Hungary -- Update on Jewish Heritage Travel's Hungarian edition

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I've been informed that the Hungarian language edition of "National Geographic Jewish Heritage Travel" will be launched at the Budapest International Book Festival in April. (I hope this is true, as the pub date has been postponed already a couple of times...)

For anyone in Budapest around that time, I am scheduled to give some sort of presentation at the Book Fair at 5 p.m. on April 23....The Hungarian edition is being published by the Hungarian branch of the parent publisher, National Geographic.

Each year the Budapest Book Fair honors one country, and this year it will be Israel, with special guest Amos Oz. He and I are to be among about 100 foreign authors from two dozen countries, as well as some 400 Hungarian authors who will be highlighted as part of readings, signings, talks, etc.

The Book Festival takes place in the Millenaris exhibition space.  It draws about 50.000 to 60.000 visitors annually and features tens of thousands of books.

Poland -- Women's lives and history in Bialystok Jewish Cemetery

 Tombstone of Esther, daughter of R. Alperik,  in the Bialystok cemetery. The epitaph (trans. by Heidi M.Szpek) reads: "Here lies a proper, God-fearing and upright woman, [in] secrecy she performed her many righteous deeds. Our beloved and precious mother, Esther daughter of R. Aperdik. She died Tuesday 11th Tishri 5669. May her soul be bound in the bond of everlasting life. [In Russian] Estera Wolkomirskaya.. She died 24 October 1908." Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Just in time for Purim (which falls this year on Feb. 28), the scholar Heidi M. Szpek has published another fascinating article in the online Jewish Magazine on the Jewish cemetery in Bialystok.  It focuses on the women named Esther whose tombstones are found there, and what we can learn about their lives from the epitaphs and carvings.

She was important, upright, modest, and extraordinary in the performance of good deeds. She was kindhearted, pleasant, precious, and God-fearing. She was a girl, a young woman, not yet a mother, a mother, and an elderly woman. She was a martyr, a Rabbi's wife, the descendant of a prominent rabbinic lineage, the crown of her children's head, and an Eshet Hayil – a "woman of valor". Such are the virtues and character of not one Esther but of the 38 women named Esther as remembered in the extant Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian and Polish inscriptions on the Jewish tombstones in the Bagnowka Jewish Cemetery in Bialystok, Poland.

Of the over 2000 extant inscriptions, nearly half remember women (including girls). Among these women, the name Esther is rivaled only by that of Chayya and Sarah. Each time I translate the inscription of an Esther I contemplate whether Bialystok's Esthers emulate their namesake, the biblical Esther, or the rich legends of Esther preserved in rabbinic literature. ( Read full article in the online Jewish Magazine. )

 Szpek is a Professor of Religious Studies and Philosophy at Central Washington University (Ellensburg, Washington) who is currently writing a book on the Jewish epitaphs from Bialystok (I linked to another of her articles HERE). She has worked with Tomasz Wisniewski (who has posted photos and translations of the epitaphs on Bialystok Jewish tombstones on his web site www.bagnowka.com)

In her Esther article, Szpek illustrates how the imagery and inscriptions tell how women died in childbirth, or how young girls died before marriage. (For more on imagery on Jewish women's tombstones see my (Candle)sticks on Stone project.) But she also notes that women in 19th and early 20th century Bialystok fulfilled roles that went far beyond the home life of wife, mother, sister and daughter:

 Women were also nurses, social workers, administrators for Linas Hatzedek, which gave aid to the poor and sick, and for the Bialystok Relief Society. Women were students and teachers; they served in the administration of the Bialystoker Youth Society, one organized and served as 'mother' of the Bialystoker Orphans. Women were youth athletes, founders of the Maccabi Sport Club, and actresses in the Habimah Players. Women were needleworkers at the "Ort" workshops in Bialystok, active Zionists in Poale Zion and embraced the socialist ideals of the Bundists. They sat on strike committees as early as 1901, and continued to march against unfair labor practices in the 1930s. Women managed their late husbands' estates, served as leaders in the Bund, even dying in the tragic Sabbath Nahamu in July 1905 when the Tsarist Army rose up against the protesting Jewish Bundist workers.

Read full article in the online Jewish Magazine

Purim is Judaism's most joyful holiday, and Esther, of course, is its heroine. The Jewish bride of the ancient Persian King Ahasuerus, she (with her uncle Mordechai) foiled the plans of Ahasuerus' wicked advisor Haman to to annihiate the Jewish people. The story is told in the biblical book of Esther. The  scroll -- the Megillah of Esther -- is often kept in a decorative contained and is read out in the synagogue, in full, on the holiday (giving rise to the Jewish expression "the whole megillah" meaning a long and detailed account, i.e. chapter and verse.)

Another Esther figures in Polish legend -- in the 14th century King Kazimierz the Great was believed to have a Jewish mistress named Esther (or Esterka). There is an Esterka street in Krakow's old Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, and her name is associated with castles and other sites.

Europe -- New Project to Digitize Jewish Cultural Collections

Photos at Jewish Museum, Florence. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Judaica Europea has just been launched -- it's a 3 million euro project aimed at providing internet access to items Jewish cultural interest in the collections of leading cultural institutions across the continent. It forms part of Europeana, a broader EC project to digitize Europe's cultural resources.

Judaica Europeana will work with European cultural institutions to identify content documenting the Jewish contribution to the cities of Europe.

It will digitize 10,500 photos, 1,500 postcards and 7,150 recordings as well as several million pages from books, newspapers, archives and press clippings. The digitized content will be available at Europeana.eu.

The target audiences are university teachers and students, schools, cultural heritage professionals, cultural tourists and the general public: "anyone interested in the history of European cities or Jewish culture."

The ambitious two-year project was announced this past week, with the launch of its web site. Partly funded by a 1.5 million euro  grant from the European Commission, it will initially involve ten institutions across Europe under the leadership of  the London-based European Association for Jewish Culture and the Judaica Collection of the Goethe University Library in Frankfurt.

Other partners include:
Alliance Israélite Universelle, Paris
Amitié, Centre for Research and Innovation, Bologna
British Library, London
Hungarian Jewish Archives, Budapest
Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw
The Jewish Museum of Greece, Athens
The Jewish Museum London
Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, Rome

Judaica Europeana will begin by digitizing millions of pages and thousands of other items selected from the collections of its partner libraries, archives and museums. The next stage will be to aggregate other digital collections on Jews in European cities — wherever they may be.

"Jewish culture has been predominantly text-based; it will be a particular challenge for us to bring in as much audio-visual material as possible," said Lena Stanley-Clamp, the project’s manager and director of the European Association for Jewish Culture.

My Web Site is Sort of Down

Just to let you know that my web site -- www.ruthellengruber.com -- is experiencing some difficulties, and if you try to access it you may not succeed... I am trying to resolve the problem.

Italy -- Kosher dining in Rome

A kosher cafe in Rome. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Forward newspaper runs a piece by food columnist Leah Koenig on kosher dining in Rome, particularly in the old Ghetto area. In the past few years, the Ghetto has undergone considerable development. The main street, via Portico D'Ottavia, is a pedestrian area, the Jewish grade school has moved into the neighborhood, and many new kosher eateries have opened. (Also Judaica stores).

Koenig mentions several places that I myself have recently sampled. The famous kosher pastry shop is a popular attraction -- it produces the best pastries in town, including a unique type of biscotto that combines spices and nuts.

Non-Jewish friends of mine recently introduced me to the newish restaurant Ba' Ghetto, a meat restaurant whose menu includes Sephardic, Ashkenazic and typically Roman Jewish dishes. When we dined there a few weeks ago, we started with appetizers that included a Roman-style torte of endive and anchovies, plus a Middle East platter of Humus and baba ghanoosh, plus a type of Yemenite puff bread. Two of us went on to cous-cous, while the third chose goulash. (The waiter also brought us a sample of excellent grilled steak.) Wine? We chose a kosher Italian red - but I can't remember which....

We reminisced with the waiter about the time, years ago, when there were no kosher restaurants in the Ghetto -- and only one in all of Rome, a Middle Eastern place called Da Lisa that was near the main train station. I don't think it exists anymore. But the family that runs Ba' Ghetto also has a place near piazza Bologna, outside the city center.

Earlier this month, when I was in the Ghetto to cover the pope's visit to the main synagogue, I grabbed a piece of pizza Romana (a sort of focaccia) stuffed with a little turkey mortadella at the Kosher Bistrot mentioned in Koenig's column. It was OK, but I was astounded at the price -- 5 euro, nearly twice what I expected to pay. The woman at the cash desk was unapologetic. "What do you expect," she told me. "It's all kosher, all controlled."

After the papal visit, I went with a friend to grab a slice at a kosher pizzeria a few doors down from the Bistrot -- it wax excellent pizza and only cost 1.5 euro.

Budapest -- Bob Cohen leads an audio culinary tour

 Me in Froelich's pastry shop in December.

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I've pointed out a lot of Bob Cohen's wonderful blog posts about food, travel and music and link to his blog, Dumneazu.

But now you can hear him -- Tablet Magazine's audio "Vox Tablet" runs a wonderful 10-minute visit with Bob to two of Budapest's most famous Jewish (or Jewish-style) eateries -- the tiny little Kadar lunchroom on Klauzal ter, and Froelich's kosher pastry shop on Dob utca.

Both are favorites with locals (and a five-minute walk from my apartment).

I vividly remember my first visit to Kadar, back in about 1990 or 1991. I was taken there by the  Peter Wirth, an architect who has carried out restoration work on several synagogues in Hungary and also produced a photographic book on Jewish cemeteries in northeast Hungary. (He won the Europa Nostra award for his restorations of the synagogues in Apostag, in the 1980s, and in Mad, in 2004.)

With Peter that first time, I remember I ordered the solet -- cholent -- with goose leg, a specialty. Kadar is not kosher and even serves sholet with pork. But for many local Jews it is a ritual to go there to eat solet on Saturday. One Saturday lunchtime my brother Sam and I shared a table with a man and his son eating solet -- and we then ran into him later at the Rabbinical Seminary synagogue, where he was the gabbai...

Poland -- new visual resources

Tomek Wisniewski has set up a YouTube channel where he has been posting both current and  pre-WW2 images of Jewish sites, both photographic and film.  (He also shows some non-Jewish sites.)

Greece -- Arrests in Hania Crete Synaogogue Arson attacks

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The BBC reports that arrests have been made in the two arson attacks this month that serious damaged the historic Etz Hayyim synagogue in Hania, Crete. In custody are a Greek man and two British men -- waiters in local restaurants -- and two Americans are sought.

The BBC's Malcolm Brabant in Athens said [that], according to the police, the men are aged 23 and 33 and are nightclub waiters in the seaside town. Police said they were arrested after a 24-year-old Greek man confessed, our correspondent added. The British men have been offered assistance by consul staff on the island.

Read full story HERE

Meanwhile, the synagogue blog continues to carry updates, including some reflective pieces by Tony Lerman.

Eastern Europe -- Initiative to protect mass grave sites

Marker at the site of mass execution/mass grave in Kremenets, Ukraine. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

A international initiative to mark, document and protect sites of Holocaust mass execution and burial is under way, and at a conference in Berlin this week groups taking part urged the German government to become involved.

The American Jewish Committee news release announcing this was not very clear about just what this was about, but one of the participants said that specifically, there is an initiative to persuade the German government through its war graves commission to pay for in general memorializing mass graves and in particular sealing the mass graves opened during research carried out by the French priest Patrick Desbois. Agence France Presse, in its article about the initiative, said Desbois's group Yahad-In Unum ("together" in Hebrew and Latin) already receives about 500,000 euros ($700,000) in funding each year from the German government.

Philip Carmel, the director of Lo-Tishkach, an organization tasked with documentive Jewish cemeteries and mass grave, took part in the conference. He told me that

“There is no better way to combat Holocaust denial and to learn the tragic lessons of the past than to physically mark the last reminders in all these thousands of towns and villages across eastern Europe that they all had living and vibrant Jewish communities and that they didn’t just disappear without reason. This in some way would mark an appropriate act of closure of our direct duty to the victims of the Holocaust.”

Here's the American Jewish Committee press release:

January 20, 2010 – Berlin – An international initiative spearheaded by AJC called today on the German government to join efforts to seal and memorialize mass graves in eastern Europe. The appeal came at a news conference hosted by AJC’s Lawrence and Lee Ramer Institute on German-Jewish Relations in Berlin.

“It is time to seal the graves.  It is time to commemorate the victims. It is time to rescue wherever possible the histories and memories of those whose lives were brutally extinguished,” said Deidre Berger, Director of AJC’s Berlin Office. She added that time is running out to solve the issue before the last witnesses and survivors die. The news conference took place one week before the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

A coalition of Jewish and non-Jewish NGO leaders outlined the incomplete level of information on Jewish mass gravesites, pointing to the lack of protection for thousands of sites in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. The difficulties of the local Jewish communities in addressing the issue were described by Rabbi Pinhas Goldschmidt, Chief Rabbi of Moscow, and Rabbi Yaacov Bleich, Chief Rabbi of Ukraine.

Rabbi Andrew Baker, AJC’s Director of International Jewish Affairs, urged the creation of a German government-led task force to survey the problem and create a comprehensive approach to seal, protect and memorialize the gravesites.

Participants at the news conference stressed the important work of Father Patrick Desbois, President of the Paris-based Yahad in Unum, in documenting the sites and bringing the issue into public focus in recent years. Father Desbois has collected testimony and documented more than 400 locations in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine where German death squads shot and killed primarily Jewish victims. Romas and Soviet communists also were victims.

Father Desbois said that a war does not end until all the dead are buried, calling it an imperative to bury the Jewish Holocaust victims in Europe. He added that it is difficult for Europeans to have credibility solving international conflicts if it can not find means to bury its own dead.

Stephan Kramer, Secretary General of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, underlined the importance of cross-national reconciliation and education in working on solutions for memorializing the mass gravesites.  In talks with Ukrainian government representatives, Kramer said they indicated a willingness to create the necessary legal framework to deal with the issue of mass graves.

The President of the German War Graves Commission, Reinhard Fuehrer, stressed the moral responsibility of Germany to address the issue of the neglected grave sites, indicating the commission will take a role if it is given funds and a mandate by the German government.

Phil Carmel, Executive Director of the Brussels-based Lo Tishkach, responsible for mapping Jewish cemeteries and grave sites in Europe, said it is urgent to address the issue before the remaining markers and clues are lost completely. The best protection against Holocaust denial, he said, is visible graves and gravesites.

At the news conference, support for the initiative also was voiced by Christian Kennedy, U.S. Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues; Jiri Cistecky, of the European Shoah Legacy Foundation; Kathrin Meyer, Executive Secretary of the International Holocaust Task Force on Education, Remembrance and Responsibility; and Paul Shapiro, Director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Poland -- Wroclaw synagogue: restoration of interior complete

 Photo from Gazeta Wroclawska newspaper. Click HERE

Gazeta Wroclawska newspaper reports that the restoration of the interior of the historic White Stork Synagogue in Wroclaw has been completed. The article is in Polish (it translates with Google translate) but also runs pictures you can see by clicking HERE.

The synagogue is to be rededicated in May. The article states that interior furnishings will be installed in April.

I posted previous information on the restoration in December -- click HERE.

Second attack on Hania synagogue!

 

Pictures courtesy of the Etz Hayyim blog.

Nikos Stavroulakis writes that there has been a second arson attack at the historic Etz Hayyim  synagogue in Hania, Crete -- just ten days after vandals broke in and set the interior alight on Jan. 5. The second attack  took place just hours after Friday night services and destroyed the archives of the synagogue, gutted the offices and damaged the sanctuary.  See more pictures at the synagogue web site/blog HERE.

On the night of Friday, January 15, after more than a week of work on the sanctuary – newly scraped, primed and re-painted; the wood-work oiled with lavender and the marble floor polished – we met for Erev Shabbat prayers and Kiddush. Later we locked the synagogue and returned to our homes feeling that we had set our steps forward. Saturday morning at 3:30 AM however the Synagogue’s director was wakened by the alarm that had been set off in the Synagogue and rushed there accompanied by two helpers to find the entire main office ablaze. They began putting out the fire with the garden hose as the firemen had not yet succeeded in getting their hoses connected. When the mains were finally connected the firemen set to work – by 4:45 the fire was only smoldering and all that remained of the upper and lower office was completely gutted. Also about a third of the wooden ceiling of the Synagogue itself was burnt, the benches covered in soot and broken wood, the floor a mess – but the EHAL was not touched! Everything in the main office – e.g. two computers, complete Talmud, Midraschim, 2 sets of Rashi lexicons (Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew) plus many reference books and the entire archive of the Synagogue have all been destroyed.

By noon the Siphrei Torah along with all of the silver ornaments (rimonim, tassim, yads etc.) and a precious early 17th century illuminated Qur’an were removed to a secure location. It was a sad moment to see them being taken away from the Kal as it was a joyous moment when they had been installed in 1999. But we are determined that they will come back!

My latest Ruthless Cosmopolitan column -- on the arson attack at the Hania synagogue

In my latest Ruthless Cosmopolitan column, I discuss the implications of last week's arson attack on the synagogue in Hania, Crete.

RUTHLESS COSMOPOLITAN
Attack on Crete synagogue carries special meaning

By Ruth Ellen Gruber · January 13, 2010

ROME (JTA) -- The vandals who torched the historic Etz Hayyim synagogue in Hania, an ancient port on the Greek island of Crete, left no doubt about their motives.

After breaking into the building on the night of Jan. 5 and setting its interior alight, they threw a bar of soap against its outer wall.

A bar of soap? That's because, explains the synagogue's director, Nikos Stavroulakis, "I'll make you into a bar of soap" is a common anti-Semitic taunt in Greece. Since the Holocaust, there has been a persistent belief that the Nazis made soap from Jewish corpses.

Even though scholars have disproved the idea, bars of soap have been buried reverently in some European Jewish cemeteries under solemn memorials.

"In this place lie the remains of Jewish martyrs exterminated by German fascists and turned into soap," reads the inscription on an obelisk in Piatra Neamt, Romania.

The power of this belief was examined in "The Soap Myth," a play by Jeff Cohen that ran last summer in New York. Based on a true story, the play focused on the efforts of an elderly Holocaust survivor "on a one-man mission to get the 'soap myth' reclassified as fact," Marissa Brostoff wrote in Tablet magazine.

But at the heart of the story was something much more.

What was at stake, Brostoff wrote, was "the way we choose to see the past, a struggle between a dispassionate approach relying on facts and figures and another, much more subjective one that holds survivors' testimonies to be unarguably true and ultimately sacred."

Anti-Semitic violence is anything but dispassionate.

The bar of soap hurled against the desecrated synagogue in Hania was a diabolically mixed metaphor: Soap usually symbolizes purity and godliness, but in this twisted context it spelled hatred and death.

The attack on the Hania synagogue was not just an assault on a building. It was an assault on the ideals that had transformed the structure from a wrecked relic of Holocaust destruction to a new symbol of community and compassion.

This transformation was accomplished largely through the efforts of Stavroulakis, a remarkable man who has devoted much of the past two decades to restoring a Jewish presence to a city made "Judenrein" by the Nazis.

I met Stavroulakis when I visited Hania in 1996. An artist, author and scholar who had co-founded and directed the Jewish Museum in Athens, Stavroulakis had returned to live in his family's rambling house in Hania after many years away.

The synagogue, which dates back to the 15th century, was in ruin. But over the next three years Stavroulakis made it his mission to raise funds and, with the help of the World Monuments Fund and other donors, oversee the building's rebirth. His aim was to make it a living spiritual presence, not simply a restored reminder of the past.

The synagogue now functions as a museum, and it hosts exhibitions and cultural events.

It’s also an active house of worship. A small Havurah community whose members include Christians and some Muslims -- as well as Jews of all persuasions -- regularly assembles there to celebrate Shabbat and Jewish holidays.

Stavroulakis himself leads daily prayers each morning, whether a minyan is present or not.

Prayers were held as usual at 9 a.m. Jan. 6, the morning after the arson attack. The fire had gutted a stairway, wreaked havoc on the synagogue library, and covered walls and precious furnishings with a thick layer of soot.

"Fortunately," Stavroulakis said, "the fabric of the synagogue was and is intact."

He was referring to the physical structure of the building, but I think he also meant that the symbolic identity of the synagogue also had survived -- and would be maintained.

"We must be angry over what has happened to our synagogue," he told the small group of worshipers gathered for prayers amid the soot. "If we were not, it would be an indication that we were either indifferent or morally numb."

But, Stavroulakis asked, just where should the anger be directed? Local indifference and the ignorance that promotes racism had to be addressed.

"We have tried at Etz Hayyim to be a small presence in the midst of what is at times almost aggressive ignorance," he wrote on the synagogue blog. "We have done this to such a degree that our doors are open from early in the morning until late in the day so that the synagogue assumes its role as a place of prayer, recollection and reconciliation."

There is, Stavroulakis wrote, little if any sign of overt security.

"This character of the synagogue must not change and the doors must remain open," he wrote. If not, that means "we have given in to the ignorance that has perpetrated this desecration."

A week after the attack, the Etz Hayyim blog posted pictures showing that thanks in large part to volunteers, the walls of the sanctuary already had been painted and other clean-up work was well under way.

"The impact of this [attack] will be wider than simply an act of terrorism against Jews," Stavroulakis told me. "Already it is being seen in a much wider social context that has to do with civic responsibility and care."

 Read story at JTA web site

Poland -- Fascinating article on epitaphs in Bialystok Jewish Cemetery

Tomasz Wiesniewski opens the gate to the Bagnowka Jewish cemetery in Bialystok, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

by Ruth Ellen Gruber

The online "Jewish Magazine" publishes a fascinating article by the scholar Heidi M. Szpek about the epitaphs in the Bagnowka Jewish Cemetery in Bialystok, Poland.

Called "In the Bloodshed of Their Days," it explores how tombstone epitaphs provide a vivid picture of the people buried there, and thus shed light on the life of the community -- both the good times and the bad.

As I translated each of this cemetery's inscriptions, I read of the character and qualities of the Bialystoker Jews, of "perfect and upright men" and "modest and God-fearing women". On their tombstones are also words of praise for great rabbis, scholars, and charitable women. Old age is recorded as a triumph, especially in the case of an Abraham son of Israel who lived to be 102 years old. What history Abraham must have seen and experienced from 1830 to 1932, the century and more of his life! (Image 2) Occasionally, the lesser qualities of the deceased are remembered, as one father wrote of his daughter: "Her mouth ceased from (its) evil tongue" – she gossiped! 

These inscriptions also hold details that were sadly normal to life in a world a century ago in Bialystok, Poland. Inscriptions remember women who died in childbirth, especially in the cold winter months, women who died before they could marry, and a man who barely experienced the joy of fatherhood before his untimely death. And then there are the tombstones of children. Perhaps the most heart wrenching inscription is that of three sons – Chaim Lejb, Shalom Shechna and Israel Abraham, aged eight, six and four, who died in a fire in March of 1908! How did their father, Asher, and their mother endure this loss? Such deaths, though sad, are not unique to Bialystok; they were part of life without the comforts of the contemporary world.

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Szpek, a Professor of Religious Studies and Philosophy at Central Washington University (Ellensburg, Washington), is currently writing a book on the Jewish epitaphs from Bialystok. She spent three years translating all the epitaphs in the Bagnowka cemetery, the only Jewish cemetery to remain in Bialystok. Over the years she has worked with Tomasz Wisniewski, who has dedicated the past quarter century to documenting Jewish heritage in eastern Poland and who has been my own guide to Bialystok.

In Bialystok, Poland's Jewish cemetery on Wschodnia Street, the black Memorial Pillar that stands at its center is a blatant visual reminder of hatred vented in the past. The nearly 50 tombstone inscriptions that speak of "the bloodshed of the days" also bear subtle witness to Jewish persecution in the years 1905 onward. But of what value is this knowledge? The answer no doubt depends on the individual. For some people these tombstones might bring awareness that this entire cemetery - not just the tall, black Memorial Pillar – is a memorial to the "bloodshed of the days" in Bialystok's past. For others the knowledge imparted by these inscriptions fosters remembrance of the very personal world of Bialystok Jewry, a world at times gentle and loving, a world at times sad and violent. But for me, in particular, these horrific phrases, combined with a woman's name, a father's name, a child's name, with words of love mixed with words of grief, and a date, remind me of specific incidents in Bialystok's past. Together all these words also remind me that I am not simply translating words cut into stone. Rather as I translate I feel – if only for a moment – a touch of the anguish experienced by those of Bialystok's now 'lost' Jewish community, those perceived as 'the other' by past generations of Russians, Poles and Germans. In this brief moment of my anguish, an indissoluble desire is implanted in my mind and engraved on the tablets of my heart - that past hatred may not bequeath to us a future legacy of hatred and anguish. 

Read full article

The memorial to the 1905 pogrom, Bialystok cemetery. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Ukraine -- Report on Cemetery Clean up and exhibit at Sniatyn

More on Ukraine -- Check Sam Gruber's blog for a long post and photographs about an "archeology of memory" project this past  summer organized by the Center for Urban History in L'viv to clean up the Jewish cemetery in Sniatyn, rescue tombstones that were used to pave a courtyard, and stage an exhibition.

The Center's web site reports:

The goal of the project was to return the attention of the inhabitants of Sniatyn to the multi-national and multi-religious heritage of their city with the help of the two week program of a volunteer camp made up of youth from Ukraine, Poland and Germany. The program included fixing up and recording the architectural cemetery ensembles of the city. Concurrently the camp become an opportunity for participants of the volunteer group to become acquainted with the heritage, as well as contemporary life of Sniatyn. The work of the volunteers focused on two cemeteries in Sniatyn - Jewish and Christian, which are found not far from one another. The Christian cemetery is still used as a place of ritual events. The Jewish cemetery is in a state of neglect and ruin, and gravestones are being destroyed by spreading tree roots. Both cemeteries are monuments to the culture and history of the city, witnesses of the life and death of Sniatyn’s past inhabitants.

 Nineteen young people took part in in the two week project at the end of July and beginning fo August.

The project was realized by the Centre for Urban History within the framework of the program "Memoria", which was initiated by the foundation "Memory, responsibility and future" and was led together with the Stefan Batory Foundation. The goal of the program is to inspire young people to look for traces of shared culture and history in the border territory. The geographical focus of the program is Central and Eastern Europe, where for centuries people from different cultures, religions and languages co-existed. The Second World War and the Holocaust, deportations and changing borders after 1945 almost completely destroyed the diversity of these territories.  That is why, within the framework of the "Memoria" program, events are organized with the participation of young volunteers from Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Russia, Belorus and Ukraine, which are aimed at the preservation of historical monuments, acquaintance with different aspects of border area history and culture and formation of contacts with the inhabitants of these populated points, where the camps take place. 

Ukraine -- New Report on Jewish Cemeteries in Kiev Region

Lo Tishkach, the international organization involved in documenting and preserving Jewish cemeteries, has just published a detailed report on the cemeteries and World War II Holocaust mass grave sites in the Kiev (Kyiv) region of Ukraine, which can be downloaded as a file.

This report on the Jewish burial grounds of Kyiv Region, or Oblast, is one of the results of a number of education and research projects undertaken by the Lo Tishkach Foundation in the spring and summer of 2009. It catalogues 52 Jewish cemeteries and 29 Holocaust-era mass graves. The publication, which can be downloaded HERE, also contains details of two mass graves dating from 1919, when many Ukrainian Jews were murdered in the wave of pogroms committed in the aftermath of the Russian revolution.

Thanks to the efforts of local partners and with the support of the Genesis Philanthropy Group, this material is now available for Kyiv Oblast, the area around Ukraine’s capital and its largest city. During the spring and summer months of 2009, 83 burial grounds in the Kyiv Region were located, visited, surveyed and photographed, creating a unique record of the region’s Jewish heritage.

The report gives the history of the cemetery and of the local Jewish community (in many cases destroyed in the Holocaust), as well as details of access, location and demarcation of the cemetery; graves, gravestones, memorial markers and structures; condition and threats.

Lo Tishkach surveys in the Kiev Oblast of Ukraine have shown that the following works are urgently required on the cemeteries listed below. 

Baryshivka Jewish Cemetery – Identification marker, fencing

Bohuslav Jewish Cemetery – Completion of fencing, vegetation clearance

Borodianka Jewish Cemetery – Fencing, reparation of broken monuments, vegetation clearance

Boryspil Jewish Cemetery – Identification marker

Brovary Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker

Byshiv Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker, restoration of remaining matzevot

Dymer Jewish Cemetery – Vegetation clearance, fencing, restoration of metal grave markers

Hermanivka Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, memorial plaque

Hnativka Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Hornostaypil Old Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Hornostaypil New Jewish Cemetery – Identification marker

Hostomel Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Hrebinky Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker

Kaharlyk Jewish Cemetery – Vegetation clearance, fencing

Kivshovata Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Kodra Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Kozyn Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Kyiv (Zvirynetske) Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker

Makariv Jewish Cemetery – Identification marker

Medvyn Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, vegetation clearance, identification marker

Obukhiv Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker

Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi Jewish Cemetery – Fencing

Piatyhory Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker, restoration of gravestones

Poliske Jewish Cemetery – Completion and restoration of fence, vegetation clearance

Rokytne Jewish Cemetery – Completion of cemetery wall

Rozhiv Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Rzhyschiv Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Skvyra Old Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker

Tetiiv Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Trypillia Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker

Vasylkiv Old Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker

Volodarka Old Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker

Volodarka New Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker

Voronkiv Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Yahotyn Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker, gravestone restoration

Yasnohorodka Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Greece -- Full Report on the Destructive Arson Fire at the Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Hania

 

 Destroyed library of synagogue. All Photos courtesty Etz Hayyim web site

Sam Gruber posts pictures and a full description of the destructive arson attack Tuesday night on the beautiful Etz Hayyim synagogue in Hania, Crete.

The fire severely damaged the recently restored ezrat nashim (former women's section) of the historic synagogue, and entirely destroyed the library and computer stations. Additional damage from soot and water to the rest of the structure and furnishing can be repaired, but at a considerable cost.

Sam posts the description presented on the synagogue's web site by our old friend Nikos Stavrolakis, the director of the synagogue complex, who personally raised money for and oversaw the restoration of the building in the late 1990s.  I vividly remember visiting the synagogue with Nikos in 1996, when it was still pretty much a ruin, and listening to his hopes and plans for it.

In his description, Nikos reflected about the significance of the synagogue and the attempt to destroy it --noting that the perpetrators had thrown and bar of soap against the burning building -- a reference to a "common anti-semitic quip in Greek [that] runs…’I'll make you into a bar of soap!’" and that local people apparently did not react.

What was quite notable was the lack of ‘locals’ despite the quite incredible noise of the synagogue alarm system and sirens from the two fire engines screeching through the neighborhood. What was even more disturbing and an obvious sign of a lack of civic responsibility was the apparent lack of sensitivity to the fact that had the synagogue been engulfed in flames at least half of the old city of Hania would have gone up in flames as the narrow streets and inaccessible quarters would have prevented access by the fire brigades.

We must be angry over what has happened to our synagogue. If we were not it would be an indication that we were either indifferent or morally numb. But exactly against what is our anger directed? The urban context in which Etz Hayyim figures at this moment must be considered carefully and any indifference on the part of the citizens to the material fabric of this city and its collective ‘psyche’ is tantamount to abetting to a degree the desecration of monuments, of homes and sites of common meeting.

What we must be angry about is the ignorance that determines racism, discrimination or badly examined lives. We have tried at Etz Hayyim to be a small presence in the midst of what is at times almost aggressive ignorance. We have done this to such a degree that our doors are open from early in the morning until late in the day so that the Synagogue assumes its role as a place of prayer, recollection and reconciliation. In many ways we have been successful through this quiet presence – perhaps our ‘silent presence’ wears not too well on some and is even a source of annoyance to others.

Often I have pointed out that we are perhaps the only synagogue of significance in Greece, possibly Europe, where there is little if any overt sign of protective security. Hand-bags are not checked, ID cards and passports are not examined, and one is not obliged to sign in. This character of the Synagogue must not change and the doors must remain open – or we have given in to the ignorance that has perpetrated this desecration. Our awareness of what ignorance can do to us will certainly determine how certain repairs are to be made – but at the same time we must be cautious about allowing ignorance to affect or determine the nature of our presence. We will have a heavy burden of funding the necessary renovations and we hope that you as either old friends or new ones will assist us. Any donations will be deeply appreciated and, of course, welcome.

The web site has a slide show of images showing the extent of the damage, which included the destruction of the valuable library and music collection.

At approximately 12:20-1:00 AM on the night of the 5^th January [,,,] one or two or even more individuals made their way into the south garden of the synagogue by climbing over the iron gate. Subsequent to this they set about making an improvised incendiary device by tearing open a large Ottoman cushion in the mikveh and then with the contents stuffed a canister that was filled with some flammable liquid which was then set afire under the wooden stair of the ezrat nashim. 

(The upper floor of the women’s section (ezrat nashim) serves as the office of the director as well as a library and reading room and contains valuable books in various languages on Ottoman, Byzantine and Jewish art and architecture as well as resource books on European and Near Eastern History from pre-historic times as well as a large section on Cretan history. A computer and CD player with over 150 CDs of Sephardic liturgical and secular music were also kept in the office.) Within probably minutes the assailants had taken off and the fire produced smoke that poured into the synagogue proper and then out into the street through the oculus in the facade of the synagogue.

Yannis Pietra, an Albanian emigrant living not far from the Synagogue, smelled the smoke and looking into the street saw it belching out of the facade and called the police, fire-station and then set off to find the director who arrived not long after along with Besnik Seitas the handyman of the Synagogue. At roughly the same time a young Moroccan, Nasr Alassoud, also traced the smoke that was coming down the street to the harbor. He proved to be a much needed hand by the director. By 1:45 AM the fire brigade had extinguished the fire and the police had begun their work. But the residual damage was only going to be apparent the next day.

Make donatation to efforts to repair the synagogue and rebuild the library to:

ALPHA BANK (Hania, Crete)
Account name: Friends of Etz Hayyim
Account # 776-002101-087154
IBAN:  GR74 0140 6600 7760 0210 1087 154
Nicholas Hannan-Stavroulakis / Director Etz Hayyim Synagogue/ Hania

Poland -- Moment Magazine publishes my article on Krakow

Me in the Ariel cafe, Krakow, 2006.

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Moment Magazine has published an article by me looking back over 20 years of watching the evolution (and shaping) of Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter of Krakow.

Scenes from a Krakow cafe

By Ruth Ellen Gruber, Jan/Feb 2010
 

It's a sunny morning in early July, and I'm having breakfast at an outdoor cafe table in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter of Krakow. I have been sitting at cafes in and around Szeroka Street, the main square of Kazimierz, for nearly 20 years, watching the paradoxical Jewish components of post-communist Poland unfold, and Kazimierz itself evolve from a deserted district of decrepit buildings—some with grooves on their doorposts from missing mezuzahs—into one of Europe's premier Jewish tourist attractions, a fashionable boom town of Jewish-style cafes, trendy pubs, kitschy souvenirs and nostalgic shtetl chic.

As Poland's historic royal capital, Krakow is one of central Europe's most beautiful cities and was one of the few major Polish metropolises to escape wholesale destruction in World War II. Once Kazimierz was a center of Jewish life and learning, but after the Holocaust only its architectural skeleton remained: Krakow's 64,000 Jews (among three million of pre-war Poland's 3.5 million Jews) perished, but seven synagogues and a score of former prayer houses, stores, homes and cemeteries survived. After the war, under the communists, Kazimierz slid into ruin, and only in the early 1990s did the neighborhood begin to take on new life. Even before Steven Spielberg came here to shoot his 1993 film Schindler's List, set in the wartime Krakow Ghetto and the city's concentration camp, Plaszow, Kazimierz was beginning to rediscover its Jewish soul.

Although Krakow is now home to just a few hundred Jews at most (Poland itself has maybe 5,000 to 15,000 out of a population of 40 million), the streets beyond my cafe are crowded with people here for the annual nine-day extravaganza known as the Festival of Jewish Culture. There are Jews from within Poland and from outside: Rabbis, tourists, earnest seekers of family history, writers, filmmakers, bureaucrats, philanthropists, academics, musicians and artists wander the square and surrounding cobbled streets. The vast majority of visitors, however, are non-Jewish Poles who have come to celebrate both the Polish Jewish life that once was and the contemporary Jewish culture that is still very much alive around the world. Some of them have helped bring about the renaissance of Kazimierz and a revival of public interest in Jewish culture throughout the country. Newcomers and regulars, Jews and non-Jews, come together at the cafes that line Szeroka and other streets and squares, turning Kazimierz into a moveable feast of drink, food and conversation that migrates from cafe table to cafe table.

Read Full Story HERE

Poland -- A New Warning on Jewish Heritage

Abandoned synagogue, Nowy Korczyn, Poland, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The New Year brings a new warning that Polands Jewish hertitage sites are in danger. Scarcely new news, but important to stress.

Monika Krawczyk, CEO of FODZ, the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland,  makes the point in the Jerusalem Post.

"There are about 1,200 Jewish cemeteries and nearly 200 synagogues in Poland that survived the war," said Monika Krawczyk, president of the Warsaw-based Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland, which oversees the sites on behalf of the Jewish community. "But now, many are in a terrible state of disrepair and are literally falling apart," she told The Jerusalem Post in an interview during a visit to Jerusalem, adding that, "if we don't act now to save these sites, in another 10 or 20 years there will be nothing left to see."

Read Full Story HERE

Bob Cohen on East European Diaspora Haunts in New York

I have a link to Bob Cohen's Dumneazu blog on the sidebar of this blog, but his current post, "From Katz's Deli to Williamsburg, Let My People Go!" on visiting (and eating in) New York haunts of East European Jewish immigrants is well worth reading... the photos and his descriptions go back and forth between the Old Country and the New World, pointing out wonderful visual and gustitorial links and influences.

Italy -- Historic Synagogue in Sabbioneta Closed

                  

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The entry stairway to the early 19th century  synagogue in the historic northern Italian town of Sabbioneta has been declared unsafe and the building, now used as a museum, closed to visitors.

Sabbioneta, on the Po River near Mantova, was laid out as a walled "ideal city" in the second half of the 16th century by Prince Vespasiano Gonzaga Colonna. It is on UNESCO's list of world heritage sites, paired with Mantova as two aspects of Renaissance town planning.

Mantua shows the renewal and extension of an existing city, while 30 km away, Sabbioneta represents the implementation of the period’s theories about planning the ideal city. Typically, Mantua’s layout is irregular with regular parts showing different stages of its growth since the Roman period and includes many medieval edifices among them an 11th century rotunda and a Baroque theatre. Sabbioneta, created in the second half of the 16th century under the rule of one person, Vespasiano Gonzaga Colonna, can be described as a single-period city and has a right angle grid layout. Both cities offer exceptional testimonies to the urban, architectural and artistic realizations of the Renaissance, linked through the visions and actions of the ruling Gonzaga family.



Sabbioneta represents the construction of an entirely new town according to the modern, functional vision of the Renaissance. The defensive walls, grid pattern of streets, role of public spaces and monuments all make Sabbioneta one of the best examples of ideal cities built in Europe, with an influence over urbanism and architecture in and outside the continent. The properties represent two significant stages of territorial planning and urban interventions undertaken by the Gonzagas in their domains.

Jews lived in Sabbioneta from the town's early days -- even before it was laid out in its present form. There was a ghetto here, and the town developed into an important center of Hebrew printing.   The Sabbioneta synagogue dates from 1824 -- its present form is an enlargement and rebuilding of an earlier structure by a noted Lombard architect named Carlo Visioli.

The synagogue lay in sorry disrepair for decades until it was restored by local authorities, turned into a museum and inserted into local tourism itineraries. It has a gilded ark behind a low, elaborate grille and  flanked by Corinthian columns. The ceiling is decorated by ornate stucco work.

Austria -- Government to Help Fund Jewish Cemetery Restoration

 Historic Jewish cemetery in Eisenstadt, Austria. Photo: Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Austrian government is mandating 20 million euro over the next 20 years toward the care and restoration of abandoned and neglected Jewish cemeteries in Austria. An agreement reached Monday night broke what Austrian Jewish leader Ariel Muzicant said had been a stalemate lasting nine years, following an agreement made in 2001 under which Austria had committed to care for Jewish cemeteries as part of a compensation deal for Nazi crimes.

Vienna's Jewish community called the government's 20 million euros (29 million dollars) a "late Hanukkah gift." "Nearly nine years after the signing of the Washington Agreement, the last issue that was still open in terms of international law is settled," the community said in a statement. Under the new funding agreement reached late on Monday, Jewish communities are to raise an additional 20 million euros, while the city of Vienna and the province of Lower Austria also pledged contributions.

          Read full DPA story

          Read Associated Press story

There are about 70 Jewish cemeteries in Austria, about 20 of which are said to be in particularly bad condition. The Austrian Jewish Community web site has an extensive page listing all the cemeteries and giving their history, size, location, condition and notes on any current or recent restoration efforts.

Me -- Interviewed about the Virtually Jewish on a Canadian Radio

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

When I was in Budapest this month, I was interviewed by phone about the Virtually Jewish phenomenon by Radio613, an independent Canadian Jewish radio program. Click RIGHT HERE to listen -- but be forewarned, it runs about an hour!

The interview highlights Jewish cultural developments and other contemporary European issues that are critically examined in her book Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture and her recent essay featured in the Jewish Quarterly Review, “Beyond Virtually Jewish: New Authenticitiy and Real Imaginary Spaces in Europe”.  Ruth Ellen Gruber shares insights on the state of Klezmer in Europe with music this week from Itzhak Perlman and the Klezmatics (“Dybbuk Shers”), Brave Old World (“Berlin 1990″) and Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird (“Broken Tongue”). Tune in!

RUTHLESS COSMOPOLITAN -- Riffing on architecture bans (and destruction), from Vilnius

My latest Ruthless Cosmopolitan column is a riff about how the recent vote to ban new mosque minarets in Switzerland struck a chord -- making me recall historic bans and regulations on synagogue architecture -- and the ultimate destruction of them.

I wrote it after I got back from the seminar in Vilnius, which came a week after the Swiss vote and focused on the lasting impact of the destruction of Lithuanian Jews -- and their built heritage.

I realize that the Swiss voters who overwhelmingly approved the minaret ban were responding to scare tactics that raised the specter of an extremist Islamic takeover in their country.
Yet in a certain way, the Swiss vote Nov. 29 and the Lithuanian seminar were connected.

To me, the ban on minarets recalled centuries of restrictions on the size or prominence of synagogues. The Swiss ban is just the latest example of how governmental authorities target religious architecture as a means of limiting religious or cultural expression.

 In the story I quote Sam.

"Beginning in the fourth century and continuing through the Middle Ages, and again in the 20th century, the 'legal' restriction and destruction of synagogues quickly led to the same policies applied against individuals, and then whole communities. 

"Restricting specific types of religious or cultural expression -- especially when such restrictions are deliberate exceptions to existing building, zoning, health and safety codes -- is discriminatory."
It is, he said, "an act of denigration of cultural custom and, by extension, of the people who cherish, or the religion that requires, those very customs."

 I also noted the focus of the Vilnius seminar -- and now the destruction of nearly all traces of Jewish historic presence in Vilnius left a gaping hole that has yet to be filled.

Before World War II, about 100,000 Jews lived here. The Great Synagogue, standing in the heart of what is today's postcard-perfect Old Town, was the most magnificent of more than 100 synagogues and prayer houses in the city. The Vilnius Old Town today is on UNESCO's roster of World Heritage Sites, but almost no physical traces of its Jewish past remain. There are a few street names, wall inscriptions and plaques, but that's it.

Read full story

Moldova -- Anti-Semitism on Show

 

 Photo from jurnaltv.md

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This deviates somewhat from what I usually post here, but the video is so graphic that I decided to put it up. If you've never seen anti-Semitism in action, here's your chance. TV footage on jurnaltv.md of a group of 100-200 Orthodox Christian fundamentalists in Chisinau (Kishinev), the capital of Moldova, led by a priest, removing a Hanukkah Menorah placed by the Jewish community, replacing it with a cross, and then taking the Menorah and positioning it -- symbolically -- upside down. The priest and crowd spout paranoid anti-Semitic slurs.

Reactions have come from the Moldovan blog morninginmoldova.com and the MCA -- The Center for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism in Romania.

Lithuania -- Report from Vilnius

Plaque recalling the Gaon of Vilna. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The formal topic of the seminar in Vilnius this week was "Vilnius -- World Heritage Site: Values of Jewish Heritage and its Commemoration."

Vilnius's postcard-perfect historic center is a UNESCO site of world heritage, but almost nothing physical remains to be seen of the rich and important Jewish presence that once stood here. The early 17th-century Great Synagogue and its surrounding buildings were severely damaged in WW2 and the ruins were razed by the Soviet authorities in the 1950s. Almost no traces remain except for some plaques, a few monuments and a couple of faded Yiddish wall signs.

Yiddish signage in Vilnius. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The issue of what to do with Jewish heritage and memory in Vilnius has been contentious. It is haunted not just by the memory of the 100,000 Jews who before WW2 made up a third of the city's population, but by other factors, including the collaboration of local Lithuanians in the killing of Jews and the local nationalist narrative that associates anti-Nazi activity with support of the Soviet regime.

It has also been haunted by a huge and highly controversial $32 million project to rebuild (rather than restore) the old Jewish quarter in Vilnius, including the  Great Synagogue, which was approved (at least in principle) some years ago but never really got off the ground. See articles about this HERE and HERE and HERE. This project was promoted by MP and activist Emanuelis Zingeris, but was opposed by others in the Jewish community (and elsewhere).

I was one of three outside experts who took part in the seminar -- the others were Philip Carmel, who heads the Lo Tishkach organization that is creating a data base of Jewish cemeteries, and Vladimir Levin of the Center for Jewish Art in Jerusalem. (Magdalena Waligorska, from Poland/Florence was supposed to have come but she got the flu.)

I was impressed by the number of people who showed up for the formal session, on Dec. 7 -- and stayed throughout a long day of presentations from more than a dozen speakers, as well as the number of people who tuned up the following day for a more informal discussion of the issues. This indicates the intererest, at least in certain official spheres. One of the successes of the seminar, someone joked, was that representatives of all or almost all of the stakeholders in the Jewish heritage issue sat together in the same room and even discussed the situation.

The consensus that emerged was that it is totally unrealistic to even think of rebuilding the Great Synagogue. Even Zingeris (who denied to me that he had ever suggested it) now opposes it -- he would, however, like to see the foundations of the synagogue excavated and used as education/exhibition space, as in Frankfurt with the Judengasse and in Vienna with the Judenplatz excavation of the medieval synagogue there.

People at the meeting talked about restoring "fragments" -- uncovering more Yiddish signs, for example. Also making an archeological investigation to discover exactly where the limits of the Great Synagogue are, and then deciding what to do (this apparently has not been carried out).

During the meeting we learned of several initiatives involving Vilnius and Lithuania in general, where the state of Jewish heritage sites is perilous, to say the least.

Besides the collapse, in a hurricane apparently, of the Red Synagogue in Joniskis two years ago, and the fire that damaged the wooden synagogue in Pakruojis earlier this year, the precious wooden synagogue in Seda has also collapsed. And masonry synagogues (and maybe also the wooden synagogue) in Plunge were recently bulldozed. The wooden synagogue in Ziezmariai, which is one of the few to bear in identification plaque, is said to be under threat and there are thoughts that it should be moved to an outdoor architecture park.

(As I noted earlier, we heard from both a representative of Pakruoijis and a culture ministry official that there was a commitment to rebuild the Pakruojis synagogue, and also that funds have been found to begin restoring the structure in Joniskis.)

During the conference, we heard from the researchers who in 2006-2008 directed the compilation of  a catalogue of all the more than 90 extant synagogues in Lithuania. This massive work is nearing completion, and publication of its first volume should take place within weeks. During the seminar, a photographic exhibition of a small fraction of the material compiled was opened, showing the variety of type -- and condition -- of these buildings.

The project was initiated in 2006 by the Vilnius-based Centre for the Studies of the Culture and History of East European Jews, in collaboration with the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts. The Center for Jewish Art joined the project in 2007, and the  Gediminas Technical University in Vilnius also takes part.  


You can see a photo gallery of many synagogues at the web site of the  Center for the Studies of the Cultur and History of East European Jews.


The catalogue began as research on masonry synagogues but soon expanded  to record all synagogues of Lithuania. Students fanned out throug the country to measure buildings,  make diagrams, pinpoint their locaton and gather archival, cartographic, iconographic and other information about particular synagogues.

There have been many lost opportunities regarding Jewish heritage in Lithuania. One of them stems from the rather abortive -- if loudly proclaimed -- attempt to establish a "European Route of Jewish Culture." There was little coordination of this from its headquarters in Luxemburg, but also, on the ground, it was difficult to gain local support, and it remains difficult to convince some local authorities that the Jewish heritage of their towns and villages is part of their own heritage. 

On this note, there appear to be few initiatives such as those in Poland, whereby local Catholics have taken a lead in delving into local (Jewish) history, cleaning cemeteries, and the like -- efforts which each year are honored by the Israeli Embassy. I suggested to culture minister representatives and also to the representative of the Israeli embassy that some sort of similar honor could be organized in Lithuania as encouragement for local involvement. 

Ukraine -- New Resource for Jewish Heritage

 Synagogue, Bolekhiv, Ukraine, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I want to highlight a rich and exciting new web resource for Jewish heritage in Ukraine that I learned about at the seminar in Vilnius this week on preserving and promoting Jewish heritage in Lithuania.

This is the Jewish History in Galicia and Bukovina site, which compiles extensive databases, photo galleries, articles and other material gleaned on expeditions carried out by the Center For Jewish Art at Hebrew University. (One of the scholars involved with the site, Dr. Vladimir Levin, also took part in the Vilnius seminar.)

The project Jewish History in Galicia and Bukovina is designed to preserve the once vivid world of Galician and Bukovinian Jewry. Our goal is to save historical documents and vestiges of Jewish material culture in Galicia and Bukovina before these historical records and objects disappear. We intend to make them available to the wider public as well as to the growing community of researchers worldwide through this website.

The project begins with the region of southern Galicia, which was known as the Stanislawów Voivodship (województwo stanisławowskie) in interwar Poland and is known as the Ivano-Frankivsk Region (Ivano-Frankivs'ka oblast') in today's Ukraine. In this region, primary attention is paid to four communities around Ivano-Frankivsk (Stanislawów): Bohorodczany (Brotchin, Bohorodchany), Lysiec (Lysets', Łysiec), Nadworna (Nadvirna, Nadwórna) and Solotwin (Solotvyn, Sołotwina).

The core of the project Jewish History in Galicia and Bukovina is an electronic database of primary materials pertaining to Galician and Bukovinian Jewry. Ultimately, the database will include: archival documents, newspapers articles, oral history testimonies, and documentation of Jewish cemeteries and communal buildings. The database also includes information regarding Jewish communities, Jewish communal organizations and the lives of individual Jews in the region. The project's website also includes part of the archival catalogue of the Central Archives for the History of Jewish People in Jerusalem (CAHJP).

The project Jewish History in Galicia and Bukovina was initiated by a generous donation from a private foundation that wishes to remain anonymous. The project is conducted under the auspices of the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in cooperation with The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem. Other organizations, such as the Sefer Center in Moscow and the Center for Jewish Art in Jerusalem also take part in the project.

.The site includes search options, interactive databases and other aides. It looks great!