The Hebrew Ornament

Born in the old Jewish center of Kamenets-Podolsk in the Russian Empire (today Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi, Ukraine) to Baron Horace Gintsburg (Günzberg), a member of Russia’s most affluent Jewish banking family, David Gintsburg enjoyed a first-class private religious and secular education from traditionally educated but modern-minded teachers like Adolf Neubauer. Gintsburg went on to take his degree in St. Petersburg in “Oriental languages,” with particular interest in Arabic. A devoted philanthropist supporting Jewish institutions in St. Petersburg and throughout Russia, Gintsburg also used his family’s extensive resources to build his private library of rare Jewish illustrated manuscripts and incunabula, which served as the source material for his extraordinary bibliographical treasury, L’Ornement Hebreu (Hebrew Ornament). Gintsburg established and financed the Academy of Jewish Sciences in St. Petersburg (1907–1914) and served on the editorial board of the Evreiskaia entsiklopediia (Jewish Encyclopedia).

St. Petersburg-born Russian critic Vladimir Stasov championed folk-creativity as the ground of modern cultural and civic development in the Russian Empire. He embraced the Russian Empire’s multiethnicity and not only welcomed aesthetic creativity by all of the empire’s constituent peoples but actively enjoined artists and composers of various ethnic backgrounds to collect and respond to the folk traditions of “their people” as a contribution to Russian imperial cultural life. Not himself Jewish, Stasov extended this outlook fully to Russia’s Jews, becoming among other things a patron of sculptor Mark Antokolski and consultant for the construction of the Grand Choral Synagogue, one of the great “Oriental”-style synagogues of the age. Developing a close friendship with the Gintsburg family, Stasov coproduced L’Ornement Hebreu (Hebrew Ornament) with David Gintsburg.