Sergey R . Kravtsov
Dr. Sergey R. Kravtsov is a Research Fellow at the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Born in Lviv, Ukraine, he was trained as an architect in his native city. He received his doctoral degree in architectural history from the Institute for the Theory and History of Architecture in Moscow in 1993 and moved to Israel in 1994. He has published about 90 essays on the history of urban planning and synagogue architecture; he has authored and co-authored five books (two forthcoming), edited one book, and co-produced 16 multimedia compact discs.
less
InterestsView All (7)
Uploads
Books
The publication contains 21 articles dedicated to the history, ethnicity, culture, literature, theatre, fine arts, architecture, heritage and memory thematically grouped in nine sections. The particular sections elucidate the protection of Jewish movable and immovable heritage and memory in Slavic countries, the destiny of Jewish cultural heritage in the Holocaust and its aftermath, an image of a Jew in Christian and Jewish cultures, Jewish ethnography and historiography, history of Jewish art and artists’ biography, Jewish artistic life in Slavic public milieu, the methodology of Jewish art history, the search for “Yiddishland” in interwar Poland, and a Jewish contribution to the Serbian culture.
Ruth Ellen Gruber, Director of Jewish Heritage Europe
Author of Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe
Samuel D. Gruber
President, International Survey of Jewish Monuments
"
The first volume of the catalogue includes the following entries: Alanta, Alsėdžiai, Alytus, Anykščiai, Balbieriškis, Biržai, Čekiškė, Daugai, Eišiškės, Jonava, Joniškėlis, Joniškis, Kaltinėnai, Kalvarija, Kaunas, Kėdainiai, Klaipėda, Krekenava, Kupiškis, Kurkliai, Laukuva, Lazdijai, Linkuva, Lygumai, Marijampolė, Merkinė.
Papers
The publication contains 21 articles dedicated to the history, ethnicity, culture, literature, theatre, fine arts, architecture, heritage and memory thematically grouped in nine sections. The particular sections elucidate the protection of Jewish movable and immovable heritage and memory in Slavic countries, the destiny of Jewish cultural heritage in the Holocaust and its aftermath, an image of a Jew in Christian and Jewish cultures, Jewish ethnography and historiography, history of Jewish art and artists’ biography, Jewish artistic life in Slavic public milieu, the methodology of Jewish art history, the search for “Yiddishland” in interwar Poland, and a Jewish contribution to the Serbian culture.
Ruth Ellen Gruber, Director of Jewish Heritage Europe
Author of Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe
Samuel D. Gruber
President, International Survey of Jewish Monuments
"
The first volume of the catalogue includes the following entries: Alanta, Alsėdžiai, Alytus, Anykščiai, Balbieriškis, Biržai, Čekiškė, Daugai, Eišiškės, Jonava, Joniškėlis, Joniškis, Kaltinėnai, Kalvarija, Kaunas, Kėdainiai, Klaipėda, Krekenava, Kupiškis, Kurkliai, Laukuva, Lazdijai, Linkuva, Lygumai, Marijampolė, Merkinė.
In 1906, the Academy allowed Barsky’s artistic journey to the Middle East. In Palestine, Barsky fell ill with malaria and remained there, with short breaks, for the rest of his life.
Barsky’s most important project, in cooperation with Boris Schatz, was the Herzliya Gymnasium in Tel Aviv (1909–10). Publications of the gymnasium façade in Die Welt and Ost und West made Barsky popular in the Jewish world. He based his idea of ‘Hebrew’ architecture—opposed to the European ‘Jewish’ expression—on the iconography of the Temple, envisioned in the 1880s by Charles Chipiez. As well, Barsky included in his design medieval elements of local architecture. Barsky used some elements borrowed from Chipiez in the Herzl House (1909, Hulda Forest) and the Bezalel Building (1911–13, Ben Shemen). Most probably, his concept of the Diskin Orphanage in Jerusalem (1908) was continued by Joshua Tabachnik in 1922.
Barsky supervised Alexander Baerwald’s National Romanticist project of the Technion in 1911–14. Barsky’s experience in ‘Hebrew’ architecture, though shortly continued by Tabachnik, became useless in the following years. His work was devaluated to such a degree that the Herzliya Gymnasium was razed in 1962. Much later its façade became the emblem of the Council for Conservation Preservation of Heritage Sites in Israel.
The synagogues’ compound was destroyed by Nazis and has not been revitalized after World War II. The remains of the Great Synagogue and Beit Midrash were razed to the ground, while those of the Golden Rose Synagogue were conserved. This area contrasted with the fairly preserved surrounding, which was protected in entirety by UNESCO in 1998. The contrast became astonishing in 2000s, when public interest to the Jewish memory and flow of tourists increased manifold.
In 2008, the City and the Center for Urban History have held an international conference on the future of the Jewish heritage in Lviv. The conference’s consent was to organize an architectural competition for the space of synagogues. The competition was held in 2010 by the City, the Center, and German Society for International Cooperation. Were presented 35 projects. The winning project by Franz Reschke (Berlin) was developed into working design and its first stage was implemented in 2016. The work lasted one year.
The Space of Synagogues became a success in urban policy of Lviv. It frames and emphasizes the void of the erased space and populace. However, the project was not accomplished: the site is due to include the Great Synagogue, an open space now used by a restaurant. The remaining challenges are not only financial and logistic. Reconsidering the space, which was transformed from the place of worship to that of memory, is an ongoing process now facilitated by the new architectural setting.
'Synagogue Wall Paintings: Research, Preservation, Presentation,"
which will take place at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at September 13-14, 2016.
Sergey R. Kravtsov,
Jerusalem
Synagogues with a broadened entrance front were numerous in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the early eighteenth century. This type originated in wooden construction: the first masonry synagogue of similar massing was built only in 1764–74. A theory deriving this synagogue type from Polish wooden construction lore and a model of a nobleman’s manor was proposed by Kazimierz Mokłowski (1869–1905) in 1903. Though a national romanticist construct and a product of historical materialism, this theory captivated researchers with its obviousness; it was almost unanimously accepted in Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Jewish scholarship. While not dismissing the basics of Mokłowski’s theory, the present paper pursues an alternative, iconographic approach to a synagogue with a broadened front. It points out a novel graphical interpretation of the messianic Temple, proposed by R. Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller (ca. 1579‒1654) in the first half of the seventeenth century and increasingly popular in the Jewish thought. A comparison between the contemporary imagery of the Temple and the built shape of wooden synagogues discloses a Jewish eschatological meaning of the latter, discernible on parallel with the dependence on Polish construction lore.
The volume’s twenty-one essays elucidate the protection of Jewish movable and immovable heritage and memory, the destiny of Jewish cultural heritage in the Holocaust and its aftermath, an image of a Jew in Christian and Jewish cultures, Jewish ethnography and historiography, history of Jewish art and artists’ biography, Jewish artistic life in Slavic public milieu, the methodology of Jewish art history, the search for “Yiddishland,” and a Jewish contribution to the Slavic cultures. The scholars of diverse backgrounds and research interests from Belarus, Israel, Poland, the Russian Federation, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the USA contributed to this volume.
10:00 Greetings, Lola Kantor-Kazovsky
10:15 - 11:00 Session 1
The Catalogue of Wall Paintings in
Central and East European Synagogues
Chair: Aliza Cohen-Mushlin
Boris Khaimovich, "The Catalogue of Wall Paintings
in Central and East European Synagogues":
An Experience of Collecting Lost Heritage
11:00 - 11:30 Coffee Break
11:30 - 12:00 Session 2
Survey, Preservation, and Presentation I
Chair: Samuel D. Gruber
Armin Panter, Reconstruction and Presentation
of the Synagogues of Unterlimpurg and Steinbach
by Eliezer-Zusman
Ewa Malkowska-Bieniek, Awaiting the Messiah:
Paintings in the Synagogues of Gwoidziec
and Polaniec in Historical Context
Aiste Niunkaite-Raciiiniene, Paintings in Lithuanian
Synagogues: Sources for Research and Reconstruction
13:00 - 14:30 Lunch
14:30 - 16:00 Session 3
Survey, Preservation, and Presentation II
Chair: Tania Coen-Uzzielli
Eugeny Kotlyar, Perpetuating the Heritage:
Current State, Conservation, and Presentation
of Synagogue Paintings in Ukraine
Samuel D. Gruber, Art of Old and New Worlds:
The Chai Adam Shul Mural of Burlington, Vermont
Ulrich Knufinke, Wall Paintings in the Synagogues
of Displaced Persons in Germany, 1945-1950
Visit to the Synagogue Route in Israel Museum
Tania Coen-Uzzielli, Exploring Synagogues in Context
14 September, Wednesday
10:00 - 11:00 Session 4
Artist: Tradition and Responses to Modernity I
Chair: Rudolf Klein
Zvi Orgad, Seeing the Elephant: Repetition
and Invention in the Eighteenth-century
Synagogue Paintings
Tamar Shadmi, Who were the Synagogue Artists?
Signatures as Biographic Sources
11:00 - 11:30 Coffee Break
11:30 - 13:00 Session 5
Artist: Tradition and Responses to Modernity II
Chair: Rina Talgam
Riva Arnold, Geometric Surfaces in
Oriental-Styled Synagogues
Rudolf Klein, Wall Paintings in the Subotica Synagogue
Sergey R. Kravtsov, The Artist's Destiny in
Jewish Collective Memory: From Traditional Society
to Avant-garde
13:00 - 14:30 Lunch
14:30 - 17:00 Session 6
Paintings: Program, Reception, and
Signification
Chair: Shalom Sabar
Batsheva Goldman-Ida, The Imagery of
King Solomon's Throne
Thomas Hubka, The Tent and Tabernacle Symbolism
in the Wall Paintings of the Polish Wooden Synagogues
Bracha Yaniv, Multiple Meanings of the Bestiary in
Synagogue Ceiling Paintings of Eastern Europe
Ilia Rodov, Synagogue Space, Its Dimmed Images,
and Their Elusive Meanings
Closing remarks, Vladimir Levin