Vienna (Leopoldstadt)

Leopoldstadt, Alt-Wien. A man playing the violin, figure of a young girl alongside, her right arm outstretched, offering a coin. The old world--a certain formality, born of time--the overcoat, the hat, the leaning pose--gestures containing the past. As in a painting of two horses, by Gericault--beginnings of the modern world. In an alleyway or stall, seen from behind, their nobility played against an inevitable dailiness. Bulk and weight...

Nothing like it since the age of Rome: walls of Pompeii, figure of a man offering loaves of bread from a window, his arms reaching down... The people below. Gesture of plenty, all that can be known. Panadero...

Rosh Hashanah

Early Soviet version, perhaps--vision of the future, a time of hope. Roman Vishniac: young people, seated together at long benches, bandanas and scarves, plans for farming, olive groves, fields of wheat. Instead, a rocky landscape, water sparse, someone else's home. Sentries and stockades--another future, but still the hope...

Dark waters of the Moldau, Czechoslovakia. The old names... A sweet new year...

Munkacs (Rosh Hashanah)

Munkacs, a town in the Carpathians, once part of Hungary (hence the name), today in the Western Ukraine. Photographs in Roman Vishniac--the shul of the Mukachevo Rebbe. Described there, room awash with seforim, the books every which way on old wooden shelves. The year was 1938, R. Baruch Rabinowitz, "seated between candles...," his chassidim gathered round...