1. The contemporary Ukrainian name is Khodoriv, but this paper uses the Polish name Chodorów, as do most literary sources written in Polish.

2. The synagogue was built in 1642 or 1652. For the synagogue and bibliographic references, see Maria and Piechotka, Kazimierz, Heaven's Gates: Wooden Synagogues in the Territories of the Former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Krupski i S-ka, 2004), 182–85Google Scholar.

3. Smotrych in Ukrainian; see above, n. 1. This synagogue has not been researched to date. For photographs of the exterior, see Yargina, Zoya, Wooden Synagogues: A Pictorial Series of Treasures in the Commonwealth of Independent States (Moscow: Image Publishing House, 1993), nos. 1–3Google Scholar.

4. These two photographs, like others taken before World War II, document synagogues that did not survive the war. The available photographic material is partial and reflects either the photographer's interest, simple historical accident, or both.

5. Rodov, Ilia, “The Eagle, Its Twin Heads and Many Faces: Synagogue Chandeliers Surmounted by Double-headed Eagles,” in Jewish Ceremonial Objects in Transcultural Context, Studia Rosenthaliana 37 (2004): 77–129Google Scholar. This article provides an iconographic survey of the two-headed eagle in European Christian and national and emblematic symbolism.

6. Among the earliest of these was the kabbalistic book Ginat 'egoz, printed in 1615 in Hanau; see Heller, Marvin J., The Seventeenth Century Hebrew Book (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011), 1:316–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For similar eagles in books printed in Amsterdam, see Habermann, Avraham Meir, Sha‘arei sefarim ‘ivriyim (Safed: Museum of the Art of Printing, 1969), 129, no. 36Google Scholar. This title page with the spread-winged eagle was very popular and printed many times, especially in books intended for the eastern European Jewish book market. Moreover, a single-headed eagle, grasping a sword and a scepter as attributes of power, appeared for the first time on the title page of Keter kehunah, printed in Berlin in 1699; Heller, Seventeenth Century, 2:1368–69.

7. Khaimovich, Boris, “The Jewish Bestiary of the 18th Century in the Dome Mural of the Khodorow Synagogue,” in Jews and Eastern Slavs: Essays on Intercultural Relations, ed. Moskovich, Wolf, Finberg, Leonid, and Feller, Marten, Jews and Slavs 7 (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2000), 133–36Google Scholar.

8. Epstein, Marc Michael, Dreams of Subversion in Medieval Jewish Art and Literature (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 17–38Google Scholar; Horowitz, Elliott, “Odd Couples: The Eagle and the Hare, the Lion and the Unicorn,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 11, no. 3 (August 2004): 252–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. As suggested by Epstein, Dreams, 33, the two-headed eagle points to the Habsburg empress Maria Theresa, whose emblem is a two-headed eagle and who reigned in Galicia after the first partition of Poland in 1772. Accordingly, the antisemitic empress would be flattered by her comparison to God; Huberman, Ida, Living Symbols: Symbols in Jewish Art and Tradition (Tel Aviv: Masada, 1988), 85Google Scholar; Khaimovich, “Jewish Bestiary,” 137 (Khaimovich suggests that the eagle is “a metaphor for the Almighty exercising dominion over God-fearing people”); Horowitz suggests that the eagle “may be rescuing the hares” (Horowitz, “Odd Couples,” 256).

10. Vayikra Rabba, Shemini, par. 13:5, to Leviticus 11:6 (Midrash Rabba, trans. Israelstam, J. and Slotki, Judah J. [London: Soncino Press, 1939], 173Google Scholar). The concept of the four kingdoms that will oppress the people of Israel originates in the book of Daniel, who saw in his vision “Four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea; four mighty beasts different from each other emerged from the sea” (Daniel 7:2–3). According to the midrash, Abraham, Moses, and the prophets foresaw the “empires engaged in their activities” and also foresaw their decline. Greece was one of the four. About the four kingdoms in the ancient Near East, see Hasel, Gerhard F., “The Four Empires of Daniel 2 against Its Near Eastern Environment,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 12 (May 1979): 17–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the four kingdoms in Jewish and Christian literature, see Gutmann, Yeḥiel Michael, Mafteaḥ ha-Talmud: enẓiklopediyah be-seder 'alef bet (Budapest: Yehiel M. Gutmann, 1906), vol. 3, part 2, 53–77Google Scholar.

11. Indeed, the translation of the term “hare” in Leviticus 11:6 in the Septuagint does not use its equivalent, Λάγος (lagos in Greek; lagus in Latin). In its stead appears the term Δασύπους (dasupous), i.e., “hairy legs,” a term that refers to a young hare. See Hatch, Edwin and Redpath, Henry A., A Concordance to the Septuagint (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998), 285Google Scholar. The allusion of the hare to Greece was rooted in the cult of Aphrodite, which was intensively practiced by the Ptolemaic kings. See Epstein, Abraham, Mi-kadmoniot ha-yehudim: meḥkarim u-reshimot, ed. Habermann, Abraham M. (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1957), 31–32Google Scholar. According to Pausanias, the Greek geographer of the second century CE, “The Macedonians consider Ptolemy to be the son of Philip, the son of Amyntas, though putatively the son of Lagus, asserting that his mother was with child when she was married to Lagus by Philip” (Pausanias, Description of Greece, with an English translation by Jones, W. H. S. and Ormerod, H. A. [London and Cambridge, MA: William Heinemann and Harvard University Press, 1966], I, 6, 2)Google Scholar. See also Lagus, defined in a Latin-English dictionary as “the father of Ptolemy I, king of Egypt”; Lewis, Charlton T. and Short, Charles, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879), 1031Google Scholar.

12. B. Megillah 9a–b. English translations, following Rashi, have mistranslated “צעירת הרגלים” as “short-legged.” As noted above, Δασύπους (dasupous) means “young” or “hairy,” since at birth the young hare is furry all over its body.

13. Yalkut Shimoni, Shemini 536; Tanḥuma (Warsaw), Shmot 22; Tanḥuma (Warsaw), Shemini, 8 (this source cites the rabbit as an allusion to Greece and the hare as an allusion to Media, both hostile kingdoms to Israel).

14. In Spain, e.g., Shueib, Rabbi Joshua ben (1280–1340) in his Sefer derashot Rabbi Yehoshu‘a ben Shueib al ha-Torah u-mo‘adei ha-shanah, ed. Metzger, Ze'ev (Jerusalem: Lev Sameaḥ, 1992), 1:247Google Scholar; and his contemporary Sikili, Rabbi Jacob ben Ḥananel, in Sefer torat ha-minḥah (Safed: Baruch Avigdor Hefetz, 1991)Google Scholar, vol. 2, Shemini, homily 43, 404. (For Rabbi Joshua ben Shueib, as for Midrash Tanḥuma, the rabbit is an allusion to Greece and the hare to Media.)

15. Menaḥem Recanati perush ‘al ha-Torah, ed. Gross, Amnon (Rehovot: A. Gross, 2003), 2:49Google Scholar. By noting its long legs and short front limbs, he referred to the length of the reign of Greece as compared to that of the other three kingdoms.

16. The book was published for the first time in Venice in 1523 and was republished with a commentary by Mordecai Jaffe in Lublin in 1595. About its popularity among the Jews in Cracow, Rabbi Moses Isserles, the Rema, wrote in his introduction to his book Torat ha‘olah: “and many of the common people are rushing to study Kabbalah since it is attractive…and especially nowadays that the books of Kabbalah have been printed, such as the Zohar, Recanati and Sha‘arei Orah, that everybody who reads them thinks that he understands, despite that what is written in them is not truly understood.…”; Moses b. Israel Isserles, Torat ha‘olah (Prague, 1570), section 3, chap. 4, 72b.

17. Heller, Seventeenth Century, 1:654–55. This book was written by Horowitz in the Holy Land, where he moved after his wife passed away. His Shnei luḥot ha-brit was written as a moral scripture for his sons, and they published it nineteen years after his death. Between 1670 and 1770 it was published in five Hebrew editions. In Yiddish it was published between 1743 and 1768 in six editions, under the title Eẓ ḥayim

18. Sefer ha-Shelah, Isaiah ben ha-Levi Horovitz ‘al ḥamishah ḥumashei Torah (Haifa: Yad Ramah Institute, 2002), 3:271Google Scholar. See also the annotated English translation, Shney Luchot Habrit: On the Written Torah, annotated and trans. Munk, Eliyahu (1962; repr., Jerusalem: E. Munk, 1992), 1:744Google Scholar.

19. On the four kingdoms, see above, n. 10.

20. Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, par. Baḥodesh, 9, on Genesis 15:1 (ed. J.Z. Lauterbach, 2:338).

21. Midrash Rabba, Bereshit, par. 2:4, to Genesis 1:2 (trans. H. Freedman and M. Simon [London and Bournemouth: Soncino Press, 1931], 17). See also their n. 4: “The reference is to Antiochus who endeavored to annihilate Judaism and implant Hellenism in its stead; ‘write on the horn of an ox’ probably implies a public disavowal of Judaism. This is the source upon which Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz based his allusion, ‘the Greek exile is wasting time that could be spent on Torah study and deeds,’” Sefer ha-Shelah, 2:334, on Tractate Ta‘anit, (Matot), 16.

22. Hertz, J. H., ed., The Authorized Daily Prayer Book (London: National Council for Jewish Religious Education, 1943), 153Google Scholar, to “Thanks giving on Hanukkah.” This text is already mentioned in tractate Sofrim 20:4 and included in the ninth-century Seder Rav Amram.

23. Midrash on Psalms, on 18:6. The popularity of the book is attested by its repeated printing in the relevant period: Prague, 1613; Amsterdam, 1730; Polonnoye, 1794; and Zholkva, 1800. In this midrash, too, Greece is one of the four evil kingdoms mentioned above, which also include Babylon, Media, and Edom.

24. The midrash refers to Jacob's dream in which the ascent and descent of the angels allude to the ascent and casting off of the evil kingdoms, Berman, Samuel A., trans., Midrash Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 1996), 185Google Scholar, on Genesis 28:12.

25. About this poem, its Hebrew text, and its English translation, see Kravtsov, Sergey R., Di Gildene Royze: The Turei Zahav Synagogue in L'viv (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2011), 51, 63–70Google Scholar. About this event in Lwów, see Gelber, Nathan Michael, ed., “Lvov,” Enẓiklopediyah shel galuyot 6 (Jerusalem: Ḥevrat enẓiklopediyah shel galuyot, 1956), 52–66Google Scholar. The two Lwów rabbis, Yehoshua Falk and Meir Lublin, who recommended publication of the prayer, were the teachers of Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz.

26. About this manner of relating to historical events, referring in particular to the 1648–49 massacres, see Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (New York: Schocken Books, 1989), 49–51Google Scholar.

27. As instructed by Rabbis Falk and Lublin; see Gelber, Lvov, 348 n. 8.

28. Among the reasons for this uprising was the fact that most of the land was owned by the Catholic Polish high nobility, the magnates, while the peasants were mainly Orthodox Ukrainians. During the first half of the seventeenth century the magnates demanded more and more taxes from the peasants. The Jews, who managed the magnates' estates, were identified by the peasants with the oppressing rulers, and thus became the focus of hatred and hostility. Chmielnicki, who made an alliance with the Tatars, the Muslim tribes in Crimea, attacked Polish towns and cities and advanced in his conquests to the central parts of Poland in the west and Lithuania in the north. As for the Jewish population, about forty thousand, half their number, were massacred in cruel riots. See Stampfer, Shaul, “Gzeyres takh vetat,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, ed. Hundert, Gershon David (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 1:644–47Google Scholar.

29. I would like to thank Prof. Rachel Elior for directing me to this literary genre, in which I found the link between the hare and the Ukrainians according to Jewish contemporary expressions.

30. Shebreshin, Meir ben Shmuel ish, Ẓok ha-‘itim, in Lekorot ha-gezerot ‘al Yisrael, ed. Gurland, Haim Yona (Cracow: Sha'altiel Isaac Greber, 1889)Google Scholar, fourth section, 7.

31. Avraham ben Shmuel Ashkenazi, Sefer ẓa'ar bat rabim or Misped Polania, in ibid., second section, 19.

32. Seliḥah by Rabbi Shabtai ben Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz, in ibid., third fascicle, II24; Kina ‘al harugei t”ḥ (Lamentation on the Massacred of 1648), by Rabbi Mordecai, son of Naftali Hirsh, in ibid., third section III, 26.

33. Hannover, Nathan ben Moses, Abyss of Despair [Yeven meẓulah], trans. Mesch, Abraham J. (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Books, 1983), 27Google Scholar, with slight changes.

34. One of the reasons for Chmielnicki's uprising was the Union of Brest, which in 1596 created a Uniate Church, subordinate to the Pope in Rome but following the Ruthenian rite.

35. Today Brzeg Dolny in southwestern Poland

36. Wahrmann, Nahum, Mekorot le-toldot gezerot taḥ ve-tat; tefilot u-seliḥot le-kaf Sivan (Jerusalem: Bamberger and Wahrmann, 1949), 18–20Google Scholar.

37. The earliest text of Perek shirah was found in the Cairo Genizah and is dated to the tenth century. About Perek shirah in detail, see Malachi Beit-Arié, “Perek shirah: mevo'ot u-mahadurah bikortit,” PhD diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1966; Beit-Arié, Perek shirah: mahadurat faksimiliyah, 'osef Beit ha-Sefarim ha-Leumi ve-ha-Universitai bi-Yerushalayim, ketav-yad HEB 8⁰ 4295 (Tel Aviv: Turnowsky, 1990)Google Scholar; also by Beit-Arié, Encyclopedia Judaica, s.v. “Perek Shira,” 13:273–75.

38. There is an additional expression of revenge in Perek shirah, referring to the prophecy upon Edom, which is pronounced by the cat: “Should you nest high as the eagle, Should your eyrie be lodged among the stars, Even from there I will pull you down—declares the Lord” (Obadiah 1:4).

39. Perek shirah came to serve as an amuletic text with mystical powers. It was the subject of kabbalistic commentaries, and its recitation was considered protection against all sorts of afflictions. Its diffusion was enhanced by the Hebrew press. It was also printed as an appendix to the popular kabbalistic prayer book of Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz in his Siddur sha‘ar ha-shamayim (Amsterdam, repr. 1917).

40. Painted by Hayim ben Isaac Segal from Słuck. For a photograph of the domed ceiling, see Sokolova, Alla, Photographs for the “Album of Jewish Artistic Antiquities,” vol. 2: Wooden Synagogues, Ordinary Streets, Cemeteries, Photo-archive of An-sky's expeditions ([St Petersburg]: Petersburg Judaica, 2007), fig. 35Google Scholar. About the synagogue, see Piechotka, Maria and Piechotka, Kazimierz, Wooden Synagogues in the Territories of the Former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Krupski I S-ka, 2004), 274Google Scholar.

41. This eagle was photographed by an architecture student as part of a documentation project he conducted in 1930. According to the synagogue's beadle, the eagle was removed from atop the ark because of its two heads, since the two-headed eagle was the emblem of tsarist Russia, from which Latvia had gained its independence but twelve years earlier. Synagogue officials feared that the Latvian authorities would consider the eagle inappropriate, so they preferred to remove it and store it away. That is why it was photographed apart from the Torah ark. (This information is included in a document of the Latvian Antiquities Authority's Center for Monuments' Documentation at the State Inspection for Protection of Cultural Monuments, PDC, 1097-9-KM' f. 1r. I thank Dr. Sergey Kravtsov for bringing this to my attention.) When the photo was taken, the crown on the eagle's left head was already missing; and from the position of its one remaining talon we can assume that it was grasping another object. Such objects are also missing from some of the other arks, but close examination shows that the eagles had had talons that had been broken. The photograph of the ark in its entirety is in the Ausra Museum in Siauliai, Latvia, no inventory number.

42. There is no documentation of any reference to this depiction during community gatherings in the synagogue. Despite that, we might assume that such a depiction was referred to when certain homiletic sermons were delivered in the synagogue. A suitable occasion could be the twentieth of Sivan, the day of mourning and public fast in memory of the Nemyriv Jewish community, which was massacred on that day in 1648. Recent research by the author and Tamar Shadmi, to be published in the future, proves that wall and ceiling inscriptions and depictions in synagogues played didactic and functional roles.