Ornaments

 

In the ornaments of Jewish tombstones, the image of a person was always unacceptable, so the masters had to use many artistic images and plots, both ancient symbols and biblical motifs, images of animals, birds, plants, real-world objects, attributes of craft and everyday life, and all this in a variety of solutions, interpretations and semantic loads. The art of carving and making gravestones also owes its diversity to the existence of many "schools". In different corners of the "Pale of settlement" there were their own stone-cutting workshops and individual craftsmen. Their style and craftsmanship developed and improved independently of each other and under the influence of many factors. Often, stone-cutting was a hereditary craft that was passed down from father to son. From generation to generation, in each separate area, craftsmen consolidated and improved the artistic images and methods of work handed down to them from their ancestors, and developed their own. Thus, in various Jewish cemeteries of "The Pale of settlement" tombstone complexes have formed with a unique carving peculiar only to this cemetery.

In the 19th century, after almost two centuries of flourishing, the art of carved tombstone decoration began to fade, which was caused by a number of factors. The plot lost its former meaning and interpretation, the picture itself became more and more minimalistic and less expressive. Traditional, increasingly less significant, symbols were "stamped" by masters according to templates, and the stone steles themselves began to be gradually replaced by monuments of various forms. In Soviet times, old masters passed away and ancient traditional art was practically forgotten.

However, in the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery, you can still see ancient tombstones decorated with carved ornaments. The reliefs of the grave monuments still preserve a rich complex of pictorial symbols. Its interpretation reveals a peculiar, extremely interesting side of the national culture and artistic creativity of the Jewish people.

Among the tombstones dated before 1921, approximately half of the monuments have carved ornaments.

Formed in the stone-cutting art of making tombstones back in the 15th - 16th centuries, the motifs of the portal with a separate, slightly deepened niche for the text were preserved throughout the following time. This artistic decision of tombstones caused associations with the gate of paradise, as a messianic symbol, or with the Jerusalem Temple. Similar options for the design of tombstones in the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery are found repeatedly, and in most cases the ornament symbolizes the portal rather than faithfully depicting it, showing its real shape and volume. It is worth noting the special twisted shape of the columns supporting the arch on some tombstones.

 

The processing of this detail of the ornament is deep, almost sculptural. This shape is probably a reminiscence of the two twisted columns from Solomon's Temple, Jachin and Boaz, which became a common symbol. At the same time, the columns of these tombstones, emphasized by floral bases and capitals, may have the character of a tree. Columns in the ornamentation of the reverse side of another tombstone can have the same semantics. Here, the architectural details of the "gate" are combined with plant ones - branches with a large number of fruit grow from the columns.

 

On some tombstones, the arch rests not on columns, but on wide strips with a floral ornament. In essence, these are the portals themselves. The dimensions of the bas-relief exceed the field of the epitaph. Plant shoots and flowers cover the entire surface of the tympanum like a carpet. Such tombstones are unique not only because of the artistic execution, but also because of the original plastic solution. Similar monuments are found in the Jewish cemeteries of Satanov and Derazhnya and date back to the middle of the 18th century. Hlukhiv steles with this type of ornament are a later interpretation of a similar compositional solution. Complex plant weaving and flowers merge into a single pattern, which is a formative factor of the composition. These monuments can be considered full-fledged works of art, that clearly reveal the individual ideas of the master of beauty.

 

The most common symbol used in the decoration of the tombstones of the Jewish cemetery in the town of Hlukhiv is the Star of David (Shield of David or Magen David) - an ancient symbol, a six-pointed star, in which two identical equilateral triangles (one with the top up, the other with the top down) are superimposed, forming a structure of six identical angles attached to the sides of a regular hexagon. This ancient symbol has many interpretations and versions of its origin.

The second most frequently used motif at the Jewish cemetery in the town of Hlukhiv is a menorah. This motif is connected with cult symbolism and represents a lamp with seven candles (sometimes more or less, one candle can be found on girls' tombstones, sometimes broken). Menorahs with seven and three candles are presented on the tombstones of the Hlukhiv cemetery. The menorah is an ancient attribute of the temple, which is a symbol of Judaism. Without losing this ancient meaning, later the menorah on grave monuments began to be interpreted as a sign of female piety, which is manifested in the observance of the ritual of lighting candles on the eve of Sabbath and holidays. At the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery, the menorah is present in ornaments both individually and in combination with other symbols exclusively in female tombstones. The degree of elaboration of the drawings, their stylistic forms and execution techniques are completely different diverse. Most of the menorahs of the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery are made in the form of a stylized tree (analogous to the biblical prototype), whose branches in the shape of horns end with flowers-lamps with a pestil-wick in each. On many gravestones, the images of menorahs are extremely simple and represent not the object itself, but rather its schematic image. On some tombstones the menorahs are real objects, in their images the masters seem to have depicted the forms of candlesticks characteristic of their time, which may have been in their everyday life or seen somewhere.

 

On a few individual tombstones, menorah horns, with a truly artistic taste, are cunningly interwoven with each other and woven into plant motifs, forming ornamental compositions in the spirit of oriental scrolls. The plant motifs next to the menorah symbolize olives, the source of oil for the temple lamp.

 

In the plot of this tombstone birds flank the menorah, on other tombstones the menorah is framed by lions. Living beings in this case could have the interpretation of good geniuses who feed the lamp with oil. These meanings are associated with the victory of the Maccabee rebellion, the liberation of Jerusalem, the consecration of the Temple, and the Hanukkah holiday, which is celebrated by Jews all over the world in memory of those events. The menorah was made according to the instructions Moshe received from God on Mount Sinai and was installed in the Jerusalem Temple. By law, at least one of her lights had to be on all the time. The light of the menorah burning in the Temple symbolized the spiritual light brought to the world by the Torah and Jewish tradition. The menorah could be lit only with oil that was prepared and stored in compliance with special rules. If these rules were not followed (for example, if a Greek soldier opened the vessel with oil and thus defiled it), then it was not possible to light the menorah with such oil. After the release in 164 BC. Yehuda Maccabee of Jerusalem undertook the cleansing and consecration of the Temple. According to the Talmud, when the Greeks entered the Temple, they desecrated or destroyed all the oil that was there, thereby trying to extinguish the menorah forever and destroy the Jewish religion. Of all the vessels preserved in the Temple, only one jug with oil turned out to be sealed with the high priest's seal. There was only enough oil in it for one day of burning the menorah. But a miracle happened and this oil was enough for eight days - exactly as much as was needed to make new oil.

 

As for lions, their image, like the images of other representatives of the animal world, is connected with the biblical edification, which requires to be "bold as a panther, light as an eagle, swift as a deer, and strong as a lion when performing God's will". This quotation presents a rich source of subjects to give free rein to the master's imagination, and any one of them could, after all, be a sign of the piety of the deceased. These images, together with the griffin, unicorn and some others, are interpreted as good geniuses - guards of a shrine. Their paired silhouettes seem to protect the menorah, the ark with the Torah, the cabinet with the Pentateuch of the Bible and the six books of the Mishnah, and a number of other symbols. Similarly, lions guard a stylized scroll and a holy book, and birds "guard" the Torah ark.

 

In the Jewish tradition, birds also have an independent symbolic meaning: "Birds are the most outstanding singers who praise the God". In rabbinical texts there is an opinion that the human soul is like a bird. Texts about the flying soul are found in the Talmud and Midrash and are based on the psalm: "...you speak to my soul: fly like a bird..." (Psalms 11:1-2). Perhaps it was thanks to this metaphor that the image of birds on tombstones was widespread.

On one of the tombstones, birds are located next to two fish, symbolizing the month of Adar, in which the coming of the Messiah is expected.

 

At the base of one of the destroyed tombstones you can distinguish a deer or a doe. The image of the latter contains the idea of goodness and beauty, it symbolizes love, sensuality, simple-minded innocence and decorates the tombstones of girls and young women.

Eventually, in the plots of the carved decor of tombstones, the mystical beginning gradually fades into the background, giving way to more real, human concepts. Thus, in the image of a lion, the high meaning of this symbol could be simplified to a simple illustration of the name of the late Aryeh-Leib (lion in Hebrew and Yiddish). A deer could be depicted on the tombstone of Zvi-Hirsh (deer in Hebrew and Yiddish) or Naphtali (the name of the founder of one of the tribes of Israel, whose symbol, according to the biblical text, is a deer (Genesis 49:21), a bear - on the grave of Dov-Ber (bear) in Hebrew and Yiddish), a fish - on the tombstone of Fischl, and a bird - on the monument of a woman Feiga-Tzipora (bird in Hebrew and Yiddish). Among the tombstones of the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery, no such analogies could be found, except for one case - the image of lions on the tombstone of a person with the name of Yehuda (as it is said (Genesis, 49, 9), "Hur-arye (young lion) of Yehuda"), but this case can be considered more of a coincidence than correlation between the image and the name.

The crown marked the high value of a particular symbol. Thus, the crown depicted above the epitaph was called the "crown of a good name", the crown above the blessing hands of the Aaronite - the "crown of the priesthood", the crown crowning the Torah scroll - the "crown of Teaching". The crown located above the sacred ark can be interpreted in the same way.

Overcoming the ban on depicting an image of a person on tombstones, masters often resorted to a technique known as "a part instead of a whole", and instead of the whole figure of a person, only the hands were shown. These could be female hands folded in prayer with fingers pressed together, blessing hands with fingers spread in pairs (a birthmark on the tombstones of Aaronite priests – kohens. With a number of restrictions, this status was passed down from father to son) or hands holding a jug. The jug could be depicted separately and denoted the honourable duty of the Levites to wash the hands of the Aaronites before performing the sacrament. A tombstone with this image was installed on the graves of the Levites.

One of the tombstones of the Cohens has an image of a heraldic eagle. The masters depicted similar eagles on 2 other stelae. At first glance, it seems that these birds are borrowed from the coat of arms of the Russian or Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, in the Jewish tradition, images of the double-headed eagle date back to medieval manuscripts of the 13th century and printed books of the Baroque era. In the Jewish literature, the image of the eagle is associated with several symbolic connotations. The most common are the edification from the Mishnah (Avot 5:20) "Be light as an eagle", which expresses a special service to the God, and the metaphor from the book of Darim (Deuteronomy 32:11): "Like an eagle guard that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young...", where the actions of the eagle are compared with the attitude of the God to his people. In the Jewish art of Eastern Europe, the heraldic eagle became truly popular. It was almost always associated with royal power as a metaphor for the power of God. As a rule, this is confirmed by the attributes that the double-headed eagle holds in its paws on Jewish tombstones — usually they have a Jewish symbolic meaning or combine elements of royal and heavenly power. In the images of the heraldic eagle on all three tombstones of the Jewish cemetery in Hlukhiv, there are no objects in the paws of this bird. However, on one of the tombstones the eagle is depicted in combination with a heart.

The heart is a symbol of mercy. In combination with the eagle, as the personification of the power of the God, or in combination with the lion, as the ancestral symbol of the tribe of Yehuda (according to the blessing of Jacob) and his descendants, that is, all the Jews who are currently living, can be interpreted as the mercy of the Almighty towards his people.

 

Plant ornaments on Jewish tombstones had a decorative function, but also carried a meaningful load. Flowering plants and individual flowers, as well as various fruits, expressed the idea of fruitful activity of the deceased on the path of good. Flowers are present on the tombstone of the Jewish writer, publicist and teacher Lazar Davidovych Zweifel. Special attention should be paid to the two-sided tombstone, on one of the sides of which a floral ornament with the image of pears is carved, which has no analogues among other steles of the Hlukhiv cemetery.

The floral ornaments of two more tombstones are also noteworthy, echoing the traditional types of artistic creativity of the Jewish people. The carvings of these stelae have many similarities with the engraved title pages of Bibles and the ornaments of marriage contracts (ketubah). Patterns of wall panels (mizrahs), which were made on walls facing Jerusalem and which the Jews faced during the prayer, were often reflected in the ornaments of tombstones. Common motifs with carvings on monuments are characteristic of the temple art – ceiling and wall paintings, carved wooden decorations of the Torah ark and its gold-stitched curtains, patterned metal elements of synagogue chandeliers and ritual household items.

 A palm branch (lulav), which is an ancient symbol of Judaism and an attribute of the Sukkot holiday, is depicted on several tombstones in the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery. The palm branch depicted on the tombstones symbolizes the future liberation and revival of the Jewish people. On early European Judean tombstones, a palm branch was depicted as a palm sprout with some semblance of roots, pulled out of the ground. Probably, the transformation of this motif can be a unique symbol recorded exclusively in the ornaments of the Jewish cemetery in Hlukhiv, which resembles some kind of root crop (beetroot or turnip). This symbol is found on 7 tombstones of the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery. Most interestingly, this symbol is made on one of the tombstones. It cannot also be ruled out that this plant motif in the symbolism of the carved ornaments of the Hlukhiv cemetery was borrowed by local craftsmen from the environment or from the folk art of local artisans. One way or another, but in the works of Jewish stonemasons, it took root, developed, acquired new outlines and ways of fitting into the general artistic idea of the decoration of monuments.

On the tombstones of the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery, in addition to the above, there are other ancient attributes of Judaism, such as stylized images of sacred books and scrolls of the Torah, as well as the tree of life, depicted in its usual traditional form on only one tombstone next to a broken tree. The latter can be a transformation of the image of a tree. The image of the fruit-bearing, life-radiating Tree of the Garden of Eden is replaced with the image of a tree-man with a broken trunk, withered crown and cut branches. The branches symbolize orphaned children, the broken trunk and withered crown become an allegory of a broken life. Another type of tree of life is a tree in a tub or a flowerpot. At the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery, this ornament is not used on traditional Jewish steles, but exclusively on low obelisk columns with epitaphs on one or both sides, and an ornament in the form of a tree in a flower pot on the other sides, which is characterized by deliberate decorativeness and even stylization. In the performance of Hlukhiv stone carvers, this symbol becomes similar to an ear of corn or a braid of cunningly woven branches, each of which is crowned with a single large leaf. This ornament is used in the decoration of two dozen monuments of the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery, and the completely identical template character of this carving element indicates that it was used by masters when applying stencils and patterns.

On the tombstone of Nehemiah, son of Shmuel a-Cohen, the so-called weeping tree is inscribed in the carved decor. This is the only tombstone in the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery with such an image.

Combinations of certain symbols could be interpreted in different ways, causing all kinds of improvisations and giving free rein to the imagination of master stonemasons, thereby developing the art of decorating tombstones, bringing new elements and artistic images to it.

In the works of stone-cutters, they treated the concept of scale rather loosely, finding the necessary proportions of objects from a compositional point of view, neglecting their real proportions. Thus, on the tombstones, equal-sized images of lions and trees are harmonious neighbours, and the crown exceeds the size of the ark. Exaggerated large leaves of plant ornaments or a significant menorah in relation to obviously downplayed images of animals and birds are not surprising.

During the execution of the carved ornaments of tombstones, masters used all kinds of techniques. The images could be made with an incised contour line, or they could be made in relief with different depths of the background. The tombstones of different time periods have a style and originality that come from the stone-carving traditions of the masters who worked in Hlukhiv at that time, their artistic passions, the level of skill, talent, and sometimes the level of the stone-carving school. Thus, the monuments of the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery allow you to see the art of local stonemasons in its development over 120 years. Some stones impress with their simplicity and monumentality, others with the presence of a purely decorative pattern in the absence of images. The drawing of the third is geometrized, almost completely devoid of ornaments, and together with the lines of the epitaph and freely placed words and signs create a peculiarly rhythmic composition. Finely drawn reliefs of the fourth are distinguished by their graphics. Feathers of birds, fish scales, and intricately twisted plant branches are finely detailed on them, as if on an engraving. The heels fifth are a highly artistic combination of plant forms, ornaments and peculiar graphics of the font. It seems that the master subjugated all his skills to the single goal of achieving plastic beauty. Complex plant weaving and flowers merge into a single picture, impress with the elaboration of plastics and can be full-fledged works of art.

The font of the epitaphs could be very simple, executed in the mortise technique, or embossed, which required scrupulous processing of the background. The lines of letters on some gravestones have a sloppy folk-craft character, and the relief epitaphs of others are similar in their execution to works of art. Monumentality is felt in the architectonics of the letters, and rigor and completeness – in the solution of the text block. The epitaph’s lines are always brought to the end by lengthening the final mark, as is customary in Jewish manuscripts from time immemorial. Thanks to the calm rhythm of the lines, the absence of voids and crowding, the inscription is perceived as a continuous pattern, and the variety and richness of this pattern is achieved due to the use of different forms of the font.

At the end of this subsection, it should be noted that the carved ornaments of stone tombstones, their plot, character and complexity always depended on the social status of the deceased. More complex, time-consuming development of carvings is always characteristic of monuments of wealthy people. Often their steles exceeded ordinary ones in their size and abundance of decoration. Steles of this type, which reflect the wealth and significance of the deceased, make up only a small part of the stones in the cemetery, the decor of which is mainly quite simple and has a folk-craft character.