Poland -- Tablet magazine on Krakow (mentioning Virtually Jewish)

Crowd gathers for the final concert. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Though I was in Krakow for the last few days of the Festival of Jewish Culture, I haven't (yet...) contributed to the annual crop of articles about it... but I was happy to see this nice mention of Virtually Jewish in the "Letter from Krakow" piece by Roger Bennett run in Tablet Magazine.

Krakow is a town in which the Holocaust is everywhere—thanks to the battery of brightly colored wagons, little bigger than golf carts, that litter the streets, energetically competing to lure visitors onto a series of niche tours they market via menus emblazoned on their sides. Trips to Auschwitz, “Kazimierz Ghetto,” and “Schindler’s Factory” are advertised alongside “Pope’s Krakow” and Wawel Castle as if they are all great days out for the whole family, despite the fact that while the last two are national jewels, the former are scars that stretch across the heart of the city. 65,000 Jews lived in Krakow before the war, amounting to 25 percent of the population. They now number a mere 200. Their absence hangs heavy, and if these tour carts were the sole custodians of their memory, they would surely soon be forgotten. But over the past 19 years, the Krakow Jewish Culture Festival has provided a critical public space for its audience to grapple with the stains of their history. This tangled phenomenon has been well-documented by the remarkable Ruth Ellen Gruber in her book Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe and our first encounter with it on this evening served to underline just how complex a task it can be.

Krakow -- It's That Time of Year Again.....

Exhibition during Festival in the High Synagogue, 2008. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

It's that time of year again, the run-up to the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, and articles are beginning to appear in newpapers and online....click here for one in the Jerusalem Post. According to the Festival's web site, the Festival recently took first place in a survey on what is Krakow's best product for tourists.

This year's festival has several points of interest that set it apart -- one will be the performance by the Other Europeans group of Yiddish and Gypsy (Lautari) musicians, part of a tour that is the culmination of this wonderful two-year project. The other is the selection of expanded day trips to shtetls in the Krakow area. Parts of the Festival will also be transmitted live on Internet.

I've attended most of the festivals in the past 20 years (it was founded in 1988) and have both taken part in them, giving talks or presentations of my books, and written about it in my books and in publications ranging from the International Herald Tribune to Polin, the scholarly annual on Polish-Jewish relations.

The article I wrote back in 1995 for the International Herald Tribune (now on the New York Times web site) still sums up much of the experience - what has changed is that Szeroka, the main square of the old Jewish quarter Kazimierz, is no longer very dilapidated, and that many more Jewish visitors now form part of the festival crowds.

On the rain-soaked main square of Krakow's dilapidated old Jewish quarter, thousands of Poles cheered, clapped, sang and danced well past midnight recently as klezmer bands playing traditional East European Jewish music and Israeli musicians sent their sounds blasting into the night.

The concert was the five-hour finale of the city's Fifth Festival of Jewish Culture — a festival that some have described as a "Jewish Woodstock."

Throughout the festival week, the old Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, and other parts of the city were the scene of concerts, theatrical performances, exhibitions, films, street happenings and workshops rooted in Jewish heritage.

Most of the performers and artists were Jews from the United States, Israel and Western Europe. But the overwhelming majority of the audience were non-Jewish Poles, joined by a handful of foreign Jewish tourists and members of the tiny local Jewish community.

Read full story

I'm not sure if I will get to Krakow for the festival this year....I've left it rather late to line up accommodation (as I thought I would have to be elsewhere at the time). But who knows. I have long regarded the festival week as the best party going -- and so many of my friends will be there....

Click HERE to see a video of my being interviewed during the Festival in 2007.

And remember -- the Krakow festival is just one (though the biggest and most venerable) of many Jewish festivals around Europe this summer -- see HERE for information and links to a score of them.

Poland -- Some new Jewish travel resources

I'm doing a little updating on Jewish Heritage Travel, for inclusion in the Hungarian edition of the book that is currently undergoing translation, and in doing so I have come across various new (or newish) web sites that are useful for Jewish heritage travelers. Some have downloadable maps and recommendations for accommodation and dining.

Here are a few of them -- I'll be posting more:

Poland Jewish Heritage Tours -- a new program launched by the Taube Foundation

Jewish Krakow -- I'm not sure who runs this new English language site

Jewish Lublin (with a downloadable map) -- English language site of the Lublin branch of the Warsaw Jewish Community

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 -- Yale Strom Remembers Henryk Halkowski

Yale Strom, the klezmer musician, writer and filmmaker, has been exploring eastern Europe and its Jewish culture for decades.... He send this vivid and loving recollection of Henryk Halkowski.

The news of Henryk's death both shocks and saddens me. I've known Henryk (or Tsvi, as I always called him) since 1984. Tsvi, along with Jerzy Kichler and Joasia Swieciki (my former wife), formed the nucleus of the revival of Yiddish culture in Krakow before the wall came down. This was 6 years before the first Krakow Jewish Festival. After Jerzy moved to Wroclaw and took over the leadership of the Jewish club there, Tsvi became the leader of the Jewish club of Krakow. All my forays to Krakow over 20 years included visits and meals with Tsvi, and a performance and lecture at his club. Tsvi represented a group of young Jews - almost a forgotten generation - born to survivors in the late 40's-early 50's, who for myriad reasons never married. An only son, Tsvi was extraordinarily loyal and devoted to his parents, and then to his mother once his father passed away. Tsvi was offered a scholarship to study and lecture at NYU, but turned it down to stay with his mother, who was originally from Vienna. Tsvi is featured in several of my documentary films, because he was, in my opinion, the most knowledgeable Jew about Krakow Jewish history and folklore. After the wall came down and with the seeds of Jewish culture sprouting, Tsvi was an integral part of this movement. He was linked with the Jewish festival, where he gave insightful commentary (often at an RPM that rivals my own) on papers he'd written, including several of his books. He was able to bridge the divide between the old Jews of Krakow, who had a certain amount of power and status in the 1970's and '80's and the new Jews who participated in the revival. I last saw Tsvi in September of 2008, when he gave me his usual pungent and satirical historical insight into the erection of the new apartment building that will shamefully tower over the Remuh's cemetery. As I had every other time since 1984, I walked away from this meeting laughing and crying and savoring our conversation. Wherever one walked in Kaczimiercz, regardless of the time of day or night (and Tsvi particularly liked to walk the streets at night), you couldn't help but run into him, then have a drink, then have a meal. I endearingly called him "The Mayor of Kaczimiercz". Tsvi's last project was editing Khasidic stories of the Bratslaver Rebe and we talked about this over latkes at the Klezmer-Hois. His intellect was eclipsed only by his gentle sweetness. His ghost, like so many others, will hover over Krakow. The world will truly miss this "pintele Yid".

Sad News from Krakow -- Death of Henryk Halkowski

The inimitable Henryk Halkowski, one of foremost (and colorful) Jewish personalities in contemporary Poloand, died in Krakow of a sudden heart attack around midnight the night of Jan. 1-2...He had turned 57 only a few days earlier.

A writer, translator and consumate luftmensch, Henryk possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of Jewish culture , lore, heritage and history in Krakow and introduced me and countless others to many of the citys Jewish mysteries.

Henryk was unique. I will write more about him in a later post.

Poland -- New Schindler's Factory museum in Krakow

 Schindler's desk. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

When I was in Krakow for the Festival of Jewish Culture, I had the opportunity to visit the new Schindler's Factory museum -- a branch of the city's History Museum that tells the story of the Nazi occupation of Krakow in 1939-45 and is located in the administration building of what was Oskar Schindler's enamelware factory.

 Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The museum is a wonderful combination of traditional objects and interactivity and in particular uses sound in a remarkably evocative way.

I wrote a piece for the International Herald Tribune and New York Times web site.

On June 11, the factory’s sprawling administration building opened as Krakow’s newest museum, an ambitious, multimedia evocation of Krakow’s experience under Nazi occupation from 1939 to 1945. Three years in the making, Schindler’s Museum (4 Lipowa Street, www.mhk.pl) cost €3.7 million, or about $4.7 million.

The new museum uses Schindler’s famous story as a springboard to recount a broader narrative that encompasses oppression and resilience, heroism and deceit.

“The history we see here is a reminder that there is an alternative to inaction, a reminder that when we learn of crimes that cry out against our conscience we cannot stand by in quiet revulsion, hoping the world will fix itself,” said the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who toured the museum during an official visit to Krakow July 3.

Formally a branch of Krakow’s Historical Museum, Schindler’s Factory is “a museum of the occupation that shows what the wartime experience was like in Krakow and shows the context of all the stories — of Jews in Krakow, of Oskar Schindler, of Cracovians, of the German occupiers,” said Edyta Gawron, a historian who was part of the team that developed the museum concept. “Such a museum was needed,” she said. “People visit Auschwitz, but they have no idea of what life was like here in Krakow.”The new museum combines photographs, artifacts and other traditional objects with interactive components, sound, set-piece reconstructions and film and photo projections to provide a full-immersion effect.

You can watch contemporary film footage out the windows of a wartime-era tram, for example — film of traffic, pedestrians, soldiers and roundups. Or peek into cramped family quarters or the hideout of underground resistance fighters. Or read posters announcing everything from circus performances to executions.

A labyrinthine route leads through exhibit sections based on chronology, specific themes, and the experiences of individuals. Personal testimony and interviews are used throughout. The choices people had to make in order to survive also form part of the story, and some sections deal with collaboration and betrayal.

Sound effects ranging from music to reproduced radio broadcasts to ordinary city noises heighten the impact of the visuals.

The symbolism is sometimes tangible. One section is paved with floor tiles that bear the Nazi swastika.

“It was a dilemma how to show Nazi symbols without seeming to promote them,” Ms. Gawron said, “but in this case, though some people are shocked, it clearly works — the swastikas are there, but they are being trampled underfoot.”

Read full story HERE

The one aspect of the museum that has raised criticism (among people I talked to) is the section on the role of the Catholic Church during the occupation, and in particular that of the Archbishop of Krakow, Adam Sapieha. The information panel on Sapieha states that he aided Jews by intervening with German authorities and urging local clergy to help hide Jews and issue false baptismal papers.

 Photo: Emily Finer

But it ignores the general anti-semitic attitudes expressed by the church and Sapieha himself. I was told, however, that more information including interactive material would be added to this section of the museum exhibit. I hope this is true and that the full context will be presented.

Poland Backlog

 Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

I'm in Poland, and I have a lot to post about Jewish heritage in the little (rather depressed and depressing) town of Piotrkow Trybunalski -- and also my impressions from Krakow, where I am attending the latest edition -- the 20th --  of the Festival of Jewish Culture.

I doubt if anyone out there is holding their breath for these reports..... but I'll get to them! Meanwhile a photo or two from the wonderful Jewish cemetery in Piotrkow....

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Poland -- Festivals (not Krakow....)

 Synagogue in Chmielnik, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

By now, the Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow, which marks its 20th edition this year (June 26-July 4), is wellknown around the world. But Poland is host to many other Jewish culture festivals of one sort or another, which frequently take place in towns and villages where Jews no longer live. This month, for example, there are at least three: in Bialystok, Sejny and Chmielnik.

The Zahor: Color and Sound Jewish culture festival takes place June 13-15 in Bialystok. It features lectures, concerts and films.

Another edition of the annual Musicians' Raft  series of workshops/concerts/events on Yiddish culture, held in Sejny, near the Lithuanian border, June 13-19 and organized by the Borderland Foundation, a wonderful foundation dedicated to presenting and preserving minority cultures in Poland and elsewhere.

Young music bands from Central Europe, Israel, Turkey, Denmark, New York and Great Britain will to participate in the project: Steve Swell (NY), Mikołaj Trzaska (Gdańsk), Mark Sanders (London), Olie Brice (London), Raphael Rogiński (Warszawa), Paul Brody (Berlin), Gökçe Kilincer (London), Tahir Palali (London), Peter Ole Jørgensen (Kopenhagen) and Klezmer Band from Sejny. The meeting of experienced musicians, who refer to tradition, and young artists, who prefer the new sounds, will be really interesting. Rummy music experiments are expected! The seminars about the yiddish culture in Central-Eastern Europe are the integral part of the project. The seminars are set to lead by well-known scholars and attended by 15 students who would like to learn more about Jewish history.

June 18-20, the 8th annual "Meetings with Jewish Culture" takes place in the small villages of Szydlow and Chmielnik, in south-central Poland. No Jews live in either village, but both  boast huge historic former synagogues.

VIII MEETINGS WITH JEWISH CULTURE


SZYDŁOW – CHMIELNIK


18-20 JUNE 2010



Friday, 18 june 2010 – Szydlow



17:00 (5 p.m.) - Theatrical spectacle: “Chasidy Stories” by Jewish Theatre.


18:00 (6 p.m.) - Theatrical spectacle in execution of young people from Szydlow’s school.


19:00 (7 p.m.) - Open the exhibition called "I see faces, hear steps" made by Malgorzata Gladyszewska and the painting-sculpturing of the Plastic Arts Association in Kielce.


19:20 (7:20 p.m.) - The "Qartet Klezmer Trio" team from Krakow concert on the market.


20:35 (8:35 p.m.) – finish show.



19 – 20 JUNE 2010 – CHMIELNIK

Saturday, 19 june 2010 - the House of Culture in Chmielnik


17:00 (5 p.m.) – open the photo exhibition by Ryszard Biskup and drawing & graphic arts by Cezary Zdrojewski.


17:35 (5:35 p.m.) – premiere the videoclip of “Chmielnikers” band.


17:40 (5:40 p.m.) - dancing show inspired by the Jewish music made by children from the Elementary School in Chmielnik.


18:00 (6 p.m.) - Theatrical performance called "On the world borderland" made by Poem Theatre "In Radziwill" from Szydlowiec.


18:40 (6:40 p.m.) - Theatrical performance called "Jonash – The Prophet" made by Theatre Team "Bonteo" from Krakow.


19:15 (7:15 p.m.) - dancing show inspired by the Jewish music made by children from the Basic School in Chmielnik.


20:00 (8 p.m.) – “Jidisze Perl” – Jewish religious songs by Nina Stiller. Piano – Artur Jerzy Zielinski.


21:00 (p.m.) - finish show.


Sunday, 20 june 2010.


12:00 (12 noon) - The solemn holy mass in the Church in Chmielnik.


In the Synagogue in Chmielnik:


13:30 (1:30 p.m.) - Open the exhibition called "Jews from Chmielnik story" made by Leszek Wawrzyk.


13:45 (1:45 p.m.) – Performance called “This cities wasn’t there…” – singer Ewa Warta Smietana, recite Jerzy Trela.


15:00 – “Around Chopin music” – piano Krystyna Man-Szczepanczyk.


At the time: 13:00 - 20:00 at the Synagogue on the Sienkiewicza and Wspolna street will be the introductions of handicraft, Jewish food, plastic performances as well as the demonstrations of Jewish art of boiling, illumined the performance of klezmer team called the "Klezmafour".


On the Market:


16:00 (4 p.m.) – Shows by the children and youth:


- dancing show inspired by the Jewish music made by children from the Elementary School in Chmielnik.


- “Szmoncesy” - theatrical performance by children from Elementary and Basic School in Chmielnik.


16:15 (4:15 p.m.) – Jewish dance practice part 1 – by Ewa Gajo.


16:45 (4:45 p.m.) – The final of the Second Youth Jewish Songs Contest in Chmielnik.


17:30 (5:30 p.m.) – Band “Chmielnikers” concert.


18:15 (6:15 p.m.) – Results of the Second Youth Jewish Songs Contest in Chmielnik.


18:30 (6:30 p.m.) - dancing show inspired by the Jewish music made by girls from the Basic School in Chmielnik.


18:45 (6:45 p.m.) – Jewish dance practice part 2 – by Ewa Gajo.


20:00 (8 p.m.) – Leonard Cohen’s songs “The deep of the heart” by Pawel Orkisz & Band.


21:30 (9:30 p.m.) – finish show.

Synagogues -- Painted Curtains, etc

Sam Gruber has posted a detailed description and commentary on the Kupa synagogue in Krakow, based on a visit he made there recently. It's an excellent guide to the synagogue and discussion of issues raised in the restoration/renewal of the building carried out several years ago. He discusses in some detail the decorative painting on the walls and ceiling of the sanctuary.

The synagogue was in very dilapidated condition when I saw it first in 1990. I was told it had been used as a matzo factory after WW2. In Virtually Jewish, I quoted Monika Krajewska, who first visited the Kupa synagogue in the 1970s, when it was used as a warehouse:

"We stared at the walls, with their paintings: the lions, the deer, all the things that relate to Jewish biblical tradition of synagogue decoration. And there were workers who were just installing additional shelves; they were making holes in the lion's nose, in the instruments of the Levites painted on the ceiling."

Among the decorative elements discussed by Sam is that of curtains painted around the Ark -- in the picture below, Alan Bern, on piano, accompanies Lorin Sklamberg singing in front of the Ark of the Kupa at the Jewish Culture Festival in 2004.

Photo (c) R. E. Gruber


Sam writes:

A second decorative element that interests me a lot is the painting around the Ark, which is a large and impressive Baroque construction. On the wall behind the projecting stone Ark is painted a large red curtain, drawn apart just above the apex of the Ark. Of course this too, can have Temple associations, since a curtain in the Temple hung before the entrance of the Holy of Holies. Here, though, the curtain is hung behind the Ark, and it is open. What does it mean? Is it an earthly curtain, intended to create the illusion of greater synagogue space? Is it a symbolic curtain, representing either Temple or perhaps the revelation of the Torah? Or perhaps is it a curtain allowing a glimpse form this world into another? It could be all these things, or none. I’m not going to decide. But since I’m looking I am seeing these curtains almost everywhere - and they are one of the favorite European (or Polish) synagogue decorative devices carried over by immigrant artists from the old world to the new. I'm still looking for some contemporary user - a rabbi or congregant - who commented on their position and use.

I, too, have seen painted curtains around Arks in synagogues in several countries. Here is a short slide show of some of them: you can see the variety of construction of the Ark itself, as well as the way in which the curtain motif is used.

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 -- Austeria in Krakow

Austeria book store, Krakow. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

I was pleased to see a nice mention of Austeria publisher in Krakow, as part of a story in the Jerusalem Post about Jewish renewal in Krakow.

The new Polish-language book Dovev Siftei Yeshenim (The Utterings of the Lips of the Sleepers), written by Krakow's Rabbi Boaz Pash, is an effort to bring back to life the voices of the city's rabbinic tradition in the place where it all happened. The book is a collection of interpretations on the weekly Torah portion written by some of the greatest rabbis Krakow ever produced.

"Everyone has heard about the rabbis and sages of Krakow, but who can quote them?" asks Pash. "What member of the current generation that is living and growing up in Poland can open their books? This book and others of its kind represent an attempt to meet that need."

The book begins with 15th century scholar Rabbi Yom Tov Milhausen, and continues with such luminaries of the Jewish bookshelf as the 16th century giant Rabbi Moshe Isserles, better known as the Rama, and the 17th-century halachist Rabbi Yoel Sirkas, the Bach.

"Poland is experiencing a renewal of Jewish culture and a demand for more information about Judaism, both in the past and present," says Pash.

Indeed, the book's publisher, the local Jewish publishing house Austeria, is part of that revival, owned by a Krakow couple who run a Jewish-themed café, bookstore and hotel. At 30 zlotys (about NIS 40), it is priced for popular consumption.

Austeria is run by Wojtek and Malgosia Ornat, who also run the Klezmer Hois cafe/restaurant/hotel, a Jewish book store and a Jewish art gallery (in the High Synagogue).

Austeria published my book "Letters from Europe (and Elsewhere)" last year.

New Book on Jewish Heritage Published -- "Reclaiming Memory"

Tempel Synagogue, Krakow. July 2009. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I'm delighted to announced the publication of a new book, to which I have contributed. It's called Reclaiming Memory: Urban regeneration in the historic Jewish quarters of Central European Cities, and it is published by the International Cultural Center in Krakow, Poland.

Edited by Monika Murzyn-Kupisz and Jacek Purchla, the book is the English language version of a collection of essays that was already published last year in Poland.

The essays included form the proceedings of a conference held in June 2007.

I've contributed a piece in my "beyond Virtually Jewish" mode, dealing with the creation of "new authenticities" and "real imaginary spaces" in today's world. It is a delight to be in a collection whose other contributors include Miriam Akavia, Leopold Unger, Janusz Makuch, Magdalena Waligorska, Martha Keil, Arno Parik, Jarolsav Klenovsky, Lena Bergman, Adam Bartosz and others.

Reclaiming memory – the theme of the conference organised by the International Cultural Centre in Krakow in June 2007 – is one of the most significant issues in Central Europe since the fall of communism. One salient aspect of this issue is Jewish heritage, for so many centuries such an expressive facet of the identity of this part of the continent, yet now survived only by a hollow echo. Vibrant districts were reduced by the Holocaust to lifeless spaces – witnesses to tragedy, orphaned monuments to a culture sentenced to annihilation, and in the best case to oblivion.

With the fall of communism and the restitution of freedom to Central Europe, the time came to reclaim that memory. The rediscovery of Jewish culture has become a characteristic feature of the transformation of the region’s largest metropolises: Berlin, Budapest, Prague, Vilnius and Warsaw.

The papers brought together in this publication go further than a simple general analysis of the issues attendant upon attempts at regeneration of former centres of Jewish culture since 1989. Their authors have tried to take a wider angle on the subject of Jewish heritage, and in particular on what Ruth E. Gruber aptly dubs its “new authenticity” and the phenomenon of “real imagined space”. For the question arises whether, paradoxically, this rapid evolution from a phase of destruction to rampant commercialisation will not eradicate completely the testimony to the Jewish presence in our culture that even the Holocaust failed to destroy?

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