| _BIOG_EN_L |
Ludwig August Frankl (1810-1894) relates in Nach Jerusalem that Schnitzer was known as a praised stone sculptor in Vienna. He was the one who sculpted the cornerstone of the Votivkirche in Vienna, following the directions of the architect Mr. Endlicher.
Mordechai Schnitzer moved to Eretz Yisrael twenty-eight years earlier, in 1810 [he probably meant 1809], with the third caravan of students of R’ Eliahu Kramer, known as the Gaon (Genius) of Vilna (1720-1798). In charge were two of the Gaon’s students - R’ Chaim ben R’ Tovia Katz (the rabbi of Pakroi) and R’ Yisrael ben R’ Shmuel Ashkenazi of Shklov (c.1770-1839), author of Pe’as Hashulchan and Taklin Chadtin. After living in Safed for six years, R’ Menachem Mendel of Shklov (-1827) - the leader of the first caravan, and R’ Avraham Shlomo Zalman Zoref, felt that it was time to act on their decision to move to Jerusalem. Ten Ashkenazic Perushim (religious, Lithuanian, non-Chassidic) families got ready to move from the Galilee to Judea, one of them being the family of Mordechai Schnitzer - "one out of ten” - as written in Eliezer Halevi’s letter.
The Jewish settlement in Jerusalem those days was mostly Sephardic, and the few Ashkenazim mixed in with the Sephardic community when they first came. They led a Sephardic lifestyle, buried their dead in the Sephardic cemetery, and prayed in the Sephardic synagogues. In Zichronos L’ven Yerushalayim (Memories of a Native of Jerusalem), Yehoshua Yellin relates that "the Sephardim gave them as a place for prayer the small synagogue called ‘The Middle Synagogue,’ so called because of its status between the Synagogue of R’ Yochanan ben Zakkai and the Turkish Synagogue (emigrants of Istanbul), and when they were lacking ten men for a minyan (quorum), they were obliged to pay a Persian moving man, whose name was Siman Tov (Good Omen), to complete the minyan. In that merit his name was listed in Vilna as one of the recipients of money from the Ashkenazic charity fund in Jerusalem.”
In those days, R’ Mordechai was publicized - as his name, "Pituchei Chosam,” or "Schnitzer,” implies - as a stone sculptor par excellence, whom all praised exceedingly.
Even William Cooper Freim, professor of art history at Princeton University and the first vice president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who visited Eretz Yisrael in 1856, writes in Life in Tents, "I revealed an elderly Jew named Mordechai, who has considerable talent in cutting stone in various shapes.” He adds that he bought several examples of his work.
How this yeshiva boy, a student of the Gaon, learned his art in those long ago years at the end of the seventeenth century is told in a well known story, touching in its simple purity.
Grayevsky recounts it in Zichron LeChovevim Harishonim (Memorial to the Early Devotees of Jerusalem) (vol. 6, 5688): "Concerning his exceptional art skill - he did not learn it from anyone; rather, he was the self-taught king of art, and this is what brought out his talent: Once, he fell asleep in the great study hall in Vilna, where he was studying Torah day and night. In this study hall was a remarkable holy ark, and he dreamt that he duplicated that holy ark along with its goblets, spheres, and flowers, and in the morning his spirit throbbed and his talent was inspired. He 10 bought himself craft tools right away and began working with them with diligence and skill, and soon became the talk of the town in the art circles of Vilna.” [2] |
1805 - 1865 (60 Jahre)
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