renaissance, 63.
231
Stefano Zaggia, “La Scuola Grande di Padova: vicende storiche e architettura” in De
Benedetti, ed., Hatikwá, 1: 60; ",(1369-1509) ‫ "היהודים בפאדובה בתקופת הריניסאנס‬,‫דניאל קרפי‬
2 (Jerusalem, 1967): IX.
232
For a later example of a treatment of Talmudic assertions for the justification of the
lion image in the synagogue decoration, see Kaufmann, “Art in the Synagogue,” 259-
62. Another possible proof may be found in Tosafot to Yomah 54a that objects only to
free-standing sculpture, but not sculptured objects attached to the wall.
233
‫ אבקת רוכל‬,‫ יוסף קארו‬no. 65 partially translated into English in Shulvass, The Jews in
the World of the Renaissance, 193 and 325; Mann, Jewish Texts, 117. See also ,‫כהנא‬
‫ מחקרים‬371 (the number of Caro’s responsum in ibid., 371 n. 160 is wrong). Rabbi Caro
 187

The background of Hertz Wertheim’s initiative is known from an additional

report by a pupil of Rabbi Judah Mintz, Elijah ben Elkhanan Capsali of Candia (ca.
1483-1555). In his chronicles, Capsali suggested that Wertheim’s parokhet was a part of
his much more spectacular project of a splendid synagogue with gilded walls and
precious ritual objects. It is likely that the sumptuous designs were destined to
demonstrate Wertheim’s exclusive status among the Jews. The community objected to
his pretentious plans: after Wertheim had built his synagogue and began to gild the new
building, the Jews denounced him to the Doge of Venice, and Wertheim was ordered to
stop half-way through the work. Meanwhile, a very expensive mantle for the Torah
scroll and the parokhet with pearls had been produced.234 Notwithstanding the criticism
of Judah Mintz, Wertheim placed the objects in the synagogue – obviously in the
building which remained without its gold plating.
The responsa clearly report that the image placed on the curtain of the Holy Ark
here was the patron’s coat-of-arms. As a rule, a Jew could not be given a nobleman’s
heraldic symbol by a suzerain, but some Jews chose arms-like emblems on their own in
order to demonstrate their high social status, to represent or to commemorate
themselves (e.g., ill. 302).235 Such an emblem often reflected the person’s name or the
image connected to this name in Jacob’s blessing (Gen. 49:3-27). Jacob’s blessing of
Naphtali as a hind (Gen. 49:21), often depicted as a deer, gives a direct association of
the name of Naphtali Hertz Wertheim with the deer on his parokhet. The last name,
identical with the town Wertheim in Bavaria, indicates the German origin of the family
and of the private name Naphtali Hertz (‫)הירץ‬, an italianized variant of the widespread
Ashkenazi composite name Naphtali Hirsch (“deer”).236 Although the choice of a
prestigious architectural style as an expression of a patron’s pride and the use of
zoomorphic images in private synagogues as patrons’ personal emblems were practiced
already in medieval Spain, the Renaissance spirit of individualism would have
———————————————————————————————————
learnt details of the case of Wertheim’s parokhet from the responsum of the Maharam of
Padua that he received from Rabbi Capsali (see ‫ מחקרים‬,‫ כהנא‬358-59 n. 70; ‫ אבקת‬,‫קארו‬
‫ רוכל‬no. 64).
234
[Elijah Capsali], “Elie Capsali et sa chronique de Venice,” RÉJ, 79 (1924): 43.
235
Cecil Roth, “Stemmi di Famiglie ebraiche italiane” in Scritti in Memoria di Leone
Carpi, 165-184; idem, The Jews in the Renaissance, 200-201; Daniel M. Friedenberg,
Medieval Jewish Seals from Europe (Detroit, 1987), 31-35; Sabar, “The Beginnings
and Flourishing of Ketubbah Illustration in Italy,” 271-85, n. 85-87, 97.
236
Morpurgo also accepted Herz as a version of Hirsch (Edgardo Morpurgo,
“L’Università degli Ebrei in Padova nel XVI secolo,” [Padua, 1910]; offprint from
Bolletino del Museo Civico di Padova, 12 [1909, 1, 2 and 3]: 22).
 188

reinforced Wertheim’s feeling of freedom from public opinion in the visual

demonstration of his lucky fortune by means of an especially luxurious project, and
exacerbated his attempts to accomplish it at any price.
As the medieval tradition of synagogue decoration shows, zoomorphic images as
well as the adoption of a sumptuous contemporary style in a private synagogue would
not necessarily have caused protests by the Jewish community. Moreover, Judah Mintz
(ca. 1408-1508) could have known of the zoomorphic sculptures in the synagogues of
Worms and Cologne during his years in Mainz, which he left when he was about 55
years old. In Padua, where he is said to have been a philosophy professor at the
University,237 he would also have been aware of the Renaissance use of a patron’s
personal emblem on artistic objects. It thus seems that Judah Mintz denounced the
parokhet not because of pure iconoclastic motives, but because he considered
Wertheim’s hubris as a threat to the integrity of the Jewish community, and saw the
permissions Wertheim attained from other rabbis as defiance against his religious
authority.
When compared to the cases of the Abulafia Synagogue of ca. 1357 in Toledo
and of the Wertheim Synagogue of the late 15th or the early 16th century in Padua, the
1520-35 Pinchas Synagogue in Prague substantiates the paradigm of private patronage
in synagogue art. In all of these synagogues, the patrons marked their ownership by
their personal emblems. Although the traditions of synagogue building and
arrangement, and also the religious, social and moral norms that prevailed in the whole
community influenced the building and adornment of the private synagogues, their
patrons felt relatively free in their choice of artistic models. Whereas the style of
decorations in Ashkenazi synagogues discussed above depended mostly on the style of
contemporary church art, Aaron Meshulam Horowitz, like Samuel Abulafia, imitated
the style of contemporary royal architecture to demonstrate his high status. In these
private synagogues, the adornment did not stress messages that contradicted the
teachings of Christianity regarding the Jews as was the case in the Altneuschul. Instead,
the symbolic message of their designs connoted the patron’s special position in the
community.
The case of the Pinchas Synagogue is, however, more complex. In contrast to
Abulafia and Wertheim, where the congregation of their private synagogues consisted
of the patrons’ families and neighbours, Aaron Meshulam destined his family
———————————————————————————————————
237
Shulvass, The Jews in the World of the Renaissance, 152, 235.
 189

synagogue for a specific community of believers and utilized his independence as a

patron to choose symbols that were connected to his messianic views rather than to pure
egoism. Although in the struggle for the communal leadership Aaron Meshulam was
violent, he did not break the conventions accepted in the Jewish community of Prague
concerning the use of images in the synagogue. The jugs, his family’s emblem of the
Levites and the Shield of David with a Jewish hat in the Pinchas Synagogue were taken
from the customary Jewish repertoire of symbols, and as in the Altneuschul, there are
no zoomorphic images in his synagogue, even though animals and royal and state coats-
of-arms, also lacking here, are frequently found in Hebrew books printed in Prague in
that period.
Conclusions
The analysis of the stone carvings that have survived in the Altneuschul
completes the deductions based on the examination of several fragments of the Gothic
carvings in Worms and throws light on the Gothic sculptural decorations in other
Ashkenazi synagogues. The Altneuschul proves that the sculptural decorations not only
stressed the entrance to the prayer hall, the Holy Ark and the bimah, but were also found
in the interior on the pillars, wall supports and ceiling. As in the previous period, this art
treated decorative images as symbolic forms. Although I am aware of the dangers of
overinterpretation regarding these stylistic details, it is strikingly clear that each of them
can be given a Jewish meaning.
The Gothic style influenced the synagogue decorations in a few different ways.
A few motifs in the synagogue decorations were kept almost unchanged because of their
special symbolism. Thus, because of their association with the Temple, closed
triangular pediments were often chosen to top synagogue Arks rather than the pointed
arches that were characteristic of Gothic architecture. In contrast, many traditional
motifs were given a new form. For example, synagogue sculptures continued to develop
medieval plant symbolism, reinterpreting the vegetative symbols used in the Gothic
churches by giving them a Jewish meaning. Genuine Gothic patterns that could not be
associated with the old forms of synagogue decoration were also given new symbolic
meanings derived from Jewish exegesis. For instance, placed above the niche for the
Torah scrolls in the synagogue Ark, Gothic crockets and wreaths of leaves alluded to
the “wreath of gold” that was set around the Ark of the Covenant, a wreath that had
been interpreted in the Talmud as the Crown of the Torah. Gothic turrets and
crenellations imparted to the Ark the features of the “strong tower,” an epithet for God’s
 190

name that protects of the faithful.

Deeper stylistic changes took place in the family synagogues established by
private patrons. They were less bound by the opinions of the community in the choice
of the decorations in their synagogues. The patrons of private synagogues often used
this independence to demonstrate their exclusive social status by means of sumptuous
adornment and personal emblems, while Aaron Meshulam added to this individualistic
message the symbols revealing his special religious views. The search for an impressive
style caused Aaron Meshulam, like Samuel Ha-Levi Abulafia before him, to imitate the
decorations of contemporary court architecture rather than that of the older synagogues
in their cities. This is the way a local version of the Renaissance style first influenced
the design of Ashkenazi synagogues outside Italy. Twenty years later private patrons
accepted a more fully developed Italian Renaissance style in their family synagogue in
Kazimierz near Cracow, profoundly influencing the style of public synagogues in
Poland.
 191

Chapter III
From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in Cracow and Kazimierz

From Prague to Cracow

Jews begun to settle in Poland after 1098 when the persecutions of the First
Crusade forced Jews to leave Germany and Bohemia. To the East of Bohemia, Jews
settled mainly in Silesia, a region that was under Bohemian rule from 1335 to 1526,
until the mid-15th century, and in Poland.1 From the 13th century on, waves of
immigration caused a sizeable enlargement of the Jewish population in Silesia and
Poland, and this led to the growth of synagogue building. The few known medieval
synagogues in Silesia had all been significantly rebuilt when the Jews were expelled
from there in the mid-15th century and the buildings were turned into churches.2
However, the structure of the original synagogue survived in Strzegom (Striegau) and in
Oleśnica (Öls), both near Wroclaw in Silesia, to the north of the halfway mark between
Prague and Cracow. The Jews built the synagogue in Strzegom after they settled there in
the 14th century, and used the building until 1454, when they were expelled from the

———————————————————————————————————
1
Polish-Jewish legends date the beginnings of the Jewish settlement in Poland back even
earlier - to the 9th century, see S. M. Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and
Poland, 1 (Philadelphia, 1916): 40; [Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson], “Poland: The Early
Settlements,” EJ, 13: 709-10, and a critical review of the legendary traditions in Bernard
D. Weinryb, The Jews of Poland: A Social and Economic History of the Jewish
Comunity in Poland from 1100 to 1800 (Philadelphia, 1973): 17-22. For reviews of the
early stages of Jewish settlement in Silesia and Poland, see Weinryb, ibid., 22-29; Markus
Brann, Geschichte der Juden in Schlesien, 1 (Wroclaw, 1896); Ignacy Schipper, Studya
nad stosunkami gospodarczymi Żydów w Polsce podczas średniowiecha (Lvov,
1911), 52-68; Majer Bałaban, Kiędy i skąd przybyli Żydzi do Polski (Warsaw, 1931);
Salo Wittmayer Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 10 (New York,
1965): 31-36; Jerzy Wyrozumski, “Jews in Medieval Poland” in: Antony Polonsky, Jakub
Basista and Anrzej Link-Lenczowski, eds., The Jews in Old Poland (London, 1993), 13-
22; Alexander Gieysztor, “The Beginnings of Jewish Settlement in the Polish Land” in
Chimen Abramsky, Maciej Jachimczyk and Antony Polonsky (eds.), The Jews in Poland
(Oxford, 1986), 5-21; [Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson], “Poland: The Early Settlements,” 709-
12.
2
Alfred Grotte, Synagogenspuren in schlesischen Kirchen (Wroclaw, 1937);
Piechotka, Bóżnice murowane, 38-42. Note esp.: the synagogue in Jawor (Jauer), built
after 1364, expropriated in 1438 and considerably remodelled in 1729 (Grotte, ibid., 23-
25, pl. IV; Bergman and Jagielski, Zachowane synagogi, 52); a synagogue in Świdnica
(Schweidnitz) that existed already in 1285, was converted into a chapel after the Jews
were expelled from the town in 1453 and was considerably remodelled in 1859 (Grotte,
ibid., 26-33, pl. VII; “Swidnica,” EJ, 15: 553; Bergman and Jagielski, ibid., 156).
 192

town and it was rebuilt as St. Barbara’s Church (ill. 323).3 Here, the Late Gothic
network of intersecting ribs in the vault of the long presbytery contrasts with the simpler
cross vaults in the two west bays, which are remnants of the older structure (ills. 324-
25).4 Thus the original building was a single-nave room (6.54 x 8.80 m) similar in its
size and composition to the 13th-century Miltenberg synagogue (6.20 x 9.20 m, ill.
264).5 The first record on Jews in Oleśnica dates to 1389, but they possibly settled there
earlier. After they established their community, they built a synagogue that remained in
their possession until 1453, when the community was expelled. Jews lived in Oleśnica
again from the early 16th century to 1535, from 1555 to 1575, and after 1750. The
original building (ills. 326-27) is a later version of the Ashkenazi two-nave synagogue
(9.50 x 11.80 m) with six bays spanned by cross vaults and an entrance vestibule here
attached on the north side. Buttresses reinforce the walls at the joints of the bays and in
the four corners. The central buttress on the eastern side abuts on the apse of the Holy
Ark that protrudes from the wall (ill. 327). After 1535, the synagogue was rebuilt into an
arsenal and later into a church. The building underwent considerable reconstruction: a
tower, later used as a church belfry, was attached from the north, the original spanning
was changed, and the windows and entrances were altered.6 Although nothing survives
of the original adornment of these two synagogues,7 their architecture suggests that they
were built and decorated according to the artistic tradition of German and Bohemian

———————————————————————————————————
3
Jilius Filla, Chronik der Stadt Striegau von den ältesten Zeiten bis zu Jahre 1889
(Strzegom, 1889), 144-145; Bernard Brilling, Die jüdischen Gemeinden
Mittelschlesiens. Entstehung und Geschichte (Stuttgart, 1972), 187-89.
4
Władysław Dziewulski, “Stregom” in Studia z historii budowy miast polskich
(Warsaw, 1957), 225, 227, 232; Franciszek Rosenthal, “Najstarsze osiedla żydowskie na
Śląsku,” BŻIH, 34 (1960): 16; Bergman and Jagielski, Zachowane synagogi, 128;
Piechotka, Bóżnice murowane, 43-45. In contrast, Grotte supposed that the presbytery is
the remaining part of the synagogue (Alfred Grotte, “Synagogen-Kirchen” in Schlesien
[Wroclaw, 1930], 12-14; idem, Synagogenspuren in schlesischen Kirchen, 20-22).
5
Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 189-92. In contrast to the five-rib vaults in
the Altneuschul in Prague (ill. 179) and in Miltenberg (ill. 272), the cross vaults in the
Strzegom synagogue have a standard four-rib form.
6
Grotte, “Synagogen-Kirchen” in Schlesisen, 3-12; idem, Synagogenspuren in
schlesischen Kirchen, 12-19; M. Stażewska, Oleśnica (Wroclaw, 1953); “Oleśnica,” EJ,
12: 1360; Brilling, Die jüdischen Gemeinden Mittelschlesiens, 148-51; Bergman and
Jagielski, Zachowane synagogi, 95; Piechotka, Bóżnice murowane, 46-47.
7
As the presbytery in St. Barbara in Strzegom is not a part of the synagogue, Grotte’s
drawing of a carved spandrel from the southern wall of the presbytery (“Synagogen-
Kirchen” in Schlesien, 9 fig. 5) cannot be considered a remnant of the synagogue, and
must be attributed to church decoration.
 193

synagogues.
Further to the east, in Cracow, the capital of Poland and the royal residence from
the 11th through the 16th century, the Jews had relatively more protection and more
opportunities for economic activity in the aegis of the royal court. The Jewish settlement
of Cracow is estimated as one of the earliest in Poland: beginnings of a Jewish presence
in the town are traced back to the 11th century, and the Jewish community as such was
presumably established in the 13th century.8 As early as 1304, the Jews settled in the
Jewish Street (today St. Anna Street).9 During the 15th century, the Jewish minority
faced increasing hostility on the part of the townsfolk. The Catholic clergy incited the
middle classes to violence against the Jews, and persuaded the king to undertake
legislative measures against the presence of the “infidelis” in the capital of a Christian
kingdom.10 Sanguinary disorders broke out in 1407, 1423, 1445 and 1448, and in 1463
the mob attacked and robbed the Jews in the city.11 As a result, the Jews became
gradually pushed out of the position that they had occupied in Cracow. In 1469 they
were expelled from their old settlement near St. Anna Street to the Śpiglarska Street
(now St. Thomas Street), located further from the town’s center.12 After the leaders of
———————————————————————————————————
8
The Jewish merchant and traveler Ibrahim ibn Yaqub of Tortosa mentioned a Jewish
presence in Cracow in 965 (translated into German in Gottlieb Bondy and Franz
Dworský, eds., Zur Geschichte der Juden in Böhmen, Mähren und Schlesien, 2
[Prague, 1906]: 2. See also [Eliyahu Ashtor], “Ibrahim ibn Yaqub of Tortosa,” EJ, 8:
1214; Krystyna Pieradzka, “Kraków w relacjach cudzoziemców X-XVII wieku,” Rocznik
Krakowski 28 (1937): 185-186. For a review of the early stages of Jewish settlement in
Cracow, see Schipper, Studya nad stosunkami gospodarczymi, 63-65; [Arthur
Cygielman], “Cracow,” EJ, 5: 1026; Weinryb, The Jews of Poland, 24-25.
9
Eugeniusz Müller, Żydzi w Krakowie w drugiej połowie XIV stulecia (Cracow,
1906), 11, 13.
10
For example, in 1453, the Franciscan monk John Capistrano preached anti-Jewish
sermons in Cracow. He and the bishop of Cracow, cardinal Zbigniew Oleśnicki called on
the king to abolish the Jewish privileges pro honore et reverentia dei et fidei (“for the
honour and reverence of God and the faithful,” cited from Oleśnicki’s letter to Jan of
Tęczyn after the extract published in Majer Bałaban, Historja Żydów w Krakowie i na
Kazimierzu, 1304-1868, 1, 1304-1655 [Cracow, 1931]: 50 n. 22, 47 ff). See also Baron,
A Social and Religious History, 10: 46-47.
11
Schipper, Studya nad stosunkami gospodarczymi, 282-285; Bałaban, Historja
Żydów, 1: 33-43.
12
Seniores communitatis Iudaeorum Cracoviensium synagogam antiquam et novam cum
hospitalibus et cimiteriis a tergo Collegii Aristarum sitas, Ioanni seniori et Ioanni
iunioru Dlugosz Canonicis Cracoviensibus pro alia synagoga et areis in platea
Spiglarska, coram Iudicio Iudaeorum commutant, Cracow, January 20, 1469 (Codex
Diplomaticus Universitatis Studii Generalis Cracoviensis, 2, 1441-1470, [Cracow,
1873], 262-63 no. 223; Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 57-58 n. 4). The issue is discussed
 194

the Jewish community had been forced to sign a renunciation of trade in Cracow in
1485,13 the economical basis of the community deteriorated. The Jews then chose to
move their trade activity to the neighbouring town of Kazimierz because de jure it did
not fall under the renunciation, while in practice it was only a half hour’s walk from the
Cracow market and the royal castle (see ill. 328).
The town of Kazimierz near Cracow was established in 1335, and the presence
of Jews there was first recorded in the 1380’s.14 Documents dated to 1485 and 1488 tell
about a Jewish bath, perhaps a ritual one, and market square respectively.15 The kahal, a
self-governing Jewish community, was first recorded in Kazimierz in 1494.16 In that
year, a big fire provoked a new wave of anti-Jewish assaults in Cracow. Giving in to the
pressure of the clergy and citizens, King John Albrecht forbade any Jewish settlement in
Cracow. The exiled Jews moved to Kazimierz, and their real estate in Cracow passed
into the possession of Christian residents.17
Although the Jewish community in Cracow was already established in the 13th
century, the first datable mention on synagogues goes back only to 1370.18 An archival
document describing the transfer of Jews from the Jewish Street to Śpiglarska Street in
1469 testifies that before that time there were at least three synagogues in the town: the
Jews now abandoned the older “Old” and “New” synagogues, but remained in the newer

———————————————————————————————————
in С. Гольдштейн, “Къ исторiи еврейской общины в Краков 15 в ка. Историкъ
Янъ Длугош и евреи Кракова,” Еврейская старина, 2 (1910): 630-31; Bałaban,
Historja Żydów, 1: 56-59.
13
Pacta originalia inter Judaeos & civitatem Cracoviensem quomodo mercari debent,
conscripta in anno 1485 (the text in Latin is in Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 60 n. 8; the
parallel text in Hebrew, in ibid., fig. [8]; and ‫ מפנקסי הקהל בקראקא לקורות‬,‫ וועטשטיין‬.‫ ה‬.‫פ‬
‫ רבניו ומנהיגיו בפולניא בכלל ובקראקא בפרט‬,‫( ישראל וחכמיו‬Wroclaw, 1901), 1-2.
14
Klemens Bąkowski, Historya miasta Kazimierza pod Krakowiem do XVI wieku
(Cracow, 1902), 14-16; Bogusław Krasnowołski, Ulice i place krakowskiego
Kazimierza (Cracow, 1992), 12. Registers from 1385-90 mention two Jews in Kazimierz
(Stanisław Kutrzeba, “Ludność i majątek Kazimierza w końcu XVI stulecia,” Rocznik
Krakowski, 3 [1900]: 190). Kazimierz, once an independent suburban town and then a
quarter of the city of Cracow, must not be confused with the town Kazimierz about 60 km
to the northwest from Cracow, or with Kazimierz in Pomerania, Kazimierz Dolny on the
Vistula and Kazimierz Biskupi in the Great Poland.
15
Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 72.
16
Klemens Bąkowski, Dzieje Krakowa (Cracow, 1911), 202-203, 405; Bałaban,
Historja Żydów, 1: 65, 72.
17
Bąkowski, Dzieje Krakowa, 39.
18
Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 17 n. 8. According to Bałaban, a synagogue in Cracow
was mentioned already in documents from 1356, but he gives no reference (ibid., 6, 71).
 195

third synagogue located in Śpiglarska Street.19 Although none of these buildings in

Cracow can be identified, the historical background of the Jewish community may
throw light on those who established these buildings, or whose opinion about a
synagogue’s arrangement could have influenced the synagogue donors and the rest of
the community.
Lewko, son of Jordan (died ca. 1395), a royal banker who served at the court of
three Polish kings, represents a type of court Jew who accumulated significant power in
the Jewish community and far beyond it. Lewko’s business in the spheres of renting,
money lending and trading property reached far beyond Cracow, and he had debtors in
different strata of Christian society. Illustrative of his power is the story that a Polish
nobleman had to turn to the Pope to ask for protection from Lewko, but even the papal
measures against Lewko had little effect.20 Persons such as Lewko often were the
donors of a community or private synagogue, just as Jacob ben David and his wife
Rachel had established the community synagogue in Worms in 1034, and in ca. 1357
Lewko’s older contemporary Samuel Ha-Levi Abulafia had built his private synagogue
in Toledo. It is noteworthy that in 1370 Lewko purchased a parcel of land “behind the
synagogue in the Jewish street.”21 There are two possibilities for this purchase: Lewko
may have wished to live near the synagogue, or he planned to use this site for enlarging
the building.22
Rabbi Yom Tov Lipman of Mühlhausen exemplifies a type of Jewish scholar
active in Cracow in the early 15th century. Lipman lived in Lindau and Erfurt, and then
served as a dayan in Prague. In Erfurt, he may have known about the two-nave
synagogue that was built there after 1221 and was under Jewish ownership until 1349
(ill. 329),23 and in Prague he would have seen the Altneuschul. In addition to his great

———————————————————————————————————
19
See note 12 above.
20
On the Jewish court bankers in the Medieval Europe, see Baron, A Social and
Religious History of the Jews, 12 (1967): 132-97; about Lewko of Cracow, see Müller,
Żydzi w Krakowie, 16 ff., 45-51; Ignacy Schipper, Studya nad stosunkami
gospodarczymi, 115-32; Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 16-23.
21
Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 17 n. 8
22
Assis reviewed the practice in Medieval Spain of the donation of private houses to the
community in order to convert them into synagogues. He noted also that sometimes
philanthropists enlarged the synagogue by donating properties they possessed that were
located next to the synagogue (Assis, “Synagogues in Mediaeval Spain,” 14, 17).
23
The synagogue in Erfurt was burnt in 1736 and its appearance is known only from a
drawing (ill. 329). Krautheimer interpreted the buttresses seen on this picture as
indicating a two-nave structure (Mittelalterliche Synagogen, 196-98).
 196

expertise in Judaism, Lipman knew Latin, and demonstrated a knowledge of the New
Testament and the writings of the Church Fathers. He belonged to the Jewish supporters
of John Huss, and participated in theological disputes with the Catholic clergy.
Following one such dispute in 1399, he was compelled to flee from Prague to Cracow.
There he lived for about 35 years, continuing his theological activity. Mark and Kupfer
assumed that Lipman sometimes preached in Catholic churches of Cracow,24 probably
to suppot Judaism in the religious disputes. In Cracow, he completed the Sefer
Nitzakhon (“Book of Victory”), a polemic against Christianity that was meant to serve
the ordinary Jew as a guide to the complicated theological problems he faced during his
contacts with the Christians.25 Lipman’s influence on the next generations of Jewish
scholars in Poland was great, so that he must have had an influence on his
contemporaries during his lifetime. His heritage and activity in Cracow suggest that
immigrants from the West could bring to Poland not only the tradition of building two-
nave synagogues but also an awareness of contemporary Christian theology and of the
rabbinical counter-arguments that, as we have seen, found an expression in synagogue
art.
Secular and spiritual leaders often held positions in Jewish self-government. The
kahal leadership of Cracow consisted of several officers, named in Hebrew parnasim
(literally “providers”) and roshim (“heads”), and in Latin seniores (“elders”) and
episcopus Judaeorum (“Jewish bishop”). The latter title was usual in medieval Jewish
communities in Western Europe.26 Historians have noted that this communal structure
was imported into Poland with the waves of Jewish immigration from the West, caused
by the expulsions of the Jews from German, Bohemian, Moravian and Silesian towns.27
The seniores were in charge of the synagogues: they signed the contract transferring the

———————————————————————————————————
24
Bernard Mark and Fr. Kupfer, “Żydzi Polscy w Okresie Odrodzenia,” BŻIH, 6-7
(1953): 3-55.
25
Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 67, 76-79; Silver, A History of Messianic Speculation
in Israel, 220-21.
26
Schipper, Studya nad stosunkami gospodarczymi, 148-156; Bałaban, Kiedy i skąd
przybyli Żydzi do Polski, 17-21; idem, Historja Żydów, 1: 43, 97-98; Weinryb, The
Jews of Poland, 27-32.
27
See Weinryb, The Jews of Poland, 71-78; Salo Wittmayer Baron, The Jewish
Community, Its History and Structure to the American Revolution, 2 (Philadelphia,
1942): 55-66; idem, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 11 (1967): 63; Guido
Kisch, The Jews in Medieval Germany, 348, 551 n. 17.
 197

two old synagogues in Cracow to Christian ownership in 1469.28 After the exile of the
Jews from Cracow in 1494, the last synagogue would also have passed to the Christians.
During at least a quarter century, the Jewish community of Cracow thus had to abandon
three synagogues, but their memory would have been alive for at least one or two
generations among the Jews who moved to Kazimerz. Jews apparently took with them
the Scrolls of the Torah and ritual objects from the abandoned synagogues. It is also
probable that they followed the old practice of taking away carved stones from an
abandoned synagogue in order to reuse them in a new one – a custom that was discussed
concerning Worms. In addition, the reuse of old stones or other constructive and
decorative traits common to the synagogues in Cracow might have been apprehended by
the community in Kazimierz as a token of the continuity of the Jewish community and
its refusal to yield in matters of faith despite the expulsion from the capital.
A few stone carvings from the Remah Synagogue and the neighbouring cemetery
in Kazimierz show a style that predates the Jewish settlement in this town and may be
attributed to synagogues abandoned in Cracow. The two central supports of the Remah
Synagogue’s Ark (ills. 330-34) differ from those alongside them at the outer sides of the
Ark in their material, so that the tint of these two central pilasters is lighter than that of
the rest of the sandstone structure (ill. 330). The central pilasters are also shorter than
the outer ones, so that an echinus made from the darker sort of stone and decorated with
an egg-and-dart pattern had to be inserted above the central capitals so that they could
reach the uniform height of the other supports (ills. 330, 334-36). Unlike the curved
section of the abacus above the outer capitals, the section above the central capitals is
made as a straight mould crossed with vertical slits that resemble dentils (ills. 335-37).
In contrast, in the two outer pilasters (ills. 335-37), the capitals are entirely carved from
the pilasters’ slabs, and the slightly curved abacus becomes the bottom fascia of the
protruding stone block of the architrave. The parts of the outer capitals engraved on the
pilasters’ slabs and those on the architrave dovetail with each other: a small shell-like
palmette in the center of the abacus on the architrave is situated just above a bold round
knob, and seems to be a finial of a bunch of stems that reach the knob from below (ill.
336).29 The structural differences between the pairs of supports suggest that the central

———————————————————————————————————
28
See note 12 above.
29
The connection of the outer right capital with the wall was reinforced with a clincher
nail stuck in above the left side of the capital in the slot between the echinus and abacus
(ill. 337).
 198

lighter-coloured shorter pilasters were adopted from another structure to compose this
Ark.
The design of the pairs of pilasters is also different. Whereas both pilasters are
box-like, on the outer pilasters, the corners are elaborated with wide chamfers (ill. 338).
The three flutes that are carved on their face seem to be incomplete: on top, each of
them is crossed with a small transverse groove, and then continues upwards in the form
of a short and shallow incised line. In contrast, the fluting on the inner pilasters ends in a
clean arch (ills. 331, 337). In the two central pilasters, the capital’s block is shaped like
a brace bracket of heavy proportions, with convex profiles and a pointed salience above
its wide “waistline” (ill. 333). The rounded patterns covering the capital’s face look like
scrollwork, but one may discern in them several different elements. The bottom half of
the capital is occupied by a broad fleur-de-lis enclosing an elongated lentil-like core.
The flower’s lower segments curve outward to create ear-like patterns, while the base
curves upwards to join the lower petals. Taken together with the fleur-de-lis proper,
these curving lines create an inverted heart-like shape, which is outlined by an incised
contour. Two massive leaves flank the heart-like pattern, embracing the capital from the
sides and thus forming a curved profile with a pointed edge. The upper rounded sections
of the capital’s silhouette echo the two concentric patterns in the capital’s upper part,
that impart an impression of scroll lines. The symmetrical design on the outer capitals
(ill. 336) is in more shallow relief and consists of less massive and smaller members that
cover the capital’s face and partially extend on to the outer lateral side. In the bottom
center of these capitals, there is a rose on a long stem with leaves and a rhombic
extension in its bottom. A small fleur-de-lis is engraved within this rhomb that is
flanked by a recumbent ear-like shape. Rounded short leaves rise along the capital’s
shaped ribs and spread towards the center. A garland of leaves hangs from concentric
rings that occupy the capital’s upper corners. The capital’s outline, excluding the
echinus, is similar to the bracket-like silhouette of the central capitals. In both types of
capitals, double recessing annulets divide the outer capitals from the pilaster’s shaft.
The bracket-shaped capitals are characteristic of Romanesque columns (e.g.,
272). A massive heart-like ornament such as that on the Ark’s central capitals has no
parallels in Polish art in the mid-16th century, but is commonly found in Romanesque art
elsewhere in Europe from the mid-12th to the early 13th century (e.g., ills. 339-41). In
those Romanesque ornaments, the number of petals in the vertical leaf vary from three
 199

to seven, and the lateral petals can be either rounded or crescent-shaped like those in the
fleur-de-lis. A typical example of this motif decorates a spandrel in the arcade of the
altarpiece dated to ca. 1170 from St. Ursula’s Church in Cologne (ill. 339).30 A simpler
variation of the same pattern appears on the columns dividing the scenes on the
Tremessen chalice that originated from lower Saxony, ca. 1170 (ill. 340). As in the
central pilasters of the Holy Ark, the leaf within the heart-like shape has three petals,
and the whole pattern decorates a capital.31 The closest type of this architectonic
decoration is seen in the palmettes within heart-shaped stems that adorn the carved
impost of the northeastern pillar of the cross vault in the former monastery church in
Neuenburg (Neuchâtel) to the west of Bern from the second half of the 12th century (ill.
341).32 In the reliefs from both the church and the synagogue, the petals of the central
leaves are similarly carved as concave forms. Although in the Ark’s central capitals, the
central leaf is three-petalled, its upper petal is pointed and the lower petals are crescent-
shaped as in the five-petalled palmette on the impost.
This Romanesque heart-like pattern enclosing a symmetrical leaf later appeared
in 13th-century Ashkenazi illuminated manuscripts, for example, on the left column of
the monumental portal painted in the Worms Mahzor from 1272 (ill. 122). The
elongated lentil-like protruding core of the fleur-de-lis on the Ark’s central capitals,
which is absent from the West-European examples of the heart-like pattern, is found in
regions influenced by Oriental art, mainly in Romanesque Spain.33 Baltrušaitis traced
the origin of this pattern back to the so-called rūmī motif in Muslim Art. He found an
example of the composition consisting of the fleur-de-lis, a lens-like core and a heart-
shaped outline in an engraving on an ivory (ill. 342) dated to the 11th or 12th century and
originating from Sicily, which was under Muslim (Saracen) rule until 1061.34 A similar
design was also used in France, e.g., in the ornamental arch-shaped relief above the door

———————————————————————————————————
30
Ornamenta Ecclesiae. Kunst und Künstler der Romanik, 2 (Cologne, 1985): 348
no. E 113.
31
On the origins of the motif, see the section “Rinceaux et palmettes” in Denise Jalabert,
La flore sculptée des monuments du Moyen Age en France (Paris, 1965), 75 f., pl. 40
fig. A.
32
François Maurer-Kuhn, Romanische Kapitellplastik in der Schweiz (Bern, 1971),
183ff.
33
Izabella Rejduch-Samkowa (“Die kunsthistorischen Probleme der ältesten Krakauer
Synagogen,” Wissenschaftlische Zeitschrift der Martin-Luther-Universität, 37
[1988], 5: 60) had noticed the resemblance of the capitals in the Remah Synagogue and
Sephardi artistic motifs, but did not argue her statement.
 200

of the St. Michael chapel at Le Puy of ca. 1150 (ill. 343). In Sephardi illuminated
manuscripts, this heart-shaped motif was used through the 14th century. A great leaf
with a lentil-shaped core and stems composing a heart-like design is depicted on folio
55 in the Golden Haggadah, probably from Barcelona, ca. 1320 (ill. 344).35 The same
example also has a symmetrical pair of large leaves flanking the central pattern in a way
similar to that of the side leaves embracing the Holy Ark’s central capitals (ill. 333).
Sephardi manuscripts circulated among Jewish communities beyond the Iberian
Peninsula, sometimes reaching those in Germany, Bohemia and Poland, and they could
have influenced the capitals found in the Remah synagogue.
The Romanesque origin of the ornament on the Ark’s central pilasters is at odds
with its date from the 1550s. The traditional practice of reusing parts of old synagogues
suggests that the pilasters are remnants of a medieval Ark rather than a 16th-century
copy of a medieval manuscript. As the earliest known synagogue in Kazimierz is the
late 15th-century Old Synagogue that had not been abandoned when Isserl built the
Remah Synagogue nearby, the remnants must have originated from one of the three
synagogues in Cracow, the earliest of which, first mentioned in 1370, would have been
built at some point after the Jewish community was established there in the 13th century.
This date does not controvert the style of the Romanesque pilasters: in Cracow church
architecture, the Gothic style appeared only in the mid-13th century,36 and in
synagogues, Romanesque ornamentation could have survived even later: we saw such a
late use of the Romanesque style in the depictions of portals in the Worms Mahzor from
1272 (ills. 48, 122-23). The oldest synagogue was abandoned together with the second,
newer synagogue in 1469, and the third, latest one passed into the possession of

———————————————————————————————————
34
Jurgis Baltrušaitis, Le Moyen Age fantastique [Paris, 1955], 88-90.
35
See also the ornamental decoration on folia 70v and 78 v of the same manuscript
(London, British museum, Add. Ms. 27210) and on folia 41v and 63 of the “Sister” to the
Golden Haggadah, 14th c., Spain, probably Barcelona, London, British Museum, Or. Ms.,
2884 (Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts in the British Isles, 2: pl. XLV nos.
151, 152; pl. LVII no. 199; pl. LIX no. 208).
36
E.g., note the case of the Dominican St. Trinity Church of Cracow rebuilt in the 12th-
century, probably from a wooden church. Fragments of a masonry wall dated to the
period after the Dominican friars received the building in 1222 are still Romanesque,
whereas in ca. 1241-1258 they rebuilt the church in the Early Gothic style (Feliks Kopera,
“Średniowieczna architectura kościoła i klasztoru OO. Dominikanów w Krakowie,”
Rocznik Krakowski, 20 [1926]: 57-76; Józef Jamróz, “Średniowieczna architectura
dominikańska w Krakowie,” Rocznik Krakowski, 41 [1926]: 5-28; Jerzy Wyrozumski,
“Kraków do schyłku wieków średnich” in Janina Bieniarzówna and Jan M. Małecki,
 201

Christians in 1494, when the Jews were expelled from the town. It is likely that before
abandoning the old synagogues, the Jews dismantled the Holy Ark, brought the parts to
Kazimierz and stored them there. The fact that the Remah Synagogue was called “New”
testifies that it was established before the even newer masonry synagogues were built in
Kazimierz a few years later, and at a time when no other masonry synagogue except for
the Old Synagogue existed there. As we will see below, the Old Synagogue had been
built before 1494. This New Synagogue was thus the first great masonry synagogue
established after the Jews were expelled from Cracow in 1494, so that it would have
been an appropriate place to re-use the old relics brought from there for a new Holy Ark.
The supposition that the two pilasters of the 13th-century Holy Ark were re-used
demands that we examine their probable original meaning. Since the architectonic
composition of the synagogue Ark flanked by columns alluded to the Sanctuary
containing the Ark and Tablets of the Covenant, these supports, and especially such
ornamented ones, may have been associated with Jachin and Boaz, the two brazen
pillars set in front of the Temple in Jerusalem.37 The biblical descriptions of the pillars
are obscure in their terminology and controversial in several details and thus do not
provide an artist with a clear concept of what each detail and their combination looked
like.38 Discussing visual images of the Temple in Jerusalem in both Christian and
Jewish art until the 16th century, scholars noticed that pars-pro-toto depictions of
particular features were predominant rather than attempts at a comprehensive artistic
reconstruction in strict accordance with the biblical ekphrasis.39 As we already saw in
synagogue art, the identification of typical Romanesque columns with the Solomonic
pillars was also not abnormal in the context of the medieval iconography of the Temple.

———————————————————————————————————
Dzieje Krakowa, 1 [Cracow, 1992]: 120-22).
37
I Kings 7:15-22, 41-42; II Kings 25:16-17; Jer. 52:17, 20-23; Ezek. 40:49; II Chron.
3:15-17, 4:12-13.
38
Cf. Cahn, “Solomonic Elements in Romanesque Art;” C. L. Meyers, “Jachin and Boaz
in Religious and Political Perspective” in T. G. Madsen, ed., The Temple of Antiquity,
(Provo, 1984), 135-50.
39
Wolfgang Herrmann, “Unknown Design for the Temple of Jerusalem by Claude
Perrault,” Essays in the History of Architecture Presented to Rudolf Wittkower, 1
(London, 1967), 154-58; Helen Rosenau, Vision of the Temple (London, 1972); idem,
“The Architecture of Nicolaus de Lyra’s Temple: Illustrations on the Jewish Tradition,”
Journal of Jewish Studies, 25 (1974): 294-304; Rachel Wischnitzer, “Maimonides’
Drawings of the Temple,” JJA, 1 (1974): 16-27; Paul von Naredi-Rainer, “Between
Vatable and Villalpando: Aspects of Postmedieval Reception of the Temple in Christian
Art,” JA, 23-24, The Real and Ideal Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Art
 202

The Romanesque pillars of the arch representing the Temple in the Worms Mahzor (ill.
122) examplify the illustration of particular Biblical descriptions of objects by means of
contemporary decorative patterns. The two pillars are dissimilar: a knotted capital and
ornamented frames around a wavy branch with leaves adorn the right pillar that stands
on the back of a lion, whereas the design of the left pillar consists of a repeated pattern
of heart-shaped palmettes running along the shaft, and a capital displaying a monster
who combines two legs and a bearded head and is set under a leafy abacus. Like the lion
under the column, the oppressed figure on the capital may be a symbol of defeated evil,
imported from Christian art. Several other features can be derived from descriptions of
Jachin and Boaz in the Bible.40 For example, the undulate stem highlighted with a bright
colour on the right column (ill. 122) may designate “a line of twelve cubits”
compassing both of Solomon’s pillars (I Kings 7:15), and the knotted pattern on the
capital above the bright stem may designate the “meshwork” (‫ )מעשה שבכה‬made “for the
capitals which were upon the top of the pillars” (I Kings 7:17).41 In a similar way, the
carvings on the Remah Ark’s Romanesque capitals (ill. 333) may have been read in
terms of the capitals of Jachin and Boaz as described in the Bible. The fleur-de-lis can
thus reproduce “the capitals that were upon the top of the pillars [that] were of lily

———————————————————————————————————
(1997-1998): 218-25.
40
The sun and moon above the columns seem to be symbols reinforcing the identification
of the supports in this picture with the Temple’s two pillars: in his commentary on II
Chron. 3:17, Rashi wrote that Jachin alluded to the crescent, and Boaz to the sun. In
contrast to other illuminations in Jewish manuscripts, where the moon often appears to
the left of the sun (e.g., ills. 136, 240), in the Worms Mahzor the crescent of Jachin is on
the right and the sun of Boaz appears on the left, that is according to I Kings 7:21, which
places Jachin on the right, and Boaz on the left. Rashi’s explanation that the ‫ירח קטן‬
(“small crescent”), to which he compares Jachin, differs from the ‫“( לבנה‬moon”), can also
explain the drawing of a separate crescent in the Worms Mahzor, in contrast with the
more widespread representation of the moon as a complete circle often enclosing a
crescent (ills. 49, 136, 240). Moreover, it may be Rashi’s other parallel between Jachin
and Samson (see Rashi’s commentary on Judges 16:29) who overpowered a wild lion
(Judg. 14:5-6) that inspired the artist of the Worms Mahzor to place the satanic lion only
under the right pillar.
41
The knot design of the capitals may have been inspired by the ‫( רמונים‬rimmonim, I
Kings 7:18, 42; II Chron. 3:16), usually translated as “pomegranates.” However, the
Septuagint in Exodus 28:33 translated this term as ροχοισ, meaning both knots and
pomegranates (Ioli Kalavrezou-Maxeiner, “The Byzantine Knotted Column” in Speros
Vryonis, ed., Byzantine Studies in Honor of Milton V. Anastos [Malibu, 1985]: 99).
According to the biblical account, both Jachin and Boaz had the same form and design,
but their different names would have influenced dissimilar depictions of each of the two
pillars.
 203

work” (I Kings 7:19, 22), and the lateral great leaves might have been chosen to imply
the ‫( שבכה‬sevakhah, I Kings 7:17, 20) on the Solomonic capitals, a term that Rashi
explained as a thicket, and that was sometimes interpreted more specifically as palm
branches.42 The concentric rings above the fleur-de-lis might easily be associated with
the “pomegranates” on the Temple’s columns. The belief of Jewish exegetes that the
numerous adornments on the capitals of Jachin and Boaz were composed in two tiers,43
as thery indeed are here, might make the Jews imagine that such a capital could have a
Romanesque hourglass outline of the kind used there.
The hypothesis that after the expulsion of the Jews from Cracow they transferred
remnants from the medieval synagogues there to Kazimierz also calls for a
reexamination of a sandstone sculpture of a lion discovered in the Jewish cemetery near
the Remah synagogue (ills. 345 no. 4, 346-47). Because the lion looks like a tombstone,
visitors to the cemetery put near it small stones as a traditional sign of deference.
However, the lion’s pedestal is not a tombstone but a block supporting tombstones of
the 18th and the 19th century.44 Such a lion has no parallels in the tombstones of this
cemetery, and a sculptured lion in the round was an exceptional motif in Jewish
tombstones in Poland before the early 20th century.45 The head and back of the lion at
the Remah cemetery are partially worn out, and the forepaws and rear legs are lost, but
the figure in general is in good shape. The lion is represented sitting on its legs, raising
its head and roaring; its massive head and breast are in contrast with the smaller rear
part of the body. The incised linear strokes of the pelage and several curves of the mane
are discernable in the lion’s front part. The composition and style of this lion suggests
its attribution to Romanesque lions with massive heads and linear manes (e.g., ills. 133,
135). It cannot be unequivocally stated whether the lion from Kazimierz was set before

———————————————————————————————————
42
For example, in his commentary on II Chron. 3:16, Rashi had associated the ‫שבכה‬
(sevakhah) with ‫( סבך‬sevakh), basing its sense as “a dense growth of branches” on the
passage ‫[“( בסבך קרניו‬a ram caught in] a thicket by his horns,” Gen. 22:13). He also
explained the sevakhah as ‫“( חריות‬palm tufts”, commentary on II Chron. 4:12) and ‫לולבי‬
‫“( דקל‬young palm branches,” commentary on I Kings 7:16-17). In contrast, the Latin
Vulgate interpreted ‫( שבכים מעשה שבכה‬sevakhim ma’aseh sevakhah, I Kings 7:17) as [et]
quasi in modum retis (“nets of checker work”, or “meshwork”).
43
For example, note the Targum Jonathan and the commentary of Rashi on I Kings 7:18.
44
The tomb of Jekutiel Zelman (died 1753 or 1766), and that of Nechama Haia (died in
the 19th century). In 1912, the tombstone of Nechama was reconstructed by her
granddaughter Frida Teitelbaum (Katalog zabytków, 4 Kraków, 6: 63-64 no. 172 [33],
72).
45
Cf. Krajewska, A Tribe of Stones, passim.
 204

the column like the Romanesque lion that is situated before the Worms Cathedral (ill.
133), or whether it was placed under the column like the roaring lions in the portal of St.
Zeno in Verona from ca. 1135 (ills. 131, 348) or the lion under the Temple’s column in
the Worms Mahzor (ill. 122). It is possible that before the lion’s rear legs were
destroyed, its flat back was in a horizontal position and served as the base of a column,
however the bad condition of the stone on the lion’s back does not allow us to find any
traces of joints or a clearly defined flat surface on which a column’s base rested.46
Like the Ark’s two Romanesque pilasters, the Romanesque lion near the
synagogue cannot be a remnant from Kazimierz because the town was only established
in 1335, and the cemetery was founded only in 1551-52.47 Before 1335 there are no
traces of any masonry building there. The tradition of transferring or burying synagogue
parts when they were no longer in use may again settle the contradiction between the
dates and explain the location of the lion in the cemetery. From the late 19th century
until 1939, publications reporting on the remarkable tombstones at the Remah cemetery
did not mention the curious sculpture of the lion. They did not see the lion because it
was buried in the cemetery together with many old tombstones, some of which had
fallen, while others were hidden under newer tombs (later excavations revealed four to
six levels of graves there). From the late 19th century to 1939, about fifty tombstones of
prominent persons were renovated, but during the Nazi occupation, most of them were
damaged. The lion was most probably discovered in 1959-60, when about 700
tombstones were renovated or excavated, and then it was accepted as an old tombstone
and was mounted on top of a stone block.48 However, the lion might have been

———————————————————————————————————
46
The authors of the Katalog zabytków attributed the lion to the Romanesque period,
supposing that it is dated from the first half of the 13th century, but did not discuss where
this sculpture was originally set (Katalog zabytków, 4 Kraków, 6: 72, fig. 282).
47
See note 171 below.
48
In the late 18th century, the cemetery had become overfilled, and in 1800 the burials
were stopped and the cemetery was neglected. From 1988 until the present time the
cemetery has been continuously restored. See ‫ עיר הצדק‬,‫( יחיאל מתתיהו צונץ‬Lvov, 1874),
passim; F. H. Wetstein, “Noch ein wort über die jüngst in Krakau aufgefunden
Grabschriften,” Monatschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums, 9(45)
(1901): 165-76; ‫ לוחות זכרון‬,‫( חיים דובבעריש פריעדברג‬Frankfurt am Main, 1904), passim;
‫" האשכול‬,‫ "לתולדות ישראל וחכמיו בפולין‬,‫ וועטשטיין‬.‫ה‬.‫ פ‬6 (Cracow, 1909): 211-35; 7 (Cracow,
1913): 148-53; Mayer Bałaban, Przewodnik po żydowskich zabytkach Krakowa
(Cracow, 1935), 75-84; Ozjasz Mahler, Przewodnik po Żydowskich zabytkach
Krakowa (Cracow, n.d.), 31-40; Kazimierz Radwański, “Odkrycie renesansowych i
barokowych nagrobków Żydowskich na cmentarzu R’emuh w Krakowie,” Biuletyn
Krakowski, 2 (1960): 62-72; Eugeniusz Duda, Krakowskie judaica, [Warsaw, 1991],
 205

intentionally interred in the cemetery near the synagogue as a disused piece of

synagogue furnishings that could not be thrown out or reused, and thus had to be
concealed in the genizah or buried in the earth.
If the Jews brought the lion sculpture from Cracow to Kazimierz and then
treated it like a disused Torah scroll, it seems most reasonable that it was a part of the
Holy Ark, perhaps supporting a column or sitting at the Ark’s base, rather than
appearing on the synagogue’s exterior. The problem of why the columns were used here
and not in the Old Synagogue and why they did not use the lion will be solved as we go
deeper into the situation on the founding of the Old and Remah synagogues. If our
assumption on the origin of the pilasters and sculptured lion in a 13th-century synagogue
of Cracow is true, these objects are unique remnants of medieval sculptural decorations
in Polish synagogues. The find at the Remah cemetery is also an additional testimony
for the use of sculptural lions in medieval Ashkenazi synagogues and reinforces the
assumption that the lion-shaped wedding stone in the synagogue of Worms was once a
part of the synagogue’s interior.
The Old Synagogue in Kazimierz
The Jews settled at the Northeastern side of Kazimierz, and built a masonry
synagogue to the south of the market square of the Jewish quarter, close to the town’s
wall at the east side of the town (ills. 349-50). Although late 15th century Kazimierz
appears in John Strożecki’s topographically exact pictorial map of Cracow and its
vicinity that was published in Hartmann Schedel’s Cronica Mundi in Nuremberg in
1493 (ill. 328), a year before the Jewish exile from Cracow, the artist concentrated only
on the Christian landmarks (ill. 351)49 and ignored the synagogues that existed then in
both Cracow and Kazimierz. The Old Synagogue should have appeared in the lower
area of Kazimierz, behind the town wall, and the three churches discernable on the map
help to locate its site. The synagogue is to the east of the Corpus Christi church, to the
south-east of St. Catherine’s church and south of the St. Laurence Church.50 Since there
is no building that may securely be identified as a synagogue there, it either had not yet

———————————————————————————————————
84-97; Leszek Hońdo, “Stary cmentarz Żydowski w Krakowie” in Żydzi i Judaism we
współczesnych badaniach Polskich. Materiały z konferencji, Kraków, 21-23, XI,
1995 (Cracow, 1997), 337-74; Katalog zabytków, 4 Kraków, 6: 45-72.
49
Corpus Christi and St. Catherine’s are still extant, and St. Laurence’s was demolished
in 1787. See Crossley, Gothic Architecture, 148, 323 n. 491.
50
See also Leszek Ludwikowski, The Old Synagogue of Cracow (Former Kazimierz
District) (Cracow, 1981), 12.
 206

been built, or – more likely – it did not differ from the other houses with their typical
Gothic high gabled roofs. Even Merian’s 1628 bird’s-eye view of Frankfurt am Main,
which is more explicit in its details than the dense and enlarged depiction of buildings in
Schedel’s book, demonstrates that such a Gothic synagogue with a gabled roof built in
1460-66 (ill. 352, above the word Judengaβ) barely stood out against the surrounding
Gothic secular architecture.51
The oblong prayer hall (12.40 x 17.70 m) of the Old Synagogue is divided by
two axial columns into two naves (ill. 353). The town’s wall reinforces the synagogue’s
eastern wall which has a niche for the Holy Ark in its center. Massive buttresses support
the vaults on the other walls and at both western corners of the hall, as in Oleśnica, and
the entrance into the prayer hall is near the corner buttress on the northern wall.52 The
original spanning, the axial columns and interior fixtures were altered after 1557, and
reconstructions of the roofing and several annexes that were later attached from the
north, west and south changed the original exterior.53
Discussing the Old Synagogue in Kazimierz, researchers have usually noticed
that the spatial composition of the six-bay hall with its pair of axial columns and the
entrance from the western bay on a longitudinal wall belongs to the medieval type of
two-nave synagogues such as that of Worms, Regensburg and Prague (ills. 8, 31, 188).54
The lack of documentary evidence on the establishment of the synagogue led to
different, sometimes controversial conclusions. According to Bałaban, the first records
mentioning the Old Synagogue in Kazimierz are two royal decrees from 1519,55 but, as
we will see below, they mention an existing synagogue that would thus have been
established earlier. Later alterations obscured the original structure of the synagogue, so
that its current stylistic features do not help in dating the original structure. As a result,

———————————————————————————————————
51
The annex adjoined to the synagogue from the court is dated to 1603 (Isidor Kracauer,
Die Geschichte der Judengasse [Frankfurt am Main, 1906], 320).
52
The other entrances were opened during the later reconstructions of the original
building.
53
See Ludwikowski, Old Synagogue; Katalog zabytków, 4 Kraków, 6: 1-8; Piechotka,
Bóżnice murowane, 48-53.
54
Grotte, “Deutsche, böhmische und polnische Synagogentypen,” 24-27; idem, “Die
Beeinflussung jüdischer östlicher Sakralkunst;” Krautheimer, Mittelalterliche
Synagogen, 102 ff.; Wischnitzer, “Mutual Influences;” idem, Architecture, 44-56;
Piechotka, Bóżnice murowane, 29-34.
55
Сергей Александрович Бершадский, Русско-еврейскiй архивъ. Документы и
материалы для исторiи евреев в Россiи, 3, Документы къ исторiи польскихъ и
литовскихъ евреевъ, 1364-1569 (St. Petersburg, 1903), 150-54 nos. 121-22.
 207

estimations on the date of the establishment of this synagogue vary from the 13th
through the early 16th century. Essenwein’s early dating of the synagogue to the 13th
century56 is obviously amiss because the town of Kazimierz was founded only in 1335.
Krautheimer reported the date given by Essenwein, but noted that a local tradition dates
the building of the Old Synagogue to the establishment of Cracow University in 1364.57
Łuszczkiewicz and Bąkowski dated the synagogue to the 14th century, although they
gave no explicit reasons.58 To attain a more exact date, Bałaban based himself on the
history of Jewish settlement in Kazimierz, assuming that the synagogue was built after
the year 1386 when the Jews of Kazimierz were first mentioned in documents, and
probably soon after 1389 when the disorders in Prague forced Jews to escape to
Cracow.59 Grotte developed Bałaban’s supposition that the Old Synagogue in Kazimierz
was built by Jewish immigrants from Prague in the late 14th century, arguing that the
synagogue in Kazimierz was based on the pattern of the Prague Altneuschul. 60
Wischnitzer accepted their methodology and the theory of the Bohemian origins of the
synagogue in Kazimierz, adding that the well-balanced construction of walls and the
slim columns of the Old Synagogue contrasts with the more massive supporting
structures of the Altneuschul and therefore must be dated to a later period. She noted
that not only Bohemian immigrants who came in 1389, but also those who arrived

———————————————————————————————————
56
August Ottomar von Essenwein, Die mittelalterlichen Kunstdenkmale der Stadt
Krakau (Leipzig, 1869), 136. Wischnitzer (“Mutual Influences,” 26) mistakenly reported
that Essenwein accepted a later date.
57
Krautheimer, Mittelalterlische Synagogen, 213.
58
Władysław Łuszczkiewicz, Zabytki sztuk pięknych Krakowa, 1, Pomniki
architektury od XI do XVIII wieku (Cracow, 1872), 59. Bąkowski supposed that the
Jews had settled in Kazimierz when the town was established in 1335 (Historya miasta
Kazimierza, 37, idem, Dzieje Krakowa, 202).
59
Majer Bałaban, Dzieje Żydów w Krakowie i na Kazimierzu, 1304-1868 (Cracow,
1912), 38; idem, Historja Żydów, 1: 72ff.; idem, Przewodnik, 48. Mahler also accepted
this date (Mahler, Przewodnik, 43). Bałaban based his statement about the Jewish
community in Kazimierz in 1386 on Kutrzeba’s publication of a document mentioning
two Jews (see note 14 above) as a testimony to the existence of a Jewish community in
Kazimierz (cf. also Majer Bałaban, Skizzen und Studien zur Geschichte der Juden in
Polen [Berlin, 1911], 90; idem, Zabytki Historyczne Żydów w Polsce [Warsaw, 1929],
60). This record obviously does not include all the Jewish residents in the town, but
nevertheless does not prove the existence of a community large and rich enough to build a
voluminous masonry building such as the Old Synagogue.
60
Grotte, “Deutsche, böhmische und polnische Synagogentypen,” 26. In the bibliography
(ibid., III-IV), Grotte records both Essenwein’s Die mittelalterichen Kunstdenkmäler
(1869) and Bałaban’s Skizzen und Studien (1911), but obviously based his dating on
Bałaban, although he did not explain this in the text.
 208

during the 15th century or even later from Bohemia could have imported the idea of the
two-nave synagogue, and thus dated the Old Synagogue to the late 14th or the early 15th
century.61 However this date is at odds with her mention that until 1494, the immigrants
settled in Cracow rather than in Kazimierz, and that the small community living in
Kazimierz in the 15th century could not have built so monumental a building until their
numbers significantly increased following the growing pressure on the Jews in Cracow,
and especially after they had to cease their trade in the town in 1485 and to leave it in
1494.62 This reinforces Ludwikowski’s assumption that the synagogue was built when
the Jewish population of Kazimierz suddenly grew in the late 15th century,63 rather than
lending substance to Wischnitzer’s own early dating of this great masonry building to
the period when the Jewish community of Kazimierz was not large and the center of
Jewish life was still in Cracow.
In contrast to Bałaban, Bersohn’s 1911 publication connects the two 1519 royal
decrees that first mention the Old Synagogue not to that in Kazimierz, but to the one in
Cracow.64 Świszczowski understood these decrees as testimony that the Jews continued
to use the synagogue in Cracow, which remained in their possession after 1469, and
suggested that the royal permission for building a synagogue granted in 1537 was
related to the establishment of the Old Synagogue in Kazimierz.65 Such a late date
controverts Ludwikowski’s report that the original masonry and the earliest fragments of

———————————————————————————————————
61
Wischnitzer, “Mutual Influences,” 35-39; idem, Architecture, 54-56. This date is also
accepted in Piechotka, Bóżnice murowane, 48.
62
Wischnitzer, “Mutual Influences,” 36.
63
Ludwikowski, Old Synagogue, 11. Duda believed that Jewish settlement in Kazimierz
grew significantly already in the second part of the 15th century and thus dates the Old
Synagogue to that period (Eugeniusz Duda, “Hebrajskie inskrypcje - cytatu ze Starego
Testamentu - w Starej synagodze i na zabytkach ze zbiorów Muzeum Historycznego m.
Krakowa,” Krzysztofory, 8 [Cracow, 1981; in fact after 1982]: 82-85; idem,
Krakowskie judaica, 72).
64
Mathias Bersohn, Dyplomatariusz dotyczący żydów w dawnej Polsce, na źródłach
archiwalnych osnuty (Warsaw, 1911), 29 no. 20, 31 no. 21a. The “Index of Places”
there counts the documents under the rubric “Cracow, synagogues” though a separate
rubric for Kazimierz appears as well (see ibid., XII, XIV). This point of view was shared
by the publishers, as the book was completed after Bersohn’s death.
65
Stefan Świszczowski, “Miasto żydowskie na Kazimierzu w świetle nowych badań,”
Biuletyn Krakowski, 2 (1960): 51-52; idem, Miasto Kazimierz pod Krakowem
(Cracow, 1981), 98. Ludwikowski uncritically accepted this concept (Old Synagogue, 10
no. 7). For a critique of Świszczowski’s methodology, see Eugeniusz Duda, “W obronie
prof. Majera Bałabana, Starej Synagogi na Kazimierzu w Krakowie i języka hebrajskiego,
Folks-Sztyme, 12(4568) (1982), 10: 10, 12; idem, “Hebrajskie inskrypcje,” 85.
 209

the Old Synagogue have nothing in common with those of the Polish Renaissance of the
16th century.66 At the same time, the documents from 1519 and from 1537 are indeed
equivocal and thus must be re-examined in their historical context.
In the late 15th century and the first decades of the 16th century, the Jewish
community of Kazimierz was split into two groups, the immigrants from Bohemia,
called “Czechs” or “Bohemians,” and the native “Polish” or “old” community.67
However, the “natives” also had more or less distant family relationships with Jews in
the West since immigrants from there had founded the Jewish settlement in Cracow, and
waves of Western immigration took place for centuries.68 Consequently, the first
generations of each wave maintained their own self-consciousness versus the “old”
community before blending into it. Thus the “old” party was led by members of the
Fishel family who emigrated from Nuremberg in the mid-15th century. In Cracow they
served as bankers to the Polish kings and aristocracy. Already in 1485, the two Fishel
brothers were seniores of the Jewish community.69 In 1494, the year the Jews were
exiled from Cracow, Moses Fishel (d. ca. 1504) served as a senior of the Jewish
community in Kazimierz.70 His son-in-law was Jacob Polak (1460/70- after 1522), a
prominent Talmud scholar in Poland,71 who came to Cracow some time before 1494,
and joined the leadership of the “Poles.”72 Asher Lemel, who was also Moses’s son-in-

———————————————————————————————————
66
Ludwikowski, Old Synagogue, 11.
67
See Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 97 ff. The conflict between the “Bohemians” and
“Poles” in Cracow and Kazimierz is discussed also in Weinryb, The Jews of Poland, 91-
92.
68
Weinryb noted, “the Polish Jew of the Middle Ages was either an immigrant or an
immigrant's son” (The Jews of Poland, 79).
69
On the Fishel family, see Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 69, 112-18; [Arthur
Cygielman], “Fishel,” EJ, 6: 1329-30; Weinryb, The Jews of Poland, 30, 49.
70
Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 543.
71
“Literature, Jewish,” EJ, 11: 333.
72
Polak was born in Bavaria, studied under Rabbi Jacob Margolioth (died between 1499
and 1512) in Nuremberg, and served as a rabbi in Prague. In 1503, King Alexander
officially appointed him as the rabbi of Lesser Poland (or maybe of the whole kingdom of
Poland, the point in unclear in the texts), but he probably had already served as a rabbi in
Kazimierz. In 1508 Polak issued a debatable halakhic verdict, and for this reason some
famous rabbis laid him under a ban. From this point on, his administrative status
deteriorated. He later became involved in a libel, and about 1522 was compelled to flee
from Poland (Majer Bałaban, “Jacob Polak, der Baal Chillukim in Krakau und seine
Zeit,” Monattsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft der Judentums 21[57] [1913]:
5, 9-73, 196-210; idem, Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 70, 76, 106-110, 116-18; [Schlomo
Tal], “Pollack, Jacob ben Joseph,” EJ, 13: 833-34).
 210

law, was the rabbi leading the “old” community of Kazimierz.73 The term “Bohemians”
was probably a collective name for Jews exiled from Prague as well as from the German
countries, Moravia and Silesia.74 Seemingly, they came to Kazimierz in a new wave of
immigrants between 1494 and 1509, and it was at the very end of the 15th century that
their representative Abraham Judaeus Bohemus (otherwise Abraham the Czech, died
1533) emigrated from Prague to Kazimierz.75
Relations between the “Bohemians” and the “Poles” were tense. In 1509, the
conflict grew into scuffles. King Sigismund I (1467-1548) had to intervene, and
imposed a tax on anyone who offered violence to a member of the opposite party.76 In
1519, relations between the two parties became strained again over arrangements for
elections for the post of rabbi “in the synagogue.” The “Bohemians”, a group of a higher
social and economical status, gained considerable power and demanded that Rabbi
Peretz, their new leader, be appointed as the only rabbi of the whole Jewish community,
and not Asher Lemel, leader of the “Poles.” Another party wanted to appoint a rabbi for
each of the two parts of the community.77 The conflict had again to be arbitrated by
Sigismund I. In the decree Judeorum Cracoviensium pro Doctoribus from May 25,
1519, the king stated that following “the traditional arrangement,” he nominated two
rabbis independent of each another.78 Although the text does not clearly identify the
sides as “Poles” or “Bohemians”, it notes that Peretz had held the position of sole rabbi
in the synagogue during the previous three years, and thus suggests that the
“Bohemians” tried to keep their absolute leadership in managing the affairs of the
synagogue. The “Poles” therefore appealed to an “old tradition” of appointing an
independent leader for each of the two groups in order to obtain an official position for

———————————————————————————————————
73
Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 101-102, 110, 112, 497.
74
New series of expulsions of the Jews from these countries began in 1499. On the waves
of the Jewish immigration to Poland from the late 15th century to the 1540s, see Bałaban,
Historja Żydów, 1: 97-98.
75
Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 101-102; “Abraham Judaeus Bohemus,” EJ, 11: 160-61.
76
Бершадский, Русско-еврейскiй архивъ, 3: 91 no. 64.
77
Quia dum tenetur dissensio inter totam communitatem judeorum Cracoviensium pro
eo, quia una pars eorum duntaxat doctorem, altera duos doctores in sinagoga habere
voluit (Бершадский, Русско-еврейскiй архивъ, 3: 151). Bałaban interpreted the text to
mean that both Peretz and Asher Lemel had a claim on the whole community (Historja
Żydów, 1: 110).
78
Quia intelleximus quod sinagoga eorum Cracoviensium antea duo flebant [fiebant?]
doctores (Бершадский, Русско-еврейскiй архивъ, 3:151). Bałaban estimated this
decision as a compromise settlement (Historja Żydów, 1: 111).
 211

their leader. The king decided to recognize the division of the Jews into two
communities and the equal jurisdiction of each leader within his community.79
In spite of the royal verdict, Peretz tried to continue his exclusive power, and the
opposition again asked the king to intervene. The Judæorum Cracoviensium pro
Synagoga from November 5, 1519 states that the group of Bohemian Jews tried to
remove the “old” community from the synagogue. Although in the official language of
that time the term “synagogue” sometimes merged the connotations a “Jewish prayer
house” and the “Jewish community,” in the decrees discussed here it clearly means the
building: turning to the king, the “Poles” asserted that they had built, repaired and
maintained the building of the synagogue already before the arrival of the
“Bohemians.”80 Sigismund I decided in favour of the “old community” and confirmed
the exclusive rights of the “Poles” to the synagogue.81
However, the decrees appeal specifically to the Judeorum Cracoviensium (“the
Jews of Cracow”) and discuss “a synagogue of Cracow” without mentioning Kazimierz
at all: the term sinagoga eorum Cracoviensium (“their synagogue of Cracow”) appears
in the decree pro Doctoribus, and the sinagoga antiqua (“old synagogue”) is found in
the verdict pro Synagoga. At that time, Cracow and Kazimierz were independent towns,
each of them had its own laws, government and town walls. Seemingly for this reason,
Bersohn and Świszczowski have related these documents to a synagogue in the town of
Cracow,82 despite the fact that there was no permanent Jewish residence in Cracow after
the expulsion of 1494.83
On the other hand, in Polish official documents on Jews from the first decades of
the 16th century, a different set of the distinctions was used: as a rule, if a document
discussed a person, it mentioned his actual residence, speaking, for example, of “a Jew

———————————————————————————————————
79
Бершадский, Русско-еврейскiй архивъ, 3: 150-51.
80
Quia dum orta fuit discordia inter Judaeos occasione eorum sinagoge. Ita videlicet,
quod pars Bohemorum doctorem Perecz voluit reicere antiquam communitatem de
eadem sinagoga, quae communitas est ex parte doctoris Ossar et quia communitas
antigua Judaeorum allegabat et asserabat, quod predictam sinagogam edificiis suis
erexit et restauravit, prout et usque ad adventum Bohemorum restaurabat (Ibid., 3: 152).
81
Ibid., 152-54.
82
See notes 64-65 above.
83
Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 62ff. In order to live intra muros civitatis Cracoviensis
after 1494, Jews had to receive a royal permit: e.g., in 1504, king Alexander allowed
Rachel Fishel and her successors to acquire a house in Cracow (Бершадский, Русско-
еврейскiй архивъ, 3: 46-47 no. 27).
 212

from Kazimierz”,84 but when the matter concerned the Jewish community of Kazimierz
as a whole, the definition “of Cracow” came into use.85 Although the Jews moved their
activity from Cracow to Kazimierz in 1485, they still were called “the Jews of Cracow,
otherwise the Jews who live in Kazimierz near Cracow.”86 Hence, we must understand
the Judeorum Cracoviensium as “the Jews of Cracow living in Kazimierz,” and read the
Sinagoga eorum Cracoviensium as the synagogue, which belonged to the Jews of the
former community of Cracow, but which was in fact situated in Kazimierz. This theory
is reinforced by the role played in this decree by Rachel Fishel, mother-in-law of Asher
Lemel, the leader of the “Poles,” who seems to have lobbied for his interests at the royal
court.87 She may have convinced the king as an eyewitness of the establishment of the
synagogue: between the mid-1480s and 1508, her husband Moses Fishel and their son-
in-law Rabbi Jacob Polak had held key positions in the communal leadership and could
have taken an active part in the foundation of the synagogue in Kazimierz in the reign of
Casimir IV (Kazimierz, 1447-92) or John Albrecht (Jan Olbracht, 1493-1501).
Moreover, Rachel had been a creditor to these kings and to their successor Alexander
(reigned 1502-1506).88 If the “Bohemians” arrived in the late 15th century or in the early
1500s, they would thus have found a masonry synagogue in Kazimierz which had been
built and administered by the “Poles.”

———————————————————————————————————
84
Note the following excerpts from Bershadsky’s publication: Isaac condominanti
Izaczek phisici judei nostri Casimiriam (1507, Sigismund I; Бершадский, Русско-
еврейскiй архивъ, 3: 81 no. 54); Moyses et Lewko de Casimiria (1511, Sigismund I;
ibid, 98 no. 72); Francisko Isaac genero Rachlin de Casimiria (1512, Sigismund I; ibid.,
102 no. 77); Iudeo Francisko de Casimiria (1512, Sigismund I; ibid., 106 no. 82).
85
Note the excerpts referring to the entire community: Consensus Reemptionis Centum
florenum Judeo Isaac super Judeis Cracoviensibus datus (1504, Alexander;
Бершадский, Русско-еврейскiй архивъ, 3: 47 no. 28); hebreos nostros cracovienses,
senioribus judeorum cracoviensium (1509, Sigismund I; ibid., 88-89 no. 61); Vadium
centum marcarum eat vallatum inter Iudeos Cracovienses, Bohemos scilicet et polonos
(1509; ibid., 91 no. 64); iudeis Cracoviensibus (1525, Sigismund I; ibid., 163 no. 130);
Doctoribus et Rabbis Judeorum tam Cracoviensium, quam in alijs civitatibus regni
nostri (1530, Sigismund I; ibid., 192 no. 146).
86
Judeis Cracoviensibus, seu in Casimiria apud Cracoviam habitantibus (Sigismund I,
1527; ibid., 171 no. 135). Note also judeis nihilominus cracoviensibus alias
casimiriensibus duntaxat exceptis, “the Jews except the Jews of Cracow, otherwise of
Kazimierz” (1512; ibid., 106 no. 82); communitatis judeorum predictorum
cracoviensium, “the Jewish community called [the Jewish community] of Cracow”
(Sigismund I, 1527, ibid., 180 no. 139).
87
In the royal decree of May 25, 1519, Asher Lemel is specifically identified by his
relation to Rachel: Osszar, Rachle generum (Ibid., 3: 151).
88
[Cygielman], “Fishel,” 1329.
 213

The definition antiqua does not date the building to a really early period, as any
earlier synagogue was usually called “old” if there were two or more synagogues in the
community.89 Bałaban’s statement that “both equal rabbis and both communities
functioned in the only synagogue (the old one) at that time”90 is not borne out by the
decree pro Synagoga that suggests that there was another prayer house, which belonged
to the “Bohemians”: under threats of penalties the king forbade the “Bohemians” to
enter the sinagoga antiqua of the “native” Jews, and warned the “Bohemians” against
enticing the “natives” to join their community.91 If the “Bohemians” were deprived of
entering the Old Synagogue without the permission of the “natives”, the immigrants had
to have had another place to worship. The fight over the “old synagogue” would thus
have been due to the fact that the prosperous, influential and increasing community of
the “Bohemians” refused to put up with a situation in which they assembled in a modest,
perhaps wooden structure, and not in the great masonry sinagoga antiqua of the
“Poles.” This monumental synagogue in the market place was the center of religious and
communal life of the Jewish town in Kazimierz, and their management of this place
would symbolize their ruling position in the whole community. Moreover, besides the
two larger communities, there were a few other groups of Jewish immigrants in
Kazimierz, who might have built wooden buildings or adapted private houses for public
worship in accordance with their rites. The royal decree of 1537 suggests that there were
a few such congregations in Kazimierz: to set the value of taxes, Sigismund I appointed
two or three persons of each synagogue (“duo vel tres viri graves et maturi ex
unaquaque sinagoga”) to estimate the personal taxes of the Jews in Kazimierz, 92 and
the constitution of the 1542 Piotrkow synod mentioned “new synagogues built even in
Cracow,” i.e., in Kazimierz near Cracow.93 It looks as though the Jews established their
smaller prayer houses without royal permission.
The 1537 royal decree also prescribes the allotting of an appropriate parcel of
land for a new – likely masonry – synagogue within the Jewish town of Kazimierz.94 As

———————————————————————————————————
89
Cf. the case of the Old and Old-New (Altneuschul) synagogues in Prague.
90
Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 111.
91
Бершадский, Русско-еврейскiй архивъ, 3: 152-54.
92
Ibid., 195-197 no. 148; Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 193.
93
See “Uchwały Synodu prowincyjonalnego Piotrkowskiego z r. 1542” (B. Ułanowski,
Materyjały do historyi ustawodawstwa synodalnego w Polsce w w. XVI [Cracow,
1895], 68[392]); Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 137, 143.
94
An abstract of the royal decree is contained in the Metryka Koronna (1537), fol. 205,
 214

in the case of the 1519 dispute, the ordinance was not effective because some Jews
hindered the erection of the new synagogue, and the king issued a second decree on the
same matter.95 Bałaban interpreted this as a recurrence of the conflict between the
“Bohemians” and the “Poles,” explaining that the leaders of the “Poles” saw the request
as an encroachment on their hegemony and therefore obstructed its realization.96 It
seems that the second royal decree from 1537 was also ignored, as the “New
Synagogue” was a private masonry house that Israel Isserl adapted as a synagogue in
1553, and than reconstructed ca. 1557.97 This was after the ideas and art of the Italian
Renaissance had made an impact on synagogues in Italy, and had caused the
development of Renaissance culture in Cracow. Israel Isserl’s synagogue was the first
project in Poland that went beyond the medieval conception of synagogue design.
Shortly thereafter, the Late Gothic Old Synagogue was also remodelled in accordance
with the new style of the Polish Renaissance. These two synagogues and several others
built during the second half of the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century have
survived. Along with the rich historical evidence on Jews at that period, these buildings
make Kazimierz near Cracow a fruitful ground for research on the Renaissance impact
on synagogue art in Poland.
The Beginnings of the Renaissance Art in Poland
In the second half of the 15th century, the new ideas of Italian Humanism reached
Poland, in part imported by hundreds of young Poles, who had been studying in Italy
since the 13th century, mainly in the universities of Bologna and Padua.98 Several

———————————————————————————————————
no. LIV (published in Bersohn, Dyplomatariusz, 41 no. 41). Concerning this point,
Bałaban (Historja Żydów, 1: 111-12), wrongly referred to another royal decree from July
15, 1537 (published in Бершадский, Русско-еврейскiй архивъ, 3: 195-97 no. 148).
95
“Metryka koronna” (August 30, 1537) fol. 244 no. LIV (referred in Bałaban, Historja
Żydów, 1: 112).
96
Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 111-12.
97
This building was called the “New Synagogue” until at least the second half of the 19th
century as is attested by the text engraved in 1800 or 1829 above the gate leading from
the market square into the courtyard of Isserl’s synagogue (ill. 354):
‫“( בית הכנסת חדש דרמ"א ז'צ'ל‬the new synagogue of the Remah, the memory of the righteous
be blessed”). This inscription was destroyed after 1939 and has been recently renovated.
During the 19th century, the definition “New Synagogue” for this building was used in
Jewish literature (e.g., ‫ עיר צדק‬,‫ צונץ‬3).
98
On the beginings of Renaissance culture in Poland, see Giovanni Maver, I Polacchi
all’università di Padova (Rome, 1933); Richard Casimir Lewański, Storia delle
relazioni fra la Polonia e Bologna (Bologna, 1951); Stanisław Łempicki, Renesans i
Humanizm w Polsce: materialy do studiów (Warsaw, 1952); Илья Николаевич
 215

prominent Italians working in Poland also disseminated humanistic ideas in Poland: for
instance, Filippo Buonaccorsi (Callimachus, 1437-96), an Italian humanist, writer and
historian, served as royal secretary to King Casimir IV from 1474 on, and was a tutor to
the king’s sons. While living in Cracow, Buonaccorsi kept up his ties with Italian
humanists: he was in communication with Lorenzo de’ Medici the Magnificent (1449-
92) and Marsilio Ficino (1433-99).99 Renaissance influence also came to Poland from
the court of King Corvinus at Buda.100 Corvinus had contacts both with Buonaccorsi,
who praised the king of Hungary as an ideal ruler,101 and with Ficino, who sent his
neo-Platonic treatises to Corvinus.102 The contacts between the court of Buda and that of
Cracow became even closer after Corvinus’ death in 1490, when King Vladislav II of
Bohemia, a son of Casimir IV, was also elected king of Hungary (1490-1516).
Vladislav’s brother Sigismund (Zygmunt, 1467-1548), the fifth son of Casimir IV, had
never been expected to be crowned King of Poland. Buonaccorsi had nurtured
Sigismund in accordance with the humanistic ideals of a nobleman educated in literature
and art. Sigismund deepened his Renaissance experience when in 1498 he went to visit
his brother Vladislav II at the royal court in Buda, and found there the style of the
Tuscan Renaissance, treasures of Renaissance art, and the huge library of Renaissance
tractates and illuminated manuscripts collected by Corvinus.103 In 1501, Sigismund

———————————————————————————————————
Голенищев-Кутузов, Итальянское Возрождение и славянские литературы XV-
XVI веков (Moscow, 1963); Stanisław Windakewicz, “Padwa. Studyum z dziejów
cywilizacyi polskiej,” Przegląd Polski, 25 (Cracow, 1981), 99: 258-98, 548-97;
Białostocki, The Art of the Renaissance, 1-12.
99
Buonaccorsi belonged to the circle of Pomponius Laetus in Rome. He settled in
Cracow in 1472 (T. Garbacik, Kallimach jako dyplomata i polityk [Cracow, 1948];
Józef Garbacik, “Kallimach, Filip Buonaccorsi,” Polski Słownik Biograficzny, 11
[Wroclaw, 1964-65]: 493-99).
100
Jan Dąbrowski, “Związki początków i rozwoju Odrodzenia w Krakowie z
Odrodzeniem na Węgrzech” in Jan Dąbrowski, ed., Krakowskie Odrodzenie, Referaty
z konferencji naukowej Towarzystwa Miłośników Historii i Zabytków Krakowa z
września 1953 (Cracow, 1954), 138-57; Białostocki, The Art of the Renaissance, 1-12;
Valery Rees, “Pre-Reformation Changes in Hungary at the End of the Fifteenth Century”
in Karin Maag, ed., The Reformation in Eastern and Central Europe (Aldershot,
1997), 19-35.
101
See Buonaccorsi’s poem Attila (1486-87) devoted to Corvinus (Голенищев-Кутузов,
Итальянское Возрождение, 147).
102
In 1477, Ficino sent Corvinus a biography on Plato, and in 1483 sent him his
Theologia Platonica (Lech Kalinowski, Speculum Artis. Treści dzieła sztuki
sredniowiecza i renesansu [Warsaw, 1989], 473).
103
Balogh, Die Anfänge der Renaissance in Ungarn, passim; Białostocki, The Art of
the Renaissance, 9.
 216

went back to Cracow where, after the death of his brother, King Alexander in 1506, he
was crowned Sigismund I, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania.
Renaissance art was imported into Poland at the initiative of Sigismund and his
immediate circle. Already as a prince, he gave vent to his partiality for the Renaissance
style he had seen in Hungary by intervening in several projects undertaken in the royal
residence at Wawel in Cracow.104 Like Vladislav II, king of Bohemia (since 1471) and
of Hungary (1490-1516), who in 1490 sent Ried to Buda in order to transplant the
Renaissance style of the Castle in Buda to Prague, a decade later Sigismund recruited
the Tuscan masters who worked at his brother’s court in Hungary in order to impart a
Renaissance character to the Late Gothic works in Wawel Castle that were in progress at
the time. One of those was the architect and sculptor Franciscus Italus or Florentinus
(Franciszek Florentczyk, died 1516). In contrast to Ried, who merged his Gothic style
with several Renaissance novelties, Franciscus Florentinus, whose surname explicitly
suggests his origin, had mastered the mature style of the Tuscan Renaissance in his
native land. In 1502-1505, Franciscus with his assistants produced a Renaissance
architectonic frame for the Late Gothic tomb of Sigismund’s brother, King John
Albrecht at Wawel Cathedral, originally sculpted in 1501 by Jörg Huber of Veit Stoss’
circle (ill. 355-56).105 Franciscus set the effigy of John Albrecht into a deep niche and
spanned it with a coffered arch supported by pilasters. The monumental expression and

———————————————————————————————————
104
On the beginnings of Renaissance Art in Poland and the so-called Wawel Renaissance,
see Stefanja Zahorska, “O pierwszych śladach Odrodzenia w Polsce,” Prace Komisji
Historji Sztuki, 2 (1922), 101-22; Karol Estreicher, “Polish Renaissance Architecture,”
Burlington Magazine, 86 (1945), 1: 4-9; Adam Bochnak, “Problematyka krakowskiego
Renesansu” and Józef Lepiarczyk, “Znacenie Krakowa dla sztuki Renesansu w Polsce” in
Jan Dąbrowski, Krakowskie odrodzenie, 106-24 and 125-37 respectively; Tadeusz
Dobrowolski, Sztuka Krakowa (Cracow, 1971), 211-73; Białostocki, The Art of the
Renaissance, 9-12; Stanisław Wiliński, “O renesansie wawelskim” in Renesans. Sztuka
i ideologia (Warsaw, 1976), 213-25; idem, “Renaissance Sculpture in Poland in its
European Context: Some Selected Problems” and Adam Miłobędzki, “Architecture under
the Last Jagiellons in its Political and Social Context” in Samuel Fiszman, ed., The
Polish Renaissance in Its European Context (Bloomington, 1988), 281-90 and 291-99
respectively.
105
Stefan Komornicki, “Franciszek Florentczyk i palac wawelski,” Przegląd Historii
Sztuki, 1 (1929), 57-69; Helena Kozakiewicz, Rzeźba XVI wieku w Polsce (Warsaw,
1984), 11-19. On the Albrecht tomb, see Feliks Kopera, “Grobowiec króla Jana Olbrachta
i pierwsze ślady stylu Odrodzenia na zamku wawelskim,” Przegląd Polski, 118 (1895):
1-36; Białostocki, The Art of the Renaissance, 10-11; Andrzej Fischinger, “Nagrobek
Jana Olbrachta i początki rzeżby renesansowej w Polsce” in Renesans. Sztuka i
ideologia, 451-66.
 217

the all’antica decoration framed the Gothic effigy of the king with Renaissance
splendour.106
The most important artistic project patronized by King Sigismund I was his own
memorial chapel at Wawel Cathedral. The death of his wife Barbara Zapolya in 1515
inspired Sigismund to begin to build his own mausoleum. In 1517, a model of the
chapel was presented to the king by Bartolommeo Berrecci (1480/1485-1537), a native
of Pontassieve near Florence, who had been trained in Sangallo’s circle in Rome and
had perhaps already worked at the Hungarian court.107 Contemporaries regarded
Berrecci as a learned man of various talents and skills who loved philosophy.108
Sigismund accepted the model, and wishing to have it executed at the highest possible
level, allowed Berrecci to employ mainly Italian sculptors and masons to assist him.109
In particular, the sculptors Giovanni (Jan) Cini of Siena (1490/1495- ca. 1565),
Bernardino Zanobi de Giannottis (Gianotis, died 1541) and Phillip of Fiesole (1475/85-
ca. 1540) took an active part in making the interior architectonic and ornamental
decorations that were produced from 1524 to 1529.110 All the works were done under
the general supervision of the royal treasurer Jan Boner, and after his death in 1524,
under his nephew and successor Seweryn Boner (1486-1549). The project took much
more time and means than was expected, and the Chapel was consecrated only in
1533.111

———————————————————————————————————
106
Białostocki, The Art of the Renaissance, 10-11, figs. 18-20; Helena Kozakiewicz,
Rzeźba XVI wieku w Polsce, 14-15, fig. 5-10.
107
Władysław Łuszczkiewicz, Bartolomeo Berecci (Cracow, 1866); Stanisław Łoza,
Architekci i budowniczowe w Polsce (Warsaw, 1954), 27-28; Thieme and Becker,
Algemeines Lexikon, 3: 379; Helena Kozakiewicz, “Z badań nad Bartłomiejem
Bereccim,” Biuletyn Historii Sztuki, 23 (1961), 4: 311-27; idem, Rzeźba XVI wieku w
Polsce, 23-79.
108
They called him a man “multis virtutibus, litteris et variis artibus mechanicis ornatus”
and “vir philosophiae amator” (Lech Kalinowski, “Treści artystyczne i ideowe Kaplicy
Zygmuntowskiej” in idem, Speculum Artis, 514 n. 224).
109
Stefan Komornicki, “Kaplica Zygmuntowska w katedrze na Wawelu: 1517-1533,”
Rocznik Krakowski, 23 (1931): 53; Białostocki, The Art of the Renaissance, 35.
110
Helena Kozakiewicz explained that most of the non-figurative decorations were
produced from 1525 to 1528 and suggested that these sculptors were employed for this
work. They worked at the Sigismund Chapel from 1524, when Berrecci expanded his
workshop, until 1529, when they left the workshop (Helena Kozakiewicz, Rzeźba XVI
wieku w Polsce, 29-37, 81).
111
Komornicki, “Kaplica Zygmuntowska w katedrze na Wawelu: 1517-1533,” 47-120;
Adam Bochnak, Kaplica Zygmuntowska ([Warsaw], 1953); Białostocki, The Art of the
Renaissance, 35-39.
 218

The building (ill. 357) replaced a Gothic chapel attached to the southern aisle of
the Cathedral, near the road leading to the Royal Palace. The new chapel has a square
plan (ill. 358a), and its arched walls support an octagonal drum with great round
windows (ills. 357, 358b). Resting on the drum, a segmented elliptical dome supports a
high round lantern with a crown-like superstructure (ill. 359a) surmounted by a spire
with a sphere on which a kneeling putto holds up a large crown topped by a cross (ill.
359b). In the interior (ills. 358b, 360-61), on the eastern side, a niche encloses an
altar,112 while the opposite niche contained the tomb of Sigismund (ills. 360-61).113 The
entrance arch is in the northern wall, and opposite it, in the southern niche, is the royal
throne (ill. 360), with the tomb of Queen Anna set before it. The marble paneling on
each wall creates the pattern of a triumphal-arch: the wall is divided into three sections
by four pilasters. The large arched niche in the center of each wall is flanked on either
side by an aedicula set under a tondo, and each wall is topped by a strongly articulated
cornice which makes the resemblance to a tripartite triumphal arch clear. Above the
cornice, a lunette is also divided into three, with its central semi-circular section
seeming to rise from the pilasters surrounding the niche below and echoing it. This
central arch is completely decorated with floral reliefs (ill. 362). A magnificent coffered
dome seemingly supported by the pilasters between the round windows of the drum,
leads to the lantern, whose shallow cupola – also supported by pilasters between
windows – completes the composition from inside (ill. 363).
Researchers on the semantic programme of the Chapel’s decoration and structure
generally agree that it expresses the ascension of the king’s soul to eternal life in heaven,
and that it sophisticatedly combines traditional Christian symbolism, Erasmus’
humanistic attitude to the Bible, a spirit of individualistic laudatio and classical
mythology, in the manner common to the neo-Platonists of the Florentine
Renaissance.114 The light streaming through the windows of the drum and the lantern

———————————————————————————————————
112
The silver altar was produced in Nuremberg and put in place in 1538 (Bochnak,
Kaplica Zygmuntowska, 9).
113
In 1571-75, Santi Gucci remodeled the original arched niche of the western wall into a
double niche, inserting the tomb of Sigismund Augustus into it (Bochnak, Kaplica
Zygmuntowska, 23; Białostocki, The Art of the Renaissance, 57-58).
114
Jerzy Kowalczyk, “Triumf i sława wojenna ‘all’antica’ w Polsce w XVI w.” in
Renesans. Sztuka i ideologia, 293-348;” Stanisław Wiliński, “Zygmunt Stary jako
Salomon. Z listów Erazma z Rotterdamu,” Biuletyn Historii Sztuki, 32 (1970), 1: 38-47;
Stanisław Mossakowski, “Tematyka mitologiczna w Kaplicy Zygmuntowskiej” in idem,
Sztuka jako świadectwo czasu. Studia z pogranicza historii sztuki i historii idei
 219

emphasizes the contrast between the lit dome and the windowless hall (ills. 360, 363).
This contrast is based on the combination of blind walls below upper windows that was
prescribed by Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72) as an ideal for a church, because it helps
the worshipers, who see nothing but the sky, to detach themselves from everyday life
outside.115 The artistic meaning of the Sigismund Chapel was obviously legible for
Berrecci’s assistants and for the Polish and Italian Humanists in the retinue of
Sigismund I and his second wife, the Italian princess Bona Sforza (1497-1557).116
Białostocki noted that the complex symbolism of the Sigismund chapel was not
fully understood in Polish art after Berrecci.117 Nevertheless, the architecture and
sculpture of the Sigismund Chapel not only served as a model for copying particular
motifs, but also deeply influenced the development of Polish art during the reigns of
Sigismund I and of his and Bona Sforza’s son Sigismund Augustus (ruled 1548-72).
Sigismund I’s project for a memorial chapel caused the flourishing of Italianized artistic
workshops in Cracow and led to a special emphasis on sepulchral sculpture and
architecture in the art of the Polish Renaissance. Having been accepted by the king and
his court as the humanistic expression of the Christian concept of the eternal soul, this
imagery also became popular for the sepulchral art of church dignitaries, nobles and the
upper stratum of burghers elsewhere in Poland. The architectonic composition, the style
of the sculptural decoration, the visual motifs, and aspects of the ideological meanings
of the Sigismund Chapel were imitated either separately or in various combinations.
From 1524 to about 1533, while working for the king, Berrecci himself used a
simplified version of Sigismund’s memorial for the chapel of the bishop of Cracow,
Piotr Tomicki, attaching it to the same southern aisle of Wawel Cathedral (seen on the

———————————————————————————————————
(Warsaw, 1980), 151-87; idem, “O niektórych przedstawieniach mitologicznych w
Kaplicy Zygmuntowskiej post scriptum,” Biuletyn Historii Sztuki, 46 (1984), 4: 333-44;
Lech Kalinowski, “Treści artystyczne i ideowe Kaplicy Zygmuntowskiej, ” “Motywy
antyczne w decoracji Kaplicy Zygmuntowskiej” and “Trytony, nereidy i walka bóstw
morskich w decoracji Kaplicy Zygmuntowskiej” in idem, Speculum Artis, 414-538, 539-
76 and 577-600 respectively; Białostocki, The Art of the Renaissance, 39-43.
115
Leon Battista Alberti, De re ædificatoria, 7 (1485), 12: r iii; Rudolf Wittkower, Art
and Architecture in Italy, 1600 to 1750 (London, 1958), 8; idem, Architectural
Principles In the Age of Humanism (London, 1967), 9. On the influence of Alberti’s
idea of a central-planned church on the ground plan and spatial composition of the
Sigismund Chapel, see Zbigniew Dmochowski, The Architecture of Poland (London,
1956), 183; Kalinowski, Speculum Artis, 468, 471.
116
Władysław Pociecha, Królowa Bona. Czasy i ludzie Odrodzenia, 1-4 (Poznan,
1949-1958); J. Ptasnik, Kultura włoska wieków średnich w Polsce (Warsaw, 1959).
 220

left of the Sigismund Chapel in ill. 364).118 The type of sepulchral monument varied
from a magnificent architectonic structure around the sculptural effigy of the deceased
in his own square chapel, as in the tomb of Tomicki (ill. 365), to a simple carved frame
on a wall in a church or monastery, as in the epitaph of Alexander Myszkowski (ill.
366).119
The work on the Chapel brought to Poland a group of Italian architects and
sculptors, whom Berrecci often employed when he worked on commissions outside the
Sigismund Chapel.120 These artists and the Polish assistants whom they trained during
their common work disseminated the style of the Italian Renaissance in Poland.
Concurrent to their activity in the Sigismund Chapel and after the structure and its
decoration had been completed, the artists engaged in this building also executed other
artistic projects for the royal court and were commissioned by private patrons for works
in Cracow and in many parts of Poland. Moreover, the growing request for Renaissance
monuments in Poland continued to attract sculptors and architects from Italy.
After 1529, when they completed their part in Berrecci’s projects, Bernardino de
Giannottis and Phillip of Fiesole established their own workshop. Giovanni Cini left for
Italy, but in 1531 he came back to Poland and joined his companions. Phillip died ca.
1540 and Bernardino de Giannottis in 1541, but Cini was active in Poland until 1562.121
Another workshop was founded in Cracow as early as 1531 by two of Berrecci’s other
assistants in the Sigismund Chapel, Antonio of Fiesole (1475/1485- ca. 1540) and
Wilhelm (Guglielmo?) of Florence. After Antonio’s death, his pupil and son-in-law
Gabriel Słoński continued his business.122 According to Helena Kozakiewicz, Jan
(Gian) Maria Mosca il Padovano (ca. 1493- ca. 1574), who worked as a sculptor in
Padua and Venice, and arrived in Cracow not later than 1532 to work for the royal court,
cooperated with this workshop in the 1530s.123 From 1541 or 1543 to about 1550,

———————————————————————————————————
117
Białostocki, The Art of the Renaissance, 43.
118
Helena and Stefan Kozakiewicz, Renesans w Polsce (Warsaw, 1976), 61-63.
119
Maximilian Cercha drew Myszkowski’s monument in 1864, and in 1904 it was
mentioned as lost (Feliks Kopera, Maksymilian and Stanisław Cercha, Pomniki
Krakowa, 2 [Cracow, 1904]: [s. p.]).
120
Helena Kozakiewicz, Rzeźba XVI wieku w Polsce, 47-65.
121
Stanisław Cercha and Feliks Kopera, Nadworny rzeżbiarz króla Zygmunta Starego
Giovanni Cini z Sieny i jego dzieła w Polsce (Cracow, [1917]), 22-24; Helena
Kozakiewicz, Rzeźba XVI wieku w Polsce, 81-85.
122
Ibid., 110
123
Ibid.
 221

Padovano worked with Cini, and in the 1550s, became one of the leading sculptors in
Poland.124 The architectonic and sculptural decorations of the Cracow workshops
became the model of Renaissance art for the Jews of Kazimierz when they began to
renovate their old synagogues and build new ones in the 1550s, and they even
commisioned works from them.
Renaissance Influences on the Jews of Kazimierz and on Rabbi
Moses Isserles
Like the Italian Humanists, adherents of the Renaissance in Poland were
interested in Hebrew, and it is likely that the Polish circle of Humanists around
Buonaccorsi conducted discussions with the learned Jews of Kazimierz.125 Such
contacts had little impact on Jewish ideas, but a deeper insight into Renaissance culture
was obtained by a small stratum of Jews who were closely acquainted with the life of
the court of the Polish kings.126 The Fishels were for generations court bankers of the
kings, and several of them served Sigismund I and his family. Rachel, wife of Moses
Fishel, served as a retainer to Sigismund’s mother Elizabeth, and supplied pearls and
jewelry for Sigismund when he was still a prince. When Rachel was widowed in 1504,
she was granted royal permission to buy a house in Cracow and to live there in spite of
the interdict against all the other Jews.127 Queen Bona Sforza introduced Rachel’s son
Ephraim-Franczek Fishel as a decent and honest person to Sigismund I, who in 1524
appointed him with his wife Chwała (Falka) as servus regis.128
Several other court Jews are mentioned in the documents. The king gave his
personal protection to his banker and tax collector Abraham Judaeus Bohemus, and

———————————————————————————————————
124
Feliks Kopera, “Jan Maria Padovano,” Prace Komisji Historii Sztuki, 7 (Cracow,
1938): 219-261; Zbigniew Hornung, “Czy Jan Maria zwany ‘Il Mosca’ albo Padovano był
klasycystą?” in Księga ku czci Wladysława Podlachy. Wrocławskie Towarzystwo
Naukowe. Rozprawy Komisji Historii Sztuki, 1 (Wroclaw, 1957): 119-28, 233-40;
Helena Kozakiewicz, Rzeźba XVI wieku w Polsce, 93-127.
125
Majer Bałaban, “Umysłowość i moralność żydostwa polskiego XVI w.” in Kultura
Staropolska (Cracow, 1932), 612.
126
For general aspects of Jewish contacts with Renaissance cultural patterns in Poland,
see Bałaban, “Umysłowość i moralność żydostwa polskiego XVI w.,” 606-39; Mark and
Kupfer, “Żydzi Polscy w Okresie Odrodzenia,” 3-55.
127
See Adam Bochnak, “Mecenat Zygmunta Starego w zakresie rzemiosła
artyctycznego,” Studia do dziejów Wawelu, 2 (Cracow, 1961), 133, 237-38 n. 31;
Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 101.
128
Ephraim and Chwala’s daughter-in-law Esther also served as a retainer to Bona
(Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 103-104, 113).
 222

called him judeus noster.129 Eliezer (Eleazar or Lazar) of Brandenburg also became a
court banker in Cracow. Such court Jews were in contact with high state dignitaries who
were adherents of humanistic views and Renaissance art. In 1525, Sigismund I freed
Eliezer from the jurisdiction of the Jewish community and subjected him to that of the
king and of Krzysztof Szydłowiecki, an active patron of Renaissance art (e.g., see his
prayer book, ill. 484).130 The range of business activities of the Jewish bankers and tax
collectors would also have put them in contact with Polish court bankers and with royal
administrators, such as Jan and Seweryn Boner, who managed the works at the
Sigismund Chapel.
Court Jews were also involved in the contacts of the Polish royal court with
Italy. About 1518 Eliezer of Brandenburg, and in 1553 Isaac Schwarz (Niger or Czarny),
son of Israel Schwarz, an elder of the Kazimierz Jewish community, visited Venice to
purchase precious stones for the queen.131 An Italian Jew, the physician Samuel bar
Meshulam, arrived in Poland in Bona Sforza’s retinue, and continued to serve her at the
royal court in Cracow. He acquired a house in Kazimierz and took an active part in the
life of the local community.132 As Padua University seems to have opened its doors to
Jews in the late 13th century, the wealthy Polish Jewish families of Kazimierz copied the
Polish nobles in sending their sons to study there, preferring the cosmopolitan
atmosphere of Renaissance Padua to Venice or Florence, and especially to Papal Rome.
In an alien country, the young Polish Jews found shelter in the Ashkenazi community of
Padua, headed from the 1460s to 1508 by Rabbi Judah Mintz, who denounced the
embroidered parokhet in Wertheim’s synagogue, and then by his son Rabbi Abraham
Mintz from 1508 to 1525, and until 1565 by Judah Mintz’s son-in-law, Rabbi Meir ben

———————————————————————————————————
129
See the decree from August 16, 1518 (Бершадский, Русско-еврейскiй архивъ, 3:
128-31 no. 104; Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 105).
130
On Lazar as Szydłowiecki’s subject, see the decree from November 14, 1525 in
Бершадский, Русско-еврейскiй архивъ, 3: 162-64 no. 130. Lazar left Brandenburg not
later than the persecutions and expulsion of the Jews that took place there in 1510
(Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 140; idem, Historja i literatura żydowska, 3 [Lvov,
1925]: 90-91; “Brandenburg,” EJ, 4: 1301-2). On Szydłowiecki as a patron of
Renaissance art, see Jerzy Kieszkowski, Kanclerz Krzysztof Szydłowiecki. Z dziejów
kultury i sztuki Zygmuntowskich czasów, 1-2 (Poznan, 1912).
131
Бершадский, Русско-еврейскiй архивъ, 3: 163; Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 140.
The Jews of Cracow were probably sent to buy jewels from the Jewish jewellers in
Venice.
132
Jan Warchał, “Żydzi polscy na uniwersytecie padewskim,” Kwartalnik poświęcony
badaniu przesłości Żydów w Polsce, 1 (1913), 3: 52; Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1:140-
 223

Isaac Katzenellenbogen (the Maharam of Padua, ca. 1482-1565).133 These Jewish

students as a rule were well-versed in Judaism, and some of them later became rabbis.
In Padua, they were influenced by the Humanistic atmosphere at the university, and by
echoes of the Renaissance in the life of the local Jews.
Doctor Rabbi Moses Fishel the Younger, son of Franczek Fishel, provides us
with an example of a Kazimierz Jew in whom humanistic education, secular science,
wealth, leadership over the Jewish community and the dignity of a rabbi were merged
together. Moses Fishel was born in Kazimierz, and studied under his uncle Rabbi Jacob
Polak. He graduated in medicine from the University of Padua, and then practiced as a
physician and served as a rabbi in his native community. Whereas occasional routine
contacts might have given Jews a very general knowledge of Christian burgher life,134
people such as the Fishels knew enough about the life of the Polish nobility to merge
into it, and the only barrier that divided them from it was their religion. When in ca.
1507 Stefan Fishel, a brother of Moses Fishel the Elder and a court Jew of John
Albrecht, Alexander and Sigismund I, converted to Christianity, Queen Elizabeth was
his godmother, and he was given large presents by the king, including noble status for
himself and his sons.135 In contrast, in spite of his contemporary humanistic education,
professional knowledge and contacts outside the Jewish community, Moses Fishel the
Younger was accused of agitating for Judaism among the Christians, and died in 1542
as a result of persecution.136

———————————————————————————————————
42.
133
Windakewicz, “Padwa,” 290 n. 3; Morpurgo, “L’Universita degli Ebrei in Padova nel
XVI secolo;” Warchal, “Żydzi polscy na Uniwersytecie padewskim,” 37-72; David B.
Ruderman, “The Impact of Science on Jewish Culture and Society in Venice (With
Special Reference to Jewish Graduates of Padua’s Medical School)” in Gaetano Gozzi,
ed., Gli Ebrei e Venezia. Secoli XIV-XVIII (Milano, 1982), 417-48; ‫ בתרבות‬,‫דניאל קארפי‬
‫הי"ז‬-‫ מחקרים בתולדות היהדות באיטליה במאות הי"ד‬.‫( הרנסאנס ובין חומות הגיטו‬Tel Aviv,
1989), 96-130.
134
The measures of the Catholic clergy against the routine relationship of Christians with
Jews testify that these contacts indeed took place (Mark and Kupfer, “Żydzi Polscy w
Okresie Odrodzenia,” 6-7).
135
Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 90-91; idem, “Umysłowość i moralność żydostwa
polskiego XVI w.,” 615. On Stefan, see also ‫ליטא‬-‫ המומרים בממלכת פולין‬,‫יעקב גולדברג‬
(Jerusalem, 1985), 13-22.
136
See Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 127-30; Paul Fox, The Reformation in Poland,
Some Social and Economic Aspects (Baltimore, 1924), 33; Mark and Kupfer, “Żydzi
Polscy w Okresie Odrodzenia,” 26; Janina Bieniarzówna, “Kraków pod wpływami
reformacji” in Janina Bieniarzówna and Jan M. Małecki, Dzieje Krakowa, 2, Kraków w
wiekach XVI-XVIII (Cracow, 1984): 125-27.
 224

Israel Isserl ben Joseph (died 1568) belonged to the same higher stratum of the
Jewish community.137 He and his family emigrated from Regensburg due to the
expulsion of the Jews in 1519. Probably already as Grand Duke of Lithuania (1544-69),
Sigismund August protected Isserl’s activities in Lithuania, giving him and his
companion the privilege to trade in Vilna in 1551, despite the fact that Vilna had been
proclaimed de non tolerandis Judaeis, and Jews were forbidden to live there.138 In due
course, Isserl’s fortune became sizeable, and he became one of the lay leaders of the
Kazimierz Jewish community.139 Isserl was noted for his deep knowledge in the
Talmud, having inherited his aptitude for both business and scholarship from his family.
Isserl’s maternal grandfather, Moses Auerbach, led the Jewish community in
Regensburg and was court Jew to the bishop. Israel Isserl’s father, Joseph, was
supposedly a descendant of Rabbi Israel Isserlein (died 1452), a prominent Talmudic
authority in Germany in the first half of the 15th century.140 The maternal grandfather of
Malka, Isserl’s wife, was probably Rabbi Jehiel Luria, who came from Alsace, served as
a rabbi and died in Brest-Litovsk in 1470. Through her, Isserl thus became an in-law of
Luria’s descendants, the Maharam of Padua and Rabbi Solomon ben Jehiel Luria (the
Maharshal of Lublin, ca. 1510-73).141
Isserl’s son Moses, renowned as the Remah (acronym of Rabbi Moses Isserles,
———————————————————————————————————
137
Wetstein, “Noch ein wort,” 9(45) (1901): 170; Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 142-46;
‫ עיר הצדק‬,‫ צונץ‬171 [161]; ‫ שם ושארית‬,‫צדק‬-‫( יוסף כהן‬Cracow, 1895), 64 (attached to
‫ אוצר הספרות‬,‫[ שאלתיאל אייזיק גראבער‬Cracow, 1896], 5 [the third series of the
pagination]); ‫ לוחות זכרון‬,‫ פריעדברג‬49 no. 29; "‫ "לתולדות ישראל וחכמיו בפולין‬,‫ וועטשטיין‬7:
148-53; ‫ עורך אשר זיו‬,‫" שו"ת הרמ"א‬,‫ "הקדמה‬,‫( אשר זיו‬Jerusalem, 1970), 10; ‫ אלף‬,‫מאיר וונדר‬
‫( מרגליות‬Jerusalem, 1993), 237-40 no. 338.
138
Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 143.
139
See Myer S. Lew, The Jews of Poland: Their Political, Economic, Social and
Communal Life in the Sixteenth Century as Reflected in the Works of Rabbi Moses
Isserls (London, 1944), 12 n. 4, 7; "‫ "הקדמה‬,‫ זיו‬10 n. 5; Weinryb dated the immigration of
the family to Cracow to the last decade of the 15th century (The Jews of Poland, 31), but
in 1497 Moses Auerbach was still in Regensburg (Louis Lewin, “Deutsche
Einwanderungen in polnische Ghetti,” Jahrbuch der jüdisch-literarischen
Gesellschaft, 4 [Frankfurt am Main, 1906]: 314; [L. Löwenstein], “Auerbach,” Jewish
Encyclopedia, 2 [London]: 298). Isserl’s second son Moses (the Remah) was born in
Cracow not later than 1530.
140
Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 142; also [Löwenstein], “Auerbach,” 298;
‫ אלף מרגליות‬,‫ וונדר‬239-40 nos. 339, 343.
141
In their correspondence, the Maharam, the Maharshal and Moses Isserles related to
each other as ‫“( שארי‬my kinsman”). Their relation to a common progenitor is discussed
along with a genealogical tree in ‫" הדרום‬,‫ "מהר"ם מפאדובה‬,‫ אשר זיו‬28 (1969): 160, 195. See
also Lewin, “Deutsche Einwanderungen,” 323.
 225

ca. 1530-72) was born into this family possessed of wealth, scholarship and influence
within both the Jewish and Christian communities. His first teachers were his father and
probably Malka’s brother Moses Heigerlich.142 Then he was sent to study under Rabbi
Shalom Shakhna (died 1558) at the Lublin yeshivah, the greatest scholastic center of
Polish Jewry at that period. In the yeshivah, Rabbi Shakhna, a pupil of Rabbi Polak and
a follower of the pilpul method of Talmud study,143 nurtured a large circle of notable
scholars.144 Moses Isserles was a gifted student, whose career was promoted by his
influential family. In 1547, when the Remah was still studying at the yeshiva, Sigismund
I invested him with the authority to perform marriage ceremonies, a function generally
conducted by a rabbi.145 Moses completed his studies in Lublin in 1549, and married
Shakhna’s only daughter Golda.146 The young couple settled in Kazimierz, the wealth of
the family allowing him to devote himself to the sciences, and to perform the duties of a
rabbi and a rabbinical judge without receiving a salary from the community.147 In due
course, he became renowned as an outstanding scholar and authoritative halakhic
codifier, and his reputation reached far beyond Poland.148 His commentaries on Joseph
Caro’s Shulkhan Arukh (“Prepared Table”) and on Jacob ben Asher’s Ha-Turim (“The
Columns”) became legal precepts for generations of Ashkenazi Jews.149
Being deeply rooted in Jewish thought, the Remah yet revealed a vivid interest
in his cultural milieu and he pioneered the adoption of the Renaissance Zeitgeist by
Polish Jewry, although he did not refer to the new ideas explicitly nor use common
Renaissance terminology. The Jewish-Christian controversy did not lead him to a total
negation of contemporary Polish culture: Remah’s resistance to the milieu was in the
religious sphere, whereas his general predisposition to Polish culture was positive,

———————————————————————————————————
142
[Shlomo Tal], “Isserles, Moses ben Israel,” EJ, 9: 1081.
143
A method of Talmudic study and exposition by the use of subtle legal, conceptual and
casuistic differentiation that is employed by the more sharp-witted among the scholars
([Moshe Brawer], “Pilpul,” EJ, 13: 524-27.
144
Bałaban, Die Judenstadt von Lublin (Berlin, 1919), 17-18. Like his teacher Rabbi
Polak, Rabbi Shakhna served as Chief Rabbi of Lesser Poland from 1541, sharing the
office with Dr. Moses Fiszel (Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, 1:
105; Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 114).
145
“Metryka koronna,” 72: 382, reproduced in Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 147 n. 25.
146
[Tal], “Isserles, Moses ben Israel,” 1081; ‫ משנתו העיונית של הרמ"א‬,‫ששון‬-‫יונה בן‬
(Jerusalem, 1984), 6 n. 25.
147
Lew, The Jews of Poland, 34-37.
148
Ibid., 39-57.
149
‫ תולדות הפוסקים‬,‫ חיים טשרנוביץ‬3 (New York, 1947): 73-36; ‫ המשפט העברי‬,‫מנחם אלון‬
 226

because “by the grace of God, the King and his nobles are favourably disposed toward
[the Jews].”150 As Remah spoke Polish, there was no language barrier between him and
the surrounding majority.151 Even if less fully integrated into court life than his father,
who enjoyed the personal protection of King Sigismund Augustus, the Remah would
have been aware of the main trends at the court from the 1550s on, where a second
generation of Polish kings and nobles cultivated the Humanistic values of the Italian
Renaissance.152 His predisposition to Renaissance culture would have been reinforced
by the Remah’s studying partner in the Lublin yeshivah, Moses, son of Queen Bona
Sforza’s physician Samuel bar Meshulam who arrived with her from Italy.153 The
Remah also knew Israel Schwarz, with whom he signed agreements on behalf of the
Jewish community of Kazimierz in 1553 and in 1554,154 and would thus have known of
the trip of Israel’s son, Isaac Schwarz, to buy gems for Bona Sforza in Venice in 1553.
The Remah also had more direct contacts with Italian Jewry. He had a
voluminous correspondence with his kinsmen, the Maharam of Padua, and with the
Maharam’s son, Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen, who lived in Padua in the 1550s.155
Remah’s acquaintances and students visited Italy: in 1551, Mordechai ben Abraham
Jaffe journeyed to Italy and stayed there for about ten years, and in 1557, David Darshan
ben Menassiah visited Ferrara.156 After coming back, they could have told the Remah
about their Italian impressions. The Remah also received contemporary Hebrew books
printed in Italy, which gave him both new ideas and access to the Renaissance patterns
that had already been accepted by Italian Jewry.157 His early book Mehir Yayin (“Price
of Wine”), which he had written in Poland in 1553, was first published in Cremona in

———————————————————————————————————
3 (Jerusalem, 1973) 1123-38.
150
‫ שו"ת הרמ"א‬no. 63, cited after the translation in Lew, The Jews of Poland, 83, see
also ibid., 80-84.
151
See ‫ שו"ת הרמ"א‬434-37 no. 101, 449-52 no. 109; Lew, The Jews of Poland, 27, 177.
152
See Bałaban, “Umysłowość i moralność żydostwa polskiego XVI w.,” 610, 618-24;
‫ משנתו העיונית של הרמ"א‬,‫ששון‬-‫ בן‬8.
153
Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 141-42.
154
Ibid., 1: 190, 543.
155
Lew, The Jews of Poland, 54-55; "‫ "מהר"ם מפאדובה‬,‫ זיו‬160-95; ‫ רבינו משה‬,‫אשר זיו‬
(‫( איסרלש )רמ"א‬New York, 1972), 25-40.
156
‫ רבינו משה איסרלש‬,‫ זיו‬45. Zunz’s assertion that the Remah himself visited Italy ( ,‫צונץ‬
‫ עיר הצדק‬4) has no documentary evidence (cf. Lew, The Jews of Poland, 21-22).
157
For example, the Remah permitted the reading of the secular books of Immanuel of
Rome ([Tal], “Isserles, Moses ben Israel,” 1084).
 227

1559.158
Even if neither the Remah nor his father visited Bohemia, they would also have
learned about the renowned Altneuschul from immigrants from Prague, one of whom
was Remah’s teacher and father-in-law, Shalom Shakhna, while many others lived in
Kazimierz. Isserl and the Remah would have learned about the Pinchas Synagogue in
Prague from its owners. In his responsa, the Remah mentioned Aaron Meshulam
Horowitz’s grandson, Pinchas ben Israel Horowitz (1535-1618).159 Pinchas married
Remah’s sister Miriam Beila. The precise date of the wedding is not known, but it
would have been before 1581, when, according to the first known record of Pinchas’
presence in Kazimierz, he already was a head of the community. It is, however, probable
that his contacts with the Isserls existed much earlier: Pinchas was in Poland already in
1556, studying under Shalom Shakhna in Lublin. Pinchas, whose name was given to the
Horowitz Synagogue in the late 16th century, or perhaps his father, Israel ben Aaron
Meshulam Horowitz (died in 1572), may have advised Isserl and the Remah when they
planned to build their own private synagogue in Kazimierz.160 The Remah also was
acquainted with the Hebrew books printed in Prague: Jewish immigrants from Bohemia
took their books with them to Poland, and Kazimierz was an important market for the
Jewish printers of Prague. The Remah even published his book Torat Ha-Olah, (“The
Law of the Burnt Offering”) in the press of Mordechai ben Gershom Ha-Cohen in
Prague in 1570.161
Since the Remah does not appear to have visited Italy, he could not have learned
either Humanism or Renaissance art at their source. Instead, his knowledge of
Humanistic ideas and the new art derived from their adaptation by both the Polish
nobility and by the Jews of Italy and Bohemia, who were visited by the Kazimierz Jews.
The distinct Aristotelianism of the Remah’s worldview, although basically derived from
the philosophy of the Rambam, shared the enthusiasm for Aristotle of the Italian

———————————————————————————————————
158
‫ הדפוס העברי בקרימונה‬,‫( מאיר בניהו‬Jerusalem, 1971), 209-10 no. 22.
159
‫ שו"ת הרמ"א‬nos. 49, 264.
160
Volavková, The Pinkas Synagogue, 33-42; Pařik and Štecha, Jewish Town of
Prague, 30-35. On Pinchas Horowitz, see [Yehoshua Horowitz], “Horowitz, Phinehas
ben Israel Ha-Levi,” EJ, 8: 998-99; ‫ תולדות משפחת הורוויץ‬,‫( היים דב פריעדברג‬Antwerp,
1928), 7; ‫ רבינו משה איסרלש‬,‫ זיו‬12 no. 8, 14, 112; ‫ "תולדלת היהודים בקראקא‬,‫אריה באומינגר‬
‫ עיר ועם בישראל‬,‫" ספר קראקא‬,‫תקע"ה‬-‫( בשנות ה' אלפים ס"ד‬Jerusalem, 1959), 20.
161
‫ דגלי המדפיסים‬,‫ יערי‬24 fig. 37, 137-38.
 228

humanists and their Polish followers.162 Ben-Sasson revealed parallels between the
Remah’s anthropology and the humanistic views of Nicolaus Cusanus (1401-64) and
Marsilio Ficino.163 Remah’s interest in history and astronomy parallels the rise of
Renaissance historiography and the progress of astronomy in Poland at this period.164
———————————————————————————————————
162
On the Remah’s Aristotelianism, see ‫ משנתו העיונית של הרמ"א‬,‫ששון‬-‫ בן‬passim. On the
interest of the Jews in Renaissance Italy in Aristotle and on Hebrew versions of Aristotle
current among them, see Shulvass, The Jews in the World of the Renaissance, 311-13;
and Cecil Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance, 35, 74. The Remah’s devotion to Aristotle
was not usual among the Ashkenazi rabbis of the period, and was sharply criticized by the
Maharshal of Lublin. However, it was not the reconciliation of Aristotle’s philosophy
with Judaism, nor the reading of pagan books and secular knowledge in connection with
Jewish studies that provoked the Maharshal. Rather it was specifically the impression that
the Remah’s disposition to Greek philosophy and to contemporary Renaissance
Aristotelianism that echoed in his writings had made on some young yeshivah students
(С. П. Рабинович, “Сл ды свободомыслiя в польском раввинизм в ка,” Еврейская
Старинa 4 [St. Petersburg, 1911]: 3-6, translated into Hebrew: ‫ עקבות של‬,‫ רבינוביץ‬.‫ פ‬.‫ש‬
‫דעות ברבנות של פולין במאה הט"ז‬-‫[ חופש‬Jerusalem, 1959]; Lew, The Jews of Poland, 25
and appendix “The prayer of Aristotle,” 182-87). In his reply, the Remah asserted that a
Jewish sage is permitted to refer to Greek philosophers and that the value of Aristotle's
philosophy was confirmed by the Rambam. He wrote, that he studied Aristotle after “the
book of the Teacher” (he obviously meant Rambam’s Moreh Nevukhim [“Guide (literally,
teacher) to the Perplexed”]) during periods of rest on Sabbaths and Festivals, while on
weekdays he studied the “Mishnah, Talmud, Posqim and their commentaries” ( ‫שו"ת‬
‫ הרמ"א‬32, 34 no. 7; Lew, The Jews of Poland, 24). A reference to Plato found in Mehir
Yayin (on Esth. 1:1) indicates the Remah’s even wider awareness of Greek philosophy,
probably also drawn from the Moreh Nevukhim. On the Aristotelian movement in Cracow
from the early 16th century, see P. Czartoryski, Wczesna rercepcja “Politiki”
Arystotelesa na Uniwersutecie Krakowskim (Wroclaw, 1963); The Cambridge
History of Poland, 1 (Cambridge, 1959): 161; ‫ משנתו העיונית של הרמ"א‬,‫ששון‬-‫ בן‬3. At the
same time, Polish Humanists revealed their interest in the works of Jewish scholars, and
some books of the Rambam were acquired for Cracow University (Mark and Kupfer,
“Żydzi Polscy w Okresie Odrodzenia,” 24; ‫ די ווירטשאַפטסגעשיכטע פון די יידן‬,‫יצחק שיפער‬
‫[ אין פוילן בעטן מיטלאַלטער‬Warsaw, 1926], 97-99).
163
‫ משנתו העיונית של הרמ"א‬,‫ששון‬-‫ בן‬110-13.
164
The Remah composed notes on the Sefer ha-Yuhasin (“Book of Genealogies”) written
in 1504 by Abraham ban Samuel Zacuto (1452- after 1515), and on the Theorica by
George von Peurbach (1423-61), originally written in Latin, and than translated into
Hebrew by Ephraim Mizrakhi in Turkey in the beginning of the 16th century (Lew, The
Jews of Poland, 74, 79). The Remah permitted the reading of books of history and
secular literature in general on the Sabbath, if written in Hebrew (see his glosses on
Caro’s ‫" שלחן ערוך‬,‫"אורך חיים‬, 307:15). He allowed the use of an astrolabe ("‫)"אצטרלוב‬
(‫" דרכי משה‬,‫ "אורך חיים‬,‫ הרמ"א‬307). On Remah's interest in astronomy, see ‫ משנתו‬,‫ששון‬-‫בן‬
‫ העיונית של הרמ"א‬3, 7. See also Mark and Kupfer, “Żydzi Polscy w Okresie Odrodzenia,”
32-37. On the rise of Renaissance historiography, see Aleksander Gieysztor, “Polish
Historians and the Need for History in 15th and 16th Century Poland” in Fiszman, The
Polish Renaissance in Its European Context, 3-16. On astronomy in Poland at this time
and its impact on thought and art, see Ewa Chojecka, “Krakowska grafika kalendarzowa i
 229

The wide range of Remah’s interests contrasts with other contemporary Jewish scholars
in Poland, and was clearly fostered by the Humanistic ideal of a universal “Renaissance
man.”
In art, the Remah confirmed Caro’s permission for the use of zoomorphic and
plant images produced in relief, and his prohibition on making an “image of a man
separately” in “protruding form,” or owning of such an image if an idolater made it.165
Following Caro, the Remah distinguished the provenance of an art piece, and somewhat
moderated the prohibition: he allowed having such images in one’s possession if
“somebody found them.”166 This remark would reflect a situation in which the Jews
might want to reuse some old decorations, even if a gentile artist made these objects in a
“protruding form.” He also agreed that his book on sacrifices, Torat Ha-Olah, printed
by Mordechai Ha-Cohen in Prague in 1570, be adorned with figurative and zoomorphic
depictions (ill. 367). The individual images of birds, naked monsters, masks of cherubs,
figures of lions and angels, and a cartouche with a modern man’s head that are depicted
on his frontispiece had already been used in earlier printed books in Prague and
Germany. They thus fell under the category of permissible flat images, even though they
had been made by non-Jews. As the Remah’s communication with Prague was close and
rapid,167 it is possible that their combination had initially been produced for the
Remah’s book,168 and that he confirmed or even suggested the choice of images. His
responsum, in which he proposed to his correspondent in Posen to buy a copy of Torat
Ha-Olah, testifies that he had seen the finished book in print.169 The Remah probably
also had some experience in the arts: it was said that he tried the professions of poet and

———————————————————————————————————
astronomiczna XVI wieku” in Michał Walicki, ed., Studia Renesansowe (Wroclaw,
1963), 319-473; Andrzej Wróblewski, “The Cracovian Background of Nicholas
Copernicus” in Fiszman, The Polish Renaissance in Its European Context, 147-60;
Jerzy Miziołek, “Oculus Mundi... oculus coeli. Prolegomena do studium o kaplicy
grobowej prymasa Uchanskiego” in Między Padwą a Zamościem. Studia z historii
sztuki i kultury nowożytnej ofiarowane profesorowi Jerzemu Kowalczykowi
(Warsaw, 1993), 73-85.
165
‫" שלחן ערוך‬,‫ "יורה דעה‬141: 4, 6.
166
See Remah’s glosses on ‫" שלחן ערוך‬,‫ "יורה דעה‬141: 4.
167
Note that the Torat ha-Olah was printed in 1570, that is soon after the manuscripts had
been completed in Kazimierz in the month of Kislev, 5330 (,‫ ספר תורת העולה‬,‫הרמ"א‬
[Prague, 1570], 1:1), that is between November 10 and December 8, 1569.
168
According to Ya’ari, the Torat ha-Olah was the first book printed by Mordechai Ha-
Cohen independently and for the first time embellished by his own printer’s mark ( ,‫יערי‬
‫ דגלי המדפיסים העבריים‬137).
169
‫ שו"ת הרמ"א‬no. 121; ‫ רבינו משה איסרלש‬,‫ זיו‬140.
 230

scribe.170 All these personal qualities and skills made him capable of taking an active
part in the establishment of the family synagogue by his father, and in its decoration in
accordance with contemporary artistic principles.
The Foundation of the Remah Synagogue
In 1552, the halcyon years after the Remah’s return from Lublin were suddenly
interrupted: both he and his father lost their wives and mothers. On June, 3, an epidemic
had taken Remah’s wife Golda; sixteen days later Isserl’s mother Gitl passed away; and
on December, 27, Isserl lost his wife, Remah’s mother Malka. The women were interred
near Isserl’s estates, in the cemetery to the west of the market square where the victims
of the 1551-52 plague were buried.171 Isserl’s feeling of heavy loss caused him to found
a new synagogue in memory of his late wife in June or July 1553. The synagogue was
placed on Isserl’s private land near the cemetery, just to the East of the tombs of Golda,
Gitl and Malka (ills. 345, 368). The establishment of the synagogue by Isserl and his
homage to Malka were commemorated in a stone dedicatory inscription that was placed
in the interior (ills. 369-71).172 Like the cemetery, the 1553 synagogue was established

———————————————————————————————————
170
‫ רבינו משה איסרלש‬,‫ זיו‬180.
171
See Wetstein, “Noch ein wort,” 167-71; ‫ לוחות זכרון‬,‫ פריעדברג‬47-49 nos. 28-26.
Bałaban (Historja Żydów, 1: 189) based his information about the 1551-52 epidemic on
records found in the Minute Book of the Burial Society of the Jewish community in
Kazimierz. The parcel of land had been acquired by the Jews in 1533, but the town
council would not permit the ground to be alloted for a cemetery (Franciszek Piekosiński,
Prawa, przywileje i statuta miasta Krakowa [Cracow, 1885], 1: 214-15; Bałaban,
Historja Żydów, 1: 186). Notwithstanding the legal status of the place, the community
used it to bury the plague victims in 1551-52. The inscription placed in 1801(?) above the
entrance into the burial ground (ill. 372), states that the cemetery was established in 1551:
‫“( בית עלמן הישנה ומקום קברת הגאונים נתיסדה מקופת הקהילה בשנת שי"א לפ"ק‬The old cemetery
and the burial place of the geonum was established from the funds of the community in
311 [1551 C. E.]”). The earliest tombs there date from 1552. On June 30, 1553, the town
council of Kazimierz officially permitted the use of this place for a cemetery, and the
Remah signed the agreement on behalf of the Jewish elders (Piekosiński, Prawa,
przywileje i statuta miasta Krakowa, 1: 154; Bersohn, Dyplomatariusz, 52-58 no. 62;
Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 190-91; Tadeusz Żychiewicz, “Krakow-Kazimierz. Bóżnica
R’emuh. Dokumentacja naukowa, Pracownia Architektoniczna P.K.Z.,” [typescript]
[Cracow, 1953], 33 n. 6; Katalog zabytków, 4 Kraków, 6: 9, 45-47).
172
The inscription on the memorial tablet is:
‫האיש ר ישראל בר‬
:‫יוסף ז"ל עוז התאזר‬
‫לכבוד הקב"ה ולזכר‬
‫אשתו מלכה בת ר‬
‫ תנ צבה בנה‬:‫אלעזר‬
[‫מנכסי עזבונה | ב'ה' ]בית הכנסת‬
 231

without any official permission: Isserl adopted one of his houses for synagogue use,
rather than building a new structure.173 Only on November 12, 1556, did Sigismund
Augustus allow Israeli Judaeo (that is Israel Isserl) to establish a synagogue in domo
eius (“in his house”) for both private and communal use.174

———————————————————————————————————
‫זה מקום בית אל‬
‫לפרט ולפרשת‬
‫שובה ה רבבות‬
‫אלפי ישראל‬
“The man Rabbi Israel, son of Joseph, be his memory blessed, ‘girded himself with
strength’ (Ps. 93:1): in honour of the Holy One blessed be He and in memory of his wife
Malka, daughter of Rabbi Eleazar ‘may her soul be bound up in the bond of life’ (a
paraphrase of I Sam. 25:29), he built from the property bequeathed by her the synagogue,
this place [is the] House of God, to the account and to the chapter ‘Return, O Lord, unto
the many thousands of Israel’ [Num. 10:36].” The first word of the last biblical verse
designates the date 313, i.e. 1553, and the whole citation is taken from the pericope
‫“( בהעלתך‬When you light [the lamps],” Num. 8:1-13:16), that in 1553 was recited in
synagogues on May 21-27. Isserl’s deed was also mentioned in the synagogue minute
book and on his tombstone. The record in the book, ,‫החסיד השלם אשר בנה בית מקדש מעט‬
‫ המנהיג והנשיא בישראל הר"ר ישראל )המכונה יסרל( ב"ר יוסף וזוגתו‬,‫הצדקת הנדיב לכל דבר שבקדושה‬
‫( דינה מלכה בת הר"ר אליעזר‬see "‫ "הקדמה‬,‫ זיו‬10), “The perfectly pious man who built the
lesser sanctuary, generous in any sacred matter, the leader and prince in Israel, Rabbi
Israel (called Isserl), son of Rabbi Joseph, and his righteous spouse Dina Malka, daughter
of Rabbi Eliezer.” The inscription on Isserl’s tombstone reads, ‫פה נקבר הר"ר ישראל יסרל‬
‫ וגודל זכותו יעמוד‬,‫ עשה עם ישראל משפט וצדקה‬,‫בנה בית הכנסת לאל נקרא יסרל לאזרש מקראקא‬
‫ עלינו לבקש רחמים לפני לא ינום ולא‬,‫ נתבקש למעלה שנת חשך י"ג אדר הראשון‬,‫למתפלל על קבורתו‬
,‫ תנצב"ה‬,‫( יישן‬see ‫ עיר הצדק‬,‫ צונץ‬171-72 [161-62]). “Here is buried Rabbi Israel Isserl
[who] built a synagogue for God, he was called Isserl Lazers from Cracow, he was just
and charitable to the People of Israel, and the magnitude of his credit will stand up for
those who pray on his burial [tomb]; he was invited aloft [in the] year of “darkness” [328,
that is 1568], 13 first Adar [February 12]; we must ask for mercy from the One Who
‘neither slumbers nor sleeps’ [Ps. 121:4], ‘may his soul be bound up in the bond of life’
[paraphrase of I Sam. 25:29].” Isserl’s donations in order to commemorate his late wife
are also recorded in the synagogue minute book, folio 20a, and in the memorial book of
the Hevrah Kadishah (burial society), folio 17a (see Wetstein, “Noch ein wort,” 166-67).
173
In his glosses on Joseph Caro’s Shulkhan Arukh, the Remah devoted special attention
to cases concerning synagogues founded by individuals in a dwelling house. Whereas
Caro forbade making a room into a synagogue if someone dwells above the prayer hall,
the Remah stated that in an urgent case, or if gentile laws forbid appropriate synagogue
building, it is allowed to pray in a house even if somebody dwells “above the synagogue”
in the upper floor above the prayer hall, especially if the dwellers “behave purely”
(Remah’s glosses to ‫" שלחן ערוך‬,‫ "אורך חיים‬150:2). Whereas Caro once again forbade a
“debasing use” such as “lying [sexual intercourse?] above the synagogue,” the Remah
differentiated a building originally erected as synagogue from a dwelling house that later
was turned into synagogue, and in the latter case, proposed a more liberal attitude ( ‫"אורך‬
‫" שלחן ערוך‬,‫ חיים‬151:12).
174
The document is partially reproduced in Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 145 n. 18.
Wischnitzer erroneously dated the permit to 1553 (Wischnitzer, Architecture, 107).
 232

Tadeusz Żychiewicz, who investigated the synagogue in 1953, discovered that

parts of Isserl’s house and of the synagogue of 1553 have survived on the eastern side of
the current Remah Synagogue. The main part of the existing building is an oblong
prayer hall with a somewhat irregular plan measuring 5.5 x 10.7 meters, with the
entrance through a vestibule at the western part of the northern wall (ill. 373). Two
slightly asymmetric niches flank the Holy Ark at the eastern wall, and three half-meter-
deep niches differing in width are sunken into the northern wall to the right of the
entrance (ills. 374-76). On each of the longitudinal walls, a wide fragment of a former
pilaster is attached in the center of the wall, and a narrower fragment of another former
pilaster is set half-way between the wide pilaster and each wall’s eastern corner (ills.
375-76). Żychiewicz justly supposed that these irregular pilasters derive from the prayer
hall of 1553. The wider pilasters are remnants of the removed western wall, so that the
old hall took up the eastern part of the current prayer hall and had a square plan
measuring about 5.5 x 5.5 meters (ill. 377).175 Thus the narrower pilasters were
originally situated in the center of the southern and the northern walls, supporting the
springing of two low-pitched vaults with small windows in the lunettes.176 Such a 30-
square-meter room could have served as a prayer hall for a minyan (the quorum of ten
men necessary for public prayer), for the women of the family, and perhaps for other
people, so that the total number of worshippers might have reached a few dozens.
Since such a private prayer hall might function without official permission, Isserl

———————————————————————————————————
175
This hypothesis was suggested by J. Jamroz and developed by Żychiewicz (“Bóżnica
R’emuh,” 8-11). Żychiewicz also pointed out the bricks mixed with cut stones at the base
of the synagogue,and stated that the measurements of the bricks are like those accepted in
the Gothic period, and would not have been used for building in the 1550s (ibid., 6-7, 34
n. 17). The lack of scientific excavations of the synagogue basement does not allow one
to draw conclusions on the question.
176
The irregular setting of the windows was inherited from the former house. Żychiewicz
proposed two other possible reconstructions of the spanning construction. In the first, the
hall was spanned by four groin vaults resting on a pillar in the center of the hall, so that
the construction was a smaller variant of medieval two-nave synagogues like the nearby
Old synagogue. In the second reconstruction, the hall was spanned with a wooden timber
ceiling. In this case, all the pilasters are remnants of the removed walls of the house and
had no constructive function (Żychiewicz, “Bóżnica R’emuh,” 9-10). However, the
massive walls that incline on the exterior from 1.5-meter thick at the base to 1-meter wide
in the upper part suggest there was some form of vaulting inside. The relatively small 5.5-
meter span leads one to suppose that a pillar in the center of the room was rather
superfluous, especially in contrast with the 6.2-meter span versus the 1.2-meter-thick
walls of the Old synagogue (ill. 353). The masonry on the eastern side of the latter
building was more massive because this section was at the same time part of the city wall.
 233

applied for the royal privilege only in 1556, after he decided to expand the hall in order
to turn it into a larger synagogue open to a greater part of the community. Most likely,
he began to commission masonry work, new furniture and decorations that all demanded
significant expense only after he had gained the official permit. When the synagogue
received the permit in November 1556, it was already late autumn, an inappropriate
season to reconstruct the external walls because water in plaster might freeze, so that
aside from small repairs, the mason- and brickwork would have begun in Spring 1577.
While Isserl was reconstructing his synagogue, a great fire broke out in
Kazimierz.177 The fire destroyed many buildings of the Jewish quarter and damaged a
synagogue, as testified by the royal decree from October 14, 1557:
Sigismund Augustus etc., [...]: That, consenting indulgently to the intercessions
made to us by certain of our Councilors on behalf of the Jews living in our town
Kazimierz, we were brought to agree and consent to them, and therefore we
admit and consent to the following series of letters. That they will be able –
according with the tradition and custom of the other synagogues – to construct
and rebuild in place of the synagogue situated among the buildings of the wall,
which was less damaged by fire, in a location that will be judged by them more
convenient, within the circle of their other town-wall houses, which they possess
in our town Kazimierz from ancient times; after their synagogue will be built
from the wall [e muro constructa], those same Jews of Kazimierz, present and
living there according to the circumstances, will hold and keep it for their use,
according to their Jewish rite, and possess it quietly and peacefully. We issue
this for the information of all and anyone to whom it may concern, ordering that
the above-mentioned Jews of Kazimierz take care to act – in rebuilding their
synagogue as well as in using it – according to the custom of the other

———————————————————————————————————
177
Bałaban (Historja Żydów, 1: 145) had definitely dated of the fire to the first day of
Iyar (April 1, 1557), referring in his note 19 to ‫ לתולדות ישראל וחכמיו בפולין‬,‫ וועטשטיין‬.‫ ה‬.‫פ‬
1909, 24. This reference is not reliable: the text Bałaban referred to tells of the
establishment of the Remah Synagogue by Israel Isserl, but does not speak of the fire and
its date (Bałaban used an offprint that is identical with the original article to which I refer
here ‫" האשכול‬,‫ "לתולדות ישראל וחכמיו בפולין‬,‫ וועטשטיין‬.‫ ה‬.‫ פ‬6 [Cracow, 1909], where p. 234
corresponds to p. 24 of the offprint). More recently, Małecki mentioned a fire of 1556
among those that occurred in Kazimierz in the 16th century, without any reference for this
statement (Jan Małecki, “Czasy renesansowego rozkwitu” in Bieniarzówna and Małecki,
Dzieje Krakowa, 2: 41). The date is also confused in the recent literature speaking of the
synagogues of Kazimierz: for example in Katalog zabytków, 4 Kraków, 6: XVII, the
year given for the fire is 1556, whereas in the same catalogue below (6: 1, 9), the fire is
dated to 1557 (cf. 1557 given in Krinsky, Synagogues of Europe, 201 vs. 1556-57 on her
p. 202). The royal decree cited below positively testifies that the fire occurred in the
Jewish quarter of Kazimierz before October 14, 1557. Perhaps, the pleading and lobbying
of the Jewish community to get this decree took several months. Since the permit given to
Isserl in November 1556 did not mention any fire, it is most likely thet the fire occurred
in the period between late 1556 to early autumn 1557.
 234

synagogues, and worry that it should be kept up by others [...].178

The grammar forms used for the word “synagoga” indicate a single building. In
contrast with the 1556 decree concerning Israel Isserl’s private synagogue that
mentioned the name of the patron and the situation of the synagogue in his house, the
document of 1557 is addressed to the whole Jewish community in Kazimierz and does
not specify which of the synagogues in Kazimierz was damaged by the fire. The
wording in locum synagogae ex aedificijs muri (“in place of the synagogue situated
among the buildings of the wall”) and synagogam eiusdem e muro constructa (“their
synagogue will be built from the wall”) may refer to the Old Synagogue, which is
attached to the murus, the town wall of Kazimierz (ills. 350, 353).179 The king also
allows the Jews to choose some “location that will be judged by them more convenient”
within the walls of the Jewish quarter, that is, to build another synagogue. The vague
topography in the text may be explained by the remote and indirect way of taking the
decision: at the time, Sigismund Augustus was in Vilna far from Cracow, and his
knowledge of the situation in Cracow and its vicinity was obviously based on the
explanations of his advisers, who, in turn, learned of it from the Jews lobbying at the
royal court in Vilna to rebuild their burnt synagogue in Kazimierz. It seems as if the
king not only had allowed the Jews to renovate the synagogue near the wall, but took
into consideration that it might be impossible or not convenient for some reason, and so

———————————————————————————————————
178
Sigismundus Augustus etc. Significamus etc. Quod intercessionibus certorum
Consiliariorum nostrorum pro iudaeis Civitatem nostram Casimiriensem commorantibus
nobis factis benigne annuentes, ipsis admittendos et consenciendos duximus,
admittimuseue [-admittimusque] et consentimus harum serie literarum. Ut in locum
synagogae ex aedificijs muri, quae incendio minus obnoxia esset, more et consuetudine
aliarum synagogarum, in loco qui commodior eis visus fuerit, inter septa aliarum
domorum, quas in Civitate nostra Cazymiriensi antiquitus possident, construere et
readificare possint, per ipsos iudeos Cazymirienses, praesentes et pro tempore
existentes, synagogam eiusdem postquam e muro constructa fuerit tenentur, habentur,
ritu eorundem iudeico [-iudaico] utifruendam quieteque et pacifice possidendam. Quod
ad universorum et singulorum quorum interest noticiam deducimus, mandantes et [-ut]
commemoratos iudaeos Cazimirienses tam in reaedificatione eiosdem [-eiusdem]
synagogae quam in usu illius more aliarum synagogarum censervent [-conservent],
conservarique ab aliis curent. In cuius rei fidem etc. Datum Vilnae feria quinta ante
festum Sanctae Helvigis proxima. Anno ut supra [1557], the Latin text is cited after
Bersohn, Dyplomatariusz, 64 no. 73; it is also partially reproduced in Bałaban, Historja
Żydów, 1: 145-46 n. 20. I thank Dr. Sandra Debenedetti Stow for her kind help in the
translation of the Latin text into English.
179
The identification of the synagogue mentioned in the 1557 decree with the Old
Synagogue is in accord with Leszek Ludwikowski (Old Synagogue, 15, n. 24).
 235

permitted, as an optional variant, that they build another synagogue if the reconstruction
of the original one was impossible for any reason.
It is possible that Israel Isserl, who had business in Vilna, was among the Jewish
lobbyists for the permit to reconstruct the damaged Old Synagogue, but the decree the
community gained does not concern Isserl’s synagogue situated between the market
place and the cemetery, and not on the town wall. Therefore, this text does not suggest,
far less mention, that his synagogue was of wood and that it had been burnt as many
scholars believed.180 If the fire reached Isserl’s masonry house, it probably destroyed
only the roofing that was usually made of wood, and damaged the ceiling and the upper
parts of the walls. The fire thus did not cause the rebuilding of the synagogue, but would
only have interrupted the realization of his project. Isserl did not need additional
permission to continue building, as he could use the privilege that already had been
granted him and not yet implemented fully. He did, however, try to protect the wooden
roofing of his house against such fires by setting a stone parapet rising above the
inclined surface of the wall on the exterior (ill. 376a). Buttresses were added on the
exterior of the eastern wall to reinforce the walls which would bear the new vaulting (ill.
378). The extant barrel vault, the large round lunette windows set under the vault on the
east and west walls, the large windows set high on the eastern part of the longitudinal
walls (ills. 375-76, 379) and the annexes (ill. 368) were probably added by Antony
Pluszyński in 1829 or even later, and thus may not be accepted as an innovative
Renaissance feature of Isserl’s 1557 reconstruction of his synagogue.181
After the earlier prayer hall was extended westward, it turned into a longitudinal
hall with an entrance from the vestibule at the western side of the northern wall (ill.
373). Such a composition follows the tradition of medieval synagogue building in

———————————————————————————————————
180
Bałaban (Historja Żydów, 1: 145) used this decree to assert that Isserl’s 1553
synagogue was of wood, and after the 1557 fire it was rebuilt in masonry. The authors of
Katalog zabytków, 4 Kraków, 6: 9, and Bogusław Krasnowolski (Ulice i place
Krakowskiego Kazimierza. Z dziejów chreścijan i Żydow w Polsce (Cracow, 1992),
152), uncritically accepted Bałaban’s conslusions. Basing themselves on Bałaban
(Historja Żydów, 1: 143, 145, 411), other believed that Isserl’s 1553 synagogue was of
wood (‫" ערים ואמהות בישראל‬,‫ "קראקא‬,‫ צבי קארל‬2 [Jerusalem, 1948]: 289; ‫ "תולדלת‬,‫באומינגר‬
"‫ היהודים בקראקא‬16; Wischnitzer, Architecture, 107, 127; Krinsky, Synagogues of
Europe, 202).
181
On the 1829 restoration, see Żychiewicz, “Bóżnica R’emuh,” 13-14; Katalog
zabytków, 4 Kraków, 6: 9. Believing that the barrel vault was built in the 1550s,
Wischnitzer misinterpreted it as “the chief Renaissance feature” of the synagogue
(“Mutual Influences,” 45).
 236

Germany, Bohemia and Poland, and the extension of an existing synagogue westward is
also known from the early 13th-century synagogue of Regensburg (ill. 31).182 Isserl
might have learnt of these traditions from members of the Horowitz family, and may
have followed the example of Aaron Meshulam Horowitz, who in 1535 extended his
private synagogue in Prague westward in order to turn it into a larger synagogue for a
wider congregation (ill. 310). No traces around the door leading from the vestibule to
Isserl’s synagogue nor any surviving documents reveal whether there was an entrance
portal as in many medieval Ashkenazi synagogues. Three built-in structures, mainly of
yellowish brown sandstone from the Pińczów mines, were installed in the prayer hall: a
Holy Ark at the center of the eastern wall (ill. 380); an alms box built into the wall near
the eastern doorpost (ills. 382-83), and the dedication tablet on the pilaster in the center
of the southern wall (ills. 369-71). Although the style of stone carvings in the interior of
Isserl’s renovated synagogue is Renaissance, the arrangement of the prayer hall is still
medieval: in front of the Ark, there is forestructure framed on either side by a parapet
(ill. 381).183 It consists of a staircase situated at the left, and a cantor’s pulpit at the right.
The raised rectangular bimah’s platform stood in the center of the hall, surrounded by an
enclosure (ill. 373a, 374, 384) that had entrances from the north and south. The central
position of the bimah in the prayer hall was endorsed by the Remah in his glosses on
Caro’s Shulkhan Arukh,184 and the bimah’s rectangular plan was traditional to medieval
Ashkenazi synagogues. The steps that lead to the center of the bimah’s northern and the
southern side rather than to the bimah’s corners as in Worms, Regensburg and Prague
(ills. 18, 32, 188, 304-305) stress the central position of the platform.
The implantation of a new style into the traditional planning also resembles
Aaron Meshulam’s synagogue in Prague. As we saw, he extended and redecorated his
synagogue in order to allow his party in the Jewish community to have their own place
for worship and to stress his claim on the leadership in the community. The historical

———————————————————————————————————
182
The door in a synagogue’s lateral side controverts the rule of Joseph Caro to “open the
entrance to the synagogue only on the side opposite to the direction of prayer,” i.e., in the
western wall, opposite the Ark (‫" שלחן ערוך‬,‫ "אורך חיים‬150:5).
183
The original adornment of the forestructure has not survived: the ornamental frieze
that is seen in the photograph taken before 1933 (ill. 381), had been covered by panels in
the 1933 reconstruction (ill. 384). It was destroyed after 1939 and has not been
reconstructed (ill. 385).
184
‫" שלחן ערוך‬,‫ "אורך חיים‬150:5.
 237

evidence from Kazimierz and the epitaphs on Israel Isserl185 suggest that he, unlike
Aaron Meshulam, was an unpresumptuous and benevolent person who offered his
synagogue to the community. In his halakhic decisions, the Remah stated that the
sovereignty of the patron of a private synagogue is limited as this is a place for public
worship that must serve the whole community. Although he remarked that the donor of
a private synagogue can beforehand reserve for himself the right to veto selling the
building, or prevent an undesirable person from entering the synagogue, he affirmed that
a synagogue built by an individual is considered to be communal property.186 It seems
that he reflected here the contemporary realities of Jewish life in Poland, and
particularly Israel Isserl’s donation of the synagogue for communal use in Kazimierz.
Isserl, a refugee from Regensburg, would have joined the Bohemian emigrants
rather than the native “Polish” part of the Kazimierz Jewish community. It is possible
that by enlarging his family synagogue, Isserl aimed to resolve the problem of the
“Bohemian” congregation that since 1519 had been deprived of their rights in the Old
Synagogue, and, because of the opposition of the “Poles,” had not realized the two 1537
royal ordinances that allowed the Jews to allot a parcel of land to build a new synagogue
in Kazimierz. The tension between the “Poles” and “Bohemians” might have continued.
Thus in the 1557 royal permission to rebuild the Old Synagogue after the fire, the
demand to possess it quieteque et pacifice (“quietly and peacefully”)187 perhaps echoed
the old quarrels. After Isserl allowed a greater group of the “Bohemians” to pray in his
family synagogue – an impressive masonry building a few hundreds meters from the
Old Synagogue – free from the dictates of the “Poles,” the conflict may have been
somewhat resolved. To demonstrate the union of the new synagogue with the traditions
of synagogue art in the local community, Isserl acquired the remnants of a synagogue in
Cracow that had been stored for more than a half of century in a genizah in Kazimierz,
and built the old pilasters into his new Ark.
In contrast to the Old Synagogue that has existed in Kazimierz since the late 15th
century, Isserl’s synagogue was called the “New Synagogue.”188 It was only later that it
began to be called the “Remah Synagogue” after Isserl’s renowned son.189 The

———————————————————————————————————
185
See note 172 above.
186
See the Remah’s glosses on ‫" שלחן ערוך‬,‫ "אורך חיים‬153:7, 16.
187
See note 178 above.
188
See note 97 above.
189
The authority of Remah’s halakhic decisions for generations of Ashkenazi Jews and
 238

dedicatory inscription and surviving archival records definitely state that Israel Isserl
financed the building, using the property bequeathed by his wife Malka, and that, as we
will see below, he commissioned a mason to do work in the synagogue. The Remah
could not have participated in financing the synagogue as he himself had no income: it
was his father’s wealth that allowed him to serve as a communal rabbi without salary, to
manage his yeshivah that was housed in their synagogue and, probably, to support the
yeshivah students.190 However, the Remah’s personal role in founding the synagogue in
1553 and its reconstruction in 1557-58, which is usually not discussed, could have been
significant. Israel Isserl, despite his erudition in the Talmud, was involved in business
rather than in learning, and for advice in the adaptation of his house into a synagogue, he
most probably turned to his learned son, who in 1553 was already a practicing rabbi and
a promising scholar. Along with the decisive voice of Israel Isserl, who initiated and
financed the synagogue, the Remah would have undertaken its creative planning and

———————————————————————————————————
the later custom of pilgrimage and prayer at the grave of a righteous man were apparently
the reasons for this name. In due course, several objects were inserted into the synagogue
and cemetery to commemorate his name. In 1899, Tomkowicz recorded an inscription,
now absent, at the courtyard gate: ‫שער חצר הפנימי מבה"כ ]מבית הסנסת[ הגאון הרמ"א זצ"ל נתיסד‬
'‫מקופת הצדקה דח"ק ג"ח ש"א ]דחברא קדישא גמילת חסדים של אמת[ לפרט שמחתי באומ'רי'ם' ב'י'ת' ה‬
,'‫“ נ'לך‬The gate of the inner courtyard from the synagogue of the gaon Remah, the
memory of the righteous be blessed, was established from the alms of the Holy Society
‘Sincere Charity’ [burial society] for the lesser counting ‘I was glad when they said unto
me, let us go into the house of the Lord’ [Ps. 122:1].” The marked characters give the
total 557, that is 1817 (Stanisław Tomkowicz, Napisy domów krakowskich [Cracow,
1899], 45). The grave of the Remah was probably a place of Jewish pilgrimage already in
the second half of the 19th century. A new epitaph enclosed within a portal-shaped frame
was engraved on the back of his 1572 tombstone, and the stone was turned around so that
the original relief became the obverse. In 1861 the Holy Ark was renovated, and about
that time, the “Eternal Light” was attached to the left pilaster of the Holy Ark (see ill.
386), and inscribed with a memorial text: ‫ "עילוי נשמת"[ רמ"א ז"ל‬/ "‫נר תמיד ע"נ ]"על נשמת‬
(“the Eternal Light for the soul [or “for the exaltation of the soul”] of the Remah, his
memory be blessed”). To the right of the Holy Ark in the synagogue, there is a tablet
inscribed, ‫“( מקובל אצלנו אשר על המקום הזה עמד הרמ"א ז'צ'ל להתפלל ולשפוך שיחו לפני הקב"ה‬It is
accepted by us that the Remah, his righteous memory be blessed, stood at this place to
pray and to pour out his heart before the Holy One blessed be He”). See Mahler,
Przewodnik, 27-30; Duda, Krakowskie judaica, 79-84, 92-93 no. 199; Katalog
zabytków, 4 Kraków, 6: 9-13, 58, figs. 36, 37, 96, 115, 151, 152. At the bottom of the
alms box at the entrance, Drożdziewicz read a memorial inscription, ‫צדקה עבור נשמת רמא‬
‫“ ז~צ"ל‬alms for the soul of Remah, will his righteous memory be blessed” with an added
accent between the ‫ ז‬and the ‫( צ‬Jan Droździewicz, O napisie Hebrejskim w bóżnicy
kazimirskiéj Starą zwanéj [Cracow, 1865] 17). Bałaban testified that in 1935 this text
was unreadable (Bałaban, Przewodnik, 72).
190
Lew, The Jews of Poland, 28-29, 34-37.
 239

decoration.
The Remah deeply esteemed his father for founding the synagogue, and
introduced himself in his principal philosophic work, Torat Ha-Olah, to the reader as
the son of one who built “a lesser Temple, a splendid building, a house of God.”191 He
and Israel Isserl were exposed to key-pieces of the Polish Renaissance in Cracow,
especially as a number of the wall-tombstones were set on the exterior of churches, and
thus could be seen without entering them.192 Visiting the Royal Palace in Wawel, Isserl,
and perhaps his son, passed near the Sigismund Chapel. The persons from the royal
court who were in contact with them and the sculptor who produced the Italianized
reliefs for their synagogue may have discussed with them some popular symbolic
aspects of the non-figurative images of the Polish Renaissance. In his writings, the
Remah demonstrated an open-minded attitude to artistic expression, using allegories193
and applying a symbolic interpretation to architectonic structures and objects: thus,
according to him, the Temple and its implements symbolically reflect the reality and the
revelation of God.194 His reported practice as a scribe stemmed from his belief in the
cabalistic theory that the world was created by means of the Hebrew alphabet, and he
discussed the point and the line as the essential elements of Hebrew letters and
consequently of the entire Universe.195 With his scholarly erudition, inventive mind and
large ken, he could have imparted a deep symbolic content to the synagogue project.
Since Isserl had dedicated the synagogue to the memory of his wife, for the
Remah the synagogue was a memorial for his mother, who was buried behind this
building near his own young wife and his grandmother. The impact of the death of all of
them in 1552 influenced his creative work, and reflections of these grievous experiences

———————————————————————————————————
191
The Remah wrote: ‫ אשר נדבה רוחו לבנות מקדש‬,‫אני משה בן לא”א ]לאדוני אבי[ הפרנס הנדיב‬
‫מעט בניין מפואר בית אלהים אשר שם נהלך ברגש ישראל שלי"ט ]שיחיה לאורך ימים טובים[ הנקרא משה‬
‫“ איסרליש מקראקא‬I [am] Moses, the son of the my father and lord - the generous warden
whose soul prompted him to build ‘a lesser Temple’ [Ezek. 11:16], a splendid building,
‘the house of God’ that there we ‘will walk with emotion’ [Ps. 55:15] – Israel, may he
live on for many good days, named Moses Isserles of Cracow.”
192
Normally, Jews did not enter sanctuaries of other cults, but occasionally such visits
could occur: for example, Mark and Kupfer believed that in the early 15th century, Yom
Tov Lipman of Mühlhausen preached in the Catholic churches of Cracow (“Żydzi Polscy
w Okresie Odrodzenia,” 3-55).
193
For example, he used a tree with its roots, trunk and branches as an allegory of a man
with his predecessors and successors (‫ תורת העולה‬,‫ הרמ"א‬3: sign 63).
194
‫ רבינו משה איסרלש‬,‫ זיו‬233-34; ‫ משנתו העיונית של הרמ"א‬,‫ששון‬-‫ בן‬27-28.
195
Ibid., 27-28, 74-76.
 240

can be discerned in the subject of his first book Mehir Yayin,196 which he finished
writing in March 1556 at Szydłów, where he had gone to escape the next wave of the
epidemic in Cracow.197 In this book, the Remah exegetically interpreted the biblical
story of Esther as an allegory of human life that is full of troubles and sufferings from
birth to death. He stated that writing a commentary on the Scroll of Esther, the text
recited on Purim, was a sort of substitute for the customary joy of Purim, which could
not be attained under the circumstances. The writer’s allusions were obviously wider
than those proclaimed. He chose a biblical book in which the hero is a woman, and
spoke about the duality of man who is composed of male and female elements
representing form and matter respectively.198 His meditation on the indispensable
female component of the human being could be a reaction, expressed in philosophic
terms, to the sudden loss of three generations of beloved women in his family. The
memories of the pestilence that took their lives must have been reactivated by his own
flight from the next epidemic.199 The poem concluding the book explains that he sent
the composition to his father as a Purim gift.200 The Remah’s dedication of the book to
his father stresses the memorial sentiment common to both of them. In general, the
interpretation of a human life as a painful road leading to death sounds like an echo of
the concept of the memento mori popular in the Late Renaissance.
With the same interest in Renaissance ideas, the Remah could have associated
the foundation of the synagogue near the graves of his kin with the Renaissance mode of
the memorial sanctuary. This is especially so, as the Renaissance was adopted in Poland
first and foremost as an art of memorial chapels and relief tombstones for the royal
family and nobility, erected in churches and monasteries, and the idea of the Sigismund
Chapel, the first Renaissance ensemble in Poland, was motivated by the death of
Sigismund’s wife. Although the construction of the 1553 prayer hall in Isserl’s house as
an almost cubic space with upper lighting (ill. 377) did not demonstrate Renaissance

———————————————————————————————————
196
On this book, see Menachem G. Glenn, “‘Mehir Yayin’ (Rabbi Moses Isserles’
Philosophical Allegory on the Book of Esther),” The Jewish Forum, 31 (March, 1948):
48; Lew, The Jews of Poland, 34-37, 58-60; ‫ רבינו משה איסרלש‬,‫ זיו‬136-39; ‫ משנתו‬,‫ששון‬-‫בן‬
‫ העיונית של הרמ"א‬12.
197
Purim 5316 fell on February 25-26, 1556.
198
See the foreword and the commentary on Esth. 1:1 in ‫ מחיר יין‬,‫הרמ"א‬.
199
The feeling of loneliness flowing from the “Introduction” makes one assume that the
Remah had not yet married his second wife, so that his sorrow had not been softened by a
new alliance.
200
Cf. Lew, The Jews of Poland, 58-60, and esp. 59 n. 5
 241

architectural innovations in the masonry and vaulting, and the windows set high on the
wall were characteristic of medieval European synagogues, the volumetric composition
recalls the Sigismund Chapel that is set on a square plan and illuminated with natural
light from above (ills. 360, 363). On the other hand, the connotations of the prayer
house established by Isserl in 1553 as a private memorial retained all the usual meanings
of the synagogue, and this was stressed by the extension of the building in 1557. This is
seen as well by the denotation of the synagogue on the memorial tablet as ‫מקום בית אל‬
(literally, “a place of the house of God”),201 since ‫“( בית אל‬house of God”) is a biblical
definition for the Temple.202 This meaning is reinforced by the Remah’s calling the
synagogue founded by Isserl both the “lesser Temple” and “the house of God.”203 After
the synagogue was extended, the patrons used Renaissance style stone carvings to
express Jewish concepts going beyond those of a private memorial prayer house.
A contract from 1558, discovered by Krasnowolski, states that Israel the Jew
(i.e., Israel Isserl) commissioned Stanisław Baranek (or Baran) to build the
synagogue.204 The text suggests that the construction already existed in that year, but
that Baranek still had to execute some work in order to complete the building.205 It is
unclear whether the relief decorations were already set up in the interior at that time. In
another contract, Baranek was defined as mistrz rzemiosła murarskiego (“a master of
masonry craft”).206 Several other documents concerning Baranek show him to have been
a builder executing masonry works upon commission for the middle class in Kazimierz
and Cracow, rather than an architect or sculptor proficient in Renaissance art and
working for the royal court and the nobility.207 Baranek’s contribution in the final stages

———————————————————————————————————
201
See the text quoted in note 172 above.
202
E.g., “the house of God” (Dan. 1:2) or “the house of the Lord” (I Kings 3:1).
203
See note 191 above. The record from the Remah Synagogue minute book on the
foundation of the synagogue also uses the term “lesser temple” (note 172 above).
204
Krasnowolski, Ulice i place Krakowskiego Kazimierza, 152.
205
The contract states that the two sides umorzyły wszelkie pozwy, tak, iż Baranek ma
drzwi i okienko do piwnic wystawić i wytynkować około bóżnicę i 4 trety do bóżnice
wstawić (“settled all the complaints, so that Baranek must set a door and a small window
in the basement, plaster the synagogue and insert four steps [leading?] to the synagogue”),
“Teki Żegoty Paulego, wypisy z akt radzieckich i ławniczych Kazimierskich,” MS
5357/II, VII, 35, the Jagellonian Library, Cracow, cited after Krasnowolski, Ulice i place
Krakowskiego Kazimierza, 152. I thank Prof. Olga Goldberg and Dr. Eleonora Bergman
for translating the architectonic terms into English.
206
“Teki Żegoty Paulego,” MS 5357/II, VII, 36r-36v, cited after Krasnowolski, Ulice i
place Krakowskiego Kazimierza, 160.
207
In 1556, Baranek performed unmentioned works for one Walkier, and two years later
 242

of construction thus cannot satisfactorily explain the composite character of the

building’s stone decorations, and it is probable that they were executed by actual
sculptors.208
The Dedicatory Tablet and Alms Box
The inscription on the southern wall of the prayer hall (ills. 369-70), containing
Isserl’s dedication and the date of 1553,209 occupies ten lines separated by horizontal
strips, while the upper element of the letter ‫( ל‬lamed) cuts into the dividing strip. The
letters and strips stand out against the sunken background. Whereas in the upper part of
the tablet the lines are roughly aligned, in the lower lines the letters do not reach the left
border, and two rows are completed with slightly different blossoms – that at the end of
the eighth line contains six petals, and that on the tenth line has only five. Like the 11th-
century memorial tablet from Worms, Isserl’s dedication can be attributed to a
tombstone carver, the kind of expert in engraving Hebrew inscriptions that was present
in any Jewish community. Since the bad condition of the earliest tombstones from this
cemetery do not allow us to bring a surviving example of this script with a date from the
early 1550s,210 the 1553 memorial inscription in the synagogue is the earliest evidence
of the kind of incised lettering used in the tombstones from 1551-52, when the cemetery
was founded, through the 1560s.211 Thus the text in a tombstone of 1567 (ill. 387) at the

———————————————————————————————————
he was commissioned to build four stores in the courtyard of Jan Mielecki in Cracow.
From 1550 until 1573, Baranek owned a house in Kazimierz, “Teki Żegoty Paulego,” MS
5357/II, VII, 36r-36v and 53r (see Krasnowolski, Ulice i place Krakowskiego
Kazimierza, 160).
208
Krasnowolski (Ulice i place Krakowskiego Kazimierza, 152) supposed that Baranek
built the whole synagogue. The assumption was accepted in Michał Rożek, Żydowskie
zabytki Krakowskiego Kazimierza (Cracow, 1990), 25; Katalog zabytków, 4
Kraków, 6: 9.
209
See note 172 above.
210
There are several earlier tombstones, but they are considerably damaged. Although a
number of other extant tombstones also bear dates earlier than the 1560s, they are late-
19th-century remakes repeating the original epitaph, but not the appearance of the original
stones. For example, note the tombstones of Golda, Gitl and Malka, who all died in 1552
(see Duda, Krakowskie judaica, 91 no. 195 and 196; 92 fig. 59; 95 no. 260. See also
Bałaban, Przewodnik, 6; Katalog zabytków, 4 Kraków, 6: 45-72). The tombstone of
Rebecca, daughter of Mendel Shakhor (or Czarny) is dated to 1563 erroneously (Katalog
zabytków, 4 Kraków, 6: 64, fig. 231). In the inscription, the characters following the
date of Nissan 17, are "‫( ש"כ"ול‬literally, “bereavement”). Three characters marked by
apostrophes for their numerical value can be deciphered for 350, i.e. 1590. If one
supposes that the third, but not the fourth letter is marked, he can accept 326, i.e. 1566,
and the total of the word is 356, that is 1596. None of the variants gives 1563.
211
See Katalog zabytków, 4 Kraków, 6: 64-65, figs. 233-35.
 243

cemetery near the synagogue is also divided into lines separated by a horizontal strip,
the upper element of the lamed cuts into the strip, and shorter lines are completed with
five-petalled flowers.212 The square Ashkenazi script on this tombstone is better
designed: the shape of the letters is clearer, the difference between the thick horizontal
strokes and thin vertical elements is more accented, and the letters are slightly inclined.
The stone tablet with the dedicatory inscription is set within a moulded frame
(ill. 369-70) topped with a trapezoid that provides a base for a simple cornice with two
recumbent volutes tied together and embracing a trefoil. A wide raking pedimented
cornice hovers above the volutes. The year 1553 in Isserl’s dedication cannot date the
surrounding frame. As in Worms, the dedicatory tablet was originally built into the 1553
synagogue and was transferred to a new setting after the synagogue’s renovation.
The position of the alms box inside the entrance to the prayer hall (ills. 382-83)
prompted the Jews entering the synagogue to give charity to the needy, a religious
obligation prescribed in the Bible.213 Whereas in the Altneuschul, the Gothic alms box
was set to the right of the entrance as we enter the prayer hall (ill. 251), in the Remah
Synagogue and also in the other Renaissance synagogues in Kazimierz and in the
Cracow area, the alms box is set on the left side of the entrance as we come in (ills. 549,
589, 638, 703, 735), opposite to the mezuzah that was affixed to the right-hand
doorpost.214 It is possible that the left-hand position of the alms box was preferred here
by analogy with the placement of the Hanukkah lights to the left of the entrance of a
house, opposite the mezuzah, to allow the Jews “to enter between two
commandments,”215 i.e., to respect each custom separatedly. While entering the prayer
hall, the Jews first touched the mezuzah to have its blessing,216 and then gave alms, so

———————————————————————————————————
212
Only a part of the tombstone is extant, it contains the date, but no name, although the
feminine suffixes testify that it was made for a woman. See Katalog zabytków, 4
Kraków, 6: 46 no. 470 on the ground plan, 64, fig. 232.
213
Deut. 15:11.
214
Note that these photographs are taken from inside the prayer hall looking out, so that
they show the alms boxes to the right of the entrance. Although no old mezuzah has
remained in these synagogues, there are traces of an old mezuzah on the right doorposts,
and a new, modern one presently appears there.
215
The position of the Hanukkah lights to the left of the entrance is stated in Shabbat 22a,
“Hanukkah lights will be on the left, and the mezuzah on the right.” The explanation of
this arrangement as the passage between two “commandments” in the rabbinical Geonic
literature (‫ אוצר הגאונים לשבת‬22a) is mentioned in ‫ "השפעת ההלכה על עיצוב מנורות‬,‫ברכה יניב‬
"‫ חנוכה‬in ‫ מנהגי ישראל‬,‫ דניאל שפרבר‬5: 125.
216
A testimony to the custom of touching the mezuzah that is practiced by religious Jews
 244

that the placement of the alms box on the side opposite the mezuzah prevented them
from disregarding one of the commandments while observing the other.
The alms box in the Remah Synagogue is designed as an architectonic structure
framing a niche (ills. 382-83).217 Two pilasters crowned with flat Doric capitals rest on a
massive pedestal and support an entablature. A flat pilaster is seen at the left side of the
pedestal, whereas the left pilaster is missing. The relief crowning the alms box was
carved on a slab and built into the wall (ill. 382), but this and part of the relief is now
covered over (ill. 383). Like the dedicatory inscription, the tympanum is composed of
two foliated volutes bound together in the center to support a flower. However, the
flower is more elaborate: it has leaves that descend above the volutes, and a delicate
stem that bears three wide petals from which grow a vase-shaped closed flower and a
small pointed bud on either side of the flower. The words ‫“( זהב כסף נחושת‬gold, silver,
brass”) are inscribed in protruding script on the flat frieze. The relation of the large
lettering to the frieze is similar to that on the frieze of the Holy Ark (ill. 388). The text
emphasizes the communal character of the synagogue enlarged in 1557-58: “Gold,
silver, brass” are the metals collected among Jews as their contribution for the
establishment of the Tabernacle (Ex. 25:2-3).218 The biblical context creates a symbolic
parallel between the establishment of the synagogue and its Holy Ark and the making of
the “house of God” with the Ark of the Covenant in which the Divine Presence dwells,
and the congregation that donates money for this cause should be praised as giving an
offering to God “that his heart instructs him to donate” (Ex. 25:2).
Both these decorated synagogue furnishings owe much to contemporary church
designs. The inscription framed by a Renaissance architectonic frame is similar to the
monumental epitaphs in Polish churches and convents (cf. ills. 369-70 vs. ills. 366, 389-

———————————————————————————————————
until the present time is found in a 12th century interdict: ‫אין מכבדין ]מזוזה[ בידים מזוהמות‬
(“do not respect [a mezuzah] with unclean hands,”‫" משנה תורה‬,‫ "הלכות ברכות‬,‫ רמב"ם‬7:12).
217
The extant metallic moneybox was roughly cut into the stone basis during a later
renovation. The same alteration may have destroyed the inscription that Drożdziewicz
had seen “at the bottom of the alms box” in 1865. If so, the metal box was inserted after
1865 and before the 1930s, when the letters were already extinct (see Droździewicz, O
napisie Hebrejskim, 17; Bałaban, Przewodnik, 72). Obviously, the original intention
was to stand a box or cup for coins into the niche, and nowadays the gabbaim put a plastic
plate for alms on the locked moneybox which still has a coin slot (ill. 383).
218
The same metals are mentioned as materials for the Tabernacle and the Ark of the
Covenant in Ex. 31:4, 35:5, 32, and as materials for the Temple of Solomon in I Chron.
22:16, 29:2; II Chron. 2:6, 2:13. In other cases, they relate to military spoil (Num. 31:22;
Josh. 22:8), or to the vessels, which David dedicated to the Lord (I Chron. 18:10).
 245

90). The alms box resembles two kinds of architectonic church furnishings that consist
of a small niche: the sacramentarium, a repository for the Sacrament, such as the one
made by Sz. Pencz in 1542 for the former Franciscan Church in Zawichost (ill. 391),219
and the lavabo, a washbowl attached to a wall, e.g., the one from the second part of the
16th century in the parochial church at Chroberz (ill. 392).220
The recumbent volutes, tied together and supporting a flower, both here and
above the dedicatory inscription, are a common Renaissance ornament: similar volutes
can be seen, for example, above the throne of the Madonna in a painting of Ambrogio
Bergognone (ill. 393). The Remah probably chose the tied recumbent volutes with a
flower after he saw them on the title page of the Responsa by Rabbi Nissim Gerondi
(Ran) printed in Rome in 1547 (ill. 394), to which he frequently referred.221 This
Renaissance pattern was also widely used in Polish sculpture. The ornamental pediment
of the alms box resembles the volutes, decorated with leaves, that support a cup-shaped
flower surrounded by leaves that is found on top of the epitaph of Alexander
Myszkowski set up after 1548 in the Dominican church of Cracow (cf. ills. 382-83 vs.
ill. 366), whereas the pair of volutes with a small palmette that occupy both sides of this
epitaph is like the pediment of Isserl’s dedication (ill. 369). The scrolling ornaments on
the inscription are also similar to those found on the bottom of the tomb of Katarzyna
Pielecka from Pilica, who died in 1555 (ill. 395), and on top of the tomb of Krzysztof
Herburt from Felsztyn (ill. 389). These two tombs are dated to the third quarter of the
16th century and attributed to Padovano’s workshop in Cracow.222
The work of artists from Cracow on Queen Elisabeth’s tomb in Vilna throws
light on the functioning of their workshops and the synagogue reliefs. Cini produced the

———————————————————————————————————
219
Katalog zabytków sztuki w Polsce, 3, Wojewódstwo Kieleckie, 11, Powiat
Sandomierski, eds. Jerzy Z. Łoziński and Barbara Wolff, (Warsaw, 1962): 124, fig. 207.
220
Ibid., 12, fig. 105.
221
‫ שו"ת הרמ"א‬550; see also ibid., the entry “Rabbi Nissim Gerondi (Ran).” This edition
of the Ran’s responsa was a cooperative work between a Christian printer Antonio Blado
d’Asola and two Jewish scholars, Isaac ben Immanuel de Lattes and Benjamin ben Joseph
d’Arignanio (Amram, The Makers of Hebrew Books, 249-50). However, since at least
1541 when Daniel Bomberg’s Venice edition of Rabbi Bahya’s exegesis (ill. 397) was
published, a leafy ornament had been substituted for the simple rounded pediment of the
typical portal-shaped design in frontispieces of Hebrew books printed in Italy (cf. ill. 396;
‫ המדפיס דניאל בומברגי ורשימת ספרי בית דפוסו‬,‫[ אברהם הברמן‬Safed, 1978], 28-30 no. 8.)
222
Kopera, “Jan Maria Padovano,” 243-44; Tadeusz Chrzanowski and Marian Kornecki,
Sztuka ziemi krakowskiej (Cracow, 1982), 259-60; Helena and Stefan Kozakiewicz,
Renesans w Polsce, 156.
 246

sculptural tomb of Queen Elisabeth in his studio in Cracow, sent the parts in nineteen
containers to Vilna, and then went with Padovano to compose the parts in situ.223 Other
carvings made by Cini’s workshop in Cracow were floated on the Vistula to Plock and
set up there in the Cathedral.224 In order to fill their numerous commissions it seems that
the carvers produced typical ornaments in advance, and then matched the ready-made
objects to fit either figurative reliefs or textual epitaphs,225 and combined these parts
into monuments far from Cracow. Thus slabs with paired volutes would have been
carved in advance and supplied for sepulchral monuments, and some of those slabs
might also be sold for a synagogue. When the new wall tombs and epitaphs were
inserted into existing masonry, the maker of the stone carvings may not always have
supervised the actual composing of the parts together and setting them into the wall.
Thus the parts of the Pielecka tomb and of the Herburt tomb were sent from the
workshop of Padovano in Cracow, and the local masons who composed the carved slabs
together did not succeed in maintaining symmetry. In the former tomb (ill. 395), the
uppermost frieze is not parallel to the rest of the structure, and the superstructure in the
latter monument (ill. 389) is slightly tilted and therefore seems moved a bit to the right.
In like a manner, the mouldings around the tablet with the inscription in the synagogue
(ills. 368-69) are composed somewhat awkwardly: the aperture in the frame is larger
than the stone plate with the inscription, and the latter is not centered within the frame
and is inclined to the right, while the horizontal lines of the frame, the trapezoid atop the
frame, and the cornice supporting the volutes are not parallel to each other. Some
disorder is also seen in the combination of the parts of the alms box (ills. 382-83): the
left margin of the inscription is wider than the right one, the cornice shifts to the right
and looks too long in relation to the other parts, the symmetrical tympanum and the base
are set off-center. This inept work contrasts with the delicate execution of the
ornamental carvings. Apparently, the mismatch occurred after the ready-made parts
were bought and a carver of Jewish tombstones added the Hebrew inscription on the
alms box’s frieze. A mason inexperienced in artistic works, perhaps Baranek, built them
into the wall around the dedicatory tablet and the alms box.
As the synagogue was reconstructed in 1557-58 only a few years after it had

———————————————————————————————————
223
Cercha and Kopera, Nadworny rzeźbiarz, 20-24.
224
Helena Kozakiewicz, Rzeźba XVI wieku w Polsce, 82.
225
Kozakiewicz (ibid., 128-29) even mentioned blank figures that were made by Cracow
sculptors in anticipation of commissions for sepulchral effigies.
 247

been founded in 1553, one may not base the exact dating of these architectonic
Renaissance frames only on their style. However, the great and elaborate Ark (ill. 380)
would have been too expensive a project in which to invest before Isserl had been
granted the official permit for the synagogue in 1556, and the Ark’s developed
forestructure seems to be too large for the small hall of 1553, as it would have taken up
a good part of the prayer hall (cf. ill. 373a vs. ill. 377). The Renaissance features of this
1557-58 Ark had no precendents in the synagogue art in Ashkenazi areas, whereas in
Italy, Renaissance art had already influenced the design of Holy Arks for more than half
a century. Some of these innovations may have been known to Israel Isserl and the
Remah through their connections with Italian Jews, and those innovations that were
relevant to developments in Poland must therefore be discussed before we turn to a
consideration of the Remah Ark itself.
The Renaissance Impact on the Design of the Holy Arks in Italian
Synagogues
Already in the third quarter of the 15th century, the period when the 1472
Modena Ark (ill. 291) had been built in the Gothic style, illuminations in Hebrew
manuscripts from Italy depict synagogue Arks that have distinct Renaissance features. A
cabinet-like Holy Ark of wide proportions appears in two miniatures depicting a
synagogue interior from an Italian Mahzor produced in the Emilia region and dated to
1465-75 (ills. 398-99). Both pictures show a wide Holy Ark with a blind arcade of
rounded arches in two tiers, topped by a heavy cornice. The blind arcades here resemble
those seen on the walls of the prayer hall, and the central columns (ill. 398) parallel
those of the windows. The dense arcades on these façades still belong to the
architectonic vocabulary of pre-Renaissance Italian architecture, while the heavy cornice
resembles the stressed cornices of Tuscan palazzi from the mid-15th century,226 thus
indicating an influence from contemporary Renaissance art. Although in one picture, the
Ark is partially hidden by the reader and his desk (ill. 399), in the visible area in the
upper tier there are stressed columns between the arches, but no door is outlined, just as
in the hidden doors of the tower-like Gothic Arks (e.g., ill. 291). The other Ark depicted
in the 1465-75 Mahzor from Emilia (ill. 398) gives a clearer arrangement of two paired
doors in each tier, but the wide vertical panel between each pair of doors blocks the
center of the façade.

———————————————————————————————————
226
E. g., the Medici-Riccardi palace at Florence, built by Michelozzo in 1444-52.
 248

Such central panels or supports as well as hidden openings of the compartment

for the Torah scrolls were used in Italian Arks during the next centuries. They are both
found in the Renaissance wide two-tiered façade of the walnut Holy Ark of ca. 1500 from
Urbino in the Marches, the neighbouring region to the south of the Emilia Romagna (ill.
400).227 On this façade, the central section containing a pair of doors on each tier
protrudes from the lateral sections, each of which has a door panel on each tier. Every
panel is set between two pilasters, so that the even rhythm of the pilasters and panels
unifies the whole structure, but makes the real position of the doors on the protruding
section indistinct. In fact, each door is larger than the panel seen between the pilasters, so
that the split between the two doors cuts the middle pilaster in the center (ill. 401).228 In
the drawing attributed to the Jewish scribe Abraham Farissol in the 1515 Haggadah from
Ferrara (ill. 99),229 the compositional effect of the “blocked” aperture is applied to the
Messianic Temple that is depicted here as a portico with a column in its center. This
suggests that this compositional arrangement was not random, but was used to convey the
idea that the place where the Divine Presence dwells is a stronghold guarded against evil.
The only known such example in the Ashkenazi areas is the Altneuschul Ark (ill. 225),
where a central support to reinforce the lintel was added in 1618 or in the second half of
the 18th century230 and may have been legitimized by Italian Arks with an “obstacle” in
the center of the façade.
The obstacle was not found in all similar cabinet-like Arks in Italy, a number of
which adopt a simpler Renaissance composition with columns on the sides. For
instance, in the wooden Ark from Sabbioneta in Lombardy (ill. 403), ca. 50 km to the
northwest of Modena, the door panels are clearly outlined with mouldings, and the

———————————————————————————————————
227
Norman L. Kleeblatt and Vivian B. Mann, Treasures of the Jewish Museum (New
York, 1986), 52-63; Vivian B. Mann, “The Recovery of a Known Work,” JA, 12-13
[1986-87]: 269-78.
228
According to Mann, in the course of refurbishing the Urbino Ark in 1623-24, a scaled
roof was added, as is seen in a drawing from 1704 (ill. 402; Mann, “The Recovery of a
Known Work,” 269). This reconstruction revived the allusion of the Ark to a tower that is
known from illuminations in 15th-century Hebrew manuscripts from Italy (ills. 278-79). A
similar combination of a scaled cupola topping an Ark with an ornamental pilaster in the
center is found in the 17th-century Holy Ark from Livorno ( ‫ ארונות קודש ותשמישי‬,‫ נכון‬.‫ א‬.‫ש‬
‫[ קדושה מאיטליה בישראל‬Tel Aviv, 1970], 122, 124).
229
See David B. Ruderman, The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought
of Abraham Farissol (Cincinnati, 1981); Evelyn M. Cohen, “The Illustration in
Abraham Farissol’s Haggadah of 1515,” JA, 12-13 (1986-87): 89-95.
230
Münzer, “Die Altneusynagoge in Prag,” 70-71; Vilímková, “Seven Hundred Years,”
 249

simple and flattened elaboration of the doors emphasizes the unity of the sunken central
area against the massive pilasters and projecting cornice.231 A similar but more
elaborately decorated wooden cabinet from the Emilia Romagna region dating to 1520
carries a Hebrew inscription on its frieze praising the holiness of God,232 thus indicating
that this is a synagogue Ark (ills. 404-405). The vertical and horizontal panels enclose
symmetrical foliate patterns that were commonly used for the adornment of ecclesiastic
and domestic wooden furniture in Italy from the last quarter of the 15th century to the
mid-16th century (cf. ills. 406-407). Symmetrical plants with slim trunks, such as those
topped by a bowl with flames on the pilasters and those topped with palmettes on the
vertical panels of the Ark, belong to the classical types of decorative plants revived in
Renaissance art: a similar ornament with a flaming bowl decorates pilasters of the
original frame of Carlo Crivelli’s “Madonna della Rondine” of 1490 (ill. 408). These
Arks resemble the portal-like structures adopted in Ashkenazi synagogues north of the
Alps: protruding Corinthian pilasters flank the doors and the upper part with the doors
dominates the massive pedestal.
Another structural type of Italian Renaissance Ark continued the composition of a
pedimented façade. Such an Ark, known after old photographs and drawings (ills. 409-
10)233 was set up in the Scuola Catalana, a synagogue of the Sephardi “nation” in Rome
that had been established by permission of Pope Leo X in 1519.234 Boce Migliau
discovered archival documents that testify that the Ark was made of marble.235 In 1622-
28, the Scuola Catalana was renovated by Girolamo Rainaldi (1570-1655). Since the
form and decoration of the two great chairs beside the Ark differ from the Ark’s design,
they may be dated to this renovation. The synagogue was damaged by fire in 1893 and

———————————————————————————————————
79-80.
231
There is no documental evidence for the date of this Ark. Umberto Nahon’s attribution
of the Ark to the first half of the 16th century (‫ ארונות קודש‬,‫ נכון‬64-65), when the Jewish
community, established in the mid 15th century, significantly grew, seem to be reliable.
232
The text is ‫“( קדוש שוכן מעלה‬Holy One [i. e. God] dwelling aloft”). This text
paraphrases Biblical definitions of the Divine such as that in Isa. 57:15: “for thus saith the
High and Lofty One (‫ )רם ונשא‬that inhabiteth (‫ )שכן‬eternity, whose name is Holy (‫ ;)קדוש‬I
dwell (‫ )אשכון‬in a high and holy [place] (‫)מרום וקדוש‬.”
233
X. A. Hartleib copied this photograph for A. Berliner’s Geschichte der Juden in
Rom, 2 (Frankfurt am Main, 1893), frontispiece.
234
See A. Toaff, The Jewish Communities of Catalonia, Aragon and Castile in 16th-
Century Rome (Givat Ram, 1988), 260.
235
Boce Migliau, “Nuove prospettive di studio sulle Cinque Scole del ghetto di Roma:
l’identificazione ed il recupero dell’arón di Scola Catalana,” Henoch, 12 (1990): 195 ff.
 250

then demolished in 1908-1910.236

In the original Ark, two fluted columns supporting an entablature and a
triangular gable rested on a paneled pedestal. Protruding portions of the pedestal that
empasize the columns are embellished with a mask of a lion, which holds in its mouth a
loop carrying a classical tabula. On the pedestal, there are two sets of paired rectangular
panels, likely the doors of the genizah that in Holy Arks from Italy were often made as
separate compartments in the lower parts of the structure. A medallion with a rampant
lion appears on each of the doors in the pedestal, arranged so that the lions face each
other. The double doors of the Torah repository are set in a moulded frame on the façade
recessed between the columns. On each door, single square panels containing a flower
are set above and below a rectangular panel enclosing a rhombus containing an oval
medallion with a rampant lion. Five relief festoons run along the frieze and the central
one contains a seven-branched menorah, while a pair of wings appears within the
festoons at either side of the menorah, and, breaking symmetry, a goblet and a jug in the
two lateral festoons. A double rectangular tablet resembling an open book with the first
words of the Ten Commandments is set under a crown in the pediment. Two
asymmetric band-like shapes are attached to the sides of the Tablets; they may depict a
bugle at the right and a shofar at the left (see ill. 410). A great seven-branched menorah
stands on the apex of the gable, and three three-branched lamps alternate with what
appear to be flowers between the decorative waves running atop each raking cornice. A
Hebrew inscription above the Ark’s doors reads: ‫ישראל‬-‫אהל מועד זכרון לבני‬-‫ויבאו אלי אל‬
‫“( לפני יהוה‬and they will come to Me into the tabernacle of the congregation, a memorial

———————————————————————————————————
236
The dating of the Ark to the Renaissance period is in contrast to Krinsky, who
attributed it to Rainaldi (Synagogues of Europe, 364). In fact, although the renovation
was commissioned from Rainaldi, it was executed by his companion Francesco Peparelli.
See the related documents and discussion in Migliau, “Nuove prospettive,” 201. For the
history of the building, see David Kaufmann, “Léon X et les Juifs de Rome,” RÉJ, 21
(1890): 285-89; Berliner, Geschichte der Juden in Rom, 2: 96; Ermano Loevinson, “Die
Juden Italiens,” Ost und West, 13 (May 1913), 5: 393-98; E. Amadei, “Gli ebrei di
Roma” and U. Botazzi, “Ghetto,” Capitolium, 8 (1932): 253-60 and 401-11 respectively;
Wischnitzer, Architecture, 66-67; Attilio Milano, “Le sinagoghe del vecchio ghetto di
Roma,” Studi Romani, 6 (March-April 1958), 2: 138-59; idem., Il ghetto di Roma
(Rome, 1964), 214-18; U. Fortis, Jews and Synagogues (Venice, 1973), 98 ff.; Migliau,
“Nuove prospettive,” 191-205; Krinsky, Synagogues of Europe, 362-64; David Cassuto,
“La sinagoga in Italia” in Vivanti Corrado, ed., Storia di Italia, 11, Gli ebrei in Italia, 1
(1996): 329-31; ‫הכנסת באיטליה‬-‫ בתי‬,‫( יעקב פנקרפלד‬Jerusalem, 1954), 16-19.
 251

for the children of Israel before God”).237 According to Migliau, the word ‫ זכרון‬was
marked for its numeric value of 283, i.e. it records the year 1523. The Holy Ark was
thus made some four years after Leo X permitted the building of the synagogue.238
When the synagogue was renovated in 1622-28, the Holy Ark remained almost
unchanged.
The proportions and forms of the marble architectonic frame of the Catalana Ark
resemble the triangular pediment set on fluted columns surrounding a marble aedicula in
the Martelli altar produced by Jacopo Sansovino (Tatti) of Florence (1486-1570) in Sant
Agostino in Rome in 1518-21 (ill. 411).239 As clearly as we may see the lions on the
doors of the Ark (ills. 409-10), their shape is similar to that of the rampant griffins,
supposedly heraldic shields, carved on the bases of the columns in the Martelli altar.
All’antica festoons and lion’s masks are frequent motifs in Jacopo Sansovino’s works in
Venice, where he went from Rome in 1527 (e.g., ill. 412). The rare Corinthian capitals
in the Catalana Ark whose volutes scroll upwards rather than downwards as in classical
Corinthian capitals, appeared infrequently in Roman architecture in the first decades of
the 16th century, but were occasionally used by Donato Bramante (1444-1514),240 by
Andrea Sansovino (1460-1529), and by some of their followers.241 It is found, for
example, in Andrea Sansovino’s 1507 and 1509 monumental tombs from Santa Maria
del Popolo in Rome (e.g., ill. 413). Jacopo Sansovino, Andrea’s pupil, occasionally used

———————————————————————————————————
237
The inscription paraphrases Num. 31:54.
238
Migliau, “Nuove prospettive,” 195.
239
For similar portals in the works of Jacopo Sansovino in Venice, see the tomb of
Archbishop Livio Podocataro in the church of San Sebastiano (Bruce Boucher, The
Sculpture of Jacopo Sansovino, 2 [New Haven, 1991]: fig. 296); the so-called “Arsenal
Madonna,” 1534 in the vestibule of the Arsenal (ibid., fig. 98); and the nave altar from
the church of the Incurabili, now in the church of the Knights of Malta in Venice
(Deborah Howard, Jacopo Sansovino: Architecture and Patronage in Renaissance
Venice [New Haven, 1975], fig. 71).
240
E.g., the Corinthian capitals from about 1500 in the monastery Santa Maria della Pace
in Rome (G. De Angelis d’Ossat, “Preludio Romano del Bramante,” Palladio, 16 [1966]:
88; Gaetano Miarelli Mariani, “Aspetti della ricerca Bramantesca” in Bramante tra
Umanismo e Manierismo [Rome, 1970], 126). See also the capitals of the upper tier on
the façade of Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome attributed to Bramante (Arnaldo Bruschi,
Bramante [London, 1977], 195).
241
E.g., the Corinthian capitals in the study, attributed to Franciabigio, for the altar of St.
Nicholas in Santo Spirito in Florence, in the Louvre (Boucher, The Sculpture of Jacopo
Sansovino, 2: fig. 345); and in the monument to Cardinal Michiel and bishop Orso by an
unknown sculptor in San Marcello al Corso in Rome (Howard, Jacopo Sansovino, fig.
383).
 252

these inverted Corinthian volutes in Venice,242 but he would have learned this motif in
Rome before the Ark from the Scuola Catalana was produced.243 All these stylistic
features allow us to accept Migliau’s reading of the date of the Holy Ark as 1523, and to
attribute this work to a sculptor from the circle of Jacopo Sansovino in Rome.
The placement of emblems on architectural members relating to the general
program of the structure belongs to the artistic language of Renaissance sculptors and in
particular to that of Andrea Sansovino (e. g., ills. 413-14) and his circle. In a similar
way, the emblems in the frieze of the Catalana Ark add to its symbolism: the vessel at
the left side of the frieze may represent a Cohen’s censer244 and the jug of the Levites at
the right side alludes to their service in the Temple; the wings are substituted for the
images of cherubs that were set above the Ark of the Covenant;245 and the seven-
branched menorah completes the parallel of the synagogue Ark to the Biblical
Sanctuary.
The multitude of lion images in the embellishment of the Catalana Ark is more
problematic, especially given controversies over sculpted animals on Holy Arks which
raged in Italy from the late 15th to the mid-16th century, and will be discussed below.
However, the Catalonian immigrants who established this synagogue might have
remembered the liberal attitude to heraldic images in the design of synagogues in Spain.
Like the rampant lions in Abulafia’s Synagogue in Toledo (ill. 322), the heraldic lions
on the doors of the Catalana Ark suggest both political meaning and Jewish symbolism.
First, one may not exclude the admittedly problematic possibility that the heraldic lions
evoked the name of Pope Leo X (1513-21) as homage for his 1519 permit to establish
the Scuola Catalana.246 Secondly, the pairs of rampant lions facing each other on the
doors of the Ark can be connected with the meaning of guardians. Several more
interpretations of this group are less obvious but possible. The number of six rampant
lions matches the number of six Biblical Hebrew synonyms for the lion cited in
Sanhedrin 95a,247 and recalls the messianic symbolism of this number in medieval

———————————————————————————————————
242
E.g., in the nave altar from the church of the Incurabili (see note 239 above).
243
Jacopo Sansovino lived in Rome from 1505 to 1527. For his biography and works, see
Howard, Jacopo Sansovino; Boucher, The Sculpture of Jacopo Sansovino, 1-2.
244
The censer is mentioned in Ex. 30:7; Lev. 10:1.
245
E.g., see the representation of the cherubim as wings in the 14th century Sarajevo
Haggadah from Spain (ill. 295).
246
See Toaff, The Jewish Communities of Catalonia, Aragon and Castile, 260.
247
‫ ארי‬and ‫( לביא‬Gen. 49:9), ‫( כפיר‬Judg. 14:5), ‫( ליש‬Isa. 30:6), ‫( שחל‬Ps. 91:13) and ‫שחץ‬
 253

Jewish thought and art.

The lion’s masks below the columns can be a version in relief of the motif of
lions under or in front of the portal columns, but it seems that now their meaning differs
from that of the oppressed satanic beasts discussed in the context of medieval art. An
early example of the alternate interpretation of this motif is a depiction of the fortified
Gate of Heaven decorating a North-Italian Mahzor from the third quarter of the 14th
century (ill. 415), where the lions with raised heads look amicable, and the transparent
drawing clearly shows that they lie before and not under the pillars. In contrast to the
trampled lions under the gate from the Worms Mahzor (ills. 122-23), the lions in the
North-Italian Mahzor are powerful guardians defending the passage from the dragons
that appear around the gate. This new symbolism was continued through the late 16th
century, as is seen in the lions supporting shields in front of columns in frontispieces of
Hebrew books printed in Prague (e.g., ills. 301, 367), or in the standing lions with raised
heads under the columns in the frontispiece of Moses Cordovero’s Or Ne’erav (“The
Pleasant Light”) published by Giovanni di Gara in Venice in 1587 (ill. 416).
The depiction of the Tablets of the Law as an open book rather than as the twin
round-topped tablets that usually represented the Mosaic Law in Christian art (e.g., ill.
286)248 was probably preferred to prevent a possible Christian interpretation of the two
Tablets as prefigurations of the Old and the New Testament. The identification of the
pair of Tablets with the only Torah is visualized in the scene of giving the Torah in the
Laud Mahzor of ca. 1290 (ill. 130), where the angel in the left top transmits two tablets,
but the Israelites on the right are receiving a scroll of the Torah.249 A version of the
same subject in the Birds’ Head Haggadah of ca. 1390 depicts Moses receiving the two
round-topped Tablets from God’s Hand, while handing down to the people five such
tablets that allude to the five books of the Pentateuch,250 and thus suggest that the
Tablets of the Covenant consist of the whole Torah rather than only the Ten
Commandments.251 In the Catalana Ark the same ideas are conveyed by a compact

———————————————————————————————————
(Job 28:8).
248
See Ruth Mellinkoff, “The Round-Topped Tablets of the Law: Sacred Symbol and
Emblem of Evil,” JJA, 1 (1974), 29 n. 9.
249
Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts, 94.
250
Jerusalem, Israel Museum, Ms. 180/57, fol. 22v (Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated
Manuscripts, 96, fig. 28).
251
The accent on the Ten Commandments as the main prescriptions of the Torah could
have diminished the role of the rest of the 613 Commanments accepted in Judaism.
 254

single emblem: the two sides of the open book resemble the twin Tablets, while the
book itself contains the whole Torah.252
Reliefs of the shofar and the bugle (‫ )חצצרה‬that are attached to the Tablets of the
Law in the Ark’s pediment illustrate “the noise of the shofar” that in the Bible is
mentioned before and immediately after the text of the Ten Commandments (Ex. 19:19,
20:18). Angels blowing shofar or bugles sometimes accompany the scene of giving the
Tablets of the Covenant in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts (e.g., ill. 49). The shofars
and bugles were sounded together before the Ark of the Covenant to praise God.253 The
silver trumpets of the Temple are depicted on the same panel with the menorah among
other spoils of Jerusalem on the Arch of Titus (ill. 141).254 On the synagogue Ark, these
spoils of the destroyed Temple represented implements of the Temple to come. Such a
reinterpretation of the menorah, with or without the shofar, was also usual in the Jewish
art of ancient Rome (e.g., ills. 90, 96, 417).255
As shown in the drawing of the Ark (ill. 410), the stem and branches of the
menorah on top of the pediment are composed of rounded segments, and the branches
do not end above in a straight line but slightly slope towards the sides. This scheme of
the menorah’s branches was not usual in medieval Jewish iconography (cf. ills. 97, 105-
108), and may have been copied from the relief on the Arch of Titus (ill. 141). Perhaps,
the common Renaissance interest in antiquities prompted the Jews of 16th-century Rome
to collect some ancient Jewish objects, which, as we know from later finds, sometimes
bore a depiction of this type of menorah (e.g., ill. 417). It is possible that they accepted
such ancient images as their own “classical” model to be revived just as Christians
revived Roman antiquities. This is also demonstrated by the adoption of these Jewish
emigrants from Catalonia of a strict Renaissance “classical” style for the type of the
pedimented Ark that had been found in Sephardi synagogues (ill. 150).
Another Ark designed as a pedimented façade but with four round columns set

———————————————————————————————————
252
Representations of the Torah and the Tablets of the Law as an open book are known
also from Hebrew illuminated manuscripts in Italy in the 16th century. E.g., a similar open
book is in front of the Ark, and in the center of the group of men studying in the Ferrara
prayerbook (ills. 275-76). Sed-Rajna and Fellous (Les manuscrits Hébreux enluminés,
287) reported that in the illustration of 1569 on fol. 154v in the Norsa prayer book, Moses
receives the Torah in the form of a book.
253
1 Chr. 15:28; 2 Chr. 15:14; cf. also Ps. 98:6.
254
Leon Yarden, The Spoils of Jerusalem on the Arch of Titus: A Reinvestigation
(Stockholm, 1991).
255
Habas, “Identity and Hope: The Menorah in the Jewish Catacombs of Rome.”
 255

in front of the cabinet for the Torah Scrolls, all of which were raised on a platform, was
situated in the Scuola Italiana, otherwise known as il Tempio or ‫בית כנסת ההיכל‬
(“synagogue of the Sanctuary”) in Rome, a synagogue belonging to the native
“Levantine” Jewish community (ills. 418-19). Since after 1555, when Paul IV issued the
Cum nimis absurdum bull, all the Jews of Rome were forced to move to the ghetto that
was established around the Scuola Catalana, and had to abandon their medieval
synagogues outside the ghetto. Although the bull limited the number of synagogues to
one, the different Jewish “nations” who wished to pray in accordance with their own
rite, managed to establish four new synagogues in the immediate proximity of the
already existing Scuola Catalana, so that they could be considered as parts of the same
complex. Pius V (Pope 1566-72) agreed to this situation. The new synagogue was
established by the Levantine community in this complex of five synagogues in the
ghetto.256 The Ark was lost after the building was demolished in 1908-10 and is known
only from a photograph (ill. 418) and its pictorial copy by Hartleib (ill. 419).
The Ark’s façade recalls the classical pedimented tetrastyle of the Temple of
Fortuna (ca. 100-80 B.C.E.) in the Forum Boarium in Rome (ill. 421), and thus can be
seen at first as a normal Renaissance return to classical origins. Reviving such a
classical portico in Renaissance art, Christian artists sometimes set it indoors, adopting
it for a church altar. For example, the San Zeno Altarpiece produced by Antonio
Lombardo and his companions in 1504-1518 for San Marco in Venice (ill. 422) has a
façade consisting of a triangular pediment resting on freestanding columns that are
covered by an ornament of fruit-bearing plants, with pilasters in the rear supporting the
roof and flanking the Madonna and saints.257 Similar formal features were applied to the
four-columned Ark in the synagogue (ill. 418) by the Renaissance architects who
designed it.
However, the reasons for this appropriation of a classical façade of this specific
type devolve from Jewish sources. A tetrastyle with no pediment and with the Ark of the
Covenant set between the two central columns is found on Bar Kokhba’s tetradrachms

———————————————————————————————————
256
Kaufmann, “Léon X et les Juifs de Rome;” Berliner, Geschichte der Juden in Rom,
2: 96; Loevinson, “Die Juden Italiens;” Amadei, “Gli ebrei di Roma;” Botazzi, “Ghetto;”
Wischnitzer, Architecture, 66-67; Milano, Il ghetto di Roma, 214-218; Fortis, Jews
and Synagogues, 98 ff.; Krinsky, Synagogues of Europe, 362-364; David Cassuto, “La
sinagoga in Italia,” 329-31.
257
On aedicula-formed Renaissance altars, see Jacob Burckhardt, The Architecture of
the Italian Renaissance (London, 1985), 210.
 256

from 132-35 C.E. (ill. 420). The four-column façade of the Temple was widespread in
the Diaspora, ranging from the frescoes of the Dura Europos synagogue through 4th-
century gold glass from the Jewish catacombs in Rome, such as the one now in the
Museo Sacro in the Vatican (ill. 280a-b), where the tetrastyle has a triangular
pediment.258 It is probable that in the age of the Renaissance, the Jews of Rome saw
such coins, glasses or similar depictions and in the common atmosphere of interest in
antiquities, they accepted them as reliable depictions of the Temple in Jerusalem.
Although the destroyed Temple and its implements may not be reproduced in their
actual form and dimensions,259 symbols of the Sanctuary were continuously given to
synagogues in order to either emphasize their role as a temporary substitute for the lost
Temple260 or to create a vision of the Temple to come. The symbolic parallel between
this synagogue Ark, the Temple and the messianic future Temple was reinforced by its
ornamentation. The lower third of the columns is designed as a trunk of a palm tree, and
a symmetrical ornament composed of stems and leaves covers their upper part up to the
elaborate Corinthian capital. These patterns are copied on the two pilasters that support
the rear sides of the portico. The floral adornment thus alludes to palms, a motif of the
Temple’s decoration and a traditional messianic symbol.
The upper part of the portico resembles that of the Catalana Ark. A dense
scrolling ornament runs along the frieze, and the crowned Tablets of the Law,
represented as an open book, are set in the pediment. On each of its slopes, there are six
curved single-branched candlesticks, while a seventh straight and tall candlestick rises
from each slope’s lower edge. The shape of the menorah at the peak of the Tempio Ark
also resembles the Menorah from the Ark of Titus without its faceted base (ill. 141). In
the depth of the portico between the high pilasters there is a façade that consists of a
massive pedestal supporting a pair of shorter fluted pilasters that flank the double door
of the Torah repository, thus recalling the Ark of the Covenant in the recesses of the
Temple. Although each of the doors is partially hidden by the columns, they repeat a

———————————————————————————————————
258
St. Clair, “God’s House of Peace in Paradise;” Revel-Neher, Le signe de la
rencontre, 75-86, 107-109, figs. 2-3, 27-29; Franz Rickert, “Review: Revel-Neher,
L’Arche d’Alliance,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, 29 (1985), 218-22;
Weitzmann and Kessler, The Frescoes of the Dura Europos, 55-56, 98; Herbert L.
Kessler, “Through the Temple Veil: The Holy Image in Judaism and Christianity” in
idem., Studies in Pictorial Narrative, 49-73, Sed-Rajna, “Images of the
Tabernacle/Temple.”
259
Rosh Ha-shanah 24a-b; Avodah Zarah 43a.
 257

classical motif in which each door is decorated with a relief consisting of spiraling
leaves symmetrically set on either side of a slim baluster. The short pilasters have no
capitals, and support an architrave that has a rectangular meander and moulded cornices.
Symmetrical flattened and cut S-shaped spirals form a kind of pediment: they are
highest over the doors, recalling the ribs of a conch shell, and recede towards the sides
where only a small spiral finishes the composition, turning the shapes into two volutes.
As apprehended in the context of the ancient and medieval Jewish iconography we have
explored, the Renaissance style plants and spirals can be interpreted as symbols of the
Tree of Life and the scrolls of the Torah. The inscription on the Holy Ark, as far as can
be seen in the photograph, calls the worshippers to praise God at “His holy hill,”261 that
is at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, reinforcing the parallel between the pedimented
tetrastyle and the Temple in Jerusalem.
A different variation on this type of Temple façade is found in an Ark seen in a
photograph, published by Frauberger in 1901, of the Ashkenazi synagogue in Padua
(ills. 423-24), that was later destroyed, perhaps in the 1940s.262 The first record on Jews
in Padua dates from the mid-13th century, and the Jewish community possessed a
synagogue and cemetery as early as 1300. As in other Italian cities, life in Padua, a
Venetian terra ferma since 1405, exposed the local Jews both to Humanist ideology and
to the material culture of the Italian Renaissance.263 One result of this influence was that
the Jews of Padua were not only patrons of Renaissance manuscript illumination,264 but

———————————————————————————————————
260
See p. 28 n. 35 above.
261
The Hebrew inscription on the wide pedestal in the rear of the Ark cannot be read in
full because it lies in shadow and is partially hidden by the columns. However, one
readable fragment is a phrase from Ps. 99:9, ‫רוממו יי אלהינו והשתחוו להר קדשו כי קדוש יי‬
‫“( אלהינו‬Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His holy hill; for the Lord our God is
holy”), a sentence included into the Verses of the Praise (‫ )פסוקי דזימרה‬during weekday
morning service.
262
H. Frauberger, “Über Bau und Ausschmückung alter Synagogen,” Mitteilungen der
Gesellschaft zur Erforschung jüdischer Kunstdenkmäler, 2 (Frankfurt am Main,
1901): 38 fig. 42.
263
See Stefano Zaggia, “Gli Ebrei e Padova: Tracce e memorie di una storia secolare
(XIV-XVIII sec.)” and Amos Luzzato, “Espressioni culturali della Communitá Ebraica di
Padova” in De Benedetti, Hatikwá, 1 (Padua, 1998): 3-23 and 49-57 respectively;
‫" ציון‬,‫ "קווים לדמותם החברתית של יהודי איזור וויניציאה בראשית המאה הט"ז‬,‫ ראובן בונפיל‬41
(1976): 68-96.
264
Bezalel Narkiss attributed a series of illustrations of the Venetian style in the Hamburg
Halakhah Miscellany (Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Heb. 337 [scrin
132]) to an accomplished Renaissance painter from Venice or Padua, who produced them
in Padua for the Rapa family in 1477 (Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts, 158).
 258

also tolerated the sculptured heads that decorated the exterior of the building near the
Ashkenazi synagogue (ill. 425) and the colonnade under the Italian synagogue (ill. 426).
According to Shulvass, Ashkenazi Jews, or tedeschi, predominated among the
Jewish “nations” in Padua.265 Judah ben Eliezer Ha-Levi Mintz (ca. 1408-1508), after
leaving Mainz presumably in 1462, established a yeshivah in Padua in 1467.266A
synagogue of the Ashkenazi rite at the Corte Lenguazza was mentioned in documents
from 1478, and it became the center of the entire Jewish population.267 It now occupies
the first floor of the building situated between the Corte Lenguazza and the Contrada
San Canziano, now Via delle Piazze (ills. 425, 427-30), and was called the Scuola
Tedesca, Tempio Grande or Tempio Maggiore. It is possible that the yeshivah was
housed in or near the synagogue. However, recent researchers state that only the cellar
containing the ritual bath can be dated to the 15th century, whereas the beit midrash
(“house of study”) on the ground floor with its entrance from the Corte Lenguazza was
built in 1525, and documents from 1561 and 1587 state that this building already needed
to be repaired.268 In 1682-83, a new hall was built above this floor, with the entrance
through a staircase from the Via delle Piazze (Contrada San Canziano, ills. 428-29). The
1525 synagogue on the ground floor was then adopted as a beit midrash, and the prayer
hall was transferred into a newly built room on the first floor. In 1892, the synagogue
was rearranged and the beit midrash was abandoned. In 1926, the prayer hall on the
upper floor was devastated, and in 1943, bombs damaged the whole building. The
remaining parts of the old structure were recently renovated and several archival
photographs and documents contain information, albeit incomplete, on its earlier
interiors.269

———————————————————————————————————
265
Shulvass, The Jews in the World of the Renaissance, 63.
266
Stefano Zaggia, “La Scuola Grande di Padova: vicende storiche e architettura” in De
Benedetti, ed., Hatikwá, 1: 60; "(1369-1509) ‫ "היהודים בפאדובה בתקופת הריניסאנס‬,‫ דניאל קארפי‬2
(unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1967): IX.
267
Zaggia, “La Scuola Grande,” 60, n. 9; Stefano Tuzzato, “Le trasformazioni edilizie
nella storia del monumento” in De Benedetti, ed., Hatikwá, 1: 80, n. 4.
268
Tuzzato, “Le trasformazioni edilizie,” 87.
269
See Marco Osimo, Narrazione della strage compita nel 1547 contro gli ebrei
d’Asolo (Casale Monferrato, 1875), 47; Antonio Ciscato, Gli ebrei in Padova (1300-
1800): Monografia storica documentata (Padua, 1901; reprinted: Bologna, 1985), 156
n. 3; Giorgio Romano, “Cimeli di antiche sinagoghe padovane trasterite in Israele,”
Padova e la sua Provincia (May 1961): 26-31; Guido Vicentin, Il ghetto vecchio di
Padova e le sue sinagoghe: Note storico-urbanistiche (Padua, 1987), 30-39; ‫ ארונות‬,‫נכון‬
‫ קודש‬33-36. Pinkerfeld asserted that the synagogue was inaugurated in 1550, but gave no
 259

In the photograph published by Frauberger (ill. 423), the free-standing Holy Ark
is found on the ground floor of the Scuola Tedesca. The Ark’s façade (ill. 424) is
flanked by double Ionic half-colonettes and topped by an attic. The whole construction
rests on a pedestal; each set of double colonettes stands on a joined base and bears a
section of the entablature, topped by a small pediment. The attic, flanked by curved
screens, supports a low triangular pediment. A flat symmetric plant ornament – either
painted, gilt or inlaid in marquetry – is discernable on the Ark’s vertical doors, on the
pedestal and bases, and a vertical festoon is set in relief between the paired colonettes.
The carved plants and the Tablets of the Covenant superimposed on the Holy Ark, the
lush flowers, and the vases on both sides of the attic differ in style from the clean
composition of the basic structure and clearly cannot be dated to the same period. The
inscription on the attic reads, ‫“( דע לפני \ מי \ אתה עומד‬Know before Whom you
stand”),270 and that on the architrave: ‫“( זכרו תורת משה עבדי‬Remember the law of Moses
my servant,” Mal. 3:22). It must be noted that the two Hebrew texts are the same as
those that appear on the Renaissance stone tablet in the wall above the Baroque stone
Ark and in the arch above its doors (ills. 431-33).271 It is thus likely that the inscriptions

———————————————————————————————————
reference for this statement (‫ בתי הכנסת באיטליה‬,‫ פנקרפלד‬24). For recent archival studies
and in-situ investigations, see Stefano Zaggia, “Il ghetto ebraico di Padova (1603-1797),”
(M.A. Thesis, Instituto Universitario di Architettura, Venice, 1990), 258 ff.; De
Benedetti, Hatikwá, 1: I-II, 59-113.
270
A paraphrase of a verse from Berakhot 28b.
271
The tablet consists of a framed Hebrew inscription, ‫“( דע לפני מי אתה עומד‬Know before
Whom thou stand,” ill. 433), that suggests that it was originally made to be set in the area
of the Holy Ark facing the worshipers (cf. ill. 431). The inscription is enclosed with a
Renaissance ornament in low relief composed from four narrow panels. Based on the
style of the ornament and the lettering, this relief has been dated between 1450 and 1500:
Nahon dated the Paduan inscription to the second half of the 15th century ( ‫ ארונות‬,‫נכון‬
‫ קודש‬34-35), and Mann, basing herself on the resemblance of the Hebrew lettering on this
stone to that on the Holy Ark from Urbino, ca. 1500, and to late 15th-century Hebrew
manuscripts, dated the relief to ca. 1500 (“The Recovery of a Known Work,” 272-73 n.
11). This composition of ornamental panels around a monumental inscription was also
used by Jewish printers: in Joshua Soncino’s 1483 edition of the Babylonian Talmud, the
initial word of the tractate Berakhot is surrounded by lateral panels containing a
symmetric floral pattern and two horizontal borders with foliate scrolls (ill. 434). The
frame printed from two pairs of blocks evokes the combination of the four ornamental
panels in the synagogue relief (ill. 433), and the lettering of the printed initial is
stylistically akin to the stone inscription. On this woodcut, see Amram, The Makers of
Hebrew Books, 57; Aron Freimann and Moses Marx, Thesaurus Typographiae Saeculi
XV (Jerusalem, 1968), 54; Marvin Heller, Printing the Talmud: A History of the
Earliest Printed Editions of the Talmud, 51-73. The exact combination on the stone
inscription of a symmetric design consisting of a plant growing from a vase within panels
 260

were done at a later stage together, after the Renaissance stone tablet had been moved
and set atop the new Ark on the first floor, but the lettering in Frauberger’s photograph
(ills. 423-24) is not clear enough for us to conclude when exactly this change took place.
Pinkerfeld noted that a massive joist running down the center of the ceiling
caused the Ark with its high superstructure to be set off-center against the eastern wall,
to the left,272 in contrast to its standard position in the synagogues of the period. This
reinforces the reading of the Ark in the surviving photograph (ills. 423-24) as a free-
standing structure, rather than as a frame around a wall niche. It is likely that the Ark
had been moved aside during the 1682 reconstruction when the joists were added under
the ceiling to support the upper floor. However, the original Ark without the upper
details could have fitted exactly under the central joist and thus could have remained in
its place in the middle of the wall. The Baroque additions that caused this transfer were
probably influenced by the style of the splendid 8-meter-high stone Ark that was built
for the 1682 synagogue on the first floor (ill. 431).273 The new decorations modernized
the relatively modest Renaissance Ark in accordance with the current style, and the new
placement of the Ark solved the problem of the awkward effect of the joist on top of the
pediment.274

———————————————————————————————————
that flank the central field, and friezes of alternating flowers, growing up and down from
a vine, was present in Italian art from the last quarter of the 15th century (e.g., ills. 406-
408). However, whereas in the frieze of Crivelli’s “Madonna della Rondine” of ca. 1490
(ill. 408), identical flowers alternately grow up and down from the vine, in the vine on the
synagogue tablet, all the flowers differ slightly from each other. This diversity is found in
a version of this vine on the frieze of a door from the first half of the 16th century (ill.
435) a few minutes walk from the Scuola Tedesca, in the passage from the Contrada San
Canziano to the southwestern court of Il Bo campus of the University of Padua. These
comparisons suggest that the tablet originated in the 1525 building.
272
‫ בתי הכנסת באיטליה‬,‫ פנקרפלד‬22-24.
273
The date is enciphered in the dedicative inscription on the Ark, see ‫ ארונות קודש‬,‫נכון‬
33.
274
It is likely the superstructure that caused Pinkerfeld to estimate that the whole Ark is a
Baroque piece from the 17th century (‫ בתי הכנסת באיטליה‬,‫ פנקרפלד‬23). The stylistic
“upgrading” of Holy Arks was usual in Italian synagogues: e.g., the Renaissance Urbino
Ark that was redecorated in 1624 in the Baroque style (Mann, “The Recovery of a Known
Work,” 274 ff). The contrast between the Baroque decoration of an Ark with a more
richly ornamented Rococo superstructure can be noticed in the wooden carved Ark of
Vittorio Veneto from 1700 (ibid., 40; ‫ ארונות קודש‬,‫ נכון‬20-26; I[ris] F[ishof], “The
Vittorio Veneto Synagogue” in idem, ed., Jewish Art Masterpieces from the Israel
Museum, Jerusalem [Jerusalem, 1994], 32-33). In like manner, the 1650 Ark from
Conegliano Veneto was renovated in 1710 (‫ בתי הכנסת באיטליה‬,‫ פנקרפלד‬39-40; F. Luzzato,
La Communità Ebraica di Conegliano Veneto ed i suoi Monumenti [Rome, 1957];
 261

The architectonic composition of the original wooden Ark from Padua

consisting of four columns supporting and entablature, topped by a gabled attic flanked
by S-shaped sloping screens (ill. 436), can be traced to a development that begins with
Alberti’s renovation of the façade of Santa Maria Novella in Florence in 1456-70 (ill.
437). In this church, the large arch in the center, the two smaller entrances on either side
and the four attached columns that support the entablature divide the façade so as to
resemble a Roman triumphal arch (e.g., ill. 438). This architectural scheme on a church
façade served as an all’antica expression for the medieval concepts of the Church
Triumphant and the Gate of Heaven.275 However, instead of the full-width attic wall that
surrmounts triumphal arches, Alberti used an attic to cover only the higher part of the
church’s central nave, and harmoniously connected the attic with the lower side aisles
by the great scrolls of the sloping walls. Whereas in triumphal arches, the attic’s central
panel usually bore the dedication, Santa Maria Novella’s attic was designed as a
tetrastyle and surmounted by a triangular pediment to recall medieval depictions of the
Temple (e.g., ill. 272). From that time on, the layout was widely used in ecclesiastical
architecture.276 In his 1485 De re ædificatoria, Alberti used the simplified model of the
Arch of Titus (81 C.E., ill. 440) as his basic model, grouping the vertical members on
the façade in two pairs of double columns or pilasters, and removing the central pair of
pilasters from the attic (ill. 441). Alberti also used this compositional scheme, moving
the columns closer together in pairs, in his design for a monumental gateway (e. g., ill.
442), showing that the scheme had retained its original meaning. In this case, the attic is
decorative, lacking the structure and screening purposes that it had on church façades.
The main entrance of Padua University (ill. 443) is composed of just such a great four-
pillared portal with an attic, this time containing an image rather than an inscription.

———————————————————————————————————
‫ ארונות קודש‬,‫ נכון‬4-18; David Cassuto, “The Synagogue of Conegliano Veneto” in
Shalom Sabar, Steven Fine and William M. Cramer, eds., A Crown for a King: Studies
in Jewish Art, History and Archaeology in Memory of Stephen S. Kayser [Berkeley,
2000], 47-57).
275
See general notes on this motif in a wider context of classical revivals in Renaissance
architecture in Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, 37-38,
54; Peter Murray, The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance (New York, 1970), 48-
49.
276
In the second quarter of the 16th century, the layout became somewhat outmoded, but
it was still in continuous use to the last decades of the 16th century, when it was
transformed into a more elaborate and dynamic form in Giacomo della Porta’s façade of
Il Gesù (1568-84) in Rome (ill. 439).
 262

Venturi attributed this façade to Andrea Moroni, who worked at the University in the
1540s.277
As in Renaissance versions of the triumphal arch, the composition of the Padua
Ark (ill. 436) was symbolic rather than functional: it was a Renaissance reinterpretation
of the Gate of Heaven as a triumphal arch, and this made the motif acceptable in the
synagogue as a new expression for the traditional concept of the Holy Ark as the “Gate
to the Lord.” The supposed absence of an inscription or image in the Ark’s attic
emphasized its geometric outline. Like the monumental gateways, this attic does not
screen any constructive element and thus plays no apparent constructive role. However,
the combination of a rectangular panel set between pilaster-like elements that support a
triangular pediment, are again a classic sign of the Temple as in the attic of Santa Maria
Novella (ill. 437). The purely geometrical rendering of the Temple in the Ark in Padua
differs from the use of Temple implements as tokens of the Temple in the design of the
Catalana Ark (ill. 409), and from the overt expression of the Temple façade in Il
Tempio’s Ark (ill. 418).
The history of the Ashkenazi (tedeschi) Jewish community of Padua throws
light on those who could promote the casting of the medieval concept of the
synagogue Ark into a new Renaissance form. In the 1670’s, that is before the 1682
reconstruction, Isaac Haim Kohen, a cantor of the Scuola Tedesca, saw there an
inscribed tablet stating that the seat to which it was affixed belonged to the
Maharam of Padua (ca. 1482-1565), and that “nobody sat there until this day.”278
The Maharam, a relative of the Remah, was born in Prague and studied there
together with Rabbi Shalom Shakhna (died 1558) under Rabbi Jacob Polak.279 Then
he left for Padua to continue his studies under Rabbi Judah Mintz. The Maharam
married his teacher’s granddaughter Hannah, daughter of Abraham ben Judah Ha-
Levi Mintz, and after his father-in-law’s death in 1525, he was appointed as rabbi of
the Ashkenazi community in Padua and headed the yeshivah that attracted Jewish

———————————————————————————————————
277
The inscriptions in the entablature (giving the date of 1591) and, perhaps, the winged
lion in the attic were altered, and the three cartouches are from a later date, but the general
composition of the paired columns and the attic pane is original. See “Padova,”
Enciclopedia Italiana di scienze, lettere, ed arti, 25 [Rome, 1935]: 895; A. Venturi,
Storia dell’Arte Italiana, 11, Architettura del cinquecento, 3 (Milan, 1940): 72 f.;
Lucia Rossetti, The University of Padua: An Outline of Its History (Padua, 1999), 8.
278
‫ פחד יצחק‬,‫( יצחק חיים כהן‬Amsterdam, 1681), 10a; ‫ בתי הכנסת באיטליה‬,‫ פנקרפלד‬22-24.
279
[Shlomo Tal], “Katzenellenbogen, Meir ben Isaac,” EJ, 10: 829; "‫ "מהר"ם מפאדובה‬,‫זיו‬
 263

students from Italy and abroad.280 Thus the synagogue would have been established
during his activity as a rabbi of the Ashkenazi “nation” in Padua. The Maharam was
a person who could combine his memories of medieval Ashkenazi synagogues from
the years of his childhood and youth in Prague, his deep involvement in the life of
the tedeschi community and their synagogue in Padua, and his clear awareness of
the Renaissance milieu in Italy. It is likely that he also had some knowledge of
Renaissance symbolism and could thus take an active part in the reinterpretation of
traditional messages into these new symbols rather than merely agreeing to accept
the use of a new style in the synagogue.
In fact, the Maharam of Padua was generally tolerant towards certain
applications of contemporary culture and arts in Jewish life. Besides matters of a
religious nature, he was involved in political and economic affairs.281 In particular, he
and his son Samuel Judah managed a trade in Hebrew books,282 many of which would
have been decorated with Renaissance ornamentation (e.g., ill. 444). The Maharam’s
son Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen (1521-97) allowed the use of sculptures if they
were not used for a cult, arguing that Solomon permitted placing twelve brazen oxen in
the Temple because they bore a bowl on their backs and there was no risk that
somebody would worship them as deities.283 Moreover, several historians suggest that
the Maharam was not only aware of the visual arts of the Renaissance, but that the
Paduan rabbis were perhaps already portrayed during their lifetime. Leon da Modena
(1571-1648), who studied in Padua and lived in Venice, alleged that after the
Maharam’s teacher and in-law Judah Mintz served as a philosophy professor in the

———————————————————————————————————
162-63.
280
[Shlomo Eidelberg], “Minz, Abraham ben Judah Ha-Levi,” EJ, 12: 68, see also Simon
Schwarzfuchs, “I responsi di Rabbi Meir da Padova come fonte storica,” in Scritti in
Memoria di Leone Carpi (Jerusalem, 1967), 112-32; [Tal], “Katzenellenbogen, Meir
ben Isaac,” 829-30; Shulvass, The Jews in the World of the Renaissance, 91; Robert
Bonfil, Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy (New York, 1990), 132;
"‫ "מהר"ם מפאדובה‬,‫ זיו‬160-95.
281
[Tal], “Katzenellenbogen, Meir ben Isaac,” 829-30; "‫ "מהר"ם מפאדובה‬,‫ זיו‬160, 195.
282
[Tal], “Isserles, Moses ben Israel,” 1082; Joshua Bloch, “Venetian Printers of Hebrew
Books” and Isaiah Sonne, “Expurgation of Hebrew Books – the Work of Jewish Scholars:
A Contribution to the History of the Censorship of Hebrew Books in Italy in the 16th
century” in Charles Berlin, ed., Hebrew Printing and Bibliography (New York, 1976),
81-82 and 235-36 respectively; "‫ "מהר"ם מפאדובה‬,‫ זיו‬183; ‫ שו"ת הרמ"א‬48-52 no. 10.
283
See ‫ רבינו משה איסרלש‬,‫ זיו‬34.
 264

University of Padua, a sculptured portrait of him was placed in the university.284 Mulder
wrote that a portrait was painted of the Maharam,285 and this is confirmed by
Boksenboim’s reading of a letter addressed to the Maharam,286 while Shulvass assumed
that portraits were painted of both the Maharam and his son.287 Several portraits of
Italian Jews from the late 15th to the mid-16th century survive, so that the mentions of
portraits of prominent rabbis of the period may reflect reality.288 It is likely that Jews
shared the Renaissance’s individualistic self-affirmation and the belief in the
perpetuation of the immortal soul by means of art, and this facilitated their adoption of
portraits eternalizing a person’s features.
On the other hand, the Maharam agreed with Rabbis Judah and Abraham Mintz
who had forbidden the use of the parokhet with an image of a deer in Wertheim’s
synagogue in Padua in the late 15th or the early 16th century, and the Maharam was one
of four rabbis who issued a responsum denouncing the lion on the Candia Ark shortly
before the Remah Synagogue was expanded. There were indeed no animal images on
the Ark in the 1525 Scuola Tedesca in Padua constructed under the Maharam’s
rabbinate, whereas rabbinical responsa and the photograph of the Catalan Ark (ill. 409)
testify that sculptured lions were part of the design of Arks in several Italian
Renaissance synagogues. The rabbinical objection to zoomorphic sculptures in

———————————————————————————————————
284
Shulvass, The Jews in the World of the Renaissance, 152, 235.
285
S. I. Mulder, Eene zeldzame medaille ([n. p.], 1859), 3. Mulder claimed that the
portrait was made without the Maharam’s knowledge, but it seems that this conclusion
reflects the author’s opinion rather than the realities of Jewish life in Renaissance Italy.
286
The letter was evidently written in 1564 by one of the sons of Ishmael Rieti. It
suggests that a portrait of Maharam hung in the Rieti household ( ‫ אגרות בית‬,‫יעקב בוקסנבוים‬
‫[ ריאטי‬Tel Aviv, 1987], 305). However, Horowitz assumed that this letter meant a
kabbalistic amulet (Elliott Horowitz, “Speaking of the Dead: The Emergence of the
Eulogy among Italian Jewry of the Sixteenth Century” in David B. Ruderman, ed.,
Preachers of the Italian Ghetto [Berkeley, 1992], 157 n. 51.
287
Shulvass, The Jews in the World of the Renaissance, 235.
288
Roth cited a Jewish portrait painter and engraver Moses da Castelazzo, son of
Abraham Sachs from Germany, who lived in Italy and advertised himself as producing
“portraits of gentlemen and other famous men, so that their memory should remain for all
time” (Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance, 192; cf. also Shulvass, The Jews in the
World of the Renaissance, 336-37). On the portraits of Jews in Renaissance painting
and coins, see Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance, 189-212; Friedenberg, Medieval
Jewish Seals from Europe, 343 ff.; Vivian B. Mann, “The Arts of Jewish Italy” in idem,
Gardens and Ghettos, 52-53; ‫ הרב כאיקונין" ציון‬:'‫ ”'והיו עיניך רואות את מוריך‬,‫ירחמיאל כהן‬
58 (1993), 4: 407-22.
 265

Renaissance synagogues must be examined in order to understand the Remah’s selective

adoption of images for his Renaissance Ark in Kazimierz.
Sculpted Animals on Renaissance Arks in Italy
In his responsum dealing with the relief embroidery of a deer on the parokhet in
the synagogue of Naphtali Hertz Wertheim in Padua in the late 15th or the early 16th
century, Rabbi Joseph Caro compared this case to another conflict caused by setting a
sculptured lion on the Holy Ark by a private donor in a synagogue in Candia (now
Iráklion) in Crete.289 Like Wertheim’s embroidered deer, the lion on the Ark of Candia
was objected to as a protruding image that, in Caro’s opinion, “is much worse because
the object was set there on the heikhal permanently and forever.”290 At the time, Candia
was a Venetian colony, and the local Jewish community was closely connected with the
Jews of the metropolis and of Padua, then also a Venetian domain. Like the Jewish
population of Italy, the Jews of Candia comprised communities and confraternities of
different origin that prayed in at least four synagogues,291 but it is unclear in which one
of them the sculpture of a lion was set. The leading rabbi of the Candia community and
the civil head of Cretan Jewry was Elijah Capsali, who was born in Crete and had
graduated from the Ashkenazi yeshiva in Padua, where he studied under Judah Mintz.292
When Elijah Capsali was asked about the debatable issue of volumetric sculptures in the
synagogue, he, in turn, appealed for advice to four prominent contemporary halakhic
legislators. Two of them lived in Safed: Rabbi Joseph Caro, who was born in Spain, and
Rabbi Moses ben Joseph of Trani in Italy (known also as Ba’al Ha-Mabit, died 1580).
The others were Rabbi David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra (Radbaz, 1479-1573), who
had originated from Spain, lived in Egypt, and died in Safed, and the Maharam of Padua
(ca. 1482-1565), who studied with Elijah Capsali under Judah Mintz.293 Such an appeal
with the same question to several legislators is unusual in the practice of rabbinical

———————————————————————————————————
289
‫ אבקת רוכל‬,‫ יוסף קארו‬no. 65.
290
Ibid.
291
Four synagogues are recorded in Candia in 1481. They were the Great Synagogue, the
Synagogue of the Cohens, the High Synagogue, and the Ashkenazi Synagogue ([Simon
Marcus], “Crete [Candia],” EJ, 5: 1088-91).
292
"‫ "מהר"ם מפאדובה‬,‫ זיו‬168.
293
[Shlomo Eidelberg], “Minz, Abraham ben Judah Ha-Levi,” EJ, 12: 68, see also
Schwarzfuchs, “I responsi di Rabbi Meir da Padova come fonte storica,” 112-32; [Tal],
“Katzenellenbogen, Meir ben Isaac,” 829-30; Shulvass, The Jews in the World of the
Renaissance, 91; Bonfil, Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy, 132;
"‫ "מהר"ם מפאדובה‬,‫ זיו‬160-95.
 266

responsa. Capsali’s four letters to rabbis of different origin could have been the result of
his intention to attain a decision that would be equally authoritative for all the Jewish
“nations” of Candia. As in his responsum Caro, quoting the Maharam, mentioned
Abraham Mintz as deceased,294 the text must be dated after 1525, and most probably
after Caro became a rabbi in 1538, but before 1555 when Capsali died.
Capsali’s letters have not survived, but the Radbaz’s responsum restates the
problem:
The issue occurred in Candia to Reuben who plastered the synagogue, and
whitewashed it, and repaired it nicely, and wanted to write at the height of the
heikhal [here – “Holy Ark”] his name and the name of his father in order to
cover and adorn himself with a borrowed tallith [i.e., to bask in somebody else’s
glory]. Moreover, his heart [had become] extremely haughty, and he wanted to
place his family emblem, [which is] called arma [“coat of arms”], which was in
the form of a lion with a crown upon its head. Furthermore, he wanted to make
an actual volumetric golem [here - “figure” or “sculpture”], and he took to
himself a slab of marble and commissioned artists to make him a sculpture of a
gilt lion with a royal crown upon its head [cf. Esth. 2:17] and created it with a
chisel and so on. And he arranged it and gave it [to set] on the top of the heikhal,
at its highest point opposite the worshipers. And he also had engraved on the
marble stone “someone, the son of somebody, the gaon.”295 And the community,
may its Rock and Redeemer protect it, when they heard about this evil matter,
mourned and endeavoured with all their power and strength to prevent Reuben
from this bad deed. And since Reuben was a bully and close to the rulers, he did
not consent to obey them until they had to spend a lot of money for this and had
prevented him by force of the authorities, may God have mercy on him.296
The Radbaz, as well as the other rabbis who were asked for their opinion,
objected to Reuben’s act, minutely arguing their position. The Radbaz quoted the
practical reason of the Maharam of Rothenburg (Rabbi Meir ben Baruch, born in
Worms, ca. 1215-93) that images can divert the worshipper’s concentration from

———————————————————————————————————
294
‫ אבקת רוכל‬,‫ יוסף קארו‬no. 65 partially translated into English in Shulvass, The Jews in
the World of the Renaissance, 193, 325; Mann, Jewish Texts, 117. See also ,‫כהנא‬
‫ מחקרים‬371 (the number of Caro’s responsum in n. 160 there is wrong). Rabbi Capsali
sent the responsum of the Maharam to Rabbi Caro (see ‫ מחקרים‬,‫ כהנא‬358-59 n. 70; ,‫קארו‬
‫ אבקת רוכל‬no. 64).
295
The title gaon means a “prominent scholar,” and also a leader of the Jewish
community in Sephardi circles and in ancient Jewish sources. In Renaissance Italy, this
title usually distinguished a prominent rabbi renowned for his outstanding scholarly
erudition. Bonfil (Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy, 94) explained
that there “this title is no longer granted by any institutional way; however those bearing
it were considered clearly superior to other rabbis.”
296
‫ שאילות ותשובות‬,‫ הרדב"ז‬4: no. 1178. See also ‫ מחקרים‬,‫ כהנא‬355-57. The translation is
partially based on Mann, Jewish Texts, 117-20.
 267

prayer,297 but in his explanations, he placed an accent on the symbolic sense of the
image. The Radbaz, like Caro, saw the lion as one of the “four beings of the Chariot”
(Ezek. 10:14), whose image had been put under Talmudic prohibition in Avodah Zarah
43b: “The Torah prohibited only the making of the likeness of the four faces together.”
The Radbaz and the Maharam of Padua therefore conceded, “there is no prohibition,
except [in the cases where] all the four [‘beings of the Chariot’ appear] together.”298
Instead, the Radbaz gave another explanation for the ban, basing himself, in his terms,
on the “hidden wisdom” – he accused Reuben of idolatry:
The lion is “a king over all the prideful” [Job 41:26] and “a governor over all the
animals and over all the beasts,”299 and it is a hero over everybody, and therefore
one might be blessed through him, as it is written, “The lion hath roared, who
will not fear?” [Amos 3:8]. And you already knew that over everything there is a
prince and ruler, and its exemplar is above [in the heaven]. If so, Reuben, who
made an image of a lion and gave [it] a royal crown on its head, [is considered]
as if [he] crowned and enthroned this exemplar over the whole world. And this
is as if he gives power and dominion to another god, and this is the secret of
idolatry to those who are intimate with it, may the Merciful One save us [from
such a sin].300
Developing this argument, the Radbaz stated that Christians worshipped the
figure of a lion who has wings like “an eagle that flies heavenward” (Prov. 23:5), but at
times they drew it without wings. The account evokes St. Marc’s winged lion (ill. 443),
which was also the symbol of Venice and its dominions Padua and Candia, and thus
well known to the Jews. Even outside Italy, the Radbaz had learnt about the winged lion
in churches from “one who worships […] an image,” that is a Christian.301 Caro also
noted that the gentiles drew the lion as one of the four “creatures of the Chariot”
obviously referring to the symbols of the four Evangelists.302 Adding that Reuben placed
his lion “above the Torah scroll which is in the Ark,”303 the Radbaz revealed his
approach to the Ark as a hierarchic structure, in which the higher the part, the more
significant it is. Moreover, the “hidden wisdom” stresses the psychological motives that
could lead to making the sculpture: the lion as “a king over all the prideful” (Job 41:26)

———————————————————————————————————
297
Ibid., 120, n. 83. See also p. 45 above.
298
Translated from Hebrew after ‫ אבקת רוכל‬,‫ קארו‬no. 65.
299
Cf. Hagigah 13b.
300
‫ שאילות ותשובות‬,‫ הרדב"ז‬4: no. 1178. See also ‫ מחקרים‬,‫ כהנא‬355-57. The translation is
partially based on Mann, Jewish Texts, 119.
301
‫ שאילות ותשובות‬,‫ הרדב"ז‬4: no. 1178; ‫ מחקרים‬,‫ כהנא‬356; Mann, Jewish Texts, 119.
302
‫ אבקת רוכל‬,‫ קארו‬no. 65.
303
‫ שאילות ותשובות‬,‫ הרדב"ז‬4: no. 1178; Mann, Jewish Texts, 120.
 268

reflects the nature of Reuben, “a bully with an extremely haughty heart.”

Although sculpted lions above the niche of the Holy Ark served as symbolic
guardians of the Torah already in ancient synagogues (e.g., ill. 118), Reuben’s lion,
clearly defined in the responsum as arma, continues the practice of setting donors’
personal emblems in synagogues. As we saw, in his synagogue of ca. 1357 in Toledo,
Samuel Ha-Levi Abulafia used heraldic lions both as the royal emblem of Leon and as
his own sign (ill. 322). As a rule, Jews whose name was Aryeh, Leib, Leone, Leo or
other translations of “a lion” as well as those called Judah (based on Gen. 49:9) could
have chosen a lion for their “coat-of-arms.”304 For example, a crowned lion in a heraldic
cartouche on the top of a Jewish tombstone from 1545 in St. Mary’s cemetery in Padua
(ill. 445)305 is used as though it were a coat-of-arms of the deceased Liv (‫ )ליב‬Lod Levi
whose first name could be a version of Löwe or Leib (‫)לייב‬. Nothing is known to us
about the full name and family background of Reuben of Candia, and Jacob’s blessing
of Reuben (Gen. 49:3-4) contains no zoomorphic metaphor.306 At the same time, the
lion, “a governor over all the animals and over all the beasts,”307 may be an allegory of
Jacob’s reference to Reuben as “my might, and the beginning of my strength, the
excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power.”
As in the case of Wertheim’s deer, the harsh objection to Reuben’s lion, the
disapproval of displaying personal emblems on the Ark and the arguments against
borrowing images from Christian art for use in synagogue decoration are at odds both
with medieval practices of synagogue decoration, and with the relatively liberal attitude
of Italian Jews towards Renaissance art. In fact, the atmosphere of Renaissance
individualism explains the shift in the traditional form of written commemoration for a
contribution to the synagogue to the setting of the donor’s personal emblem on the Ark
as a sign for his exclusive status and his independence from public opinion. As in the
case of Wertheim, the rabbis who discussed Reuben’s sculpture suggested that his
sacrilege was caused by haughtiness, but here the Radbaz went further and stated that in

———————————————————————————————————
304
For the heraldic lion as an “arma” of a Jew, see Bezalel Narkiss, “Three Jewish Art
Patrons in Medieval Italy” in Festschrift Rëuben R. Hecht (Jerusalem, 1984), 296-307.
305
Morpurgo, “L’Università degli Ebrei,” 23, fig. 1.
306
In the midrashic astrology connecting the twelve tribes to the zodiacal signs in the
13th-century Yalkut Shimoni, the tribe of Reuben corresponds to Aquarius (no. 418). See
also Sabar, The Beginnings and Flourishing, 185.
307
See note 299 above.
 269

the placing his lion “above the Torah,” Reuben was stricken by a spirit of heresy,308 and
Caro suggested that Reuben fell under the influence of a demon.309 The rabbis were
therefore objecting to the patron’s hubris rather than to the actual three-dimensional
sculpture, which they had not prohibited or attacked in the case of the reliefs of lions on
the Catalana Ark produced almost contemporaneously to Reuben’s crowned lion on the
synagogue Ark of Candia.
Moreover, other evidence from Italy suggests that in the first half of the 16th
century, sculptural lions in the round were present under the Holy Ark in the synagogue
in Ascoli Piceno, ca. 140 km northeast of Rome, without provoking protests from the
community. David Kaufmann found a description of this Ark in the hand-written
marginal notes of Rabbi Abraham Joseph Solomon ben Mordecai Graziano (died 1690)
to a copy of Joseph Caro’s Shulkhan Arukh.310 The notes concern the chapter on the
prohibition of drawing forms of the four beings of the Divine Chariot in Yoreh Deah
141:4. The Ark Graziano discussed may be dated to the period between the late 13th
century, when the presence of Jews was first recorded in Ascoli, and 1569 when they
were expelled from the city.311 Rabbi Azriel Trabot, great-grandfather of Abraham
Graziano, was at the time of the expulsion a rabbi in Ascoli. He rescued the Ark and
brought it to the Sephardi synagogue in Pesaro, ca. 130 km north of Ascoli, where a
considerable part of the refugees from there settled. Graziano reported:
And I remember that in the city of Pesaro in the state of the Duke of Urbino, a
righteous gentile, in the synagogue of the holy community of the Sephardim
there was a Holy Ark made of walnut and gilded. And two protruding lions also
made of walnut were placed under the legs of the Ark, and hair-like patterns
were carved on their bodies, just like the hair of a real lion. Their mouths were
open and seemed to roar, and they stood one at the right side of the Ark and
another at the left with four stairs and steps [‫ ]עם ארבע מדריגות ומעלות‬before the
Holy Ark.312
The text does not describe the structure of the Ark, although the mention that

———————————————————————————————————
308
See note 303 above.
309
‫ אבקת רוכל‬,‫ קארו‬nos. 64-65; Mann, Jewish Texts, 117.
310
This copy of the Shulkhan Arukh was printed in Harau in 1627-28. On the issue as a
whole and for the Hebrew text by Graziano, see David Kaufmann, “Art in the Synagogue:
The Lions under the Ark in Acsoli and Pesaro,” Jewish Quarterly Review, 9 (London,
1897): 254-69. See also ‫ מחקרים‬,‫ כהנא‬370-71.
311
Giuseppe Fabiani, Gli ebrei e il Monte di Pietà in Ascoli (Ascoli Piceno, 1942);
[Attilio Milano], “Ascoli Piceno,” EJ, 3: 692.
312
Translated from the Hebrew text published in Kaufmann, “Art in the Synagogue,”
259, with references to Mann, Jewish Texts, 120-23. See also ‫ מחקרים‬,‫ כהנא‬355-57.
 270

this was made of walnut and gilt suggests that it may have been a wooden cabinet-like
Ark such as those known to us from Italian synagogues.313 The account is also
ambiguous about the precise position of the naturalistic sculpted lions: they stand on the
upper level of the staircase flanking the Ark ( ‫ועומדות א']חת[ מצד ימין של הארון ואחרת מצד‬
‫)שמאל עם ארבע מדריגות ומעלות‬, and are “under the legs of the Ark” (‫)מונחים תחת רגליו‬
supporting the structure, perhaps like the lion-shaped legs of the Venetian table-chest
from ca. 1550 (ill. 407). It is thus possible that the Jews of Ascoli bought a cabinet with
lion-shaped supports to use as a Torah Shrine. On the other hand, the lions may have
been intentionally produced as a part of the Ark’s decoration, as had been the case in the
Catalana Ark (ill. 409). In any case, the sculptures did not raise any known objection in
the community either in Ascoli or in Pesaro: Graziano testified that he “did not hear
then that anybody protested against the presence of those lions in the synagogue. And
there really were in those days ‘pious men and men of good deeds,’314 and wise men,
and great rabbis prominent in [the study of] Mishnah, Gemara and Kabbalah.”315
Graziano thus emphasized that such pious people would not have permitted the
existence of sculpted lions as part of the Holy Ark if they suspected that they were
idolatrous.
We will concentrate here on what caused them to have these lions in their
synagogue in the first place. Although Graziano connected the two lions from Ascoli to
the lion of the Divine Chariot, his description of the lions on the steps of the Ark recalls
rather the pairs of lions on the steps of Solomon’s Throne, and would thus be part of the
symbolic parallels between the Ark of the Covenant and the heavenly Divine Throne,
and reflect the iconography of Solomon’s Throne as a receptacle for the Torah scrolls
(e.g., ill. 136). In Italy, the same iconography was implemented both in illuminated
books and in synagogue decorations. In contrast to the ancient and medieval images of
the trampled lions (e.g., ills. 122, 127-28), the lions under or in front of the supports of
Arks in Renaissance Italy were no longer satanic symbols. The lions in the Ark from
Ascoli as well as the lion masks under the columns of the Catalana Ark (ill. 409) seem
to have been seen instead as guardians of the Throne of the Torah.

———————————————————————————————————
313
E.g., see the Urbino Ark (ill. 400) of ca. 1500 (Mann, “The Recovery of a Known
Work,” 271).
314
The titles used in Mishnah, cf. Sukkah 5:4; Sotah 9:19 (Mann, Jewish Texts, 121, n.
92).
315
See note 312 above.
 271

The surviving evidence thus proves that the design of Renaissance Arks in Italy
continued the use of the traditional symbols of the triangular pediment, elaborated
columns and lions. The Remah, who would have known this iconography from both
medieval Ashkenazi and Renaissance Italian sources, chose it for the frontispiece of his
1570 Torat Ha-Olah (ill. 367), and the shape of his lion heads is very close to those
beneath the columns of the Catalana Ark (ill. 409). In fact, like the portal-like Catalana
Ark, the Remah’s frontispiece demonstrates the iconographic scheme containing lions at
the bottom of elaborate columns, cherubs (in the Ark they are designated by wings in the
frieze) and a triangular pediment. In both cases, the use of this iconography was chosen
to give a symbolic interpretation of the Temple in Jerusalem, and to stress a symbolic
parallel between the sedes sapientiae and the Ark of the Covenant (cf. ills. 135-36).
As in the use of the old capitals of the Remah’s Ark (ill. 334), the Renaissance
columns in his frontispiece were selected to designate the two Solomonic pillars, and
they stand partially free from the pediment. Thus the winged head of a cherub in the
middle of the column’s shaft hangs like a pendant on a string decorated with small balls
that descends from the masks on the sides of the abacus of the columns. The strings can
be called the “chains of pomegranates” on “the top (‫ראש‬, rosh) of the pillars” (II Chron.
3:16), and the masks may be inspired by the literal reading of the word rosh as a
“head.”316 The human grotesques on the capitals also parallel the anthropomorphic
monster on the capital of the Temple’s left column in the Worms Mahzor (ill. 122). The
spheres on the top of the capitals in the Remah’s book (ill. 367) can represent the “two
gulot of the capitals that were on the top of the pillars” (I Kings 7:41), as a gulah in
addition to its narrower biblical denotation as “a bowl,” in 16th-century Hebrew meant
also a ball-shaped form. The birds on the balls above the portal are found in medieval
representations of the Holy Ark or the gate of Jerusalem (ills. 284, 290). In frontispieces
of Hebrew books the use of this scheme continued through the 16th century: for
example, all these elements are represented in the frontispiece of Moses Cordovero’s Or
Ne’erav (“The Pleasant Light”) from 1587 (ill. 416), where the lions are depicted as
full-bodied sculptures.
The Remah was willing to accept this iconography for the design of his 1570

———————————————————————————————————
316
The Latin Vulgate translates the “top of the pillars” as “capitibus columnarum,”
similarly using the word caput, literally “a head” and sometimes even “a face,” for the
capital of a column.
 272

frontispiece, but also he or his father may have acquired the stone lion that was part of
an Ark from a medieval synagogue in Cracow in the early 1550s, when they founded the
synagogue, or in 1557-58 when they enlarged it for public worship, they decided not to
use it and buried it in the adjacent cemetery. Undoubtedly, they were influenced by the
opposition to zoomorphic sculpture in the prayer hall that had veen voiced just before
they established the synagogue. The opposition would be reinforced for them by the
attitude of Remah’s relative, the Maharam. In contrast to the use of lion sculptures in
contemporary Italian Arks, the new parts of the Remah’s Ark were decorated only with
plant and geometric designs. Despite this censorship, the Ark of the synagogue Israel
Isserl and Remah founded pioneered the use of Renaissance Arks in Polish synagogues.
The Holy Ark in the Remah Synagogue as a Renaissance Project
After the Remah Synagogue was renovated, the old Romanesque pilasters were
set on either side of the niche for the Torah scrolls, framed by new pilasters and
surmounted with an entablature, a developed attic and pediment (ills. 380, 446).317
The use of paired pilasters with dissimilar designs and different colour was rare,
but not unheard of in the Polish Renaissance, and is even found in the frame of the
Albrecht tomb from 1502-1505 in Wawel Cathedral (ill. 355), one of the earliest
Renaissance works in Cracow. In the Remah Ark, the two old pilasters were not only

———————————————————————————————————
317
Although most of elements of the Renaissance Ark have survived, several later parts
of it disappeared during the Nazi’s occupation, and are known only from archival
photographs. For instance, the photograph taken before 1939 (ill. 384) shows a convex
crown situated in front of the Ark’s attic and supported by the Tablets of the Law. This
photograph, presently held in the archive at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of
Sciences in Warsaw (neg. no. 4642), is erroneously labeled there the “synagogue of
Przedbórz.” This crown is absent from the two earlier photographs (ills. 374, 381)
published by Bałaban in 1935 (idem, Przewodnik, figs. 15-16). The negative of ill. 374
(neg. no. 134235 in the archive of the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences
in Warsaw) bears the date 1932, and both photographs would have been taken before the
renovation of the synagogue by Hermann Gutman in 1933, when this crown was probably
added. Both the crown and the Tablets were separate parts, which could easily be
attached, transferred or removed. The crown has been lost, and the Tablets that rose at
that time from the entablature, are now attached to the attic panel (ill. 447). In the
photographs from the 1930s, there are also decorative friezes with garlands flanking the
Tablets of the Law. They are now absent, and the original stone panel with a Hebrew
inscription (ill. 388) that they concealed is now revealed. A great relief crown is now
placed above the tympanum, intruding into the space of the window above the Holy Ark
(ill. 447), whereas the early photograph (ill. 374) shows this crown to be attached to the
window itself. Unlike the original diadem-like crown carved on the Ark’s architrave (ill.
380), this upper crown must have been added later, probably during or after the
reconstruction of the vaulting and the opening of the lunette windows in 1829.
 273

adjusted in accordance with the whole architectonic structure, but also influenced
certain features of the new decoration. All four capitals (ills. 335-36) have in common a
curved bracket-shaped silhouette, but in the central pilasters, this shape is formed by a
great leaf on either side below and the lateral surface of the rings above, whereas in the
outer pilasters, the ornamentation is not developed into spatial forms, but is made as a
flattened band on the shaped slab. As we saw, the lower parts of the capital of the outer
pilasters demonstrate a certain resemblance to the Romanesque capital carved on the
two central ones. As in the central capitals, in the bottom of the outer capitals there is an
inverted heart-like shape enclosing the fleur-de-lis, but the curves freely floating from
its lower petals on the older capitals are transformed here into somewhat flabby,
recumbent ear-like shapes. As the central pilasters were originally shorter, the upper part
of the capital on the outer pilasters does not correspond to the older pilasters and it also
differs from the simple abacus and egg-and-dart plinth that was used to adjust the height
of the capitals to the new format. This partial resemblance may be explained by
assuming that the carver who produced the two outer pilasters in 1557-58 used the older
central pilasters as a basic model, copied the fluted shafts and the general form of their
capitals, but reinterpreted several details according to his own Renaissance taste and the
demands of his patrons.
The upper part of the new capitals distantly resembles a type of flattened
Corinthian capital, which was widespread and highly varied in the Polish Renaissance.
Thus the slightly concave abacus that curves down in the center and is crossed by a
small palmette (ills. 335-36) seems to be a flattened interpretation of a concave abacus
crossed with a protruding palmette on the capitals in the Albrecht tomb (ill. 356). A
garland of densely placed narrow leaves runs from the corner rings down towards an
open rose in the center of the capital. Although in a few capitals of the Sigismund
Chapel, the volute’s calyx was decorated with a few ascending narrow sharpened leaves
(cf. ill. 448), it was not designed as a descending leafy garland. On the central axis
below the rose, around what seems to be its stem, an upside-down palmette touches the
small fleur-de-lis engraved in the bottom center. These designs, as well as the recessed
annulets under the capital, could also have been inspired by Renaissance architectonic
decoration.318 On the other hand, the boss in the upper corners of the capital looks like a

———————————————————————————————————
318
For example, cf. the inverted palmette and the annulet of the capitals in Albrecht’s
tomb (ill. 356), and the big blossom on the corner capitals in the southern and western
 274

volute, but is in fact a concentric pattern composed of the echinus’ edge and a small
ring, and the simple round knob substituted for the abacus flower is an alien element to
Renaissance architectonic decoration in Cracow. It seems that while imitating the design
of the old capitals in a simplified form of Polish Renaissance decoration, the sculptor
followed the tradition of reading contemporary architectonic forms in the light of
feasible biblical terms. The unusual interpretation of the classical calyxes with spiral
volutes as leafy garlands descending from concentric rings may be an attempt to
represent ‫“( גדילים מעשה שרשרות‬festoons of chain work,” I Kings 7:17) of Jachin and
Boaz, which, like the sevakhah, sometimes were understood as branches.319 It is also
noteworthy that each “festoon” consists of seven leaves just as each festoon of the two
brazen columns has seven chains.320 On the Ark’s new capitals, the sevakhah (I Kings
7:17, 20) may be represented by the inverted palmette that is situated between the rose
and the fleur-de-lis. As the sculptor added this clearly designed rose but made the fleur-
de-lis barely readable, it is probable that he (or the patrons) identified the shoshan “on
the top of the pillars” (I Kings 7:19, 22) with a rose, and not with a lily. As a result, the
decoration on the new pilasters would have actualized the parallel between the Ark’s
supports and the Solomonic columns.
Although the four-columned scheme of the Remah’s Ark disagrees with the
biblical description of two columns, Jachin and Boaz, in front of the Temple’s porch (I
Kings 7:21, II Chron. 3:17),321 the representation of the Temple as a tetrastyle is an
ancient tradition of Jewish art (e.g., 280, 420). The Torah shrine placed behind the
columns in the depth of the portico is in accord with the situation of the Holy Ark in the
Holy of Holies hidden in the depths of the Temple and follows the iconography of Bar
Kokhba’s tetradrachms (ill. 420) and the doors to the Sanctuary in the 4th-century Jewish
gold glass (ill. 280). This composition was revived in Renaissance Italy in the four-
columned Ark of the Tempio synagogue (ill. 418), built approximately at the same time
as the Remah Synagogue was renovated. Here too the model of the Biblical Sanctuary
contained the Holy Ark in its depth.
When the patrons of the Remah Synagogue decided to reuse the two old pilasters

———————————————————————————————————
walls of the Sigismund Chapel (see the center of ill. 360).
319
See the commentary of the Rashi on I Kings 7:17.
320
See the commentary of Rabbi Levi ben Gershom (the Ralbag, 1288-1344) on I Kings
7:18.
321
See Jean Ouellette, “The Basic Structure of Solomon’s Temple and Archaeological
 275

for their Ark by adding two new ones to them, they could also have utilized the
dissimilarity of these pairs to enhance the Ark’s symbolic allusion to the Temple. We
already saw an early example of the representation of the Temple as a tetrastyle with
dissimilar pairs of columns in the mid 11th-century Lectionary of Henry II (ill. 272):
although all of its four columns are set here in a row, the hands of the figures on either
side of Mary overlap the two central columns, creating a somewhat recessed effect in
the central area.322 The compositional accent suggests that the four-columned façade
with dissimilar columns is derived from depictions of the Temple as a greater portal
enclosing the smaller arch of the Holy of Holies with the Ark of the Covenant, for
instance, as in the Temple depicted in the 6th-century floor mosaic from the synagogue
in Beit She’an (ill. 449), where the central arch contains the veiled Holy Ark of the
Covenant. Thus the depiction of the Temple in Jerusalem as a four-columned façade
with dissimilar pairs of columns, as in the Remah Ark, can be accepted as an
abbreviated representation of the Holy of Holies seen through the Temple’s façade.
Moreover, the maker of the Ark in the Remah Synagogue purposely did not blur
the contrast between the shorter old slabs and the new pair of pilasters and exploited the
lighter tint and smaller height of the inner supports in order to create an effect of a
receding central frame flanked by two pilasters (ills. 380, 385).323 The old supports

———————————————————————————————————
Research” in Joseph Gutmann, The Temple of Solomon, 1-19.
322
Krinsky (“Representations of the Temple,” 8-9) assumed that the central columns are
Jachin and Boaz, and the spinario figures appearing on them as a symbol of evil, are used
here to castigate Judaism. However, the identification of the outer columns as Jachin and
Boaz is also possible.
323
A container for the Eternal Light attached to the far left pilaster of the Holy Ark is a
later addition (ill. 386). Plaster, which is very similar in its colour to the tint of the
pilaster, fills the juncture between the container and the pilaster’s shaft. The stone frame
had been damaged and was reconstructed in 1958-68 (Katalog zabytków, 4 Kraków, 6:
11). A lighter tint at the right side of the frame (ill. 386) indicates the reconstructed part.
The metal receptacle for a light is enclosed in a pointed arch with a similarly shaped glass
door. The shape of the pointed arch is repeated in the outline of the stone border, which is
composed of scrolled leaves on the sides, a small palmette on the top and a Hebrew
dedication to the Remah on the bottom. The patterns decorating the Eternal Light
container were perhaps derived from the decoration of the Ark’s pilasters, and the general
shape of the container reflects the Neo-Gothic trend, which appeared in Polish
architecture in the 1830’s. In the light of the historicist conception of Gothic art, this style
was obviously destined to express the antiquity of the synagogue. On the “Gothic
Revival” of the 19th century, see Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Architecture: Nineteenth
and Twentieth Centuries ([Harmondsworth], 1958), 93-114; Kenneth Clark, The
Gothic Revival (London, 1973). On the Neo-Gothic in Poland, see the special issue of
Miscellanea Łódzkie, 1(14) (1996), and esp. Tadeusz Chrzanowski, “Czy istnieje
 276

situated close to the Torah scrolls would thus suggest the Ark of the Covenant hidden in
the Holy of Holies, while the pilasters flanking the entire façade symbolized those of the
Temple. Whereas the lighter pilasters from the medieval synagogue of Cracow may
originally have represented Jachin and Boaz, after they were set in the Remah Ark
between two new pilasters with equally Solomonic elements, they ceded their
symbolism to the darker pilasters, and now designated the Temple’s inner part.
Following this assumption, the egg-and-dart echini added to the central capitals (ill.
335) may have depicted the ‫( פקעים‬peka’im, “buds” or “knobs,” I Kings 6:18) carved on
the walls inside the Temple, which the Ralbag described as “eggs which have both ends
pointed.”324 On the new pilasters, the unusual design of the flute’s upper edge is
decisively limited by a transverse groove but then is continued further with a short
incised line (ills. 335, 338). Such a non-finito execution of the groves suggests the
tradition of a work left incomplete as a token of mourning for the destruction of the
Temple in Jerusalem, rather than a mere fault of the carver.325
The Ark’s paired pilasters bear a broken architrave, and a relief of a crown
embellished the sunken section above the niche of the Torah scrolls (ills. 330, 450). This
sunken architrave and the crown are made from the same stone as the outer pilasters and
the protruding sections of the entablature and may be attributed to the same hand.326 The
inscription running in a triangular outline around the crown on the architrave was

———————————————————————————————————
neogotyk polski?” ibid., 5-12. I thank Dr. Małgorzata Paszylka who kindly sent me this
issue. On the Neo-Gothic style in European synagogue architecture of the last quarter of
the 19th century, see Wischnitzer, Architecture, 214-17; Harold Hammer-Schenk,
Synagogen in Deutschland, Geschichte einer Baugattung im 19. und 20.
Jahrhundert (1780-1933), 1 (Hamburg, 1981): 232-50; Krinsky, Synagogues of
Europe, 78-79, 85-88; Dominique Jarassé, “Synagogue: The Community as Unit. The
Quest for a Style” in Sed-Rajna, Jewish Art, 174-75. In the mid-19th century, the Neo-
Gothic style also had its effect on Jewish carved tombstones in Kazimierz near Cracow,
note Katalog zabytków, 4 Kraków, 6: 77, 79, figs. 301, 303.
324
Literally, ‫( ביצים ששני ראשיהם חדים‬the commentary of the Ralbag on I Kings 6:18).
325
A common custom, which was also confirmed by the Remah is to leave a square cubit
of a plastered wall bare. On the origins and variants of this custom and its implementation
in synagogue building, see Goldman-Ida, “Black on the White - a Remembrance of
Jerusalem,” 203-209. In the foreword to his Torat ha-Olah, the Remah stated that the first
aim of the book that was composed as a symbolic interpretation of the Temple in
Jerusalem, its implements and the service, is “to complain always of the destruction [...]
as it is said ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, [let my right hand forget her cunning]’ (Ps.
137:5).”
326
The white colour of the crown, and also the blue and red spots, seen on the current
photographs (e.g., ill. 450) were recently added in oil paint.
 277

engraved in 1861.327 Probably at the same stage, a tablet was built in under the Ark’s
doors (ills. 381, 385, 450) in order to commemorate the gabbaim, the managers of the
synagogue’s affairs, who renewed the Ark, and Eleazar bar Mordechai, who executed
the work.328 The photographs (ills. 374, 384) also show a wide parokhet with a kapporet
hung from a rail supported by two brackets (ill. 381). Two big round knobs set slightly
asymmetrically on the protruding sections of the architrave (ill. 330) are remnants of
these brackets.

———————————————————————————————————
327
The text reads, ‫“( השקיפה ממעון קדשך מן השמים ובר'ך' א'ת' עמך את ישראל לפק‬Look down
from thy holy habitation, from heaven, and bless thy people Israel,” Deut. 26:15). The
punctuation discernable above the letters ‫ת‬, ‫ א‬and ‫ ר‬indicate the date of 621, or 1861. The
style of the letters confirms the dating. In contrast to the protruding bold letters on the
frieze, those on the architrave have no bold horizontal strokes and are carved into the
surface. The script may be dated to the second half of the 19th century, cf. the 19th-century
remake of the tombstone of Gitl, Remah’s grandmother, reproduced in Duda,
Krakowskie judaica, 92 fig. 59.
328
The inscription reads,
(?) ‫מלאכת עבודת הקודש נתח'דש ונת‬
'‫ע'י האלופים הגבאים דבהכ'נ דר'מ'א‬
‫ז'צ'ל'ה'ה' זכרה להם אלהי לטובב‬
‫וז'מ'י אלעזר ב'ר מהדכי‬
In the course of recent renovations, several letters were misinterpreted: in line 3, instead
of ‫“( זכרה‬remember this [the work]”), the word may have been ‫“( זכור‬remember”); in the
end of the same line, instead of ‫ לטובב‬the word must be ‫“( לטובה‬for the better”), and in the
end of line 4, ‫ מהדכי‬should be ‫“( מרדכי‬Mordecai”). Several letter combinations are
abbreviations or acronyms: in the first line, ‫ נתח'דש‬is an abbreviation of ‫“( נתחדשה‬it [the
work] was renovated”); it remains unclear however, what verb was abbreviated by the
characters ‫ ונת‬in the end of the same line. In line 2, ‫ ע'י‬is an acronym for ‫“( על ידי‬by”), and
'‫ דבהכ'נ דר'מ'א‬stays for ‫“( דבית הכנסת דרמ"א‬of the synagogue of Remah”). In line 3, '‫ז'צ'ל'ה'ה‬
is an acronym of ‫“( זכר צדיק לחיי העולם הבא‬the memory of the righteous for life everlasting
in the next world”), and in line 4, ‫ וז'מ'י‬is an acronym of ‫“( וזאת מלאכת ידי‬and this work is
by”). Thus, the inscription means, “The deed of the holy work was renovated and was [?]
by the gabbaim of the synagogue of Remah, the memory of the righteous for life
everlasting in the next world, remember [this?], O God, for their favour, and this work is
by Eleazar, son of Mordecai.” The numerical value of all the letters marked from above
by points is 1798. However, all the points here were done to designate the abbreviations
and acronyms, and thus all the marked characters may not be used for their numerological
value. The original script is somewhat deformed by renovations. Nevertheless, it can
hardly be dated back to 1798, as the structure of the characters and their proportions are
akin to the 1861 inscription on the Ark’s architrave, and to the tombstone epitaphs done
from the mid-19th century on. Perhaps, the two inscriptions were made at the same period
and are parts of the same message: the Biblical quotation around the crown was engraved
to express a plea for blessing and simultaneously recorded the date, while the less sacred
area below the Torah repository was chosen to commemorate the patrons and the master.
I thank Dr. Eleonora Bergman who kindly provided me with a clear reproduction of the
inscription.
 278

The crown relief consists of a circlet with a “wreath” of finials, depicted as if

seen from below (ill. 451). The circlet is symmetrically inlaid with jewels, and a big
oval gem is set in the very center. Three big trefoil finials, and two smaller ones
between them, compose the wreath. Crowns were widely depicted in contemporary
Jewish art: the crown with jewels on the circlet and the alternating big trefoil and small
finials is engraved on a fragment of a tombstone with a pointed arch from the cemetery
near the synagogue (ill. 452), and almost the same pattern appears in the mark of the
Venetian printer Alvise Bragadini on the frontispiece of the responsa by the Maharam of
Padua printed in Venice in 1553 (ill. 453).329 If the carver copied such a graphic model,
he clearly transformed its delicate linear foliate patterns into the simplified forms of a
stone relief.
The Hebrew inscription ‫“( בי מלכים ימלוכו‬By me kings will rule,” Prov. 8:15) is
engraved within a frieze above the crown (ill. 388). The letters with a small starlet on
each of them are carved in a shallow relief within the frieze and slightly protrude from
the wall (ill. 388). These letters, like the similar letters with dots on the vertical strokes
from the frieze of the alms box (ill. 382), resemble the initial letters in the Pentateuch
printed in Prague in 1530 (ill. 460). It was perhaps the use of monumental frieze
inscriptions in Polish Renaissance architecture330 that inspired the large proportions of
the Hebrew letters and their placement on the frieze of the Holy Ark. The accurate
symmetrical carving in low flat relief on the Ark’s outer capitals, the entablature with
the simple profiles and the crown, and the panel with the Hebrew inscription and the
hexagram may thus be attributed to one or more local stone carvers who worked for
Isserl. He may well have been a tombstone carver experienced in flattened carving and
in engraving Hebrew script on stone.331 Such craftsmen had an artistic sense for

———————————————————————————————————
329
Amram, The Makers of Hebrew Books, 373; ‫ דגלי המדפיסים העבריים‬,‫ יערי‬12 fig. 18,
131; Joshua Bloch, “Venetian Printers of Hebrew Books,” 71, 84. Bragadini’s mark also
appeared in a large scale on the title-pages of the responsa by Rabbi Asher ben Jehiel (the
Rosh, ca. 1250-1327) from 1552 (Mitchell M. Kaplan, Panorama of Ancient Letters
[New York, 1942], 41 no. 53). Bragadini was a business companion of the Maharam of
Padua, and the Remah could have received Bragadini’s newly printed books in Cracow
shortly after they were published. The Remah frequently referred to Rabbi Asher’s
responsa, and likely used a printed book (note the entry “Rabbi Asher bar Jehiel [Rosh]”
in ‫ שו"ת הרמ"א‬547). Even earlier, in 1512, a version of such a crown appeared twice on
the title page of the Prayer Book printed in Prague (ill. 302).
330
Note, for example, the monumental inscriptions on the frieze in the interior and on the
exterior of the Sigismund Chapel (ills. 357, 361).
331
Most of these craftsmen were Jewish, but the fact that the carver dealt with the
 279

symmetrical and heraldic compositions. Although they knew Renaissance art only in
general, without having experience in carving Italianiate architectonic reliefs, they could
inventively imitate complex sculptural capitals or a graphic model of a crown in
simplified and flattened forms.
The choice of the quotation “By me kings will rule” to be placed above the
crown relief in the Ark of the Remah Synagogue proves that it was the discourse on the
Ark’s “wreath of gold” that is the Crown of the Torah in Yomah 72b332 that inspired the
setting of the Crown of the Torah above synagogue Arks rather than the parable on the
four crowns in Avot 4:13. In contrast to the crown depicting the “wreath of gold” of the
biblical Ark (Ex. 25:11, 37:2) in medieval Christian art (ill. 286), the Jewish sign for the
crown above the synagogue Ark had been an inscription in Hebrew declaring “Crown of
the Torah” rather that picturing it, i.e., in the mid-15th century pediment of a Holy Ark
from Nuremberg (ill. 282). The earliest known pictorial sign for the Crown of the Torah
in synagogue art is found in the richly decorated Holy Ark of gilt walnut dated from
1543 that originated from the Scuola Grande of the Italian rite in Mantua, ca. 90 km to
the west of Padua (ill. 491-92b).333 Here the crown is set at the top of a leafy
superstructure, and the inscription ‫“( כתר תורה‬Crown of the Torah”) is carved on the
crown’s circlet (ill. 492b). In the Remah Ark, the inscription in the frieze develops the
symbolism of the purely visual sign of the crown rather than just labels the image.

———————————————————————————————————
Hebrew inscription does not testify to his Jewish origin as he might have traced the lines
marked on the stone, copied a drawing or used a stencil prepared by a Jewish scribe. It is
noteworthy that Christians were sometimes even commissioned to carve Hebrew epitaphs
in the cemetery near the Remah Synagogue. There is no extant signature on the oldest
tombstones at the Remah cemetery. However, a number of the tombstones from the first
decades of the 17th century are signed with the monogram “~NK,” the Latin characters
indicating a non-Jew (Radwański, “Odkrycie renesansowych i barokowych nagrobków,”
72). Hońdo’s interpretation of this monogram as Hebrew ‫“( אמן‬amen;” Hońdo, “Stary
cmentarz Żydowski w Krakowie,” 344) is unconvincing: the letters "NK" might allude to
a handwritten "‫ "מ‬and "‫א‬," but the curve to the left of these characters may not be
identified with a "‫ן‬." The monogramist NK based his Hebrew script on that of the
dedicatory tablet in the Remah Synagogue (see Katalog zabytków, 4 Kraków, 6: 60-61,
fig. 210).
332
Cf. also Tanhuma, Vayakhel (Ex. 35:1-38:20) 7; Num. Rabba 4:13.
333
Two monumental chairs standing at either side were found with the Ark. The similar
carved decoration and architectural details allows us to attribute the Ark and the chairs
to the same workshop. An inscription revealed on the upper left side of the right chair
records the origin and date of the whole structure: it reads, ‫בב"כ הגדולה פה מנטובה ניסן ש"ג‬
(“In the Great synagogue, Mantua, Nissan 303,” i.e. 1543). See ‫ ארונות קודש‬,‫ נכון‬48-51.
 280

Such reading of crowns in the symbolic context of the whole composition was
also found in contemporary Polish Christian imagery, for instance in crowns that were
depicted as an attribute of the Madonna. For example, the crown in the “Madonna and
Child” of the so-called Gostyń type dated to 1542 (ill. 454), is a sign of Divine Glory,
and the orb with a cross in its top, which is held by Christ, symbolizes his royal power
over the entire world.334 In Polish imagery, the royal glory of the Madonna also
connotes her special protection of the Polish state and people. A diadem with leafy
finials was also a part of the Polish royal corona clausa (“closed crown”) topped by one
or more arches with an orb, called mundus (“the Universe”), with a cross in the very top
(e.g., ill. 455).335 Since at least the Carolingian period, such a crown was accepted in
Catholic Europe as a visual sign of the Divine source of royal glory and power. In the
reign of Sigismund I, the sacral and political symbolism of royal regalia was widely
used in the heraldry and portraits of the king. In the Sigismund Chapel, the medieval
motifs and all’ antica allusions were merged with the images of royal regalia, the state
symbol and monumental inscriptions. This is seen in the artistic arrangement of the
southern niche with the royal throne (behind the tomb of Queen Anna, ill. 360) that
created the scenery for the real king to participate in prayer in the chapel. On the
throne’s back, an eagle under an orb with a cross symbolizes the Polish Kingdom, and
two columns flanking the throne support putti who hold a corona clausa with the orb
and cross over the royal seat (ill. 456). On the exterior, the superstructure above the high
lantern is again designed like a crown, and atop its spire an orb supports a kneeling
putto who holds aloft another crown, an orb and a cross (ills. 359a-b).336 The
hierarchical composition of the cross above the orb and crown symbolizes the Divine

———————————————————————————————————
On the Mantuan Jewish communities and their synagogues, see L. Carnevali, Gli
Israeliti di Mantova (Mantua, 1878); idem, Il Ghetto di Mantova (Mantua, 1884).
334
On the origins and development of the crown’s symbolism, see Chevalier and
Gheerbrant, A Dictionary of Symbols, 262-66.
335
Cf. Kalinowski, Speculum Artis, 498 ff. On the iconography of the Polish royal
crown in the late 15th century and the first half of the 16th century, see Aleksandr
Gieysztor, “‘Non habemus Caesarem nisi Regem.’ Korona zamknięta królów polskich w
końcu XV wieku i w wieku XVI,” Museum i twórca. Studia z historii sztuki i kultury
ku czci prof. dr. Stanisława Lorentza (Warsaw, 1969), 277-92; Barbara Miodońska,
“Korona zamknięta w przekazach ikonograficznych z czasów Zygmunta I,” Biuletyn
Historii Sztuki, 32 (Warsaw, 1970), 1: 3-16.
336
As in other motifs in the Sigismund Chapel, there is some tautology in the use of the
regalia: the king with the corona clausa on his head sat under another corona clausa on the
throne, the Eagle with the orb and cross is situated under a crown with another orb and
 281

source and protection of the mundane ruler, and implements the idea expressed in the
dedicatory inscription on the exterior western wall, which names the king Divus
Sigismundus I Poloniae Rex337 alluding to the classical formula Divus Caesar.
The hierarchical concept of the social order and its Divine source, which had
been expressed in the decorative programme of the Sigismund Chapel, occupied the
mind of Polish humanists in the 1550s and 1560s. In an illustration from Mikołaj Rej’s
Postilla, published in Cracow in 1557 (ill. 457), the cross extends its protection to the
crown, symbol of the king, and to the eagle, symbol of the Polish Kingdom. Stanisław
Orzechowski’s 1564 Quincunz Polonia (“Pentagon of Poland”) summarizes the views
on this subject.338 In his opinion, the rulership emanates from the Divine source and
descends on the Pope, and from there is given to both the secular and the spiritual rulers.
His views are expressed not only in literary terms, but also in a visual image: in two
illustrations from the Quincunz, his mental constructions were realized as hierarchic
compositions of allegories and symbols. In the first plate, an allegorical figure of the
Church is pictured as a woman wearing a crown from which rises a Crucifix (ill. 458).
She holds the Eucharist chalice on a box containing the host, above the Polish heraldic
eagle who wears the initials of Sigismund Augustus. An open book and another chalice
with the host are found on the altar beneath the allegory. In front of the altar in the
foreground, are two kneeling figures: the Polish archbishop and the Polish king. In
another illustration, the same hierarchic structure was reduced to symbols (ill. 459). The
Eagle of the Polish Kingdom is enclosed within a square with the royal corona clausa
and the archbishop’s miter in its upper corners, and the chalice and the altar below.
From the lower corners, a triangle rises toward the fifth apex of the “pentagon,” that is
occupied by the papal tiara surmounted by a Crucifix. This concise symbolic

———————————————————————————————————
cross, and two crowns are seen on the exterior.
337
Kalinowski, Speculum Artis, 519.
338
Alias Stanislaus Orichovius Ruthenus (1513-66). Having studied in Wittenberg and
been in favour of Luther, Orzechowski left for Italy, visited Padua and Rome. He was
ordained as a Catholic priest, and became one of the main adepts of the Counter
Reformation in the reign of Sigismund Augustus. His political opinions are scattered in
his eulogy of Sigismund I (Stanislai Orichovii Rutheni ornata et copiosa oratio habita in
funere Sigismundi Jagellonis Poloniae regis [Venice, 1548]), his chronicles of Polish
history (Annales Polonici ab excessu Divi Sigismundi Primi [1954]), and in his address to
Sigismund Augustus (Fidelis subditus [Cracow, 1548]). See, Голенищев-Кутузов,
Итальянское Возрождение, 309-16, 368-69; Polski Słownik Biograficzny, 24
(Wroclaw, 1979), 287-92; Fiszman, The Polish Renaissance in Its European Context,
5, 51, 57 n. 47, 326.
 282

representation demonstrates Christ’s Dispensation and papal supervision over the

national community that is based on a Christian union in the Eucharistic mystery, and
jointly ruled by a secular and a sacral ruler.
Renaissance hierarchical representations that based the social order on the New
Testament and Christ left the Jews with no positive part in human history. In response,
the images on the Ark of the Remah Synagogue create a hierarchical composition of
symbols similar to such pictures in Polish art, but expounding the Jewish point of view.
In his philosophical treatises, the Remah explained the Jewish attitude to Divine
Dispensation in human history, basing his historiosophy on the concept that God created
the world for the sake of the fulfillment of the Torah by the people of Israel. The exile
and the vassalage of Jews did not controvert this aim, for its severities are only temporal
visitations on the Jewish people.339 The Remah also shared the belief in the millennial
“days of the world,” the last of which will be messianic. He explained that in the
“messianic day,” the people of Israel would be free from their vassalage to gentile
rulers, and become subjects of the King Messiah, whereas the last eschatological king
would be God Himself.340
The inscription “By me kings will rule” on the frieze is followed by a hexagram
consisting of two intersecting triangles (ill. 461). The Jews of Kazimierz would have
known this image from Prague, where it was used as the Shield of David from the early
16th century. A great Shield of David between two crowns and an explanation that it is a
symbol of the Messiah of David’s lineage who will protect the Jews, appear on the
frontispiece of the prayer books printed in Prague in 1512 (ill. 302), some of which were
obviously sold in Kazimierz or brought there by immigrants from Bohemia. Israel Isserl
and Remah might also have known about the Shield of David that was used as a
hieroglyph for the Messiah between the letters engraved on the monumental portal from
1535 in the Horowitz (Pinchas) Synagogue in Prague (ill. 314). Later this symbol
appeared in combination with a tree in Italian books. For example, from 1551 on,
Tobias Foa depicted two intersecting triangles on a tree flanked by rampant lions in his
printer’s marks on the books he published in Sabbioneta (ill. 462). The biblical citations
written around the picture mention God as a shield for the faithful, suggesting again that

———————————————————————————————————
339
‫ תורת העולה‬,‫ הרמ"א‬3: 101b no. 37, See a critical review of Remah’s historiosophy in
‫ משנתו העיונית של הרמ"א‬,‫ששון‬-‫ בן‬121-26, 143-52.
340
See ‫ משנתו העיונית של הרמ"א‬,‫ששון‬-‫ בן‬131-32.
 283

this is a sign of Divine protection and Messianic Redemption.341 On the Ark’s frieze, the
messianic Shield of David develops the message encoded into the phrase from Proverbs
and the crown: it suggests that the Christian mundane spiritual and social leaders who
are not ruled by the Torah have no real authority, as it is the Messiah who will wear
David’s crown that embodies the kingdom of the Torah. The symbols imply the
dependence of the mundane authority on Divine Will, as in Christian theories, but its
emphasis on the Torah controverts the Christian view of the King as ruling by virtue of
Jesus’ identity with the celestial King of Kings.
The frieze with the inscription bears an attic flanked by volutes that supports a
triangular pediment. Each of the separate components of this composition had also been
present in contemporary Polish art since the 1530s: many sculptural tombs and epitaphs
have an attic flanked by volutes (ills. e.g., 463-64) and a more or less triangular
pediment, sometimes composed of volutes, surmounts some of them (e.g., ills. 463,
465-67). Nevertheless, the entire scheme, including the four-columned façade, seems to
be non-existant in Polish Renaissance art before the 1560s: the only known example is
the Mateusz and Anna Czarny tomb made after 1566 (ill. 468),342 i.e., about eight years
later than the Holy Ark of the Remah Synagogue. In the Renaissance architectonic
decoration of such wall tombs, the attic was used to display an inscription or an image.
In contrast, the attic of the Ark is blank, whereas the inscription is found in the frieze
(ill. 469).343 This rare layout with its unnecessary attic may have been chosen by Israel
Isserl and the Remah instead of a wide stock of architectonic patterns used in the Polish
Renaissance, particularly because they had a model for the use of this composition in the
1525 Ark of the Scuola Tedesca in Padua (ill. 436). The striking resemblance between
the two Arks demands an examination of how this structure came to be a model for the
Remah Ark.
As we have noted, the rabbi of the Scuola Tedesca, the Maharam of Padua and
his son, Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen, were the Remah’s kinsmen and

———————————————————————————————————
341
In a smaller, and probably earlier, variant of this mark, there are quotations from Ps.
119:114, 3:4, 84:12 and Prov. 2:6. In another variant of Foa’s mark, the tree bearing the
hexagram is a palm and the caption reads “The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree”
(Ps. 92:13), see ‫ דגלי המדפיסים העבריים‬,‫ יערי‬13 figs. 20-21, 133.
342
See Irena Burnatowa, “Ornament renesansowy w Krakowie” in Michał Walicki, ed.,
Studia Renesansowe, 4 (Wroclaw, 1964): 104-105, fig. 66.
343
No traces of original decoration on the attic are discernable or documented and at
most, it may have been decorated with painting. Those who later redecorated the Ark put
 284

correspondents. They both had contacts with the Remah during the 1550s: in 1550, the
Maharam and the Remah were in active communication concerning the book trade,344
and in 1553, the Remah wrote to the Maharam about the death of his mother, asking the
elder rabbi for advise on halakhic issues.345 At the time, the Maharam’s daughter and
her husband Shlomo Zalman ben Jacob Ronkel were living in Kazimierz.346 The
Remah’s friends and students, who visited Italy at least from 1551 on, continued to be in
contact with him. Although none of their letters survive, several fragments of the
Remah’s correspondence with Italy, mostly concerning halakhic problems, are scattered
in his writings. Visiting Padua, the Jews of Kazimierz would have prayed in accordance
with their rite in the Scuola Tedesca and have seen its Renaissance Ark; they may also
have taken lessons with the Maharam in his famous yeshiva, and learned his
predisposition to Renaissance ideas. This wide range of contacts would have allowed
Isserl and the Remah to have known about the Ark in the Paduan Scuola Tedesca, and
perhaps to have sought the advice of the Maharam on the synagogue they planned to
build in Kazimierz. The Maharam enjoyed great respect in Poland, and his authority
might have legitimized the new style in the synagogue.
Although the composition of the two Arks is similar, the stone “Corinthian”
pilasters, leafy pediment and volutes of the Ark in the Remah Synagogue differ from the
Ionic half-colonettes supporting small triangular gables, the simple geometric volutes
and the classical pediment of the wooden Ark in Padua (cf. ill. 446 vs. ill. 436). The

———————————————————————————————————
the great crown and the Tablets of the Law (ills. 380, 384) to fill the blank area.
344
In 1550, Alvise Bragadini issued at his Hebrew press in Venice an edition of the
Mishne Torah by Maimonides with a commentary by the Maharam of Padua. Marco
Antonio Giustiniani in the same city, printed another edition of this book in the same
year, but without the Maharam’s glosses. The competition between the two printers
seriously threatened the interests of the Maharam, who had invested a sizeable capital in
this project. To ensure the sale of this book to Polish Jewry, who were a considerable part
of the potential purchasers, the Maharam turned for help to the Remah. On August 16,
1550, the Remah undertook a decision to prevent the Jews under a ban of
excommunication from purchasing Giustiniani’s edition of Mishne Torah (‫שו"ת הרמ"א‬
no. 10) See also ",‫ "מהר"ם מפאדובה‬,‫ זיו‬183 ff.; [Tal], “Isserles, Moses ben Israel,” 1082;
Joshua Bloch, “Venetian Printers of Hebrew Books” and Isaiah Sonne, “Expurgation of
Hebrew Books – the Work of Jewish Scholars: A Contribution to the History of the
Censorship of Hebrew Books in Italy in the 16th century” in Berlin, Hebrew Printing
and Bibliography, 81-82 and 235-36 respectively.
345
‫" דרכי משה‬,‫ "יורה דעה‬,‫ הרמ"א‬sign 391b; see also ‫" שו"ת הרמ"א‬,‫ "הקדמה‬,‫ זיו‬11.
346
Shlomo Ronkel died in 1562 and was buried at the cemetery near the Remah
Synagogue (‫ לוחות זכרון‬,‫ פריעדברג‬50-51 no. 32).
 285

difference suggests that the person who chose this model for the Ark in Kazimierz
followed a verbal account or had a schematic sketch drawn by an unprofessional hand
rather than a detailed drawing. Such a description or sketch could have given the general
outline of the whole object, but not the specific details of decoration. The plant,
hexagram and even the crown that finish off the scheme of the Ark’s superstructure in
the Remah Synagogue (ills. 450, 469) are absent from the Paduan Ark (ill. 436), but
allusions to crowns in synagogue decoration in Bohemia and Germany, and the crown
and the tree were also popular in Polish art. The patrons of the synagogue thus filled in
the generalized outline of the Padua Ark with relics from the old Ark they obtained in
Cracow and with traditional Ashkenazi symbols, including the new pilasters, an
entablature and superstructure.
In contrast to the purely geometric rendering of the original superstructure of the
Ark in Padua (ill. 436), in the Remah Ark, the gable and the volutes flanking the attic
are interpreted as picturesque plant reliefs (ill. 461). The S-shaped foliate volutes scroll
around a five-petalled flower at the bottom, sprout three scrolling leaves towards the
attic, and three curving leaves outwards (ill. 470). Atop the attic, there is a relief of a
plant enclosed within a triangular shape that serves as a pediment (ill. 461). This plant
consists of a vertical baluster-like trunk spreading delicate scrolling branches. On either
side, the upper scrolling branch bears an open flower, the middle branch ends in a
blossom, and the branch beneath it forms a spiralling end with two attached scrolls
resembling architectonic volutes in the lower corner of the triangle. The attic is slightly
narrower than the pediment, so that the scrolls in the corners of the pediment hang over
the attic’s cornice. The free spread of the branches of the plant in the pediment
outwards, its hanging corners and the curved leaves on the outer side of the S-shaped
volutes give the composition an open character and thus make the separate reliefs look
like integral parts of the plant image that embraces the attic. The foliate reliefs of this
superstructure had been carved on slabs, which were then built into the wall but slightly
protruded from it (ill. 381). The plastering of the wall in the course of the late 20th-
century renovations made the background of the reliefs melt into the wall.
Whereas the carver who produced the Renaissance reinterpretation of
Romanesque capitals and copied the crown on the Ark’s architrave displayed no
experience in classical architectonic and ornamental forms, the ornamental reliefs of the
superstructure resemble the skillful Italian Renaissance sculptural decorations made in
 286

Cracow by Berrecci and his companions. Although the general continuity of the
sculptural designs of Berrecci’s Sigismund Chapel in works of his former assistants and
collaborators in the mid-16th century is undoubted, the specific attribution of leafy
ornaments in sculpted tombs to specific workshops in Cracow is more difficult. In the
scholarly literature, the attribution of the sculptural tombs is usually based mainly on the
style and iconography of the effigies, so that decorative elements such as the attic panel,
ornamental tympanum and volutes that resemble each other stylistically become
ascribed to different workshops. Following this approach, Wischnitzer attributed the
design of the Holy Ark and alms box in the Remah Synagogue to the workshop of Gian
Maria Padovano.347 But in the decorative devices on the sculptural tombs attributed to
Padovano and his workshop one may find different pediments including those
composed of softly modeled and richly foliated volutes (ill. 467), dryly modeled volutes
(ill. 471), flattened volutes of primitive shape,348 or those designed as a purely
geometrical gable.349 This lack of stylistic uniformity resulted from a situation in which
each sculptor usually specialized in one kind of artistic work, so that in order to fill a
complex commission including both sculpted figures and ornaments, experts in different
fields often joined together. For instance, already at the time they assisted Berrecci,

———————————————————————————————————
347
Wischnitzer (Architecture, 107, n. 2) based her attribution to Padovano on Feliks
Kopera, “Jan Maria Padovano,” 255-56, but those specific works of Padovano which are
discussed in the pages to which she referred are not similar to the carvings in the Remah
Synagogue. Since she did not explain this attribution, it has mostly been ignored in the
more recent literature, but sometimes it causes wrong inferences. De Breffny assumed
that some of Padovano’s Italian collaborators such as his son Andrea and his colleague
Paolo Stella might have been involved in the work at the synagogue (Breffny,
Synagogue, 106, 111). At the end of his book, he credited Wischnitzer’s Architecture
(Breffny, Synagogue, 210), and based himself on the same paper “Jan Maria Padovano”
by Kopera without giving the number of the pages to which he referred (Breffny,
Synagogue, 106, n. 1, 111, n. 118). Kopera’s article, however, demands critical reading,
and a number of his assertions were revised and updated by more recent research. Kopera
had mentioned that Paolo Stella was in Cracow and stated that the goldsmith Andrea
(Andrzej or Jędrzej Moskwa or Mosqua) was Padovano’s son (Kopera, “Jan Maria
Padovano,” 220-21 and 225 respectively). As far as it is known, Paolo Stella was never in
Poland: when Padovano went to Cracow in 1529, Stella completed some of Padovano’s
unfinished works in Italy. In 1539, Stella worked in Prague with Zuan (Zoan) Maria
Padovano, who is not the same artist as Gian (Jan) Maria Mosca il Padovano of Cracow.
Nor was Jędrzej Moskwa a son of Gian Padovano (see “Stella, Paolo,” Thieme and
Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon, 31 [1937]: 583; Helena Kozakiewicz, Rzeżba XVI wieku
w Polsce, 99-127 [on Gian Maria Padovano], 93, 99, 101 [on Stella], 99 [on the
identification of Zuan Maria Padovano], 100 [on Jędrzej Moskwa]).
348
Helena Kozakiewicz, Rzeżba XVI wieku w Polsce, figs. 138-39.
 287

Giovanni Cini specialized in carved ornamentation, whereas Padovano and Bernardino

de Giannottis produced mainly figurative sculpture.350 These different combinations of
collaborating artists suggest that we must search for a workshop that produced similar
S-shaped leafy volutes and plant pediments for works attributed to several other
workshops of figurative sculpture.
In its delicate modulations of relief, precise shapes and floating lines, the plant
reliefs atop the Remah Ark (ills. 461, 469) are similar to the arboreal reliefs that Cini
produced under the supervision of Berrecci in the Sigismund Chapel (e.g., ills. 472-76).
In the Ark’s pediment (ill. 469), the candelabrum-shaped trunk issuing delicate scrolling
tendrils with a pair of open flowers and a pair of blossoms is almost a copy of the relief
in the southern tympanum in the Chapel (cf. ill. 477). Since such a refined style is not
found in later Polish sculpture, the carvings atop the Remah Ark must be atrtributed to
one of the few sculptors of the Berecci workshop who could have reproduced this style a
quarter of century after the Sigismund Chapel was completed.
The S-shaped foliate volutes give us a better gauge for comparisons. Based on a
motif popular in the Italian Renaissance (e.g., ills. 393, 478), they were developed by
Berrecci’s workshop to include a flower instead of the volute’s spirals, and three tendrils
sprouting inwards from one end of the volute. Although the use of a symmetric plant
image on the top of an architectonic composition continued the scheme of the interior
decorations in the Sigismund Chapel, the paired volutes rather than the “leafy
candelabra” were used in Poland by Berrecci, his collaborators and followers for
ornamental pediments. An early example of this composition in Poland is the altarpiece
of St. Dorothy made in 1529-31 for Wawel Cathedral (ill. 479) that is attributed to
sculptors of the Berrecci workshop who were at that time still working on the
Sigismund Chapel.351 A slightly later version of this voluted pediment is found in the
Tomicki tomb from his chapel at Wawel cathedral from about 1535 (ill. 365), which
also has leaves above the volutes. The sculpture for the Tomicki tomb is attributed to

———————————————————————————————————
349
Ibid., figs. 161-62, 184.
350
Hornung’s attribution of several figurative sculptures to Cini was not well-grounded,
cf. Zbignew Hornung, “Działalnośćsc rzeżbiarska Jana Ciniego ze Sieny w świetle
nowych badań,” Sprawozdania Wrocławskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego, 1953, 8
(Wroclaw, 1956): 20-26.
351
The altarpiece was originally situated in the southern nave of the Cathedral, then was
replaced, and in 1637 it was recomposed in the chapel in Bodzów near Cracow (ill. 480).
See Ignacy Trybowski and Olgierd Zagórowski, “Renesansowy ołtarz Św. Doroty z
 288

either Padovano or Berrecci,352 and Antonio of Fiesole, one of Berrecci’s assistants, is

said to have made the decorative carvings.353 The definite contrast of the heavy thick
relief of the volutes with the background here clearly differs from the soft play of
delicate forms in the Remah Ark’s pediment (ill. 461).
The Italian carvers of the Berrecci workshop disseminated this type of a voluted
gable in the Renaissance sepulchral sculpture in Poland. After they had completed
sculptural works at the Sigismund Chapel, Giovanni Cini established a new sculptural
workshop with Bernardino de Giannottis and Phillip of Fiesole and, in addition to the
clientele of the royal court and high nobility, also worked for the middle nobility and
burghers. As during his work in the Berrecci workshop, Cini continued to produce
ornamental and architectonic carvings for the artists who specialized in figurative
sculpture. Thus, Cini set leafy volutes with a flower and three tendrils into the tomb of
Krzysztof Szydłowiecki from 1532-36 (ill. 464), where they now appear as an outer
frame to an effigy that is likely a work by Bernardino de Giannottis.354
A small group of these Italian masters managed numerous commissions in
Cracow and far beyond, employing a great number of local stone carvers and
builders.355 After the death of Phillip of Fiesole, Bernardino de Giannotti and Antonio
of Fiesole in 1540-42, Padovano and Cini remained Berrecci’s only Italian assistants
still active in Poland. From then on, Cini supplied the tombs produced by Padovano
with architectonic frames.356 Thus it was probably Cini who copied Antonio of Fiesole’s
architectonic frame for Tomicki’s tomb in Wawel Cathedral (cf. ill. 365) to the frame
enclosing the effigy of archbishop Piotr Gamrat in the same Cathedral carved by
Padovano in 1545-47 (ill. 471).357 The pediment with a pair of S-shaped leafy volutes
atop Gamrat’s tomb almost imitates that of Tomicki’s tomb, but in contrast to the seven-
petalled flowers in the volutes and the plant atop Tomicki’s tomb, in Gamrat’s tomb the

———————————————————————————————————
katedry na Wawelu,” Studia Renesansowe, 3 (Wroclaw, 1963): 202-46.
352
For a different attribution, see Białostocki, The Art of the Renaissance, 53 and esp.
n. 68.
353
Helena Kozakiewicz, Rzeźba XVI wieku w Polsce, 54-56.
354
In the original composition, the volutes were likely set vertically to flank the upper
tier. The tomb was altered in the 18th century, and now the volutes flank the middle tier
(Helena and Stefan Kozakiewicz, Renesans w Polsce, 71-76).
355
Helena Kozakiewicz, Rzeźba XVI wieku w Polsce, esp. 80-83, 103, 108-120.
356
Ibid., 87-90, 101, 106, 109.
357
Kopera, “Jan Maria Padovano,” 238; Helena Kozakiewicz, Rzeźba XVI wieku w
Polsce, 108-109.
 289

flowers are composed of a few concentric rings of smaller petals and the volutes support
a figure.
Until the early 1560s, the stone carvers from Cracow continued to use pediments
with rich scrolling folia in Polish sepulchral sculpture. For example, a leafy pediment
composed of a pair of long volutes supporting a plant surmounts the tomb of Stanisław
Gabriel Tęczyński from ca. 1553 attributed to the workshop of Padovano (ill. 467), and
a similar scheme is seen in the pediment of the tomb of Jan and Janusz Kościelecki
made by Cracow sculptors in the church of Kościelec near Inowrocław in 1559 (ill.
465). This composition was implemented in a more refined and soft forms in the
pediment of the architectonic frame of a lost epitaph of an unknown person, dated from
the mid-16th century on the exterior of St. Barbara’s church in Cracow (ill. 390), but
even this relief is simpler than that in the Remah Ark’s pediment, and neither of these
tombstones reproduce the “leafy candelabra” carved by Cini in the Sigismund Chapel.
Similarly, the S-shaped volutes with three additional leaves on their outer side that flank
the Remah Ark’s attic were absent in Renaissance sculptural tombs in Poland. Although
there sometimes were S-shaped volutes with leaves on their outer side (e.g., ills. 365-66,
390, 466, 468, 481), the designers did not usually place three distinctly separated leaves
there.358
From 1546 through the early 1552, Cini and Padovano worked in Cracow on
parts of the sculptural tomb of Queen Elisabeth, and in 1554 they both left Cracow to
assemble this monument in Vilna.359 It remains unclear when Cini returned from Vilna:
it may have been at some point between 1555-56 and 1562, when he finally left for
Italy. While the professional activity of Cini decreased, Padovano was again employed
at Wawel Castle in 1558,360 and worked as a sculptor until his death in ca. 1574. In his
last years in Cracow, Cini had no remarkable commissions from the royal court or

———————————————————————————————————
358
Only in the 1570s, similarly separated leaves were carved on the outer side of S-
shaped volutes for the sculptural tombs attributed to Hieronim (Gerolamo) Canavesi (d.
1582), who until ca. 1560 was Padovano’s assistant (e.g., ill. 494), and in the tombs
resembling the style of Canavesi’s workshop (e.g., ill. 495). Note also similar volutes in
the tomb of Stanisław and Katarzyna Włodka, undated, situated near Pieniążkowa’s tomb
in the cloister of the Dominican church in Cracow (see Kopera and Cercha, Pomniki
Kracowa, 2, [n.p.]). For the development of the S-shaped volutes in the Renaissance
sculpture in Cracow, see Burnatowa, “Ornament renesansowy w Krakowie,” 97. On
Canavesi and his workshop, see Helena Kozakiewicz, Rzeżba XVI wieku w Polsce, 128-
38.
359
The tomb has not survived.
 290

nobility.361 However, during this period, he may have continued his long-term
cooperation with Padovano and also with workshop of Gabriel Słoński, a Polish
architect and mason who inherited the sculptural workshop of Antonio of Fiesole in ca.
1542,362 fulfilling sculptural works for the provincial nobility and for middle-class
patrons.
After Cini and his companions began to work for a wider clientele, they came in
contact with the Jews of Kazimierz: a contract referred to by Cercha and Kopera states
that in 1537, Cini and Phillip of Fiesole built a house for Jonah ben Abraham in
Kazimierz.363 Giovanni Cini seems thus to have been the appropriate person both to
maintain the motifs of the leafy pediment and volutes in his and his workshop’s
decorative stone carvings from the early 1530s to the 1550s, and also to bring them to
Jewish Kazimierz. Rebuilding his house for the synagogue in 1553 and reconstructing
the synagogue after 1556, Isserl may have turned to the sculptors and architects who
already worked for Jews. In addition, he had his own opportunities to meet Cini,
Padovano and their companions: through his business with the court, Isserl would have
visited Wawel Castle, where these sculptors worked, and since at least 1551 he had his

———————————————————————————————————
360
Helena Kozakiewicz, Rzeżba XVI wieku w Polsce, 104, n. 89.
361
Cercha and Kopera, Nadworny rzeźbiarz, 22-24.
362
The information on the collaboration of Cini with Słoński and a suggestion that the
same craftsmen assisted both sculptors are found in an archival record on Słoński who
sent one Bartolommeo to assist Cini in Vilna about 1554. Cercha and Kopera, who found
this document, identified this Bartolommeo with Bartolommeo Krupnik, a mason, whom
Cini employed in 1562, his last year in Poland (Cercha and Kopera, Nadworny
rzeźbiarz, 24).
363
See Cercha and Kopera, Nadworny rzeźbiarz, 20-24; Helena Kozakiewicz, Rzeżba
XVI wieku w Polsce, 83. The contract is published in J. Ptaśnik, Cracovia artificum
1501-1550, M. Friedberg, ed. (Cracow, 1948), 547 no. 1360. Krasnowolski identified
Jonah’s house as the Renaissance building at the corner of the Żydowska (“Jewish”)
street (now 36 Joseph Street) and the Kierków (“Cemetery”) Street (now Jacob Street),
near the Jewish quarter’s new gate built in 1553. The building was documented by
Ekielski in the 1860s and destroyed in the late 19th century. Judging by a fragment of the
portal decoration with a relief head of angel, Ekielski asserted that the house, though
within the Jewish quarter, was originally not in the possession of a Jew (Eugeniusz
Ekielski, Miasto Kazimierz i budowle uniwersyteckie w tem mieście [Cracow, 1869],
128). However, Krasnowolski believed that the employment of Italian architects by the
Jews of Kazimierz was usual, and mentioned several more such contracts from the second
part of the 16th century and the early 17th century (Krasnowolski, Ulice i place
Krakowskiego Kazimierza, 63, 73). With his statement, Krasnowolski contested the
argument proposed by Ekielski and shared by Świszczowski (“Miasto Żydowskie na
Kazimierzu w świetle nowych badań,” 55).
 291

business in Vilna,364 where Cini and Padovano spent time after 1554.365
The attribution of the Renaissance carvings in the Remah Synagogue explains
the different style of the Ark’s superstructure and of the frames of Isserl’s dedicatory
inscription and the alms box: sculptors of Cini’s workshop may have carved, on
commission from Padovano, the simpler paired volutes for the tomb of Pielecka after
1555 (ill. 395), and in 1557-58 may have provided Isserl with the same ready-made
carving for the pediment of the dedication tablet in the synagogue (ill. 370). A mason
inexperienced in art, as we already supposed Baranek to have been, composed the reliefs
and mouldings around the alms box and memorial tablet of the Remah Synagogue in a
somewhat irregular way. However, Cini himself sculpted a variant of the “leafy
candelabrum” he produced for the Sigismund Chapel in 1524-29. He also utilized the
type of the S-shaped volutes with three tendrils that he produced for altarpieces and
tombs attributed to the Berrecci workshop, Padovano and Bernardino de Giannottis (ills.
471, 464 on the sides, 479-80), but for the Remah’s Ark, Cini interpreted them in the
elegant style of the Ark’s pediment (ill. 470) to maintain the formal unity of the Ark’s
superstructure. In contrast to the two small stone frames in the synagogue, the Ark’s
reliefs were carefully set in place, probably also by Cini.
The commission for the synagogue must have been a boon to Cini’s business
that had decreased in scope after he returned from Vilna. Receiving no commissions
from the court, Cini would have seen in this work an opportunity to remind his former
patrons of his contribution to the reliefs in the renowned Sigismund Chapel, and to
prove his high professional skills. Indeed, he established the pattern for Renaissance
Arks in Kazimierz. However, the Remah Ark instead became Cini’s “swan-song”: from
that time on, he received no more great commissions, and in 1562 he left Poland. On the
other hand, the patrons of the synagogue preferred Cini’s somewhat obsolete style of the
“leafy-candelabrum” pediment and plant volutes flanking the attic not only for the
reason that they gave an impressive appearance to the Ark, which was composed of
stone carvings from various origins, but also because these carvings developed the
simple geometric scheme of a pedimented attic such as that in the Ark in Padua (ill.
436) into a more complex composition suggesting additional symbolic allusions.
The Renaissance symbolism of plant pediments in Polish sculpture originates in

———————————————————————————————————
364
Bałaban, Historja Żydów, 1: 143.
365
See Cercha and Kopera, Nadworny rzeźbiarz, 20-24; Helena Kozakiewicz, Rzeźba
 292

the arboreal reliefs that Cini produced for Berrecci and under his supervision in the
central section in all four tympana and in the arch above the throne (ills. 472-76) in the
Sigismund Chapel. The relief in the southern tympanum (ill. 477) is almost a copy of
the classical “leafy candelabrum” in the Ara Pacis Augustae (ill. 247) and its Christian
interpretation as the crux florida in the mosaic from St. Clemente in Rome (ill. 245).366
In the programme of the Chapel’s decoration that expresses the idea of the ascension of
the soul, the leafy reliefs in the tympana are an all’antica image of a flowering and
plentiful Paradise that alludes to the Tree of Life, the Cross and Redemption, and thus
suggests the celestial realm.367 This symbolism had become popular in Polish sculptural
tombstones (e.g., ills. 365-66, 390, 466, 468, 479). An example for the reading of the
pediment composed of a pair of leafy volutes that support a plant as a sign for the Tree
of Life is found in the design of the lost epitaph on the exterior of St. Barbara’s church
in Cracow (ill. 390). Stanisław Cercha’s 1903 drawing of the frame (ill. 481) clearly
shows a crowned head and a bird, now hardly seen, on the plant. Like the arboreal
ornaments in the tympana in the Sigismund Chapel, the inhabited tree symbolizes the
ascension of the departed soul to the paradisiacal realm.
Infrequently, the Tree of Life interpreted as a symmetrical plant superstructure is
found in other Polish art. For instance, in the “Presentation in the Temple,” a miniature
from the Book of Hours of Krzysztof Szydłowiecki dated to 1528-32 (ill. 484), a
symmetrical acanthus with two curving great leaves appears between the figures of the

———————————————————————————————————
XVI wieku w Polsce, 101-103, 106.
366
Kalinowski, Speculum Artis, 562 ff.
367
In the eastern and northern tympana, the figures merging into the plant allows it to be
read as a tree: if the woman at the bottom of the central panel in the eastern tympanum
(ills. 472, 475) is Daphne, the “leafy candelabrum” growing from her figure is the tree
into which she is being transformed (Kalinowski, Speculum Artis, 531-38; in contrast,
Białostocki believed that the figure is Venus Anadyomene, see idem, The Art of the
Renaissance, 41). In the central panel of the tympanum above the entrance arch, the two
naked figures tied to the ornamental acanthus (ills. 473, 476) were interpreted either as
Adam and Eve bound to the Tree of Knowledge, or as Eros and Psyche also tied to a tree
who appear as all'antica allegories for the Christian concept of the spiritual and corporeal
moieties of human nature, as it was represented in Altobella Meloni’s engraving “Eros
and Psyche” dated to 1516 (Kalinowski, Speculum Artis, 506-507 fig. 73). At the top of
the tree on the northern tympanum of the Chapel (ill. 476), putti with tridents hitting
monsters suggest an all’antica parallel to the archangel Michael fighting with the Devil,
while two small birds near the two bound figures are pecking at grapes (ill. 482), the
traditional symbol of the Eucharist, suggesting the Redemption of the mortals below.
Two birds are also seen at the top of the “leafy candelabrum” in the throne niche (ills.
456, 483).
 293

High Priest and the Madonna on the central axis of the picture, just above the Tablets of
the Law and a burning candle in the Madonna’s hands. In Christian art, the Tablets of
the Law on a table are the common representation of the synagogue Holy Ark as a
“Jewish altar” (e.g., ill. 485), but the combination of the Tablets of the Law with a
flourishing plant is rather unusual. The picture is attributed to Stanisław Samostrzelnik
(also Stanislaus Cracoviensis, after 1480- ca. 1541), a monk of the Cistercian monastery
in Mogila near Cracow.368 The patron, Krzysztof Szydłowiecki (died 1532), the Great
Chancellor of the Crown, was an enthusiastic adherent of Humanism and a maecenas of
Renaissance art in Poland. He had commissioned paintings from Samostrzelnik already
in the 1510s. Before the artist illuminated the Books of Hours for Szydłowiecki in 1528-
32, he did similar works for Sigismund I in 1524 and for Queen Bona in 1527, and also
decorated two chapels in Wawel.369 Thus Samostrzelnik would have seen the Sigismund
Chapel and could have known both the old Cistercian tradition of the arbor crucis and
the Renaissance arboreal symbolism of the relief tympana in the Sigismund Chapel.
Moreover, Kopera already noticed that Cini’s decorative reliefs probably served as a
model for foliate ornaments and classical motifs in Samostrzelnik’s miniatures. By
depicting the plant above the Tablets of Law in the “Presentation in the Temple”, the
artist encorporated this symbolism into a critique of Judaism. While the tall candle
appears as a visual metaphor for Simeon’s statement that the Child is “a light to lighten
the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel” (Luke 2:32) the altar prefigures the
Sacrifice, and the Tablets flourishing into a plant symbolize the transformation of the
Law of Moses into the new “Tree of Life” of Christianity in the spirit of John 1:17: “For
the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” It is possible
that his accent on Mosaic Law as the basis for the New Testament was inspired by the
attitude to the Bible of Erasmus of Rotterdam, who was in contact with both the abbot

———————————————————————————————————
368
Kieszkowski, Kanclerz Krzysztof Szydłowiecki, 2: 333, 500; Feliks Kopera,
Malarstwo w Polsce od XVI do XVII wieku (Renesans, Barok, Rokoko), (Cracow,
[1925]), 22-28; Bolesław Przybyszewski, “Stanisław Samostrzelnik,” Biuletyn Historii
Sztuki, 13 (Warsaw, 1951), 1: 47-87 and esp. 59; Zofia Ameisenowa, Cztery polskie
rękopisy iluminowane z lat 1524-1528 w zbiorach obcych (Zeszyty Naukowe
Uniwersitetu Jagiellońskiego, 143, Prace z historii sztuki, 4), (Cracow, 1967); Wanda
Puget, “Przyczynek do działalności Stanisława Samostrzelnika. Malarstwo ścienne w
budowlach fundacji Szydłowieckich” in Renesans, Sztuka i ideologia (Warsaw, 1976),
487-503.
369
Kieszkowski, Kanclerz Krzysztof Szydłowiecki, 98, 439 ff., 467, 649 ff; Kopera,
Malarstwo w Polsce od XVI do XVII wieku, 22-23.
 294

of the monastery in Mogila, where Samostrzelnik lived, and with Szydłowiecki.370 The
contacts of Szydłowiecki with the Jews of Kazimierz through his personal banker,
Eliezer of Brandenburg,371 reinforce our supposition that the Jews could have been
exposed to the Humanistic ideas and Renaissance art of the royal court.
Approximately in 1529, such arboreal symbolism was given a new connotation
by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) as part of the Reformation’s visual
propaganda. The traditional antithesis between the two symbolic trees of Judaism and
Christianity was amalgamated into one tree – half-bare, half-green – to illustrate anew
the verse from John 1:17 (ill. 486). The tree in the center neatly separates the scenes of
the Fall, the Old Covenant and the Law on its dead side, from the Redemption, the New
Covenant and Grace on its live side. Cranach’s antithetic representation of the two
Testaments deeply influenced the art of the Reformation. Thus Erhard Altdorfer adopted
this composition for the title page of Luther’s German Bible published by Ludowick
Dietz in Lübeck in 1533 (ill. 487),372 and as early as 1547 or 1549, Cranach’s arboreal
symbol was known in Silesia: it was copied in the painted epitaph of the Reformist Jan
Hess in St. Mary Magdalene’s Church in Wroclaw (ill. 488).373 The Protestants,
however, interpreted the opposition between the two halves as the antithesis between the
old Catholic order and the new Protestant order.374 In spite of the prohibitions of the
Catholic church, and the punishment meted out by the secular powers, Reformist
literature spread to Cracow already in the early 1520s.375 In the atmosphere of relative
religious tolerance under Sigismund Augustus, the spread of Lutheranism among the

———————————————————————————————————
370
Kieszkowski, Kanclerz Krzysztof Szydłowiecki, 2: 333, 500; Feliks Kopera,
Malarstwo w Polsce od XVI do XVII wieku, 22-28.
371
Szydłowiecki was the suzerain of Eliezer of Brandenburg, the court banker
(Бершадский, Русско-еврейскiй архивъ, 3: 162-63). Bałaban asserted that Eliezer-
Lazar of Brandenburg was the father of Malka, Remah’s mother (Bałaban, Historja
Żydów, 1: 140), but did not prove this.
372
Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, 2: 161-64. See also Heinz
Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art (London, 1996), 124; O. Thulin, Cranach-
Altäre der Reformation (Berlin, 1955), 126-48; D. S. Ehresmann, “The Brazen Serpent:
A Reformation Motive in the Works of Lukas Cranach the Elder and His Workshop,”
Marsyas, 13 (1966-1967): 32-47; W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular
Propaganda for the German Reformation (Cambridge, 1981), 216-19; Michalski,
Protestanci a sztuka, 20-21.
373
Jan Harasimowicz, “Rola sztuki w religijnych i społecznych konfliktach wieku
Reformacji na Śląsku,” Rocznik Historii Sztuki, 18 (Wroclaw, 1990): 46.
374
Cf. Craig Harbison, The Mirror of the Artist: Northern Renaissance Art in Its
Historical Context (New York, 1995), 117-18.
 295

great German population in the city and the expansion of Calvinist views among the
Polish nobility and rich citizenry reached their peak in the mid 1550s.376 The Lutheran
Bible and Reformist imagery were fairly well known in Poland. A Lutheran translation
of the New Testament into Polish was published in 1551-53, and the Calvinist
translation of the Bible appeared in 1563.377 The antitheses encoded in the iconographic
scheme of the weak and flourishing sides of the Tree of Life that was originally invented
for Lutheran propaganda, was also recruited by the art of Counter-Reformation, and
later it appeared in the top of the frontispiece of the first edition of the Catholic Bible
published by Leopolita (Jan Nicz) in Cracow in 1561 (ill. 489).378
The revival of the medieval arboreal symbol in the Renaissance art of Cracow
may have inspired the Remah and his father to create a new version of the arboreal
images that were known to many of the Jews of Kazimierz from the Gothic version in
the Altneuschul in Prague (ills. 1, 212). The closest Renaissance model to the tree with
its alternately spiralling branches in the portal of the Altneuschul were the reliefs of the
symmetric trees consisting of a thick trunk and pairs of leaves spiralling inwards that
alternate with pairs of leaves spiralling outwards in the tympana carved by Cini for the
Sigismund Chapel (ills. 475-77), not the pediments composed of a pair of volutes in the
Polish tombstones. Furthermore, the patrons of the synagogue would have considered
the designs in a royal sanctuary to be a more appropriate model for the Ark than these
decorating wall tombs in churches.
The importance of the arboreal symbol for the patrons of the Remah Synagogue
resulted in the rendering of the attic of the Remah Ark as a base for the plant relief (ills.
461, 469) in contrast to the clearly outlined attic and triangular pediment alluding to the
Temple in the Padua Ark (ill. 436). The symmetrical ornament consisting of a flowering
plant in the center and symmetrically scrolling lower branches on the portals adorning
books printed by Bomberg in Venice since 1541 (ill. 397), or in the pediments on the

———————————————————————————————————
375
Fox, The Reformation in Poland, 28 ff.
376
Bieniarzówna, “Kraków pod wpływami reformacji,” 124-44.
377
Bernard Wojewódka, a Protestant writer and translator, who was active in Cracow in
the 1540s and 1550s, in 1563 published the Calvinist Bible translated into Polish at the
press of Mikołaj Czarny Radziviłł at Brest-Litovsk (ibid., 128-129; Helena Szwejkowska,
Książka drukowana XV-XVII wieku. Zarys Historyczny [Wroclaw, 1987], 127-34;
Fiszman, The Polish Renaissance in Its European Context, 119).
378
Ibid., 102.
 296

title-page of books from the Usque press in Ferrara in 1554-56379 might have prompted
Isserl and the Remah to use a Renaissance interpretation of the tree in the top of their
Holy Ark.
Moreover, in Italy, a Renaissance type of a voluted plant pediment surmounts the
Holy Ark from the Scuola Grande in Mantua (ills. 491-92b). The pair of symmetrical S-
shaped leafy volutes here with an open flower in the lower circle and leaves sprouting
inwards as in the Remah Ark’s volutes, are joined together above the center of the Ark,
around a narrow attic, rather than decorating its sides as in Kazimierz. In Italian
painting, such pediments consisting of a pair of volutes with a joint connecting the
upper scrolls and with a flower atop crowned the throne of the Madonna (ills. 393, 478).
In the Ark, the Renaissance model was reworked to give it Jewish symbolism. The
Ark’s attic carries the inscription: ‫“( הכון לקראת אלוהיך‬prepare to meet thy God,” Amos
4:12) that is placed above two palm branches flanking a trefoil leaf. The leaves of the
volute become even more compex above, ending with three great scrolls on either side,
and the joint around the upper part of the volutes is designed as the Crown of the Torah
(ill. 492b). The composition of the volutes forms a curving pediment, and the volutes
recall the tree above the entrance to the Altneuschul (ill. 1), but have been given a
Renaissance style in keeping with the whole shape of the Ark. However, this shaped
pediment also recalls the Gothic ogee arch with the words “Crown of the Torah” inside
it that topped the mid-15th century Ark from Nuremberg (cf. ill. 282). The two open
whirling flowers in the Ark’s pediment in Mantua recall the flowers alluding to the
symbolic shoshanim that in Gothic Ashkenazi synagogues where carved on either side
of an arch (e.g., ill. 137). The six scrolling ends at the top of the pediment may have
been emphasized to maintain the symbolism of this number that is known from
paintings of the concentric six-petalled shoshanim (e.g., ills. 181) and from the vine
with six clusters above the Altneuschul Ark (ill. 212). Surmounting the Holy Ark, the
leafy pediment with scrolls could have been accepted as part of the plant symbols
expressing the simile of the Torah as the Tree of Life and thus continuing the traditional
motif of an arboreal image at the top of the Holy Ark (cf. ills. 212, 276) in a
Renaissance style.380

———————————————————————————————————
379
See Posner and Ta-Shema, The Hebrew Book, 130. Of these books, Remah knew
Hasdai Crescas’ Or Adonai (“The Light of God”) (ill. 490), printed in the Usque press in
1555 or 1556 (‫ משנתו העיונית של הרמ"א‬,‫ששון‬-‫ בן‬93, 110, 119, 157, 194, 197, 201, 248).
380
When the Mantua Ark was found in the synagogue in Sermide and after it was brought
 297

Although a direct impact of the Ark in Mantua on the Remah Ark is unlikely, the
use of a Renaissance formal model to reinterpret the traditional symbols led to similar
results both in Italy and in Poland. As in the pediment of the Mantua Ark (ill. 492), two
open flowers in Renaissance S-shaped volutes also appear on either side of the attic in
the Remah Ark (ill. 469), in a manner resembling the pair of shoshanim in medieval
Jewish art. Commissioned by Israel Isserl and the Remah, Cini reworked the
Renaissance “leafy candelabrum” with the clearly stressed trunk and scrolling branches
(ill. 477) into the triangular pediment that became symbolic of the Tree of Life and
alludes to the Torah and the “scion,” the biblical name for the Messiah.381 This
symbolism thus contradicts the barren symbolism accorded Judaism by Cranach and
those who developed his design. In like manner, the combination of a pair of open
flowers above a pair of blossoms that was copied from the Renaissance model, may
have been accepted in the Ark’s pediment as a symbol of Judaism as a fruitful tree that
flourishes like Aaron’s rod (Num. 17:18-25), a symbol that had been appropriated into
synagogue art already in the ancient and medieval periods (e.g., ills. 60, 62, 95).382
It is probable that the deviations in the Ark’s pediment and volutes from the
common Polish Renaissance models also resulted from the demands of the patrons to
reproduce old symbols in a new form. Thus the central stem plays down the joint in its
center to avoid the cruciform suggestion Cini had used in the Sigismund Chapel (ills.
474-75, 477). As in the Mantua Ark’s superstructure, here the three scrolls on either side
of the tree that are especially massive and extend beyond the top of the attic may have
been made to suggest the number six as a symbol of the eve of the Messianic age.

———————————————————————————————————
to the Umberto Nahon Museum of Italian Jewish Art in Jerusalem, the metal lamp of the
Eternal Light that hangs from a bracket was attached to the center of the leavy pediment
(ill. 492a). Recently, the lamp and bracket were removed (ill. 492b). Whereas one may
not state surely whether they were produced especially for this Ark in 1543 or were set
there during one of the later repairs, the location of a vessel containing a wick burning in
oil that is suspended from the top of the Ark’s superstructure would have been original,
resembling the setting of an oil lamp in front of the Ark’s pediment in ancient synagogues
(cf. ill. 95). The custom of the eternal lamp in the synagogue is based on the one in the
Temple (Ex. 27:20; Lev. 24:2). The Eternal Light was interpreted as the symbol of God’s
presence in Israel (Shabbat 22b), as the symbol of the Torah, which Israel is to keep alive
in the world (Ex. Rabba 36:2; Lev. Rabba 31:4), and as representing the spiritual light
that emerges from the Sanctuary (Ex. Rabba 36:1).
381
Isa. 4:2; Jer. 23:5, 33:15; Zech. 3:8, 6:12. For this meaning of the thick trunk of the
tree atop the Holy Ark, see Weitzmann and Kessler, The Frescoes of the Dura Europos
Synagogue, 158-59, and cf. my ill. 238.
382
See p. 71 above.
 298

Similarly, the three additional leaves on the outer side of the S-shaped volutes, an
atypical element in Polish sculpture, give, together with the three inner sprouts, the
number six on each volute. Moreover, Jews would automatically associate the twelve
leaves on both volutes with the twelve tribes of Israel. The placement of the plant and
leafy volutes above the citation “By me kings will rule,” the Shield of David and the
crown also recall Jeremiah’s prophecy on the days when God “will raise unto David a
righteous Scion, and he shall reign as king and prosper, and shall execute judgment and
justice on the earth” (Jer. 23:5). This combination of symbols thus suggests that the
Messiah, David’s offspring, will be the ultimate ruler over the world.
To summarize this semantic programme, the Ark containing the scrolls of the
Torah alludes to the Temple with the Holy of Holies containing the Ark of the
Covenant. Based on the Bible and the Midrash, the symbols surmounting the Ark allude
to the Jewish view of the historical process. The crown above the niche marks the rule
of the Torah, the inscription and the Shield of David above the crown conveys the idea
that the true kingdom must be based on Mosaic Law, and that it will be governed by the
Messiah, and the tree with flowers and spiraling branches atop the composition
symbolizes the Torah as the Tree of Life flourishing in messianic times. The Ark’s
programme thus controverts the Renaissance’s hierarchical representations of Christian
symbols of the secular and sacral Kingships, and their religious views of a Christian
society (e.g., 458-59), by means a Jewish view of faith and social order under the
Messiah.
The Wrought Iron Bimah
Two photographs (ills. 374, 384) show the high iron grille surrounding the
bimah before it was destroyed during World War II. The present iron structure (ill. 371)
is the 1958 simplified reconstruction of the original enclosure.383 The 1932 photograph

———————————————————————————————————
383
Rejduch-Samkowa, “Die kunsthistorischen Probleme,” 58 fig. 4 (erroneously labelled
as the bimah in the High Synagogue), 60; Katalog zabytków, 4 Kraków, 6: 11-12, fig.
40. Two pairs of wooden doors that have survived of Holy Arks in other synagogues of
Kazimierz were attached to the apertures of the new bimah. This reconstruction differs in
several details from the grille that is seen in the old photographs (ills. 374, 384): e.g., it
lacks the vase-like finials and shaped arches that were in the top of the enclosure’s sides,
the horizontal bars that crossed the posts approximately at the level of the bimah’s table,
and the metal bookshelf that hung high on the grille to the left of the bimah’s northern
entrance. The new plant-like finials have two pairs of spirals and a hexagram on the top
of the stem rather than three such pairs and a flower, and the arched entrances are raised
above but not set under the upper horizontal bar as in the original grille.
 299

(ills. 374) shows the grille composed of vertical posts crossed by horizontal bars, several
of which form a band approximately at the level of the bimah’s table. An arched
entrance is seen in the center of the northern and the southern sides. C-shaped iron
brackets are symmetrically attached to the posts filling the space between them, except
for the central band where the curls seem to be spiral. This design differs slightly from
that of the eastern section on the bimah’s northern side, which is better seen in the
photograph taken after the 1933 reconstruction (ill. 384): here the horizontal band is
situated higher, and on the posts above it there are spiraling curls like those on the posts
of the Ark’s handrail (ill. 381). A plant consisting of three pairs of such spirals,
decreasing in size and attached to a short pole with a small open flower atop it, arises
from the arches surmounting the sides of the bimah’s enclosure, seemingly, except for
its western side (ills. 374, 384). High vase-shaped finials surmount the posts flanking
the entrances and the enclosure’s four corners. It is likely that the two arches between
the bimah’s opposite sides above the entrances were made to reinforce the grille. The
later of the bimah’s two photographs (ill. 384) testifies that during the 1933
recontruction, the upper centers of both entrances were connected by a third, much
higher arch, and under this arch, above the northern arched entrance seen in this
photograph, a thicker bar was attached to the upper side of the grille.
The closest comparable parallel to the bimah’s iron enclosure filled in with
symmetrical pairs of spiraling brackets attached to vertical poles is found in the
monastery church in Mogiła near Cracow (ill. 493). As compared to the dynamic
ornament of the more elaborate, delicately outlined grid from the 17th century,384 the
grille in the synagogue (ills. 374, 384) seems to be an earlier and much simpler work.
The evidence that has survived on the grille is too poor to allow a surer identification of
the stages of its construction and the dating of its different parts, although its structure,
which has both medieval and Renaissance features, suggests several general deductions.
The grille consisted of two wide tiers between which, at the level of the bimah’s table,
there are two horizontal bars, and an upper narrow tier with finials. This tiered
composition recalls the parapet supporting upper arcades in the medieval bimahs in
Germany and Bohemia (e.g., ills. 18, 101, 196-97). It is possible that in the Remah
Synagogue, even after it was enlargened in 1557-58, a masonry wall supporting iron

———————————————————————————————————
384
Stanisław Tomkowicz, Teka grona konserwatorów Galicyi zachodniej, 2,
Inwentaryzacya zabytków Galicyi zachodniej, 3, Powiat Krakowski ([Cracow],
 300

arcades such as that in the Altneuschul would have seemed to be too massive, so that the
more compact openwork grille was also preferred for the parapet. This bimah’s new
feature was the entrances on its northern and southern side, and this would become
normative in the synagogues in Kazimierz and the Cracow region where the bimah
would however be built on a different plan (ills. 497, 540, 643, 709), as will be
discussed below.
The ornamentation of the bimah’s grille might have had a semantic aspect
strengthening the symbolic message of the Ark. The symmetrical plants with six
spiraling branches on the central stem and with a flower on top that surmount the
enclosure recall menorah-like trees (e.g., ill. 81) and could be a version of the tree motif
that was also developed in the pediment of the Holy Ark (ill. 469). On the posts of the
grille, the paired C-shaped brackets with spiraling edges (ill. 374), and especially the
spiraling branches seen to the left of the entrance on the bimah’s northern side (ill. 384)
also resemble plants. This reading is corroborated by the use of distinct plant motives in
grilles filled in with spiraling elements in the later example from the Mogiła church (ill.
493), where the grille with S-shaped paired spirals have leaves, flowers and clusters of
grapes that clearly represent the “true vine,” a metaphor for Christ. The plant-like
patterns on the Remah’s bimah, like the undulating vines with clusters of grapes or open
flowers, shoshanim, on the bimah in Worms and Regensburg (ills. 151, 164-67, 169-
73), were again probably associated with the vital nature of the Torah and Jewish
people.
Conslusions
The compound character of the decoration in the Remah Synagogue speaks in
favour of the hypothesis that it was there that the Renaissance style was for the first time
accepted as part of the adornment of Polish synagogues. Earlier in synagogue art, a
wealthy person having close contacts with the royal court could build his private
synagogue in the most contemporary and fashionable style of court art, as Samuel Ha-
Levi Abulafia had done in his private synagogue of ca. 1357 in Toledo, and Aaron
Meshulam Horowitz had done in his synagogue in Prague in the 1520s and in 1535.
Appearing in a private synagogue, the royal style expressed the exclusive position of the
synagogue’s owner within the community. The case of the new style in the Remah
Synagogue is different. Israel Isserl and the Remah may be accused neither of hubris nor

———————————————————————————————————
1906), 168.
 301

of confrontation with the community, and the Renaissance decoration of their synagogue
that was founded as a memorial had its typological equivalents in sepulchral rather than
palatial art. Moreover, when he expended the synagogue in 1557, he opened it to the
community. While the Jews of Prague were exposed mainly to Bohemian and German
versions of the Renaissance, the Jews of Kazimierz were acquainted with Italian artists
working in Cracow, and were aware of the Renaissance as experienced by Italian Jews.
Testimonies of travelers and Jewish books printed in Italy not only fostered the
adaptation of the Renaissance style, but also supplied the patrons with Renaissance
models for the decoration of their synagogue.
The influence of Renaissance art went beyond the style. The decorative
programme of the Renaissance Ark develops the traditional messages of medieval
synagogue art by introducing new symbols and biblical quotations that were not seen
before. The Remah, who in different spheres of his activity brought the medieval
tradition into accord with the contemporary realm of Jewish life, was exactly the right
person to initiate a rendering of the medieval motifs of synagogue decoration into the
new Renaissance style and to bring its content up-to-date with contemporary reality.
Remah’s strong authority as a scholar would turn the Renaissance decoration he allowed
in his family’s synagogue into a model for other synagogues in Kazimierz and beyond.