Painting the Sacred: Torah Arks, Peripheral Communities, and Religious Belonging in Early Modern German Lands

This article examines the painted Torah ark as a form of material religion through which early modern rural Jewish communities shaped sacred space and articulated religious belonging. Focusing on a group of wooden synagogues in rural Franconia, Bavaria, and Württemberg, decorated between 1732 and 1740 by a school of painters led by the itinerant painter Eliezer-Zusman of Brody, the study analyzes a rare shift from carved-wood or stone arks to fully representational painted structures. Drawing on visual analysis, architectural context, and comparison with Eastern European precedents, the article argues that painted ark decoration functioned simultaneously as a practical substitute for carving, a strategy for creating unified interior environments, and a means of intensifying devotional experience. The replication of compositional schemes from the Chodorów (now Khodoriv, Ukraine) synagogue in Ruthenia to Bechhofen in Bavaria demonstrates a deliberate process of artistic and religious transfer from Eastern to Central Europe. This transfer reflects both the economic limitations of small German Jewish communities and their aspiration to appropriate the visual prestige of Eastern European synagogue art. More broadly, the case highlights how painted ornament could reshape ritual space and materialize cultural mobility, contributing to wider discussions of material religion, migration, and the circulation of sacred forms in early modern Europe.