The Book of Fire, a large format book (50" x 38"), consisting of 22 lithographs and three woodcuts, is dedicated to the synagogues, extraordinary works of folk architecture, were all destroyed by the Nazis. The craftsmen who built these synagogues attained the pinnacle of the carpenter's art. They built for eternity, for their people, and for their God.

The book begins on May 10, 1933, the day the Berlin University students carried out their "aktion" against those books they deemed un-German in spirit. It is followed by a quote from Heinrich Heine "That was only a prelude, where they burn books, in the end it is men that will burn." The Holocaust, here predicted, was unleashed on November 9, 1938, Kristallnacht. On September 1, 1939, the German army invaded Poland, starting the Second World War. By the time they were driven out, they had killed millions of people and had destroyed all the Polish wooden synagogues. Eyewitness accounts gathered by Rabbi Shimon Huberband during his incarceration in the Warsaw Ghetto, are used in this book to describe what happened to the Jews and their synagogues in the towns of Gabin, Parziczow, Sierpic, Rypin, and Wurka. The book ends with the poem Smoke, by Jacob Glastein, it’s subject the inferno of the crematoriums, the Holocaust, and the fulfillment of the prediction of Hienrich Heine.

The Book of Fire was printed by the artist and by John Mastracchio at the Center for Editions at S.U.N.Y., College at Purchase, Purchase, New York. The binding, designed by the artist and by Susan Bohm, was fabricated by Ms.Bohm of Scarsdale, New York. The artist’s modified version of Weiss typeface (now copyrighted under the name ZIRI) was digitized using an Apple Macintosh computer and output on the Agfa Compugraphic 9400 Image Setter by Rod Richardson assisted by Clifton Meador.