NY Jewish Week profiles me & my Jewish heritage work

Me in Hostice, CZ, in front of the long-abandoned synagogue

Writing in the New York Jewish Week, travel writer Hilary Danailova profiles me and my Jewish heritage and Jewish heritage travel work, including the Jewish Heritage Europe web site. 

Heritage Tourism In Europe

10/13/15

Hilary Danailova

From Poland to Portugal, nobody knows Jewish Europe like Ruth Ellen Gruber.

On a given week, the Philadelphia-born journalist might be checking out a newly opened museum, inspecting the restoration of a prewar synagogue, or picking her way through forest brambles in search of long-lost tombstones. That explains how Gruber found herself recently in the wilderness south of Prague, where she stumbled onto an 18th-century Jewish cemetery in a clearing near a faded sign marking “Synagogue Street.”

“Here’s this place in the middle of nowhere, and actually, there used to be a synagogue here,” recalled Gruber, who was sleuthing with the aid of locals. “It gave me that sense of discovery that I used to find everywhere. When I find a place that thrills me or makes me feel that sense of wonder again … I loved it.”

The thrill of discovery is something Gruber shares with a growing number of enthusiasts through the website she oversees, Jewish Heritage Europe. A project of the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe, JHE is a comprehensive web portal for all things Jewish overseas: festivals, institutions, scholarship, synagogues and cemeteries.

Under Gruber’s direction, JHE has evolved into an essential travel resource. With an engaging redesign and the recent launch of “Have Your Say,” a feature that invites interactive commentary, JHE makes Jewish Europe more accessible — and more communal — than ever.

Gruber has long occupied a front-row seat for the show that is modern Europe. Since the 1970s, she has reported from abroad for many major news outlets in North America; currently JTA’s senior European correspondent, next summer she will lead her first European Jewish heritage tour for The New York Times. [...]

Read the entire article on the Jewish Week web site

Nearly 25 years later, revisiting the old question : Should old synagogues in Eastern Europe be restored?

Exterior Rumbach st. synagogue, Budapest, December 2011. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

I'm crossposting this item that I put up today on Jewish Heritage Europe, the web site that I coordinate as a project of the Rothschild Foundation Europe. It looks back over the past quarter century of Jewish heritage preservation and priorities -- showing that despite progress that has been made and mind-sets that have changed, much still resonates:


Writing in September's Moment Magazine, Phyllis Myers posed the old question: should old synagogues in eastern Europe be saved?

Her answer — and mine — is, of course, a resounding YES.

It is important to remember, however, as Myers points out, that this answer was not self-evident — or even all that widely held — when she, and others involved in the field, first posed the question a quarter of a century ago, after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Myers first did so in a long article, also in Moment, published in 1990, called “The Old Shuls of Eastern Europe: Are They Worth Saving?”

It’s worth reading again today to get a sense of the situation on the ground — and in people’s mind-sets — back then, just as the movement to document and restore Jewish built heritage in eastern and central Europe was getting under way. In a sense, her article represented a sort of blueprint for what could — and should — be the preservation priorities for the coming generation.

As more restoration takes place, the need for integrity and creativity in communicating the many dimensions of the Jewish experience will grow. The answer is not just a series of plaques on the buildings. Or more exhibit cases of Jewish ceremonial objects. Or lists of famous Jews. We must strive to evoke a unique encounter between visitor and place. We need to remember that as time passes a n d travel increases, visi­tors will want to know more about how Jews lived as well as how Jews died.

A quarter of a century later, the essence of what she wrote still holds true. The priorities she outlined are still priorities that should be addressed, and — despite the many successes and great strides accomplished — her message and the concepts she framed still have a powerful resonance. Indeed, one of the synagogues whose deteriorated condition she specifically mentioned in 1990 – the Rumbach st. synagogue in Budapest — still languishes in a sorry state despite sporadic efforts to restore it.

   

Interior of Rumbach st. synagogue, 2011

“We preserve—buildings and places, the simple and the awesome—for many reasons,” Myers wrote in 1990.

We preserve to remember. For decades, Jewish preservation in Eastern Europe has focused primarily on places of death. Chasidim have tended cemeteries, especially the graves of Tzadikim (charismatic lead­ers), while other Jews have ensured that death camps remain as witnesses to a story that could otherwise become myth.
But preservation means Jewish life as well as death. When we walk in the footsteps of our forebears, contemplate their lives, stand in the places where they lived—and were betrayed—powerful linkages occur between their lives and ours.

We preserve to learn. American archi­tectural historian Carole Herselle Krinsky writes, “Synagogues…reveal especially clearly the connections between architecture and society.” Clues to self-perceptions of Jews over the centuries, the evolution of faith and culture and relations with Gentile neighbors abound in the shapes, materials, designs and settings of synagogues. Did a community choose Gothic or Moorish ar­ chitecture, site its synagogue on the street or set it back off a courtyard, retain a sepa­rate entrance for women or build a gallery in the main hall? Did it raise a dome high or low in the community’s skyline, place the bimah (pulpit) in the center of the main hall or on the east wall? Did it hire a Jewish, Gentile or Viennese architect? Why did poor Jewish artists in old Poland decorate their synagogue walls with colorful, representational frescoes and pious prayers?

We preserve to provide settings for dia­logue. It is true that in many places in East­ern Europe few, if any, Jews are left, and to talk about understanding, much less recon­ ciliation, would be glib. Yet a dialogue that goes beyond the “chamber of horrors” of the Shoah is clearly underway, fostered in special ways by sites embedded with memo­ries. [...]

We preserve to transcend. On Simchat Torah, 1989, Cracow’s revered Remuh Synagogue, rebuilt but used continuously since the mid-1550s, re­verberated as 40 Israeli teenagers took over the service from a forlorn group of elderly survivors and vibrantly danced and sang “Am Yisrael Chat”—the people of Israel live. The benefactor who paid for the Szeged synagogue’s restoration put it this way: “I just want to know that the synagogue I remem­ber from my childhood is still there.” [...]

We preserve to fulfill our commit­ ment to life. For preservation to play this role—or any successful role—in Eastern Europe, sites need to be acces­sible, marked and interpreted in com­pelling ways. [...]

Click here to read Myers’s 1990 Moment article

July Jewish Heritage Newsletter: Czech 10 Stars; Photo Galleries

Bimah and reconstructed Ark in the synagogue in Mikulov. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Please take a look at the July edition of the monthly newsletter of Jewish Heritage Europe -- the website on Jewish heritage issues that I coordinate as a project of the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe.

Access it by clicking here -- and sign up for regular monthly delivery.

This issue has two main "cover stories," plus links to other news from Poland, France, Austria, Hungary and elsewhere.

One cover theme  is the launch of new Photo Galleries on JHE -- galleries that readers are encouraged to contribute to.

The other is the inauguration in June of the wonderful Czech 10 Stars project, one of the most ambitious single Jewish heritage projects in Europe, linking 10 synagogues and associated Jewish heritage sites, in 10 towns all over the Czech Republic: in Úštěk, Jičín, and Brandýs nad Labem to the north; Plzeň and Březnice to the west; Nová Cerekev and Polná in the south-central part of the country; and Boskovice, Mikulov and Krnov to the east.

Synagogue interior, Polná. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

They have all been renovated (or re-renovated) with a mono-thematic exhibit installed in each to form 10 regional centers of Jewish culture and education (and tourism) -- sort of a nationwide Jewish museum..... (See previous JHE posts on the progress of the 10 Stars project HERE and HERE and HERE.)

Carried out by the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic, the 10 Stars was financed by an approximately €11 million grant from the EU, with further funding from the Czech Culture Ministry.

I traveled hundreds of kilometers over the past few weeks to visit seven of these sites -- and have posted galleries of pictures from most of them.

10 Stars web site

Prague Jewish Museum opens new visitor center

Photo: Jewish Museum Prague

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Prague Jewish Museum is the most visited museum in the Czech Republic -- drawing more than half a million visitors a year.

So in a way, it's high time that it has opened a new visitor information and reservation center.

The new facility opened Feb. 3 at Meiselsa 15, close to the historic synagogues that house the museum's collections, as well as to other Jewish sites such as the Old-New synagogue, the Old Jewish cemetery and the Jewish Town Hall.

According to the museum’s announcement on its web site:

This new site provides visitors with a multimedia information space and offers a range of additional services. It is an interactive information gateway with basic details about the monuments and permanent exhibitions in the Jewish Town, as well as about specific Jewish monuments in Prague and the rest of the Czech Republic. It also contains information about current educational and cultural programmes held by the museum and related organizations and institutions. Visitors will also be given useful tips on where to find kosher meals and on services provided by travel agencies specializing in Jewish heritage tours. [...] As well as providing services for individual tourists, the new centre will also accept bookings from guides, school representatives and travel agencies. It also includes a rest area with refreshments and toilet facilities, as well as disabled access and a baby changing table.

In October, the museum will mark 20 years since it was given back to Jewish ownership by the state, and the new visitor center is just one of the initiatives and changes that are being implemented this year to mark the anniversary.

Czech 10 Stars Project

Interior of the synagogue in Mikulov, one of the 10 Stars sites, which is undergoing restructuring as part of the project. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This also appears on my En Route blog for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal

I've written an article for JTA about the Czech Republic's 10 Stars project -- an innovative Jewish heritage project that will amount to a nationwide Jewish Museum with 10 thematic exhibits located in 10 restored synagogue in 10 different towns and cities around the country: Úštěk, Jičín, and Brandýs nad Labem to the north; Plzeň and Březnice to the west; Nová Cerekev and Polná in the south-central part of the country; Boskovice, Mikulov and Krnov to the east..

The project is being coordinated by the Czech Federation of Jewish Communities, which owns the buildings, with 85 percent of the funding coming from a $14 million grant from the European Union. About 15 percent of the financing is being provided by the Czech Culture Ministry.

“It’s actually one museum scattered around the country,” said Tomas Kraus, the executive director of the federation.

“The exhibition in each site will be linked to one certain phenomenon in Jewish history, culture, religion, traditions,” he said. “The idea is that if you visit one of the sites, even by chance, you will realize that there are nine other parts of the exhibition, so you will want to visit them, too.”

To encourage this, 10 Stars will issue a “passport” that can be stamped each time a person visits one of the synagogues in the network. When all 10 stamps are filled in, the passport can be redeemed for a prize.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

10 Stars is due to open in October 2013, around the time of the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. But it so far has received little publicity -- even its web site is only in Czech, limiting the audience.

I have visited a number ot these sites already: some of them were already restored in earlier years but are now undergoing maintenance and other work. Exhibits that already existed in the synagogues at Boskovice, Mikulov, Ustek and Polna are being revamped or expanded as part of the 10 Stars program.

In Ustek, the rabbi's house next door to the restored synagogue will be used to house an exhibit on Jewish education. The restored Jewish schoolroom, already installed in the basement of the synagogue, will remain as part of the new exhibit.

 Ustek synagogue. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Recreated Jewish schoolroom installed in Ustek synagogue basement. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

New books on Jewish heritage in Czech Republic and Poland

Ark in restored synagogue in Jicin, CZ. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This also ran in my En Route blog for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal

I’ve got my hands on two new books that deal with the restoration of historic Jewish sites in Poland and the Czech Republic. Both are oversized, both are bilingual (English and the local language)and both feature a combination of text and photographs.

Both, too, are, in a sense, celebrations of the restoration of Jewish heritage sites in those countries since the fall of communism in 1989. But they are quite different in scope, design and presentation.

Brány spravedlivých. Synagogy Moravy, Slezska a Čech - The gates of the righteous. Synagogues of Moravia, Silesia and Bohemia, by Jaroslav Klenovsky and photographer Ludmila Hajkova (FotoStudio H, Usti nad Labem), is a gorgeous coffee-table book that examines in some detail 54 of the synagogues that now stand in the Czech Republic, chosen to illustrate different architectural and decorative styles as well as history.

Klenovsky, based in Brno, is a pioneer in the post-World War II and post-Communist documentation of Jewish heritage sites in Czech lands, especially in Moravia, and has written widely about synagogues, cemeteries and Jewish quarters.

The synagogues in the book are arranged in chronological order, from the 13th century AltNeu (Old-New) synagogue in Prague, to the modern synagogue in Liberec, dedicated in 2000.

Several pages are devoted to each building: an explanatory text sketches the history of the synagogue and local Jewish community and also provides an architectural description. Lush color photos depict both the interior and exterior of each building, as well as details, and each is also accompanied by drawings showing the floor plan of the building as well as its location in the city.

The Nazis destroyed 70 synagogues, but 105 more were destroyed under Communist rule. The Czech Republic and its Jewish community hold an enviable record in post-Communist preservation of Jewish heritage sites: 65 synagogues have been reconstructed since 1989. (The Jubilee Synagogue in Prague hosts a permanent exhibition on restorations that opened in June of this year. It focuses on heritage sites that come under the jurisdiction of the Jewish Community of Prague — which is responsible for the management of 28 synagogues and 159 cemeteries in three regions of Bohemia. The Prague Jewish Community web site has a section with an interactive map of the heritage sites owned and maintained by the community.)

Currently, seven synagogues in CZ are used as Jewish houses of worship, 35 are Christian churches, 43 are used as museum or for cultural purposes, 15 warehouses and storage facilities, 20 are under reconstruction or without use.


Preserving Jewish Heritage in Poland – in which I am pleased to say I have an essay – was officially launched Nov. 4 in Warsaw.

Co-financed by the Polish Foreign Ministry (which will distribute copies of it), it was published explicitly to mark the 10th anniversary of the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland, or FODZ. It highlights FODZ’s work over the past decade and presents examples of FODZ’s synagogue and cemetery restoration projects, such as the restoration of the Renaissance synagogue in Zamosc, as well as its educational programs and its Chassidic Route tourism itinerary.

Synagogue in Zamosc after restoration. (Photo: FODZ)

The full text and photos of the book can be downloaded from the FODZ web site.

The focus of the book, thus, is more on policy and process than on the buildings or cemeteries themselves.

In one of the chapters, FODZ CEO Monika Krawczyk traces the history of the Foundation, which was born out of a compromise agreement following the heated debates over who should obtain restituted property that took place after Poland passed its 1997 law regulating the relations between the state and Jewish communities in Poland. A main focus of that law was restitution of pre-WW2 Jewish communal property. An agreement in 2000 led to the establishment of FODZ, granting it territorial jurisdiction for restitution and Jewish heritage in those parts of Poland where no active Jewish community now exists. This includes most of eastern and southeastern Poland.

In her essay, Veronika Litwin of FODZ notes that it was not until that law was passed that “hope for change began to emerge” that the widespread neglect of Jewish sites since World War II might be redressed.

As for my own essay? It's a personal look back on my nearly 25 years of involvement with Jewish heritage issues in Poland.

1994

Revisiting a Secret Garden Jewish Cemetery in Czech Republic

Looking out from the cemetery. All photos © Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber  

(This post also appears on my En Route blog for the Lost Angeles Jewish Journal.)
I spent part of this weekend at a bluegrass workshop in the little town of Male Svatonovice, in the north of the Czech Republic, near the Polish border. I was only there to observe, not to join the hundred or so students learning banjo, mandolin, guitar and bass, so I took time to drive half an hour through the back roads to revisit one of my favorite Jewish cemeteries -- the isolated walled graveyard at the tiny hamlet of Velka Bukovina.

The village is too small to appear even on many large scale maps. The Jewish population disappeared in the early 20th century as Jews moved out to bigger cities.

When I first visited, six years ago, while doing the update for my book National Geographic Jewish Heritage Travel, I stayed at a charming pension that was sort of near by. The son of the family who ran it helped me find the cemetery -- it is set alone in the middle of farm fields. There did not seem to be any way actually to reach the cemetery other than tramping across the field, so that is what I did. It was the height of summer, and I waded through maybe half a mile of waist-high weeds, grass, and, I guess, hay. (Thankful that I was wearing my cowboy boots.)

This time, the going was much easier. First, I could see the cemetery int he distance from the main road. And I easily found the one-lane paved road that led up near by it. I parked at the side, and found a sort of vehicle track through the grass leading to the cemetery. It was an easy path to walk. Could I have totally missed it when I went there the first time? Or is it new since I was there?

Whatever. I easily reached the cemetery and found the gate latched but not locked. Inside the absolute rectagular wall, it was just as I remembered -- a secret garden of a place, rather well maintained (I saw a wheelbarrow propped in a corner of the space) with irregular rows of gravestones exhibiting vividly carved inscriptions and decorations, many with a decidedly rustic touch -- the oldest date back to the mid-18th century. In the distance, I could see the autum colors in the nearby forest.

All photos © Ruth Ellen Gruber

   

What I still consider one of the most moving aspects of this cemetery is also still there -- a park bench placed outside the gate, looking out at the fields. Does anyone ever ever ever come to use it? To sit and remember the community? To reflect on a world of changes?

All photos © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Impressive Jewish Visitors' Center in Brno

This post originally appeared on my En Route blog, for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal


By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Once again I have to hand it to the Czechs for the exemplary way that they preserve and promote Jewish heritage, heritage sites and memory.

I spent a day this past week in Brno, the Czech Republic’s second largest city and the capital of Moravia. I was there for a totally different —- non-Jewish—reason (a country music concert and a meeting related to the Czech country music and bluegrass scene) but I took the time to visit the Jewish Tourism and Information Center that was opened last year at the city’s Jewish cemetery, a sprawling and beautifully maintained expanse that includes about 9,000 grave markers, from simple matzevot to grand family tombs.

The Center operates as part of the Jewish Brno Project, a collaborative initiative of the Jewish community in Brno and the city’s Tourist Information Center.

A deceptively boring view of the Jewish Visitors Center. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

I was already a big fan of the project’s web site www.jewishbrno.eu—an informative and easy to use portal to Jewish heritage in Brno and at least 16 towns in southern Moravia where there are historic synagogues, cemeteries and old Jewish quarters – Mikulov, Boskovice, Trebic, Ivancice, et al.
The Brno Jewish Visitor’s Center opened in January 2011, and it sports the green “i” logo of general Czech tourist info centers. It occupies one of the three early 20th century buildings that form the mortuary complex.

The Cemetery is located at Nezamyslova 27, in the Zidenice district of town, an easy tram ride from the city center. Trams 8 and 10 from the main railway station stop right in front.

The Visitors Center provides a range of services, including guided tours of Brno Jewish sites, tourist packages and itineraries outside the city. There are stacks of free informational material, including well-produced brochures in various languages on local and regional Jewish heritage. The Center has free WiFi internet access, and there is an English-speaking staffer.

For the cemetery itself, it provides individual free tours as well as free audio guides. A brochure guide to the cemetery includes a map locating the graves of prominent people interred there – the brochure provides brief biographies and photos of their gravestones. And there is also a computer screen with a link to the cemetery database, so that you can search for individual tombs.

I didn’t have much time the day I visited, but I spent a very pleasant half hour strolling around the cemetery and following the map up and down the rows of tombs – most of them stately obelisks, and many (in the style of the late 19th century) bearing laminated photographs of the deceased.

Brno was a center of modernist architecture. Here's a modernist gravestone in the Jewish cemetery. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Jewish Tourism and Information Center

Nezamyslova 27
615 00 Brno, Czech Republic
Email: tic@jewishbrno.eu
Tel: +420 544 526 737

Brno Tourist Information Center

Radnicka 8
658 78 Brno, Czech Republic
Email: info@ticbrno.cz
Tel: +420 542 427 150
www.ticbrno.cz

Czech Republic -- Memorial plaque on former Kutna Hora synagogue

Kutna Hora former synagogue. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

A memorial plaque to Holocaust victims has been placed on the former synagogue in Kutna Hora, a charming town an hour's drive east of Prague that is famous for its silver mines and St. Barbara church.

"The plaque was the idea of Mr Marek Lauermann, a young person who is a descendant of a Jewish family that was one of the few from Kutná Hora who partially survived the Holocaust. Marek has long been active in this area, he has released several publications, and he had this memorial plaque designed with our cooperation," Mayor Ivo Šanc said.[...]  The Culture to the Town (Kultura do města) association in Kutná Hora has long been involved in preserving the history of the small Jewish community there, which has almost vanished from the memory of its residents. The association organized events as part of the Year of Jewish Culture and published the book "Jews in the Kutná Hora Area - Forgotten Neighbors" (Židé na Kutnohorsku - Zapomenutí sousedé).

Read full story

Kutna Hora former synagogue. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Jews were barred from living in this mining town from 1568-1848. The surviving synagogue, at ul. Smiskova  619, was built in 1902 in Art Nouveau style. During World War II the Nazis derported the town's Jews to Terezin; few survived. During the war the synagogue was used as a factory making pipe organs. Since 1947 it has been used by the Hussite Church. Most of the decorative elements have been removed.


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Jewish Culture, etc., Festivals in 2012

Festival of the Jewish Book, Ferrara, Italy, 2011. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

As usual, I am trying to put together a list of as many as possible of the numerous Jewish festivals -- culture, film, dance, etc -- that take place each year around Europe.  I've already missed a few that have taken place this winter -- Please help me by sending me information!

The big culture festivals and other smaller events make good destinations around which to center a trip. Some, like the annual Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow, are huge events lasting a week or more, which draw thousands of people and offer scores or sometimes hundreds of performances, lectures, concerts, exhibits and the like. Other festivals are much less ambitious. Some are primarily workshops but also feature concerts. Many of the same artists perform at more than one festival.

 The list will be growing and growing -- and again,  I ask my readers to please send me information and links to upcoming events. Thanks!



ALL OVER EUROPE

Sept. 2, 2012 -- 13th European Day of Jewish Culture. This year's theme is Jewish Humor


AUSTRIA

April 19-May 23 -- Vienna --  Weanhean: Das Wienerliedfestival (Jewish music and performers are featured this year)


CROATIA

 August 28-Sept. 6 -- Pula -- Bejahad: the Jewish Cultural Scene


CZECH REPUBLIC

July 5-8 -- Boskovice -- UniJazz2012: 19th Festival for the Jewish Quarter

July 30-August 4 -- Trebic --  Trebic Jewish Festival held in one of the most extensive and best-preserved old Jewish quarters in Europe, part of the town's UNESCO-listed historic center.


GERMANY

April 9-15 -- Weimar -- Weimar Winter Edition

 June 3-16 -- Berlin & Potsdam -- 18th Jewish Film Festival


July 21-August 21 -- Weimar -- Yiddish Summer Weimar 


GREAT BRITAIN


June 24-July 1 -- Leeds -- 12th International Jewish Performing Arts Festival


HUNGARY


April 6-14 -- Budapest -- Quarter6Quarter7 Spring Festival, over Passover

July 20-22 -- Bank Lake -- Bankito Festival

November 10-18 -- Szombathely --  Jewish Festival Szombathely


ITALY

April 28-May 1 -- Ferrara -- Festival of the Jewish Book

July 29-August 5 -- Straits of Messina -- Horcynus Festival This year's focus is on Israel and Jewish culture.

September 2-8 -- Puglia Region -- Lech Lecha Festival

November 3-7 -- Rome -- Pitigliani Kolno'a Jewish & Israeli Film Festival

POLAND

April 17-21 -- Radom -- 4th annual "Meeting with Jewish Culture"

April 18-22 -- Warsaw -- New Jewish Music Festival

April 25-29 -- Warsaw -- Jewish Motifs International Film Festival

May 11-13 -- Oswiecim -- Oswiecim Life Festival

May 13-16 -- Warsaw -- Jewish Book Days 

June  2 -- Krakow -- 7@Nite - Night of the Synagogues

June 29-July 8 -- Krakow -- Jewish Culture Festival

August 10-12  -- Jelenia Gora -- Jewish Culture Festival

August 26-September 2 -- Warsaw -- Singer's Warsaw Festival

September 14-22 -- Lodz -- Festival of Four Cultures

October 4-7 -- Wlodawa -- Festival of Three Cultures



ROMANIA

April 27-May 3 -- Bucharest -- 2nd Bucharest Jewish Film Festival


RUSSIA

March 8, 2012 -- Moscow -- Yiddish Fest

SERBIA

June 20-24 -- Belgrade -- Ethno Fusion Fest: Many musics in the courtyard of the Belgrade Synagogue


SLOVAKIA

July 7-15 -- Kosice -- Mazal Tov -- 1st Jewish Culture Festival in Kosice

UKRAINE


Sept. 6-12 -- Drohobych -- Fifth Bruno Schulz Festival




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Czech Republic -- vandalism at Puklice Jewish cemetery

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Vandals have damaged or toppled about 10 gravestones in the centuries-old Jewish cemetery in Puklice, near Jihlava. The cemetery is listed as a national cultural monument and had recently undergone restoration. Police are investigating the vandalism, which was discovered in the first week of January.

The Puklice cemetery, which includes about 100 gravestones, is one of the oldest in the Czech Republic, probably founded in the 15th century. The oldest legible gravestone dates from 1699. The small Jewish quarter in the village itself is largely intact, with the remains of a mikvah and a former synagogue/school (now a residence).

Jaroslav Klenovsky, who oversees Jewish heritage in Moravia for the Federation of Jewish communities, told Czech media that the vandalism was likely not a specifically anti-semitic attack, but the work of "young offenders."

You can see a video of the damage HERE.

Czech Republic -- a Zionist take on touring Jewish Prague

Inside the Jubilee Synagogue, Prague. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

There's a detailed travel story in the Jerusalem Post by Stewart Weiss about his visit to Jewish Prague. Prague has been visited and toured and written about so much that it's really hard to find a way to say anything new, or really to express any new emotion about it, its Jewish history, the impact of visiting Jewish sites and remembering both pogroms and the Holocaust.....I packed a lot of it in in my chapter on Prague in my 1994 book Upon the Doorposts of Thy House, including a critique of mass tourism....



Weiss article goes over much of the same material. He is ever-skeptical at the tour guide spin (though as a tour leader himself, he must know how to keep his audience.....).

The first stop on our trip is the ancient Jewish cemetery in the heart of Josefov, the Jewish Quarter. Because the land allotted to the Jews was woefully insufficient to bury their dead, there are at least seven layers of graves lying deep beneath the surface, where as many as 100,000 people are buried. But while the graves are invisible, the tombstones are ubiquitous, and stretch as far as the eye can see. They stand as silent, solemn witnesses to the past 1,000 years, from the time Jewish settlers first came to Bohemia, and they testify to a nation within a nation that included every conceivable vocation, from salesman to seamstress to scholar.

The greatest of these scholars was Rabbi Yehuda Loew, the famed Maharal of Prague (1525-1609). In lesser intellectual circles – and certainly among the tour guides peddling fantasy to wide-eyed visitors seeking same – he was the progenitor of the Golem, a clay figure brought to life in order to protect the downtrodden disciples of the Maharal.

It is strange to me, though, that  in what he calls "four days of walking with ghosts" he seems to have totally missed the lively local  Jewish community and local Jewish life -- writing only that Chabad  "struggles valiantly to provide a working synagogue."


Read full story HERE

Czech republic -- Ten Stars project

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I spent two hours yesterday meeting with Jan Kindermann in Prague to discuss "Ten Stars"  -- the ambitious and very impressive EU-funded  Jewish heritage preservation project he is coordinating for the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic. The project  involves complex renovation and exhibition projects at ten synagogue buildings dotted all around the country. The towns include Úštěk, Jičín, Brandýs nad Labem, Plzeň, Březnice, Nová Cerekev, Polná, Boskovice, Mikulov and Krnov.

Krnov synagogue. Photo: 10 Hvezd project

"10 Stars" is a creative and very well thought out strategy of development and promotion that is funded by the Culture Ministry and an approxmately €10 million grant from the European Union. All the sites are owned by the Jewish community, and there are local partners in each place.

There is a comprehensive web site associated with the project -- but it's a pity that it is only in Czech, which means that awareness outside the country remains limited.

Planning took place in the approximately two years since the EU funding came through -- Jan showed me stacks of detailed files. Actual construction will being in October.

The idea is to create a network of 10 sites that will all be open to the public. Each site will house a permanent exhibition, based on one theme. Linked together, all the sites will in effect constitute a comprehensive Jewish museum spread out over the entire country. The "10 Stars" will issue a sort of "passport" (such as those used for other heritage and museums) to encourage visitors to take in all the components. Each time you visit one of the sites, you will get a stamp in the passport -- if you get stamps for all of them, you can turn it is and get some sort of "prize."

Thematic exhibits will include Jewish education, Jewish life and practice, Architecture, Industry, the Rabbinical world, etc.

Some of the sites on the list of Stars include places where synagogues  already have been restored. (Polna, Ustek, Boskovice, Jicin, etc)

Boskovice. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

In those places, the project will carry out much-needed maintenance (such as at the synagogue in Ustek, whose lower floor has suffered water damage) but will also restore a neighboring Jewish building for use as part of the exhibition complex -- in Ustek, this means the rabbi's house next to the synagogue. since the Ustek synagogue already includes a fine little reconstruction of the former school room, the permanent exhibition here will deal with Jewish education.

Ustek. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

In Plzen, where the Great Synagogue has undergone at least a partial restoration, the 10 Stars project will restore the Old Synagogue. And since Plzen is the only town on the list where there is an active Jewish community, the permanent exhibit here will deal with Jewish life and practice.

Many other synagogues have been  restored and are used for cultural purposed in the Czech Republic -- quite a few of these are owned by municipalities, not the Jewish community. But all should complement each other, meaning that CZ remains the country where a strategic vision and plan regarding Jewish heritage has had the most success, thanks  to pragmatic visionaries within the Jewish community as well as to local activists and a political and cultural climate that supports and welcomes involvement in these initiatives.