The so-called “Lost Shul Mural” in Burlington, Vermont has been moved to its new site in the nearby Ohavi Zedek synagogue.
The delicate move was the culmination of months — years — of planning and preparation work to save a more than century-old synagogue mural that was painted by an immigrant Jewish artist from Lithuania, Ben Zion Black, and is a surviving example of early 20th century synagogue art in the Eastern European tradition.
The complex, brightly color mural, includes the Ten Commandments flanked by lions, and the crown of the Torah. It was painted in 1910 and once adorned the interior of the former Chai Adam synagogue in Burlington.
Black, states the web site devoted to the preservation of the mural,
was brought from Lithuania by the congregation to paint the synagogue in the prevalent style of the wooden shuls of Eastern European. Decades later the synagogues in Burlington merged and the Chai Adam building was sold several times before ultimately being converted into apartment units. Much of the painting was destroyed during the renovation but the mural over the ark was covered by a wall and forgotten until 2012 when the Lost Shul Mural was uncovered for the first time in nearly thirty years.”
The Lost Shul Mural is part of a widespread tradition of Eastern European synagogue wall paintings that was almost entirely obliterated during the Shoah […] by the Nazis. Few of these treasures survived in Europe and most of those were located in Jewish communities that simply no longer existed. Time and the elements have nearly wiped out this type of Jewish folk art, but the Lost Shul Mural is a remnant of the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, transplanted to the US by a Jewish immigrant artist. It may be the only surviving example of its type which adorned an American synagogue sanctuary.
Moving the mural was a complex operation involving physically cutting it out of its original building packaging it, hoisting it onto a truck and moving it a few hundred meters to its new location, where it will be hung.
See article and pictures of the move