Concrete Tombstones, The "Poor Cousins" of Matzevot Typology

Kalvaria, Lithuania. Jewish Cemetery. Broken Concrete Gravestone. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Kalvaria, Lithuania. Jewish Cemetery. Concrete Ohel. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Concrete Tombstones, The "Poor Cousins" of Matzevot Typology
by Samuel D. Gruber 

I first began thinking of the use of concrete for Jewish tombstones last week while watching, at a conference on Jewish Cemeteries in Europe, the new film Testimonies Carved in Stone about the Jewish cemetery in Alba Iulia, Romania.  The narrator mentioned the use of concrete for gravestones for poor people, because of the low cost of the material. instead of carving an inscription, a short epitaph could be impressed upon the concrete while it was still drying. When I visited the Jewish cemetery in my ancestral home of Kalvaria a few days later, I immediately saw the concrete stones everywhere (albeit this is a much reduced cemetery, stones from the older parts are no longer visible).

 Kalvaria, Lithuania. Jewish Cemetery. Broken Concrete Gravestones. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

 

 Kalvaria, Lithuania. Jewish Cemetery. Concrete Gravestones, Deterioration on Back. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

 Kalvaria, Lithuania. Jewish Cemetery. Concrete Gravestones. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Usually when working on issues of Jewish cemetery documentation and preservation talk of concrete, cement, cast stone or other similar composite materials comes up when discuss methods of repair - since the inappropriate use of concrete to patch stones can frequently cause more damage. 

In fact, a closer consideration of the material reveals that concrete was not uncommon as a primary materials for Jewish gravestones in the decades before the Holocaust. Just as the new material became a favorite in industrial and commercial (and even some residential) building, so too, it became increasingly accepted for use in the sacred setting of Jewish cemetery. 

 Kalvaria, Lithuania. Jewish Cemetery. Concrete Gravestones. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

 Kalvaria, Lithuania. Jewish Cemetery. Concrete Gravestones. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Kalvaria, Lithuania. Jewish Cemetery. Concrete Gravestones. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Part of this was probably its low cost compared to cut, finished and carved stone, especially expensive stones like marble and granite. Concrete probably was popular especially in those places where transitional local stones - limestone, slate, sandstone were hard to come by. In place like Kalvaria, Lithuania, well designed concrete matzevot may have been an alternative to transitional irregularly shaped field stone markers. A then again, popularity in a single place like Kalvaria, Lithuania, when most of the surviving matzevot are made of concrete, may be due to tha single artisan-manufacturer who championed the method. Elsewhere, more common than in the standing matzevot, was the use of concrete to cover the tops of graves with flat or raised concrete platforms, upon which other stones or decorations might be laid.This was also done in Kalvaria.  Often, in many cemeteries, when the true stone was stolen, only the concrete base remains.  

Discussion of concrete gravestone has probably been neglected for several reasons.  It is a relatively new material, so older and often more picturesque cemeteries do not have examples. As presentations at the conference demonstrated, most scholarship related to Jewish gravestones looks at examples from the pre-modern period. But another reason is that concrete can often only be easily differentiate from stone from close up examination of the examples. Photographs, especially when not close-up details, often make the concrete matzevot look like traditional stone. There are a few give-away signs. Concrete stones seem to date mostly from the 1920s and 1930s (though more examples may expand this range to earlier years). Like bricks and other molded objects, concrete gravestones tend to have few raised features, and usually have consistent thickness and smooth edges.  Decoration is often impressed in patterns from pre-made forms (just like bread-stamps), and so is often repeated on multiple stones. Many broken "stones" at Kalvaria show that iron reinforcement rods were often (always) installed to stiffen the stone which had to stand for years in a upright position. 

Today, metal detectors could be used to ascertain the use of metal inserts.  Corrosion of these through water infiltration can cause deterioration and eventual collapse of the surrounding concrete. Thus, the breakage of many concrete matzevot may be due to natural causes as well as to vandalism.

Concrete was also used in Chridtian burials, and there are many examples in the United States contemporary with those at Kalvaria. Conservationist Stephanie Hoagland, a Senior Associate and Architectural Conservator with Jablonski Building Conservation Inc.,  has written about some of these:
She says that  

"Many of these markers were constructed in the same way as cast stone or a concrete sidewalk would have been laid. A single or multiple layers of concrete were poured in lifts and a slurry coat applied on top, into which the inscription was written. Note the layers clearly visible in the side views of these two markers...If the maker was familiar with concrete or cast stone, they would have been aware that concrete markers such as these require some form of internal reinforcement for strength. Unfortunately, the use of ferrous metal often meant that the marker has been damaged by the very thing added to make it durable. Many of the markers do not meet the minimum depth requirement for reinforcement, which has led to its corrosion. But this damage has provided us with the chance to see the variety of materials used for reinforcement, including bent rods, smooth rods, twisted rods, flat bars, pipes and wires"

See: Jason Church,  "Made from My Own Hand: An Introduction to Concrete Grave Markers" (International Cemetery Preservation Summit, April 8-10, 2014 Niagara Falls, NY.)

Happy 175th Birthday Mark Matveyevich Antokolsky (born November 2, 1840)

 Mark Antokolsky in his Paris Studio

Happy 175th Birthday Mark (Mordkukh) Matveyevich Antokolsky
by Samuel D. Gruber  

Today is the 175th birthday of the Vilnius-born international successful Jewish-Russian sculptor Mark Antokolsky  (2 November 1840 – 14 July 1902) a pioneer Jewish sculptor in the 19th century at a time when very few Jewish artists engaged in the plastic arts. Antokolsky's role in sculpture, and his example, was similar that of academy painters in Western Europe of the general after painter Moritz Daniel Oppenhiem. Antokolsky began with Jewish themes, but embraced Christian and Russian national subjects. 

In his student years he depicted several Jewish character types (Tailor, 1864) and unfinished works on Jewish themes, ("Talmud Dispute" (1866–1868) and "Inquisition Attacks the Jews" (1868–1869). He later created a large seated figure of Spinoza (1881).  

 

Mark Antokolsky, sculptor. Jewish Tailor (1864, in wood) won a small silver medal from the Academy.

His depictions of Jesus are among the first in a series by many artists of a more "Jewish" Christian savior. Jewish-Polish painter Maurycy Gottlieb addressed similar themes about the same time.

In Russia, Antokolsky's fame rested especially on his statues of the tsars Ivan the TYerrible and Peter I. Antokolsky was a mentor to Boris Schatz, who became a court sculptor in Bulgaria before embracing Zionism and founding the Bezalel School in Jerusalem.

 

Mark Antokolsky, sculptor. Spinoza (1881).

Mark Antokolsky, sculptor. Christ before the people (1878). Photo: Alex Bakharev, public domain.

Maurycy Gottlieb, painter. Christ Preaching at Capernaum (1879).

Coincidentally, just this past week I walked on M. Antokolskio g. in the old Jewish quarter of Vilnius, named after the famous native son. The Sculptor died in 1902 and is buried in the Jewish section of the Preobazhenskoye Cemetery in St. Petersburg. There is also an Antokolsky Street in Tel Aviv.

 Vilnius, Lithuania. Today's M. Antokolskio g. and its former appearance when it had a different name. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber, 2015.

Further reading:

Lyubov Golovina, "Mark Antokolsky: " I have done everything I could...", International  Panorama, 3, 2013 (40)

Olga Litvak, "Rome and Jerusalem: The Figure of Jesus in the Creation of Mark Antokolsky," in Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Jonathan Karp (eds), The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) (Jewish Culture and Contexts)

Hungary: Conference about Past and Future of Great Synagogue of Medieval Buda

Budapest, Hungary. Graphic reconstruction of the interior of the Great Synagogue of Buda based on the 1964 excavation . From Budai,  Középkori zsinagóga a budai várnegyedben / Medieval Synagogue in the Buda Castle Quarter (Budapest, 2007).

Budapest, Hungary. Hypothetical reconstruction of the interior of the Great Synagogue of Buda after the rebuilding following damage of 1530 and 1541. From Budai,  Középkori zsinagóga a budai várnegyedben / Medieval Synagogue in the Buda Castle Quarter (Budapest, 2007).

Hungary: Conference about Past and Future of Great Synagogue of Medieval Buda
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) Tomorrow in Budapest (September 19) there will be a conference about the past and future of the former Great Synagogue of Buda, one of Europe's most important and least known medieval Jewish monuments.  The remains of the one of the last of the great double-nave synagogue structures erected, and one of the largest built lie four meters beneath a mound at number 23 Mihaly Tancsics Street in the old city of Buda (now part of Budapest). As I don't read Hungarian, I hope that the results of the conference are summarized in English or another language.

The Great Synagogue of Buda was built as an initiative of community leader Judah Mendel after 1460 in  was built in the courtyard of the Mendel home, near the Viennese Gate and next to the Buda city walls. The synagogue and Buda’s Jewish community were violently destroyed when Turkish rule was overthrown by the Austrians in 1696. Knowledge of the synagogue came from a contemporary description by Isaac Schulhof of its destruction and the massacre of the Jews who took refuge within.[1] 

Aurel Budai, who was a young architect drawing ancient monuments for the planning office of the Municipality of Budapest when the synagogue was excavated in 1964. Budai spent much of life advocating for the re-excavation of the site and its development as an important historical and cultural resource.  He died in 2012, 48 years after the excavation was ended prematurely, without his dream coming true; but there is hope.  Already in 2004 Budai had begun to create of coalition of cultural groups in favor of the excavation and in 2007 he published a small book (Középkori zsinagóga a budai várnegyedben / Medieval Synagogue in the Buda Castle Quarter) presenting a summary of the history and archaeology, and especially his plans for the building's eventual reconstruction.  The project is not an especially difficult one - much simper, for example, than the excavation of the medieval synagogue in Vienna.  But the project needs  money to proceed. Sometime around 2012 the Schulhof Foundation for the Restoration of the Medieval Synagogue of Buda was founded to promote new excavation and restoration. In recent months yet another coalition for this project was formed, and the conference and accompanying exhibit are the result of this new effort.

Budapest, Hungary. Plan of Buda showing location of the Great Synagogue (2) and relation to so-called Syrian Synaoggue (1).  From Budai,  Középkori zsinagóga a budai várnegyedben / Medieval Synagogue in the Buda Castle Quarter (Budapest, 2007).

Budapest, Hungary. Plan of  the Great Synagogue.  From Budai,  Középkori zsinagóga a budai várnegyedben / Medieval Synagogue in the Buda Castle Quarter (Budapest, 2007).

Substantial remains of the former great synagogue and other elements of this Jewish quarter, including another synagogue and parts of the Mendel houses, were revealed during the 1964-66 excavations around numbers 23, 26, and 28 Mihaly Tancsics Street. Because the results of the excavations were not completed, and the results were only been published in Hungarian, they still remain little known outside of Hungary.[2] The excavations confirmed the destruction described by Shulhof. In addition to cannon balls and shrapnel, charred bones of Jews killed in the assault were found in the remains of the synagogue’s geniza, where they had apparently been placed prior to burial—a burial that never took place because the synagogue remains were burned in a giant fire that swept the city. 

The floor of the Great Synagogue was set below ground level. Thus, despite its important to the Jews of Hungary, and the prominence of Judah Mendel, it was kept hidden from the street and lower than churches in the area. The height of the synagogue vaults is believed to have been between 7.5 and 8 m. The synagogue interior originally measured 19 x 9 m., and after 1541 it was extended to 26.5 x 10.7 m., twice as long as the Altneushul in Prague. The synagogue is believed to have three supporting piers set on its longitudinal axis, dividing the interior into two equal naves. As in Prague, the piers were octagonal and supported Gothic rib vaults, thus creating a space of either six or eight bays. The women’s area adjoined the men’s on the south and was connected to it by windows. On the same side a large entrance arch opened into the men’s section.  

Budapest, Hungary. Great Synagogue, wall elevation revealed in 1964 excavation.  From Budai,  Középkori zsinagóga a budai várnegyedben / Medieval Synagogue in the Buda Castle Quarter (Budapest, 2007).

The archaeologists surmised that the synagogue was damaged during the sieges of 1530 and 1541, during which the vaults were probably substantially damaged, causing their replacement by a wood roof. A plaster floor in the main sanctuary was apparently destroyed in 1541 and some walls were also destroyed at this time. Thus, even before the final destruction in 1686, the synagogue had also suffered and been remodeled. Between 1684 and 1686, apparently only the women’s area was in good enough condition to be used as a synagogue.

---

[1] The eyewitness account known as the Megillot Buda, was written by Shulhof (1650-1733), a son-in-law of the Great Synagogues’ eminent rabbi Ephraim Ha-Cohen. The work, written in Hebrew, has been translated into Hungarian. An partial English translation can be found in Eli Valley, The Great Jewish Cities of Central and Eastern Europe (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1999), 424-425.

[2] On the excavations see Laszlo Zolnay, Buda kozepkori zsidosaga (Budapest: Budapest Történeti Múzeum kiadása, 1987). For a brief account in English see Krinsky, Synagogues, 154-155. For a longer narrative account of the history of Buda’s medieval Jewish community and the story of the synagogue’s destruction see E. Valley, Jewish Cities, 408-425 and for history, archaeology and ideas for reconstruction see Budai Aurel, Középkori zsinagóga a budai várnegyedben / Medieval Synagogue in the Buda Castle Quarter (Budapest, 2007).

 

USA: Middletown, Pennsylvania's B'nai Jacob is Small, but Still a Treasure (and tied to Pušalotas, Lithuania)

 

Middletown, PA. B'nai Jacob Synagogue, 1906. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Pusalotas, Lithuania. Former synagogue, view from southwest. (Photo: Evelina Kazakauskaitė, 2006. SLC Archives) from Synagogues of Lithuania, Vol 2, p63

Middletown, PA. B'nai Jacob Synagogue Sanctuary,1906. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Middletown, PA. B'nai Jacob Synagogue Sanctuary,1906. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

USA: Middletown, Pennsylvania's B'nai Jacob is Small, but Still a Treasure (and tied to Pušalotas, Lithuania)
by Samuel D. Gruber

[(August 26, 2015) Correction: in the first version of this post, I said that the former synagogue of Pušalotas was still used as a meat canning plant. This is not true. That function ended in the late 1980s or early 1990s, and the synagogue has been owned by the Lithuanian Jewish (Litvak) Community (LJC) since 1993. Unfortunately, no use for the building has been found, and it is empty.]

(ISJM) A few months ago I had the pleasure of visiting the B'nai Jacob synagogue in Middleton, Pennsylvania, where the local Penn State University campus is located, just outside Harrisburg.  I'd known about this little gem for many years, first from a paper written by Matt Singer relating this building  to similar vernacular Gothic synagogues (you can read it here: Jewish-American Gothic Architecture), and also from Julian Preisler, who has been documenting Pennsylvania synagogues for many years. The opportunity to lecture at Penn State Harrisburg gave me a chance to visit - and I was not disappointed.  

Coincidentally for me (but as pointed out by Singer) the building bears striking formal similarities to the former Ohavi Zedek Synagogue in Burlington, Vermont, and the B'nai Abraham Synagogue of Brenham, Texas, which was recently relocated to Austin (and which will be rededicated on August 30th.  These were all Lithuanian-Jewish (Litvak) settlements, and they all seem to have drawn on similar sources and/or been inspired in similar ways by local American vernacular construction. I'm also interested in Middletown's connection to Pusalotas, Lithuania, the town from which most of the Middletown Jewish settlers emigrated ca. 1900, and  whose Jewish population was massacred in 1941, but where the former synagogue still stands, and has been returned to the Jewish Community of Lithuania. My new position as a member of the Commission for the Issues Concerning the Jewish History and Culture has me wondering if something more should or could  be done there. 

Services are still held in Middletown once a month (but of course, no more in Pusalotas) and the small B'nai Jacob congregation works hard to maintain the building and its fittings. Three ark curtains have been saved and conserved, and these are hung in protective frames in the social hall downstairs.

 

Middletown, PA. B'nai Jacob Synagogue, 1906. One of three parochot (ark curtains) is preserved in the social hall. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

The congregation is presently raising funds to restore the exterior entrance stairs which are deteriorating, and bowing away from the building.  More than half of the estimated $25,000 needs has been raised.  I encourage readers to make an online contribution - of any size - via the GoFundMe webpage, here.

You can read about the Middletown synagogue here:  Historic B'nai Jacob Synagogue, with a detailed description and analysis of the building by Matt Singer here:  B'NAI JACOB BUILDING ANALYSIS.

Middletown, PA. B'nai Jacob Synagogue, 1906. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

B'nai Jacob is a simple but refined one story brick structure, with tall narrow front, side and back windows with  pointed arches. It is only becasue of these windows that the synagogues is sometimes referred to as "Gothic" in style.  At the rear of the building, one can see a protrusion that represents the Ark, which has been erected to have a depth far greater than the Ark wall thickness. This arrangement is not unknown elsewhere in Europe and America, but neither is it common (I promise to write more about this feature, variations of which can be found in late 19th century synagogues such the former Adas Israel in Washington and in some of the simple synagogues of the agricultural communities of Southern New Jersey (Alliance, Brotmanville, etc.). 

Middletown, PA. B'nai Jacob Synagogue, 1906. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

The sanctuary is reached by outside steps and the entire sanctuary is raised on a half story, allowing light into a a full basement used for community space. These exterior stairs, as previously, mentioned, need repair.

The interior arrangement is traditional, with a central bimah and seating for women in a gallery built above the entrance vestibule, reached by a dogleg stair the opens off the vestibule, before the sanctuary door. The synagogue walls are painted white - but given the colors and decorative patterns we have found in recent years beneath modern whitewash, I wonder of the original appearance wasn't a bit less austere.  But certainly the congregation here decided against the richly painted interiors of many contemporary immigrant shuls.The ark employs classical elements combined with the a pair of traditional (East Europe) carved wooden lions supporting a painted Decalogue (Tablets with Ten Commandments) set on top. The pews of B'nai Jacob were obtained from an earlier version of the Dauphin County Courthouse.

Middletown, PA. B'nai Jacob Synagogue, 1906. View from women's gallery.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Middletown, PA. B'nai Jacob Synagogue, 1906. View from women's gallery. showing central bimah.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

 Middletown, PA. B'nai Jacob Synagogue, 1906. Women's gallery.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Middletown, PA. B'nai Jacob Synagogue, 1906. View to women's gallery.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Middletown, PA. B'nai Jacob Synagogue, 1906. View of ceiling with large chandelier and of the lions and Decalogue over the Ark.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Middletown, PA. B'nai Jacob Synagogue, 1906. View of pews towards the Ark.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

We know something about the origins of the Jewish settlers of Middletown, and the founders of B'nai Jacob, who according to Singer:

 "were, overwhelmingly, Lithuanian Jewish immigrants. Oral lore notes that the founders were not only all, or nearly all, Lithuanian, but were from small, rural villages in the vicinity of the city of Panevezys in north-central Lithuania. Records available through JewishGen, a Jewish genealogy website, confirm this assertion. An addendum to the synagogue’s National Register of Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form (B’nai Jacob was granted historic status in 1985), states that B’nai Jacob’s members were, primarily, from the village of Pusalotas in north-central Lithuania. 

These Lithuanian Jews were adventurous enough to immigrate to the United States and settle in an obscure, rural town (in these characteristics, of course, Middletown was similar to the villages from which B’nai Jacob’s founders hailed) with a minuscule Jewish community and no Jewish institutions prior to the building of the synagogue. Nonetheless, they maintained traditional Eastern European Orthodox practice, which included living within walking distance of a synagogue, as traditional Jewish law forbids traveling by vehicle on the Sabbath."

Pusalotas, Lithuania. Former synagogue, view from northwest. (Photo: Evelina Kazakauskaitė, 2006. SLC Archives) from Synagogues of Lithuania, Vol 2.

Interestingly, Pušalotas had a brick synagogue - but this was built until 1913, seven years after the one in Middletown, after Pusalotas's wooden synagogue burned down. The building survives and its present condition is described in detail in Synagogues of Lithuania, Vol. 2, pp 61-65. Funds for this synagogue were originally sent from immigrants in America to Rueven Brog, the grandfather of Israeli politician and former commander-in chief Ehud Barak (b. 1942).  Brog, who was a pharmacist. In 1912, he received the money from the United States but thieves broke into his house, killed Reuven and his wife Frida, wounded their eldest son and stole the money. Nevertheless, a synagogue was built near the market square, on the opposite side of the Catholic church in 1913.12.  Howard Margol  and Willie Mann (who was born in Pushelat in 1913), and present a history of the Jewish settlement in the town and include this about the synagogue:

The main centre of activity was the shul - a solid two-storey brick building which was the heart of the shtetl. This was the new shul that was completed in 1913 after the wooden synagogue burned down. The main hall had two large tiled stoves that were always lit during winter, as it was extremely cold. This hall was only used on Shabbat and Yomtov. For daily prayers we used a small room heated in winter with ready-cut wooden logs - there was always a tall stack of them in the open yard - as Lithuania had no coal mines. Prayers were held three times a day and we boys were expected to davven every day, which we duly did. The shul had no toilets, as there was no running water in the shtetl and no indoor plumbing. 

Most of the exterior of the substantial synagogue remains intact, as can be seen in photos taken in 2006. According to the authors of Synagogues of Lithuania, the synagogue interior was destroyed when the building to industrial purposes after the Holocaust. In the decades since World War II it has housed a dairy, a mill, and then a meat preserving plant. The property was returned to the Lithuanian Jewish Community, and in 2005 a memorial plaque for the victims of the Holocaust was set up on the southern wall of the former synagogue. To my knowledge no plans have been made to renovate or restore the building for any specific Jewish purpose.

 Pusalotas, Lithuania. Former synagogue, memorial plaque on the southern façade. (Photo: Evelina Kazakauskaitė, 2006. SLC Archives), from Synagogues of Lithuania, Vol 2., p64.