Ukraine --New York Times on Bruno Schulz murals

The other day I posted information on the (stolen) murals by Bruno Schulz going on show (finally) at Yad Vashem.... here's a link to a New York Times piece on the exhibit.

Lithuania -- Paradox, contradictions and a new Jewish tourism office

Synagogue in Vilnius. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Haaretz has run a long and very interesting article discussing the schizophrenia exhibited by Lithuanian authorities vis-a-vis Jews, Jewish culture, historic memory and the like. It is pegged to a "cultural offensive" by the Lithuanian Embassy keyed to the Jerusalem International Book Fair.

This cultural offensive, however, is not being welcomed wholeheartedly. Despite the fact that one of the sessions to be presented at the fair will deal directly with the subject of the Holocaust (Is It Still Difficult to Speak about the Holocaust in Lithuania? at 5 P.M. Tuesday), the Lithuanian-sponsored campaign has been met with some derision by those who see it as a mere fig leaf to cover an official reluctance in the country to deal with its anti-Semitic past.

Calling Lithuania's participation in the book fair "propaganda," Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Israel office, told Haaretz that Lithuania, the country with the highest percentage of Jews killed during the Holocaust, has been a 'total failure' at bringing Nazi collaborators to justice.

Read the Full Article


The article, by Raphael Ahren, is thoughtful and presents a good picture of the contradictions and paradoxes of the situation.

He quotes the Lithuanian ambassador to Israel as being

convinced that her country's interest in its Jewish past is genuine and sincere. Jews have been in Lithuania for already six or seven centuries, they're a part of our culture and it's part of our mentality, part of heritage and history, she said when asked about her country's presence at the book fair. The Jews who lived in Lithuania before World War II contributed a lot to our culture, philosophy and mentality, and also to research in a lot of scientific fields. The Baltic country wants to present those parts of our history to the Israeli public, she said.

The Vilnius Yiddish Institute opened at the University of Vilnius in 2001, there is a new Jewish tourism office in the capital city, and in 2007 a Jewish nursery school started teaching Yiddish to its children in an attempt to preserve the language as Ashkenazi Jews' mother tongue.

Recently, however, I got a long email from Wyman Brent, detailing some of the bureaucratic (and other) problems he has had in trying to put together and donate a Jewish library to Vilnius... Last I heard, he has 165 boxes of books en route as a gift to the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum, but, he says, "The museum is in dire straits as the government is now saying that it will no longer pay for the necessities of water, gas and electricity" and one of the museum's buildings may have to close down....

Germany -- Emigration Museum/Jewish Museum deal

In the Czech Emigration Museum, Lichnov, 2005. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The German Emigration Center in Bremerhaven -- a museum specializing on the topic of emigration -- got in touch with me a few days ago to bring to my attention a new ticket deal they have with the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

Visitors, in short, can buy pay the entrance fee to one of these museums and visit the other on the same ticket -- within three months of the original visit.

It sounds like a good deal to me!

I haven't visited the Emigration Center in Bremerhaven -- but I think that that is where my own grandparents (and probably great-grandparents) sailed from en route to the United States.

Indeed, as the museum points out, more than 7 million emigrants gathered in Bremerhaven between 1830 and 1974 to board a ship headed for the New World. Among them were 3 million Eastern Europeans (my own ancestors, from what today is Romania and Lithuania, would have been among them).

The German Emigration Center is Europe’s largest theme museum and in 2007 was named European Museum of the Year. It is located on the site where the ships departed from the European mainland. It features reconstructions and multimedia productions to illustrate the history of emigration. Visitors can also trace their family roots.

The Jewish Museum in Berlin presents objects form everyday life and art objects, photos, letters etc. that tell the story of German Jewish life from the Middle Ages up to the present day. It is famous for is spectacular architecture, by Daniel Libeskind.

There are, in fact, several museums in Europe that deal with emigration. In the little town of Buttenheim, Germany, for example, the Levi Strauss museum, in the birthplace of the inventor of blue jeans, uses Strauss's life story to tell the more general tale of (Jewish) economic emigration in the 1840s.

More general emigration museums include the big the Ulster American Folk Park, opened in Northern Ireland in 1976, which tells the story of emigration from Ireland. There is a small museum on Czech emigration to Texas in Lichnov, in the eastern part of the Czech Republic.

My latest Ruthless Cosmopolitan column -- klezmer music and the ghost of German past

Me and the Painted Bird in Freiburg

Here's a link to my latest Ruthless Cosmopolitan column -- on Punk Cabaret klezmer danse macabre in Germany. In other words, a concert in Freiburg by Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird at the height of the uproar over the pope's rehabilitation of a Holocaust-denying bishop... I've written about klezmer music in Germany a lot over the years (including in a long section of my 2002 book, Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe.) The scene keeps changing and evolving -- and the political edge and genre mix of Daniel's group illustrates this. It may not be "pure" pre-war shtetl music, but it's rooted there, and it takes the music into the 21st century. It was a great concert, and the band's new CD -- Partisans and Parasites, is also worth buying.

FREIBURG, Germany (JTA) -- At the height of the recent uproar over Pope Benedict XVI's rehabilitation of a Holocaust-denying bishop, I attended a klezmer concert in the pontiff's native Germany.

The timing was coincidental. I didn't deliberately set out to counter the pernicious folly of denying history by listening to music rooted in the culture the Nazis sought to destroy.

Still, the concert started me to thinking -- about what and how we remember; about what and how we forget; and about the role contemporary cultural expressions play in determining how we think about things.

I had been to many klezmer concerts in Germany in the past. The traditional music of East European Jews has had a wide following here since the 1980s, when American and other artists began to tour. Scores of homegrown klezmer bands have been formed, and several leading American Jewish music performers settled in Berlin or elsewhere in the country.

Germany's particular history, of course, played a role in the music's popularity.

Some Germans, especially those from older generations, became attracted as part of the manifold process of dealing with the Nazi legacy that is commonly known here as "working through the past."

For more youthful musicians and fans, however, the baggage of guilt is mostly absent. For some, the klezmer sound simply forms part of the eclectic exoticism of world music. For others, its rich cultural contexts provide stimulus for their own creative interpretation.

The group I saw this time was The Painted Bird, a Berlin-based band pointedly named for the Holocaust novel by Jerzy Kosinski. Known for making music with a sharp political edge, the band describes itself on its MySpace page as "Punk Cabaret + Radical Yiddish Song + Gothic American Folk + Klezmer Danse Macabre."

Its leader is Daniel Kahn, a 30-year-old Detroit native who forms part of the current wave of American Jewish musical transplants to the German capital.

Read Full Article

South Africa -- Jewish Museum

This is a little far afield, but here's a link to an article by Dan Fellner about Jewish heritage sites in Cape Town, South Africa -- where, apparently, 80 percent of the Jewish population has roots in Lithuania....

Most of the important Jewish sites, including the South African Jewish Museum, the Gardens Shul, Cape Town Holocaust Center and Gitlin Library, are located in the same complex on an outdoor square in the heart of downtown Cape Town, just four blocks from the South African Parliament.

A focus was the Jewish Museum, which, the article says, attracts 15,000 visitors a year and features a "reconstructed shtetl from Riteve, Lithuania in the 1880s" with "a scale model of a school, shop and modest house. Inside the home, the table is set for Shabbat dinner."

The entrance to the museum is through the exterior of the first synagogue built in South Africa, which was consecrated in 1863. Inside are the original wooden ark and mosaic floor and other artifacts from the synagogue. [...] every window in the museum has a view of Table Mountain, which is what the Jewish immigrants first saw when arriving in Cape Town by ship.

The museum depicts what life was like for those immigrants and does so with high-tech and interactive exhibits, including a bank of touch-screen computers where visitors can research their family roots.

[...]

The museum also showcases the role played by Jews in the struggle against apartheid, including Isie Maisels, who was Nelson Mandela's defense lawyer during the 1963 trial that led to Mandela's incarceration for treason, and Helen Suzman, who for many years was the sole anti-apartheid voice in the South African Parliament.

Read Full Article

You can also read the article and see pictures on Dan Fellner's web site. Click HERE.

Malta -- Controversy over Jewish Catacombs. Religion versus Archeology

Controversy is brewing in Malta over the ancient Jewish catacombs. According to the Times of Malta, it appears to center over who has control of the site, what the site should represent -- purely a religious burial ground, or also a site of important archeological significance -- and how to reconcile the two.

The Jewish catacombs in Rabat were at the centre of controversy in recent days after Heritage Malta called in police when a Jewish religious delegation allegedly entered the site without authorisation.

The Jewish community in Malta is demanding that the human bones found inside the catacombs are given a proper burial according to Jewish rites.

A Jewish delegation made up of at least 10 experts, Rabbis and archaeologists from Israel and the US was brought over to Malta by the Jewish community to carry out the burial.

Heritage Malta CEO Luciano Mulè Stagno confirmed that a Jewish delegation last week entered the site without authorisation, a claim denied by a representative of the Jewish community in Malta.

"We lodged a police report and for some time a policeman was also placed on guard outside the entrance," Dr Mulè Stagno said.

Lawrence Attard Bezzina, a representative for the Jewish community, denied that the delegation entered the site unlawfully..

[ . . . .]

"We are seeking an agreement that respects their requests but is also in line with Maltese legislation. The Jewish community are looking at the site purely in religious terms as a burial site. We concur with the idea but for us it is more than just that because it is an important archaeological site of unique value," Dr Mulè Stagno said.

The site, which is across the road from the entrance to St Paul's catacombs, has never been open to the public and is currently being restored by Heritage Malta with EU funds.

The Jewish catacombs form part of the larger St Paul's catacombs complex in Rabat and were discovered at the end of the 19th century. They date back to the late Roman period some 1,500 years ago and are unique since they are Jewish catacombs within a Christian complex.

Read full article -- and make sure to take a look at the comments

Ukraine/Israel -- Finally! Removed (or Stolen) Bruno Schulz Murals Go On View

Ruined Drohobych synagogue, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Back in 2001, Yad Vashem’s secret removal from Ukraine of Holocaust-era wall paintings by the Polish-Jewish artist Bruno Schulz touched off an international controversy. You can find links to a number of articles on the affair, including a New York Times op-ed by Sam Gruber, on the Ukraine page of the www.isjm.org web site -- click HERE then scroll down.

Yad Vashem officials physically removed parts of the murals, which have fairy tale themes, from the walls of a villa in the town of Drohobych and smuggled them out of the country to Jerusalem.

In a statement, Yad Vashem said it had the “moral right” to the paintings.

"The correct and most suitable place to commemorate the memory of the Jewish artist, Bruno Schulz -- killed by an SS officer purely because he was a Jew -- and the place to house the drawings he sketched during the Holocaust is Yad Vashem," it said.

But the move triggered outrage in Poland and Ukraine, where Schulz's works are revered as national treasures -- and where removal of art from the wartime period is strictly regulated by national law. It also drew sharp reaction from international experts involved in the protection and preservation of Jewish heritage.

Now, with the dispute settled and the mural fragments restored and conserved, Yad Vashem is finally putting them on display -- it presented them publicly last week.

The exhibition "Bruno Schulz: Wall Painting Under Coercion," includes fragments of three murals depicting dwarfs, princesses, horses and carriages, along with images evoking Schulz's struggles during the Holocaust. ...

The dispute was settled last year; Israel recognized the Schulz works as the property and cultural wealth of Ukraine, and the Drohobychyna Museum in Ukraine agreed to give them to Yad Vashem on long-term loan.

Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Vladislav Kornienko took part in Friday's inauguration of the new display at Yad Vashem.

"The paintings have artistic, cultural, national and historic significance both to the Jewish people and the Ukrainian people," he said. "For almost 60 years these paintings were considered legend. Today, they are revealed to this generation and to generations to come."

Read Full Article

Poland -- Video about non-Jewish Poles Rescuing Jewish Cemeteries

A video that profiles several non-Jewish Poles who have devoted a good part of their lives to protecting and saving abandoned Jewish cemeteries in Poland has been posted on YouTube by Menachem Daum. Called "Common Ground," it's a trailer for a longer documentary on the subject that Menachem wants to produce -- and is trying to raise funds for.



Menachem directed the wonderful documentaries "Hiding and Seeking" and "A World Apart".

He was involved with the conference of Poles who preserve Jewish heritage, held last year -- see my blog post on it.

Warsaw -- Useful (Downloadable) Jewish Travel Brochure

Panel on Jewish shtetl life from an open-air exhibition in Warsaw, 2008. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

A very useful illustrated Jewish travel guide to Warsaw is available from the Warsaw tourism office. You can get the illustrated brochure at tourist offices there or download a PDF of it by clicking HERE. (The link takes you to the English/Polish edition -- there is also an edition in Spanish and Italian.)

The brochure, which features a picture of the Nozyk synagogue on its cover, was edited by Jan Jagielski of the Jewish Historical Institute -- one of most knowledgeable experts on Warsaw's Jewish history and heritage sites. Jan's an old friend. He was a pioneer in the documentation of Jewish heritage in Poland, and back 1990 he co-wrote a more detailed guide to Jewish Warsaw that I used extensively in my own work and travels.

The new brochure, published last summer, includes photographs and descriptions of 28 sites around the city and also includes links for Jewish organizations and information on Jewish cultural events.

Brightly colored, it is one of a series of new brochures on various aspects of Warsaw, all using the same general format.

Rome -- Link to Jewish Tour Guide

Inside the Jewish Museum, Rome. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

People often ask me to recommend Jewish sites for them to see in various cities or recommend a Jewish guide to take them around.

Here's a link to a web site to a Jewish travel guide and service for Rome -- JewishRoma.

It is run by Micaela Pavoncello, a native of the Eternal City, whose Jewish community dates back more than 2,000 years and is the oldest one in Europe. Micaela introduces herself this way:

I was born in Rome from a Jewish Roman father (proud to be here since Cesar’s time!) and a Libyan Jewish Sephardic mother. I have lived in Rome my entire life (not including the year I spent in Argentina and another year in Israel). Traveling has given me the opportunity to meet other Jews, share my story with them, and compare my community with theirs and other communities. Throughout my time as a guide, while meeting people along my journey, I have come to realize how miraculous the existence of the Jewish Community of Rome really is.

Rome's main Jewish sites include the historic ghetto area, with the imposing synagogue complex and Jewish museum, plus ancient Roman-era sites such as Jewish catacombs and the ruins of an ancient synagogue at Ostia Antica.

Main Synagogue, Rome. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

There is an active Jewish life in the city, with several synagogues, kosher restaurants and cafes, and various educational and cultural institutions. There are also frequent Jewish-themed exhibitions, concerts, theatrical performances and other events.

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Moldova -- Bob Cohen's Ode to the Knish (and other food)

The old Settlement Cookbook had on its cover the phrase "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach" (or so I remember). But, I think the way to ancestral memory, heimishness, home-thoughts, whatever you may call them is also through the stomach. Or at least the taste-buds. Or at least in descriptions of tastes and textures of what we eat. That's why some things are called comfort foods. And why Jewishness to some resides in lox, bagels, kreplach, kasha and knishes, rather than in anything religious.

On his latest blog post, Bob Cohen delves (almost literally) into contemporary culinary heaven in today's Moldova - with pictures. Wending through the Ashkenazi heartland, to the heart, through the stomach (by way, perhaps, of clogged arteries). Hidden gardens of knish, he calls it.

Great reading, and I envy the eating!

PS Bob, as I've noted earlier, was in Moldova on The Other Europeans project... he includes some great video of Adam Stinga, Kalman Balogh and others jamming between meals.

I'm Quoted on CNN

Check out this article on the CNN web site, quoting me about Jewish-Catholic relations in the wake of the scandal over the Holocaust-denying bishop Richard Williamson....

Priceless Jewish Library (in Hebrew) up for Auction

Here's a link to the NYTimes story by Edward Rothstein about a priceless (and huge) Hebrew library up for auction....the ultimate Jewish heritage armchair travel...

Is bibliophilia a religious impulse? You can’t walk into Sotheby’s exhibition space in Manhattan right now and not sense the devotion or be swept up in its passions and particularities. The 2,400-square-foot opening gallery is lined with shelves — 10 high — reaching to the ceiling, not packed tight, but with occasional books open to view. Each shelf is labeled, not with a subject, but with a city or town of origin: Amsterdam, Paris, Leiden, Izmir, Bombay, Cochin, Cremona, Jerusalem, Ferrara, Calcutta, Mantua, Shanghai, Alexandria, Baghdad and on and on.

You can’t read these books or pluck them from the shelves. But you feel their presence as you explore, particularly in adjoining rooms where volumes are open inside cases for closer scrutiny.

These 13,000 books and manuscripts were primarily collected by one man, Jack V. Lunzer, who was born in Antwerp in 1924, lives in London and made his fortune as a merchant of industrial diamonds. The collection’s geographical scale is matched by its temporal breadth, which extends over a millennium. But this endeavor is not just an exercise in bibliophilia. These are all books written in Hebrew or using Hebrew script, many of them rare or even unique. Most come from the earliest centuries of Hebrew printing in their places of origins and thus map out a history of the flourishing of Jewish communities around the world.

Read Full Article

Shanghai -- Jewish Quarter Under Threat (and Shanghai Moon)

NPR reports that the historic Jewish quarter in Shanghai -- where thousands of Jews fleeing Europe during the Holocaust found refuge -- is under threat from developers.

In the 1930s, Shanghai was the only place in the world to offer visa-free sanctuary to Jews fleeing Nazism — 20,000 ended up in Shanghai. In 1943, the Japanese restricted them to a one-square-mile area, which became known as Little Vienna.

A pianist and a violinist used to play popular music for customers at the White Horse Inn, or Das Weisse Rossl. The waitresses wore dirndls — traditional Bavarian outfits — and the menu featured Wiener schnitzel.

But the White Horse wasn't in Austria or Germany, it was in wartime Shanghai. And for the city's wealthier Jewish refugees, it offered a memory of homes that no longer existed.

- - - -

The White Horse Inn is among a number of buildings inside the Jewish district to be knocked down to make way for a widened road.

As they start work, the demolition crews are uncovering layers of the past, like unwitting architectural archaeologists. By knocking down shop facades, old shop signs beneath are revealed, like one for Wuerstel Tenor, a sandwich shop, which had been covered for decades.

They will pull down other fading shop fronts at the heart of Little Vienna, as well — those of Cafe Atlantic and Horn's Imbiss-stube (Horn's Snack Bar).

Read (or Listen to) Full Story

Coincidentally, the award-winning mystery novelist SJ Rozan has just come out with a new book that is partly set in the Jewish refugee milieu of wartime Shanghai. It's called The Shanghai Moon and concerns a (fictional) legendary jewel from that era, believed lost and/or stolen....

Rozan is an old friend of mine, and this marks the first time she has used a Jewish theme in her mysteries -- most of which (like The Shanghai Moon) are a series featuring a Chinese-America detective, Lydia Chin, and her Anglo partner, Bill Smith.

You can read an excerpt from The Shanghai Moon by clicking HERE.

Moldavia -- Bob Cohen on East European Comfort Food

The Jewish Museum in Berlin is preparing an exhibition on Food and Religion, and I've been asked to write an essay on Jewish-style restaurants in East-Central Europe for the catalogue (mainly the kitschy ones, but I'll have to add a couple of the real thing, I think). Coincidentally, I just received an email announcement of conference on "Culinary Judaism" to be held in England this summer:

Call for Papers: BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR JEWISH STUDIES Conference
12-14 July 2009, Durham, UK:
`Culinary Judaism'

THEME AND VENUE

The 2009 annual conference will take place at St Aidan's College,
Windmill Hill, Durham, 12-14 July 2009. The theme of the conference
will be `Culinary Judaism'. Speakers are invited to present papers
concerning all issues related to food and the use of food in Jewish
texts and cultures, addressing such issues as commensality, cooking,
creation of boundaries, identity, symbolism, sacrifice and material
cultural objects related to or symbolic of eating, etc. The term
`culinary' is interpreted broadly and as suggested extends to
sacrifice and other symbolic uses of food or food related objects. It
is hoped that this broad interpretation of the theme will encourage
members of BAJS from a wide range of research fields to participate.

Bob Cohen takes a far far less academic approach in the blog entry from his Moldavia trip he has just posted, describing in lush (luscious) detail the market foods he found there, many if not most of which form the gustatory core of Ashkenazi eating. You know, pickles, prunes, smoked fish....

Fish was everywhere - interesting given that Moldova is landlocked, but Odessa is only an hour away and as former CCCP appetites know, if you want to drink you need some zakuska to eat with your vodka, and that means some smoked fish. In many ways, if you are used to New York jewish foods, you won't be dissappointed in fressing in Moldova. Jewish culinary traditions have been deeply absorbed into Moldovan cuisine - supermarkets are packed at the arrival of hot, fresh baked challah on friday afternoons.

Hard Times for Jewish Museums

The New York Jewish Week has a brief (and oddly lighthearted) article describing the negative impact the current financial crisis (including the Madoff scam) is having on the Jewish museum world.

by Eric Herschthal

There was plenty to talk about at this year’s Conference of American Jewish Museums. Days before the event began here Sunday, Brandeis’ trustees announced that they were selling off the jewels in its Rose Art Museum — works by Warhol, de Kooning and Hoffman — to cover the university’s deficits. No one at the conference had any clue how much the Madoff scandal would affect future fundraisers. And, of course, it was anyone’s guess how long or deep this recession might be.

Read Full Article

Kiev -- Sholom Aleichem house torn down

Sholom Aleichem monument, Kiev. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

JTA reports that one of the buildings in Kiev where the great Yiddish writer Sholom Aleichem lived has been torn down by a real estate developer to make way for a hotel.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of Shalom Aleichem's birth (in the small town of Pereslayev), and in December, JTA reported that Ukraine had kicked off national celebrations marking the occasion with an exhibition in Kiev on the author, who evoked the shtetl in his writings and created characters such as the iconic Tevye the Milkman. As part of the celebrations, a Sholom Aleichem museum is due to be opened in Kiev, dedicated to his life and work and to Yiddish culture, architecture and folklore in general. Sholom Aleichem lived in Kiev from 1897 to 1905. A monument to him -- a statue of the author tipping his hat -- stands in central Kiev near the Brody synagogue.

A building in Kiev where the famed Yiddish writer, born Solomon Rabinovich on Feb. 18, 1859, lived in 1905 was destroyed over the weekend by the private company KievZhytloInvestManagement, despite instructions by city authorities to the company to suspend the demolition in order to clarify the case.

The site is being prepared for a new hotel for the Euro-2012 soccer tournament, according to reports.

“This is a disgraceful act to destroy that building,” said Ilya Levitas, a president of the Jewish Council of Ukraine, who addressed a petition to the deputy prime minister of Ukraine and Kiev authorities on Jan. 21, requesting that the city order a stop or suspension of the demolition.

“Activities of KievZhytloInvestManagement Company, that is an owner of the building, shocked the public this past weekend," Irina Zalyuzhenkova, an inspector for the Association for the Protection of Monuments of History and Culture, told JTA. "In spite of city authority instructions and a visit to the site, the company destroyed the building. They could find no other site.

. . . .

Mikhail Kalnitzky, a historian of Kiev, said Sholom Aleichem lived at 35 Bolshaya Vasylkivska St., apartment 1 in Kiev.

"The local authorities’ fault is that they didn’t put the building on the register list of state or municipal monuments of architecture," he said. "That is why the private company is destroying the building.”

Evgeny Chervonenko, a first deputy of the Kiev mayor and a prominent Jewish leader, told JTA that the Kiev authority will establish a committee to clarify the case properly.

Read Full Article

I included information on the Sholom Aleichem trail in the Kiev section of National Geographic Jewish Heritage Travel. I noted the address of this apartment as Bolshaya Vasylkivska st 5, not 35 -- and I said there was a plaque marking it. The sources I consulted said he lived there from 1897-1903. Sholom Aleichem also lived in Kiev at Saksagansky 27, where I also recall there being a plaque. He was at this address from 1903-1905.

Click HERE for an interesting blog post by Larry Kaufman I came across recently describing his experiences on Jewish and non-Jewish organized travel in Kiev.

Dublin -- Curator of Jewish Museum Dies

Word has come of the death of Raphael Siev, the longtime curator of the Jewish Museum in Dublin. He fell ill at a Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony on Sunday and died early Wednesday. He was 73.

I've never been to the Jewish Museum in Dublin (actually, I've never been to Dublin!) but I had met Raphael Siev at meetings of the Association of European Jewish Museums, an organization that (loosely) links representatives of Jewish Museums in about 30 cities around Europe.

Some of these museums are large, publicly funded institutions. Others, like that in Dublin, are smaller operations, run by local Jewish communities, often on a volunteer basis.

The Jewish Museum in Dublin was founded in 1985 and includes a former synagogue with all its fittings:

the former Walworth Road Synagogue, which could accommodate approximately 150 men and women, consisted of two adjoining terraced houses. Due to the movement of the Jewish people from the area to the suburbs of Dublin and with the overall decline in their numbers, the Synagogue fell into disuse and ceased to function in the early 70's.

The museum also includes:

a substantial collection of memorabilia relating to the Irish Jewish communities and their various associations and contributions to present day Ireland. The material relates to the last 150 years and is associated with the communities of Belfast, Cork, Derry, Drogheda, Dublin, Limerick & Waterford.

In addition, according to the web site, there is

an abundance of written material on James Joyce and his writings, and many people visit Dublin to follow in the footsteps of Leopold Bloom of Ulysses, nevertheless a visit to the Museum enables the Joycean follower to obtain an insight into the cultural, economic, religious & social life of the Jew in Ireland during the early 1900’s.

Italy -- Biella synagogue restored

Photo from moked.it

The gem-like synagogue in Biella, near Torino and Vercelli in the Piedmont region of northwest Italy, has been rededicated after "important and decisive" restoration.

Dating from the early 17th century, the synagogue, at vicolo del Bellone 3, occupies the top floor of a medieval house in the heart of what was the historic Jewish quarter. The sanctuary is small and rectagular in shape, focused on a spendid 17th-century Ark and an oval, waist-high carved wooden enclosure around the Bimah.

The €350,000 restoration, overseen by the Jewish community in Vercelli and funded in part by the Piedmont Region and a local bank, included structural consolidation and repair of the roof, which threatened collapse, as well as restoration of the elaborate Ark, the women's gallery and other interior fittings. Further restoration work is planned.

For Italian readers, you can see fuller details by clicking HERE. You may also contact the president of the Vercelli Jewish community, Rossella Bottini Treves, at comebravc.presid@libero.it

The Biella synagogue is one of about 16 beautiful synagogues in Piedmont, many of which have been restored in recent years and can be visited. You can find some information on the Jewish Community of Torino web site. Also, Sam Gruber has written an essay about these synagogues which can be found in a new volume about Jews in Piedmont.

See also the web site for the synagogue at Casale Monferrato, the most elaborate of the synagogues in the region, which is now used (mainly) as a Jewish museum and culture center.

Poland -- My Ruthless Cosmopolitan column about Henryk Halkowski

Here's the link to my Ruthless Cosmopolitan column remembering my old friend Henryk Halkowski, the writer and local historian who died in his native Krakow on New Year's Day.

Ruthless Cosmopolitan: Farewell to a Pintele Yid

Jan. 22, 2009

BUDAPEST (JTA) -- The Yiddish expression "dos pintele Yid" is often translated as "the Jewish spark" -- an indestructible core of Jewishness that lurks deep within even unknowing or alienated Jews, ready to spring back to life at any unexpected moment.

The Forward's language maven, Philologos, once devoted a column to the term, describing it as an almost mystical notion.

"It posits that all Jews, even if they are unaware of it or have been raised so un-Jewishly that they do not know they are Jewish, have within them a Jewish essence that can be activated under certain circumstances," Philologos wrote.

Henryk Halkowski, who died suddenly on New Year's Day in his native Krakow, Poland, may have been one of the least mystical people I ever knew, but in many ways he embodied this concept.

A writer, translator and local historian, Henryk was like a pintele Yid for an entire city -- a city whose Jewish population of more than 65,000 had been all but wiped out in the Shoah. A city where only some 200 or so Jews live today.

To my mind, Henryk was one of the most noteworthy personalities in the new Jewish reality that has emerged in Poland since the Iron Curtain came down nearly 20 years ago.

"He was a guardian of Krakow's Jewish legacy," said Joachim Russek, director of the city's Center for Jewish Culture.

Born in 1951 into the echoing vacuum of post-Holocaust Poland, Henryk was haunted by the ghosts of Krakow's Holocaust dead and the generations of Krakow Jews who went before them.

He, in turn, haunted Jewish Krakow, learning its secrets and becoming so intimately attached that he seemed to have real, psychological difficulty leaving the city even for a few days.

"He was a character," said Stanislaw Krajewski, a leader in Poland's Jewish revival and the American Jewish Committee representative in Warsaw. "He was so Cracovian -- a Krakow curiosity."

With his encyclopedic knowledge of Krakow's Jewish history, culture, legend and lore, Henryk became a touchstone for me and other Jewish foreigners who began trickling in to Krakow in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

"For many of us, Henryk Halkowski was one of our first significant encounters with Krakow, and for all the years thereafter he remained a fixture of its character as much as any other person or institution," said Michael Traison, an American lawyer who has worked for years in Poland and sponsored many projects aimed at preserving Jewish heritage and fostering Jewish revival.

A stocky figure with thick glasses and a gray-flecked beard, Henryk was a familiar figure in Krakow's Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, where he roamed the streets with a restless energy.

"Wherever one walked in Kazimierz, regardless of the time of day or night, you couldn't help but run into him, then have a drink, then have a meal," recalled the klezmer musician and filmmaker Yale Strom, who met Halkowski in 1984 and featured him in several of his documentaries.

I first met Halkowski in the early 1990s.

Back then Kazimierz was a slum, a dilapidated ghost town that still showed the scars of Nazi mass murder and communist oppression.

Henryk, as head of a Jewish club, had formed the nucleus of a group of younger Jews who had attempted to revive Yiddish culture in the 1980s.

He recalled to me how foreign Jews often seemed uncomfortable meeting younger Jews in Poland -- how they couldn't understand their desire, or need, to remain.

"American Jews have a stereotype about Polish Jews who stayed here," he told me. "It's as if we are seen as 'traitors' to the nation."

In the years since then, Kazimierz has grown into a lively tourist center, with Jewish-style cafes, renovated synagogues, kitschy souvenirs and constantly milling tour groups.

The district has a resident rabbi and a Chabad center, and there is a plethora of Jewish cultural and educational institutions -- even a local Jewish publishing house, which has brought out Henryk's own books.

Henryk was an acute observer of the transformation, even as he became one of its protagonists.

"Disheveled and in disarray, he never disappointed as he cynically critiqued the absurdity of the Disneyland display of Jewish heritage and tragedy," Traison said.

"Orally and through his writings, he offered a sincere and unique insight into Cracovian culture and specifically that special Kazimierz life created since the fall of communism.

"Henryk remained and remains a genuine part of that milieu," he said. "And if one word is needed to describe him that is it: genuine."

In 1997 I took a picture of Henryk, a wry grin on his face, as he posed a trifle awkwardly at a Krakow souvenir stall selling T-shirts and carved wooden figures of Jews.

"Shall I tell you my obsession?" he asked me once, as he tucked into a bowl of chicken soup and kreplach at one of Kazimierz's trendy new Jewish-style restaurants.

"What we need in Kazimierz is some sort of institution that presents Jewish life as it really was here. What an apartment was like, for example; what a cheder was like, what a workshop was like. How the people here really lived. Something to inject a bit of reality into the gentrification."

Henryk was buried in Krakow's Jewish cemetery. Some 300 people braved the snow and bitter cold to pay their last respects. Rabbis and cafe keepers alike mourned at the graveside.

I could not make the trip to attend. But I remembered what Henryk had told me years ago, during one of our earliest conversations.

"Kazimierz," he said, "can be a place where meaning can be materialized."

That still holds true. But it simply won't be the same without him.

Real Full JTA Story

Poland -- Wooden Synagogus anniversary

Nextbook.org recently published Sam Gruber's article marking the 50th anniversary of the landmark book Wooden Synagogues by Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka.

Fifty years ago this year, two young Polish architects published a book that would change the face of American synagogue architecture. Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka, both survivors of the Warsaw Uprising and German labor camps, collected and interpreted studies made before the war of the wooden synagogues that once dotted Eastern Europe. Most of the surveys were taken by people who died in the Holocaust, and all of the centuries-old buildings went up in flames. But much of the documentation pertaining to their architecture survived. The Piechotkas used this material, which included photographs, measurements, and descriptions, to recreate the destroyed buildings in their book Wooden Synagogues. Published in Polish in 1957 and released in English in 1959, the book revealed a lost world of interior spaces, shapes, and decorations, tremendously varied, expressive, and exciting—and all made of wood.

From 1959 to 1989, the Piechtokas, living in Warsaw, were severely restricted in what they could publish about Jewish art, despite the material they continued to gather and additional insight they might have offered. Thus, Wooden Synagogues became a sort of message in a bottle, sent out into the world on its own.

Read Full Article and See Pictures

One of my first and most intensive journeys tracing Jewish heritage sites was a trip with the Piechotkas through eastern Poland in May 1990.... Sam and his wife, Judy, and I traveled with Maria and Maciej to -- if I remember correctly -- 19 synagogue buildings in all states of repair and disrepair. (We also visited some sites on our own.) The trip opened my eyes to the extent, beauty and power of what survived of Jewish heritage in eastern Europe, and it formed the basis for much of the Poland chapter in the first edition of Jewish Heritage Travel.

Budapest Jewish summer festival celebrates its Bar Mitzvah

 Part of the festival in 2009. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Adam Lebor in Budapest writes a nice piece in the Economist online about the annual Budapest summer Jewish culture festival celebrating its 13th edition -- its bar mitzvah, so to speak.

The festival opened last night with a magnificent concert by the Boban Markovic Orchestra, the world's best known Serbian gypsy brass band ensemble, in the Great Synagogue on Dohany Street in downtown Pest. The synagogue, which holds 3,000 people, is the centre of Jewish life in Hungary. The synagogue was built in the mid-19th century in a neo-Moorish style and has been beautifully restored to its former glory. Playing to a packed house the orchestra kicked off with a rousing rendition of "Hava Nagila", probably the best known traditional Jewish song. The thumping Balkan beat soon had even dowager grandmas clapping along. The Boban Markovic Orchestra is the latest in a long line of renowned musicians to perform here: a century ago both Franz Liszt and Camille Saint-Saëns played the synagogue's organ.It was an interesting choice to open a Jewish cultural festival with a Serbian gypsy band. Partly because of their shared history of persecution, Jews and Roma often feel a kind of kinship. But despite the glorious life-affirming emotion of hearing "Hava Nagila" inside the synagogue, there was a poignant aspect to the concert, for this corner of Dohany street is a haunted place. The small Jewish cemetery behind the main hall houses the remains of perhaps 2,000 people who died of sickness and starvation during the winter of 1944-45 as the Hungarian Nazi Arrow Cross ran wild and the Red army steadily advanced, until the ghetto was finally liberated in January 1945.

On Monday, the festival features a presentation of Zsido Emlekhelyek, the Hungarian edition of my book Jewish Heritage Travel. I'm due to give an illustrated talk about Jewish heritage in Europe.

Italy -- Archeology of Jewish Settlement in Sardinia

There will be a conference this weekend about Jewish history in Alghero, a small town on the northwest coast of Sardinia where Jews settled in the mid-14th century. One of the principal speakers will be Mauro Milanese, an archologist who has directed excavations in Alghero's old Jewish quarter.

Mauro Milanese ha diretto invece gli scavi nel quartiere ebraico di Alghero, il “kahal” o “juharia”, con interventi nel cortile del vecchio ospedale, all’interno della chiesa di Santa Chiara e sopratutto in Piazza Santa Croce dove era ubicata la sinagoga, il luogo di culto della comunità ebraica, l’“aljama” algherese; quest'ultimo intervento ha riportato alla luce, al di sotto dei ruderi della chiesa di Santa Croce, i resti di alcuni fabbricati ascrivibili al quartiere ebraico, e, proprio in occasione della chiusura degli scavi, un vano sotterraneo, probabilmente il “mikvé”, ovvero la vasca annessa ai locali della sinagoga utilizzata per alcuni rituali della comunità.

I primi ebrei sefarditi arrivarono con la conquista di Alghero (1354) da parte di Pietro IV il Cerimonioso, provenienti dalla penisola iberica (“Sefarad”, in ebraico) dalla Provenza e dalle Baleari. Ben presto si dotarono di una prima sinagoga, di una macelleria per la vendita di carne “kasher”, di un cimitero (“fossar iudeorum”), ed ottenerono il privilegio, fra gli altri, di amministrare autonomamente la giustizia, tutti elementi essenziali per la sussistenza di una comunità rispettosa dei numerosi precetti previsti dalla religione giudaica.

It's a sad sign of the times and of the mentality that identifies anything Jewish with the current policies of Israel, that the organizers, according to an article in the local newspaper, in announcing a conference about local Jewish history in the 14th and 15th centuries, felt that they had to mention the situation in Gaza and their hope that "it cannot and must not transform itself into an occasion that can give rise to racist outbursts," that is, anti-semitism. The organizers also used the announcement of the conference to voice their hopes for a peaceful settlement that would "leave space for tolerance and reciprocal respect" between Israelis and Palestinians.

«Per concludere – dichiarano gli organizzatori - la situazione politica nella Striscia di Gaza, di tragica attualità, non può e non deve trasformarsi in un’occasione che possa dare origine a rigurgiti razzisti; l’auspicio è che le armi cedano il passo alla diplomazia affinché si possa trovare una soluzione ed una prospettiva di pacifica convivenza fra le parti in guerra, cosa che forse potrebbe essere possibile se l’integralismo, religioso o politico che sia, lasciasse spazio alla tolleranza e al reciproco rispetto».

Read Full Article (in Italian)

Hungarian edition of Jewish Heritage Travel presentation

The new Hungarian-language version of my book "Jewish Heritage Travel" -- Zsido Emlekhelyek -- will be featured during the book bazaar of the annual summer Jewish festival in Budapest.

I am scheduled to give an illustrated talk about the book on August 30, at 4 p.m., in Gozsdu Udvar.

Come one, come all!

Bucharest -- World of Yiddish Festival

 Entering Bucharest's Choral synagogue. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Bucharest will be the scene of a World of Yiddish Festival next week. It starts Sept. 2 and culminates on Sept. 5, the European Day of Jewish Culture.

The program includes performances, lectures, exhibits, concerts, guided tours, conferences and more:

Thursday, September 2 

10.30 - The State Jewish Theater

Official opening of the Festival - Press conference

12.00 - The State Jewish Theater

From the ”Green Tree” to Broadway - Conference – Moderator: Director Harry Eliad
The Yiddish Theater in Romania (Director Harry Eliad)  Jewish Music in Theater productions (Eng. Adrian Cuperman)  Why do we need a Yiddish theater? Director Andrei Munteanu)  From Iași to New York (Director Radu Gabrea)

16.30 - The “Union” Cinema

“And they faded out like the wind…” – the story of the Barasheum Theater
Documentary - Presented by Director Radu Gabrea

19.30 - The State Jewish Theater

The Fools of Helem by Moishe Gershenzon
The State Jewish Theater

Friday, September 3

10.00 – Jewish Community Center

The Shtetl and its world - Conference – Moderator: Director Erwin Șimșensohn
The Shtetl culture in Romania (Prof. Dr. Liviu Rotman)  The Jewish Bukovina (Dr. Emil Rennert – Austria  Rediscovering Yiddishland in Romania (Dr. Simon Geissbühler, Switzerland) Chassidism and Hesychasm: landmarks, origins, connections (Dr. Madeea Axinciuc) The mural painting of Moldavian synagogues (Dr. Măriuca Stanciu)

16.30 - The “Union” Cinema

Itzic Manger
Documentary – Presented by Director Radu Gabrea

19.00 - The Great Synagogue

Kabbalat Shabbat

Saturday, September 4

10.00 – Jewish Community Center
Yiddishland - Conference – Moderator: Dr. Aurel Vainer
Yiddish language – past and present – from mammelushn to art (Dr. Harry Kuller)  Yiddishland: culture and political identity in the Yiddish media at the end of the 19th century in Romania (Drd. Augusta Radosav – Cluj) The Yiddish language – a source of moral support during the Holocaust (Dr. Lya Benjamin)  Memories about Yiddish, from a Shtetl (Dr. Aurel Vainer)

16.00 – Jewish Community Center

Mammelushn - Conference – Moderator: Dr. Jose Blum
Translations into Romanian from the Yiddish classic literature (Dr. Camelia Crăciun)  Peretz- a great Yiddish writer (Ghidu Brukmaier )  From La Fontaine to Eliezer Shteinberg (Writer Carol Feldman)

19.00 - The State Jewish Theater

One Man Show "Alein ist die Neshume rein" - “Alone, the heart is pure”
Yaakov Bodo & Misha Blecharovitz - Yiddishpiel Theater - Israel

21.00 - Green Hours 22 Club Jazz Café

Vienna Klezmer Band (Austria)

Sunday, September 5 – ““The European Day of Jewish Culture” 

11.00 - The Romanian Peasant Museum

Hakeshet Klezmer Band (Romania)  The Hora dance group (Romania)  Mames Babegenush Klezmer Band (Denmark)

17.30 - The Romanian Peasant Museum

Mazel Tov Klezmer Band (Romania)  Preβburger Klezmer Band (Slovakia)

20.30 - Jewish Community Center

One Woman Show
Yiddish Experience
Maia Morgenstern & Radu Captari

Visiting the Great Synagogue from Bucharest – September 2,3,5, from 10.00 to 17.00 h.
Visiting the History Museum of the Jews from Romania – September 2-5, from 10.00 to 18.00 h
Contact: www.festival-idis.ro * contact@festival-idis.ro

Slovenia -- Maribor synagogue defaced

Maribor synagogue, Jan. 18, 2009 -- photo from Slovenian Press Agency

Several synagogues in Europe have been the target of vandalism (or worse) linked to the situation in Gaza.

The latest is the historic former synagogue in Maribor, Slovenia, which was daubed with anti-Semitic graffiti over the weekend -- click HERE to see more pictures showing the walls of the building covered with "Judan Raus" and "Gaza."

The synagogue in Maribor, now used as a cultural center, is one of Slovenia's most important Jewish heritage sites and one of the oldest known synagogues in Europe.

It stands in the heart of the medieval Jewish quarter (still known as Zidovska ulica) and is believed to date from the 13th century. Its exact date and original appearance are unknown, however. Already in 1501 -- a few years after the Jews were expelled from that part of Slovenia -- it was converted into a church. It functioned as a church until the late 18th century. In the early 19th century it was sold and turned into a warehouse and, later, a dwelling.

Long empty, the building was renovated in the 1990s and reopened as a cultural center in 2001. The only physical evidence that the building was once a synagogue is the large niche in the eastern wall, presumably for the Ark. Also, numerous stone fragments with carved Hebrew inscriptions were found during excavations for the renovation.

European Day of Jewish Culture -- Sept. 5

 Synagogue, Radauti, Romania. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The annual European Day of Jewish Culture is coming up -- this year, it's Sept. 5. This is the 11th edition of the "Day" -- I was present at the meeting in Paris in 1999 when it was decided to sponsor an international, cross-border Culture Day, broadening the effort that had already been under way in the Alsace region of France since 1996.

Organization is at the local level, but each year a different general theme is chosen to more or less link events, which this year are said to be taking place in nearly 30 countries -- though programs for only 16 countries are listed on the web site.

Italy remains perhaps the most enthusiastic participant, with events in some 62 locales, including many places where no Jews live.

The theme chosen this year is "Art and Judaism." Events focus on:

  - Different kinds of art: paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, literature, music, films, theatre
  - Different artists: painters, sculptors, writers, actors, composers and performers, directors
  - Different periods: ancient, medieval, modern, contemporary
  - Others: patrons of art, collections
  - Art applied in religious ceremony or in everyday life

You can see the program by clicking THIS LINK

Off Topic -- but a Pause that Refreshes the Soul

This video clip has nothing to do with Jewish Heritage travel, but I'm taking a cue from the Klezmer Shack's Ari Davidow and posting it anyway! After all, the artists, the song and the circumstances are deep within my own cultural/political/musical genes -- so maybe it at least has to do with Jewish Heritage....my parents used to talk about how they had drunk beer with Woody Guthrie back in the 1940s, and Guthrie's LP "Bound For Glory", with narration by Will Geer, was one of the records that wafted me to sleep as a child (the other two big ones were Paul Robeson's "Songs of Free Men", and the original cast recording of "Carousel.")

So -- Bruce Springsteen backs Pete Seeger as he leads hundreds of thousands of people at the big concert for Obama at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday, singing a full version of "This Land Is Your Land."

Emotions on Visiting a Jewish Cemetery in (East-Central) Europe

Nazna, Romania, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Visiting a Jewish cemetery in Europe, and particularly in East-Central Europe, can be an emotional experience.

This holds true whether you go there as a volunteer helping clean up an abandoned cemetery overgrown by weeds and trees, or as someone on a roots trip looking for a long-lost, or long-forgotten, family grave, or as a "straight" tourist interested in history or the powerful imagery of tombstone art.

In the introductory chapter of Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to Eastern Europe I addressed these emotions, describing how I myself felt when I began exploring these sites.

I became absolutely mesmerized, even a little obsessed with what I was seeing. I wanted to visit, touch, see, feel as many places as I could. I almost felt it a duty. As I entered broken gates or climbed over broken walls into cemeteries where a Jew may not have set foot in years, I wanted to spread my arms and embrace them all, embrace all the tombstones, all the people buried there, all the memories.

In the first editions of the book, I added a further sentence, describing how I projected my thoughts toward these all so often forgotten places: I'm here, I told them mentally; SOMEONE is here.

Back then, my trips were voyages of discovery. Everything was new; there was little literature on the subject, few visitors had made their way to such sites, and there were few efforts to preserve, maintain or restore them. But even today, after scholars and genealogists and tour guides have studied and mapped and documented almost everything -- I still feel the pull.

An eloquent expression of the power of this pull -- one that in many ways mirrors my own feelings -- was recently published in the Jerusalem Post. It's an article called "The Other Side," by Jonathan Gillis, who had taken part in a project to restore the Jewish cemetery in Czestochowa, Poland. The article is a tribute to the late Aryeh Geiger, the founder and head of the Reut School in Jerusalem, who also instituted the school's project to restore Jewish cemeteries in Poland. I did not know Geiger, who died at the end of 2008.

Gillis describes working to find stones hidden by ivy and undergrowth and heaving to right them and turn them over. And he describes reading a letter, originally composed by Geiger, that imagines how the individual people whose lives are marked by the individual stones might address the strangers who had suddenly come into their midst to seek them out, restore them to light and, thus, restore them also to memory:

I chose a tombstone quite near to the main path running through the cemetery. It was one I'd uncovered myself that morning, as I'd searched about under the ivy with my metal bar: the tombstone of an avrech - a young unmarried man stricken down in the prime of his youth. His name, which looked like Ya'acov, had been partly chipped off the stone, though the name of his father, Naftali, was clearly there, and also the date he had died.

I sat down on the ground next to the grave and lit the candle, and then opened the folded-up paper and, by the candlelight in the gathering gloom, read the letter Aryeh had once written in his own hand: "Dear Friend," it read, "First of all I wanted to say thank you to you for coming to visit me from the Holy Land. When you all entered my little fortress by the gateway, I was sure I was hallucinating and that my mind was deceiving me. Of course I don't have eyes or a body, and quite possibly my bones have long since disintegrated... however my spirit and soul are very much here and alive in this cemetery.

"I don't know why you came to me now. I know that you have cleaned me and restored me and my friends, and we all feel as if our spirits have been splendidly brought back to life by this.

"You know I too was alive once, breathed the air, loved, hiked, prayed; I was also once a very proud Jew. Then, after I left the world, it made me sad when the undergrowth came and hid me. I felt neglected and abandoned. And then, suddenly, you appeared, reconnected with my soul and 'revived' me.

"If you don't mind, I would like to ask you a few questions - from 'the other side' as it were... from behind the screen - the world that you call 'the world of truth' (though my soul is actually present right here this evening) - just a few questions from me to you: Who are you really?

"What brought you to me and what was it really that made you decide to visit me and revive me? How beautiful is the Land of Israel - is it important to you that you are an Israeli?

"Do you gain satisfaction from being Jewish?

"For as long as you're on 'the other side,' what is it you want to do with your life?

"Will you remember me when you leave here?

"What is it in your view that gives life value?

"I do hope you'll think about these questions because I would like you to continue talking with me. Even if you leave me here, I'd still like to stay in touch. I'd like you to remember me always, and always feel free to talk with me (a dialogue of souls).

"On behalf of myself and all my friends, I am very grateful. Now my soul really does dwell in the realm of life.

"With love, and thanks, your tombstone."

Read Full Article

Back in 1991, while researching the first edition of Jewish Heritage Travel, I had an almost mystical experience in the old Jewish cemetery in Nazna, near Targu Mures, Romania. Here, in a sort of clearing in the center, I found one stone shaped almost like a human being; its back even curved like the back of a living person. I somehow felt a living presence. Not that the stone was "alive", but that it embodied a strong, surviving spirit. A man, a mentsch. I was very reluctant to leave. The man buried here was named Moses, son of Israel. His epitaph tells us that he was a man of integrity; the carved decoration represents a crown, and an upside-down heart pierced by an arrow.

I keep a picture of me and the stone tacked to the bulletin board above my desk -- the stone stood upright, almost as tall as I am. It was early early spring; barren and still chill.

When I visited Nazna again, 15 years later, I was as excited to revisit that stone as I would have been to revisit a friend I hadn't seen in that long a time...This time it was summer, and the fruit trees planted since I had last been there made a rich, green, leafy bower. The stone seemed to be more tilted over, as if by added age. Its carved decoration, too, was more blurred. Still, the connection was there. I felt the same spirit, only a little older perhaps, like me. It was still a man, a mentsch. And it was great to see him.

Nazna, Romania, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Synagogue restored in Beirut

This is a bit out of the 'hood, but Haaretz runs a nice piece about the restoration of the Maghen Abraham Synagogue synagogue in downtown Beirut....

Renovations on the ruined synagogue, which was built in 1925, began in 2009

after an agreement between various religious denominations and permission from the Lebanese government, planning authorities and even Hezbollah. The project received the green light after political officials and community leaders became convinced it could show that Lebanon is an open country, tolerant of many faiths including Judaism. [...]

Renovations have included mending the gaping hole in the Moroccan-style synagogue's roof and repairing the chandeliers that once hung from it. The Torah ark and prayer benches will also be refurbished to their former states, having been seriously damaged in fighting between Muslim and Christian forces during the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war.

Several dozen Jews still living in Lebanon will fund the project to the tune of $200,000, along with others in the Diaspora. The project has also received a $150,000 grant from Solidere, a construction firm tasked with rebuilding central Beirut from the destruction of the civil war. The company is privately owned by the family of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister assassinated in 2005.

Read full story by clicking RIGHT HERE

Czech Republic --video from Boskovice Festival

Here's a youtube video of a performance in the old synagogue in Boskovice from this summer's Boskovice Festival -- a jazz version of Lecha Dodi prayer, composed by Peter Gyori (also on guitar) and sung by Lenka Lichtenberg.

Italy -- New Museum of Memory and Welcome

Many (many) years ago, while driving near the beautiful baroque city of Lecce in the very heel of the Italian boot, I was startled to pass by a building with Hebrew lettering on its wall....I didn't stop to find out what that was all about, and I've never really remembered just where it was, but given the inauguration of a new museum near Lecce this week, the Hebrew must have had something to do with the seacoast village of Santa Maria al Bagno, near Nardo.

Here, on Jan. 14, museum commemorating tens of thousands of Jewish Holocaust refugees was opened -- the Museum of Memory and Welcome (Museo della Memoria e dell'Accoglienza).

Between 1943 and 1947 as many as 150,000 Jews fleeing Europe for Palestine, then still under British control, found shelter in and around Nardo. The museum, designed by the Rome architect Luca Zevi, was opened in Santa Maria al Bagno, which was one of the main refugee centers. Here, Jewish institutions including a synagogue, canteen, orphanage and hospital were set up.

Three newly restored murals painted by one of the refugees, Romanian-born Zivi Miller, form the centerpiece of the museum. The murals were painted on a building that was long abandoned -- maybe these are what I glimpsed from the car window. One shows a lighted menorah; one depicts the journey of Jews from southern Italy toward Palestine, and the third shows a Jewish mother a child asking a British soldier to allow them to enter.

For Italian-readers, here's a link to the local town web site, which has pictures of the ceremony.

It sounds like a fascinating place -- and I hope to be able to make the long trip down there later in the year.

Pisa -- Vandalized Synagogue Already in Bad Repair

I filed a brief story for JTA about a vandal attack this week on the synagogue in Pisa, probably linked to the crisis in Gaza. Five eggs filled with red paint were thrown at the buildings facade, leaving five red splashes, like blood.

The Pisa Mayor said the city will take care of cleaning up the damage. But the sad fact is that the synagogue as a whole is a very bad repair. Writing on moked.it, the web site of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, Journalist Piera Di Segni says it is in a "particularly alarming" state, closed for use for more than a year because of serious structural damage and a hole in the roof. Photographs on the site show missing tiles in the roof.

You can see an earlier article, from last summer, in the Florence newspaper La Nazione, by clicking HERE.

The synagogue was built in the 16th century (transforming an earlier medieval structure) and remodeled in the 1860s by the architect Marco Treves.

The Moked.it article is part of a series the site is posting on Jewish cultural heritage in Italy.

For Italian-readers, I'm posting Piera Di Segni's entire article below. You can see the entire series at the culture section of the moked.it site.

Beni da salvare 6 Pisa: “La sinagoga è in pericolo” Nel panorama del patrimonio artistico ebraico italiano c’è una situazione particolarmente allarmante: la sinagoga di Pisa. Inagibile a causa di gravi danni al tetto e alle strutture, è chiusa da oltre un anno. “Noi qui svolgevamo le funzioni religiose il sabato e le feste, ora siamo costretti a pregare nel sottoscala”, è il grido di dolore che arriva da Guido Cava, presidente della comunità. La situazione danneggia prima di tutto la vita religiosa della comunità, ma non solo: ”la sinagoga era aperta alle scolaresche di tutta la regione che facevano qui delle visite guidate e imparavano qualcosa sulla nostra storia, sull’ebraismo“ aggiunge il presidente. Il fatto che sia chiusa “è un danno per tutta la collettività”. Al piano terra, alla base di un ampio scalone, sono sistemati alcuni banchi e un Aron, un oratorio improvvisato dove gli ebrei di Pisa, nell'ultimo anno, si sono adattati a fare tefillah. E quando si entra nella sala di preghiera, al primo piano, si notano subito i segni dei danneggiamenti: crepe che si aprono come ferite lungo i muri e la volta, macchie di umidità che mangiano a poco a poco i colori delle decorazioni, macchie bianche di intonaco che tradiscono interventi fatti con urgenza, per bloccare danni maggiori. Salendo fino al matroneo, più vicino alla volta, sono ancora più visibili i danni provocati dal lento e inesorabile stillicidio dell'acqua penetrata attraverso il tetto, che si era infiltrata anche nell'Aron, l’armadio che custodisce i rotoli della Legge. La sinagoga di Pisa, in via Palestro, nei pressi del Teatro Verdi e non lontano dall’Arno, fu ristrutturata nelle sue forme attuali a metà dell’800, modificando un tempio che risaliva al 1500, nato a sua volta dalla trasformazione di antichi edifici medievali. Il progetto fu affidato all’architetto Marco Treves, nato a Vercelli, protagonista dell’architettura sinagogale dell’epoca dell’emancipazione in Italia: nell’archivio della comunità sono conservati alcuni suoi disegni autografi che illustrano il progetto col sapore del tempo. La facciata è semplice, ma ben riconoscibile dall’esterno. La sala di preghiera, sobria ed elegante, in stile neoclassico, è illuminata da ampie finestre sui due lati; il matroneo è sorretto da colonne e la sala è sormontata da una volta ricca di decorazioni. “La volta è una carena di nave rovesciata: sotto al tetto ci sono delle doghe di legno, dei travicelli che sorreggono un incannucciato. Questa base di cannette è stata intonacata a calce e poi sono state fatte le decorazioni, che sono tempere, non affreschi”, spiega l’ingegner Piero Cesare Rini. La volta ha subito gravi danneggiamenti: crepe, macchie di muffa e di umidità sono i segni visibili di un danno ancora più grave. Un anno fa forti infiltrazioni d’acqua hanno provocato un crollo del tetto. Approfittando del varco i piccioni vi hanno nidificato, producendo quintali di guano e peggiorando la situazione. Il danno è stato tamponato provvisoriamente, con un primo intervento d’urgenza di 35.000 euro finanziato con i fondi della legge 175. Ma le strutture e la volta corrono seri rischi. “La copertura a volta e il tetto sono interconnessi tra di loro, non possono essere smontati e rimontati, vanno restaurati” sottolinea l’ingegner Rini. Si prospetta dunque un intervento molto delicato e complesso che viene ad aggiungersi al complessivo progetto di restauro architettonico e archivistico per il quale sono stati richiesti i finanziamenti della legge 175 per oltre 600 mila euro. “Il meccanismo dei finanziamenti è complicato” spiega Federico Prosperi, un giovane medico che, da volontario, si occupa degli aspetti burocratici “prima si fa il lavoro poi, a consuntivo, arrivano i rimborsi. Per una comunità piccola come quella di Pisa è molto difficile trovare i fondi da anticipare, e si tratta di centinaia di migliaia di euro”. La chiusura della sinagoga sottrae agli ebrei di Pisa il loro centro vitale, ma piano piano si affrontano le varie fasi del restauro: alcuni lavori sono già stati effettuati, iniziando da un importante lavoro sull'impianto elettrico. La speranza è che attraverso i finanziamenti richiesti questa bella sinagoga torni ad essere il centro della vita della comunità e venga e restituita alla città, come parte importante della storia e della cultura ebraica, ma anche pregevole testimonianza del patrimonio artistico italiano. Piera Di Segni