"The Lost World" is an exhibition in memory of the Jewish culture, once prosperous in Lithuania. Almost all of the Lithuanian Jewish community, its centuries-old cultural treasure, which has glorified the name of Lithuania in the world, and its artistic and architectural heritage, were brutally destroyed during the Nazi invasion. The exhibition presents saved and preserved objects of Lithuanian Jewish heritage – deep-rooted traditional Jewish art and 19^th century-born and ever-developing secular art of the Lithuanian Jews.

The Lithuanian Jews, the litvaks, stood out among the other Jews for strict preservation of the religious tradition, intellectual rationality, special education, and for certain features of their religious and everyday life. All this influenced a specific artistic expression. It was until the second part of the 19^th century that only traditional art developed in the Jewish culture of Lithuania, limited by old traditions. It was mostly expressed in the synagogue architecture, interior design and decorations, creation of ritual objects or the illustrations and decorative motifs used in religious texts. The traditional Lithuanian Jewish art is notable for its synthesis of craft and spiritual doctrine.

The mode of life of the Lithuanian Jews, determined by the religious regulations and rituals, is revealed through the exhibited items, which are associated with the interior decoration of synagogues, and ritual objects, which are designed for the rites performed at the synagogue and at home, and for the main holidays of the year and life cycle.

The following elements of the interior of the Vilnius Great synagogue are key to the exhibition: the twofold doors of the aron kodesh, the cartouche with the Tablets of the Law, which used to decorate the topmost level of the aron kodesh, and the candlestick from the omed (the cantor’s desk), which stood in front of it. These objects are all that is left of the Vilnius Great synagogue, built in the end of the XVI c. – the beginning of the XVII c., which had for centuries been the main spiritual axis of the Jewish community. The Great synagogue was also renowned for its ornate interior, which was considered one of the finest in the country. That interior with the gorgeous aron kodesh and the remaining objects, exhibited in our exposition, was immortalized in a watercolor by the world-famous artist Marc Chagall, who visited Vilnius in 1935.

The woodcarving tradition, inherited from generation to generation, acquires unexpected shapes in the piece by the early 20^th century Jewish folk artist Aaron Chait from Kelmė – "The Throne of King Solomon". This masterpiece, created in the 3^rd decade of the 20^th century, is a multi-figural dimensional composition, a sculptural installation incorporating architectonic elements, carvings of different animals, and over two hundred dressed dolls. In the context of Lithuanian Jewish art this composition is unique. The traditional Jewish art in Lithuania has never used neither sculptural human groups, nor similar sculptural dimensional compositions, because of the strict understanding of the Second Commandment. No such compositions are known in the whole history of traditional Jewish art, either. Aaron Chait created this unusual piece to illustrate the biblical story of King Solomon’s court and his magical throne, described in Jewish legends. Unfortunately, due to the vast number of lacking parts, the authentic dimensional view of the composition is impossible to restore, thus the remaining objects are exhibited on a wall.

The memoirs of the artist’s son Jakov Chait who described it in detail, and the description of Solomon’s trial and Solomon’s throne in the Second Targum helped to reconstruct an approximate composition of the artwork.

In 1941 the remains of the majestic composition – about twenty-three human figures and part of the carvings – were saved from the destroyed buildingof the Jewish Ethnographic Society in Kaunas by the art critic Professor Paulius Galaunė. After the war the scattered composition was kept at the M. K. Čiurlionis Art Museum in Kaunas, where all that was known about it was that they were “Jewish dolls” and “Jewish carvings”. Later it was given as a gift to the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum. As the artwork’s authorshipwas lost, for many years no one even suspected that the “dolls” and “carvings” were part of a unique work of art. Only in the last decade when a thorough research of the surviving “dolls” and ‘carvings” was carried out and the memoirs of Jakov Chait were discovered was the story of this piece of art and the artist who created it revealed. Almost a century after “Solomon’s Throne” was created it turned out that the composition which the artist’s son looked for even at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, as he wrote in his memoirs, was really still in Lithuania, at the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum.

Dr. Aistė Niunkaitė-Račiūnienė

Encounters: Litvak Art of XX-XXI centuries