Stories circulated about the Mogilev Shul. We set out because of them. First we stopped in Kopust. ^{5 5} Kopust is the Yiddish name for Kopys, in the Vitebsk region of Belarus. We’d been told that the shul in Kopust was of the same type as the one in Mogilev, and had been painted by the same master. What we found in Kopust was some charcoal, burned bricks from the foundations and a few rotten beams that someone had contributed for the construction of the new shul—the old one had burned down. The entire shtetl had burned down, in fact, and not a trace of its antiquity remained.

We traveled further. Arrived in Mogilev. In the distance, from the Dnieper, we saw a building: tall and black, it looked like a granary, not large—a shul. But we were only in the outskirts of the city: it couldn’t be the shul. We disembarked onto the riverbank, and headed into the city to find out. People sent us to newer “more beautiful” shuls, made of stone, with boudoir-lamps and freshly painted cornices and panels just like in a provincial movie theater.

After a few hours we found it. The shul stood on the banks of the Dnieper, but in a basin so that it seemed completely concealed. And this was remarkable. People usually placed shuls so that they would rule over the surrounding valleys. It is like this in Druya, in Dubrowna and in other shtetls: the great mass of the shul, especially its roof, gave the entire shtetl its characteristic profile, the way the character of the old European cities was marked by their towers and dome.

The style of the Mogilev Shul (a recognizable type, clear, I would even say: a classic type) is the same as that of the Christian Basilicas. That is to say: the central part protruding upward, with windows high up, and two lower wings on the northern and southern sides. In contrast to the churches, the side wings are not open, but rather completely separated from the center, from the men’s section. The wings are the women’s section, and only a narrow hole at eye level unites them with the men’s section. This is an old style. This is similar to the representations we once saw of the innermost appearance of the oldest shul in Germany (from the 13th century) in Worms. There also the men’s and women’s shuls are on the same level and in the wall between them is a small window. By these windows a Jewish woman would stand who would repeat the prayers of the cantor and the rest of the women would repeat after her. In the cemetery of Worms there is a gravestone from the 14th century of just such a “firzogerin.” ^{6 6}Firzogern is the title of the position just described, it means literally “a woman who says for [the others].”

The women’s gallery is a later invention. In Mogilev there is also a women’s gallery now, and others have moved into the side wings: in one, the shammes, a wood turner who will certainly one day destroy the shul in fire with his wood shavings and little furnace; and in the other wing, a heder. But the whole character of the shul is determined by the tall middle section with its high pointed roof and the two wings pressed to the sides with their sloping roofs and small windows.

In the middle of the day the shul was closed. We sought out the shammes and he opened it for us.

No, this was something different from that first surprise I received when I visited the Roman basilicas, the Gothic cathedrals, the Baroque churches of Germany, France, and Italy. Maybe, when a child awakens in a crib that is covered with a veil upon which flies and butterflies are sitting and the entire thing is drenched by the sun, maybe the child sees something like that.

The walls—wooden, oaken beams that resound when you hit them. Above the walls, a ceiling like a vault made out of boards. The seams all visible. Although the work of the carpenter is without artfulness, without imagination, the whole interior of the shul is so perfectly conceived by the painter with only a few uncomplicated colors that an entire grand world lives there and blooms and overflows this small space.

The complete interior of the shul is decorated, starting with the backs of the benches, which cover the length of the walls, all the way to the very pinnacle of the vault. The shul, which is a square at the level of the floor, becomes an octagonal vaulted ceiling, resembling a yarmulke. Triangular panels mask the transition from square to octagon. These walls and ceiling are structured with an immense feel for composition. This is something completely contrary to the primitive. This is the fruit of a great culture. Where does it come from? The master of this work, Segal, says in his inscription, full of the most noble enthusiasm: “Long already have I wandered through the world of the living . . .”

People say that he painted three shuls. In Mogilev, Kopust, and in Dohlinov (others recall a different location for the latter). ^{7 7} Dolhinov is today Daŭhinava, in the Minsk region of Belarus. After he had finished, he fell from the scaffolding and died. Each shtetl tells the story about itself: the Mogilevers say he died in Mogilev, the Kapusters—in Kopust, the Dolhinevers—there. The last two shuls burned down. The Dolhinov burned long ago; my father used to say that he remembered a giant fresco in it of the burial of Jacob with a wagon, horses, the sons of Jacob, Egyptians, etc. Today we cannot compare. But the story is characteristic for our understanding of the artist. His work was so great that his continued life could only diminish him. Once his work was completed his soul had no more reason to be in his body.

The centerpiece of the whole place is the ceiling. On the western side, by the entrance, there stand giant lions and, behind them, peacocks. The lions hold two shields with inscriptions, the lower one is a memorial by the master for himself. Then there are three northern and three southern panels like a kind of frieze upon which unfurls the lives of predators and prey. Below there is water, upon it the earth, above the earth a sky; in the sky, stars that blossom into flowers. In the water—fish; they are being caught by the birds. On the earth a fox carries a bird in its snout. A bear climbs a tree looking for honey. Birds carry snakes in their beaks. All these flying things and running things—are people. Through their four-footed or feathered masks they look with human eyes. This is a very significant trend in Jewish folk art. Is that not a rabbinical face in the lion’s head in the zodiac paintings of the Mogilev Shul?

From the frieze blossoms forth a giant plant-ornamentation, which encircles the entire ceiling in a ring. Above this a row of seals of a more oriental, I would even say Moorish composition, and in them a complicated interweaving of ropes, a motif that strongly recalls Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing of the seal of his academy. And now I remember that in the castle in Milan I saw a hall, whose ceiling was also ascribed to Leonardo, also with a similar rope ornamentation.

The zodiacs stand in a row above the rope ornament. Twelve compositions within circles, linked together in one complete whole. The zodiac paintings are very distinctive and some of their signs are especially concise and powerful. For example, the Archer (mazl kashes). In its entirety it consists of two hands; one holds the bow, the other pulls on the string. This is the “powerful hand,” the “punishing hand” of the bible. And above all of this, in the centerpoint of the “yarmulke”—a three-headed eagle: a combination of the Russian and the Polish eagles.

In the east, above the holy ark, more lions, only these are holding the tablets of the Ten Commandments and from them a large mercy seat covers the ark. On the sides are two panels—to the left on the southern wall a “vormayse,” depicting the cursed city of Worms encircled by some kind of dragon, and a tree of life. On the other side, in the northwest—Jerusalem and the tree of knowledge.

On the triangles that mask the transition from the walls to the ceiling, on one of them, in the northwest, the shorabor, the ox that will be eaten in paradise; on the other side, in the northeast, a wild goat; on the third, in the southeast, the leviathan and on the fourth, in the southwest, an elephant with a palanquin on its back.

On the walls—panels with inscriptions, holy vessels from King Solomon’s Temple, ornaments, and all kinds of living creatures.

The treasury of forms used by the painter is inexhaustible. One sees how it all flowed from him, as from a cornucopia, and how the hand of the virtuoso never grew tired and never allowed itself to be outpaced by the speed of thought. On the back of the holy ark I discovered the first sketches in pencil of the outline of the entire painting, which served as the foundation of the later work in paint. This outline was sketched on the wall by a master with intense confidence, for whom the pencil is perfectly under the control of his will.

The color of the painting: pearly amber with sparks of brick red. It can’t be comprehended; it lives and moves thanks to the specific nature of the light. In all four walls there are windows at the very top. As the sun completes its circle, every hour each wall—and especially the sloping parts of the ceiling—is lit in a different way. This gives the entire thing an unending play. The painting is very thick. All heavy colors: ochre, lead white, vermilion, foliage green, and only in tiny amounts the cold tones: blue and violet.

But where did this stream begin? From where did this cloud drink, in order to pour down such a wonderful rain?

I will leave it to the researchers to seek and roam in the sea of art history; I can only share the following fact that I have observed. There was always a small library in a shul. On the bookshelves in the old shuls stood Gemaras and other holy books from the oldest printing houses with rich title pages and ornamentations and closing illustrations. Those few pages played the same role in their time that illustrated journals play today: they acquaint people with the newest forms of art. Truly, I once saw a gravestone with such a bas-relief: a bear stands on its back paws embracing a blooming acanthus ornament. In the attic of the Druya Shul, in a heap of sheymes ^{8 8} ripped or loose pages from a sacred book that cannot be burned or thrown away because they may contain the name (shem) of god. from the printing house of Amsterdam from the 16th and 17th centuries, I saw a closing illustration with the exact same theme, and there can be no doubt that the carver of the gravestone was informed by that very closing illustration.

A second example: the carved trees and the entire composition of the multistory holy arks and the Renaissance-Baroque title pages of the Yiddish sforim. For the Jewish carver, those title pages served as patterns the same way that the work of Vignola and Palladio serve the architect.

The question remains about the national aspect of these paintings. We leave it for the psychologists and ethnographers. We only want to draw to their attention that the relationship between these forms—which are so generously scattered on the walls and ceiling of the Mogilev Shul—and the contemporary forms of other peoples should compel them to especially serious reflection. The Italian Fioravanti ^{9 9} Aristotele Fioravanti. Italian Renaaissance architect and engineer active in Muscovy. built the Uspensky Cathedral in the Kremlin, and his countryman Aloisio ^{10 10} Aloisio da Milano. A senior court architect for Ivan III. —the Kremlin. The Phoenician Hiram built King Solomon’s Temple. There is no end to such evidence.

Consequently then, if the printed literature, newspapers and journals, theater, painting, music, etc., serve as the signs of a cultured people—we have all of that. That is to say—we are also a people of culture. All that is missing is a prestigious lineage. But if this is the reason people begin to crawl back to antiquity, and if this alone explains the interest in the “folk-culture,” then we are better off without it.

And if now, given the high quality methods of reproduction and printing presses that work so fast, if now these things will achieve the broadest dissemination and they will infect the “artifiers” who will begin to powder and stylize the face that revealed itself but once, hacking it into pieces and presenting this vinegret as a new art culture, then it’s better without that culture.

That which is called art is created when one does not know that what one is doing is art. Only then does it remain as a memorial to culture. Today art is created through those who fight against it.

To us, the living dog is more precious than the dead lion. We know that when the dog dies, it will become a lion.