Happy Thanksgiving -- with Jewish Turkeys

Happy Thanksgiving!



I'm reposting this item from my Jewish Heritage Europe web site -- an online resource to Jewish heritage across the continent. See the full post here.

Thanksgiving is often called “turkey-day” because of the tradition of eating roast turkey at the Thanksgiving dinner.

The bird that we call “turkey” was native to the Americas, and was brought back to Europe by the first European explorers, where it quickly became popular. As can be seen above in the replica of the early 18th century painted ceiling of the destroyed wooden synagogue at Gwozdziec — now in the POLIN museum in Warsaw — its image was used two centuries ago in East European synagogue decoration.

An almost identical image, for example, appears in the painted wooden synagogue of Chodorow, now replicated at the Bet Hatfutsoth museum in Tel Aviv — see below.





For a fascinating look at the Turkey in Jewish artistic (and culinary) tradition, Samuel Gruber has posted a lengthy description — with illustrations — on his blog.

Among other things, he notes that Thomas Hubka, author of Resplendent Synagogue: Architecture and Worship in an Eighteen-Century Polish Synagogue, writes: “At first, it is difficult to imagine how the North American turkey could have been painted in an early-eighteenth-century Polish synagogue, but books depicting the exotic flora and fauna from beyond the European world were widely available at the time.”

He writes that Hubka links the presences of exotic animals in the decoration to Jewish ethical literature and writings that celebrate God’s creation. According to Hubka:

“The illustrated Perek Shira (chapter of song) was a popular “exotic creature” book specifically written for a Jewish audience. the book was a collection of hymnic sayings in praise of the Creator placed in the mouths of various animals, especially exotic animals. Many animals and their sayings emphasized the wonder and incomprehensibility of God’s creation as, for example, written next to a drawing of a dragon “What does the dragon say? Sing unto him, sing psalms unto Him: talk ye of all his wondrous works (Psalm 105;2). As a measure of its popularity and ethical function,Perek Shira was included in some of the earliest printed prayer books in Eastern Europe…thus the unknown turkey was to be contemplated by pious Jews as an ex maple of the unfathomable variety of God’s creatures. as they did with the exotic ostrich and unicorn, the artists of the Gwozdziec Synagogue may have placed the turkey in a prominent central location so that the congregation would “Lift up [its] eyes…to obtain knowledge of the works of the Holy One” (II:231b).  (Hubka, Resplendent Synagogue: Architecture and Worship in an Eighteen-Century Polish Synagogue, p. 103.)

Gruber also discusses turkeys on the Jewish dinner table, quoting the early 19th century memoirist memoirist Pauline Wengeroff (Rememberings: The World of A Russian-Jewish Woman in the Nineteenth Century, various editions), describing how her family in Bobruisk (now in Belarus) in the 1830s ate turkey for Pesach and Sukkoth.

For Pesach she describes the process of kashering chickens and turkeys, and at a noon meal on Pesach, following the seder, “there had to be stuffed turkey neck.” She also mentions eating roast turkey on Shmini Atzeres and Simchas Torah.
Read Samuel Gruber's full blog post here

Check out the latest Jewish Heritage Europe Newsletter

Painted ceiling, replica of Gwozdziec wooden synagogue, in the POLIN museum.

The Jewish Heritage Europe newsletter this month has links to posts and pictures from Poland, Italy, Germany, Romania, Serbia -- and more!

This month's theme is "Dedication! Celebration!"

Links include links to photo galleries on the new POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and the Old and New Jewish cemeteries in Venice, Italy.

Click here to access the Newsletter online

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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

More than 40 Jewish Culture, etc, festivals each year in Poland!

Singer's Warsaw Festival, 2011

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Readers of this blog know that each year since 2009 I have tried to put together a list of Jewish culture, music, film -- etc -- festivals that take place around Europe.

This year (so far) the list includes 40 or so, in more than a dozen countries.

My list is far from totally comprehensive -- I know I miss quite a few events. But I believe it is still probably the most complete list of such festivals Europe-wide.

Still, my list's incomplete-ness is borne out by a list of Jewish culture and other festivals in Poland, researched and complied by Agnieszka Gis, a young volunteer at the Krakow Jewish Community Center who this summer is working as an intern at the Taube Foundation in San Francisco.

Agnieszka's list includes more than 40 festivals, of all sorts. That's 40 Jewish culture, film, music and other such festivals in Poland alone -- a country whose Jewish community today numbers probably some 15,000 or so!

There are big festivals, such as the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow and the Singer's Warsaw festival in Warsaw. But many are in small towns and even  far-flung villages. Most are organized by non-Jews and directed at a non-Jewish audience, perfect examples of what I have I described as the "virtually Jewish" phenomenon.

Click here to see Agnieszka's list in PDF form (you will have to enlarge it to read)

Recent updates from Jewish Heritage Europe

Postcard showing Chmielnik synagogue and the Archangel Gabriel

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

As I have begun to do on a regular basis, I'm posting here last week's updates from www.jewish-heritage-europe.eu, the web site that I coordinate as a project of the Rothschild Foundation Europe. There's news mainly from Poland, Ukraine and Belarus.

I post on the JHE newsfeed several times a week, to keep content dynamic on what we aim to make the go-to web site for Jewish heritage issues in Europe. JHE will celebrate two years online next month, and we are planning to expand the enhance the site with new features.

Meanwhile -- please subscribe to the JHE news feed! You can use the subscribe buttons on the home page or on any of the news pages. The deal is that, on days that I post on the JHE news feed, you will receive one email with the links to the posts. Easy, convenient and informative, no? And you won't miss any of the feed.

Look at all the news we ran last week:


"Shtetl Routes" under development with EU grant in Poland-Belarus-Ukraine border region

An ambitious, international “Shtetl Routes” tourism itinerary through a score or more of towns in the Poland-Belarus-Ukraine border region is under development with a more than €400,000 grant from the European Union’s Cross-border Cooperation Programme Poland-Belarus-Ukraine 2007-2013.

Call for Papers: Conference “Urban Spaces of Lviv/Lwów/Lemberg: Imagination, Experiences, Practices”

Commemorative postcard of Chmielnik synagogue

Call for papers: New Research on Memory in Eastern Europe conference in Warsaw

Aim of the workshop is to discuss specificity of the collective memory and research of that memory in Ukraine and Belarus

Dariusz Stola named director of Museum of the History of Polish Jews

Report on Jewish Cemeteries in Silesia Province Published

The Brama Cukerman (Cukerman’s Gate) Foundation in Będzin, Poland, has recently published “Our Cemeteries,” a detailed, 50-page report on the state and status of the dozens of Jewish cemeteries in the Silesia Vojvodship (Province).

Happy 2014 (& beyond) -- and catching up...

Preserved fragments of the wheel of the Zodiac on the synagogue in Chmielnik, Poland, now restored as a Jewish museum. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Happy new year!

I've been woefully neglectful of this blog in recent months....mainly because I have been concentrating a lot of energy on the web site that I coordinate -- www.jewish-heritage-europe.eu.

I post on the JHE newsfeed several times a week, to keep content dynamic on what we aim to make the go-to web site for Jewish heritage issues in Europe. JHE will celebrate two years online next month, and we are planning to expand the enhance the site with new features.

Below are the links to the most recent JHE posts -- I'm sure readers of this blog will find them of interest.

Meanwhile -- please subscribe to the JHE news feed! You can use the subscribe buttons on the home page or on any of the news pages. The deal is that, on days that I post on the JHE news feed, you will receive one email with the links to the posts. Easy, convenient and informative, no?

As befits the change of year and change of seasons, I'm posting some examples of the wheel of the Zodiac, a traditional synagogue decorative device, from synagogues in Poland, Romania and Ukraine.

Cycle of the Zodiac in the replica of the ceiling of the wooden synagogue in Gwozdziec, now installed at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Recent JHE posts:



Plans/hopes for synagogue restoration work in Romania in 2014




"Miracle" clean-up and care of Jewish cemetery in Myslowice, Poland




January - calendar of Hasidic pilgrimages in Poland to tombs of Tzaddikim




Happy 2014 -- Gallery of Zodiac paintings from synagogues in Romania, Poland, Ukraine



Irish Jewish Museum gets OK for expansion; NIMBY objections overruled

Zodiac on ceiling of Beit Tfila Benjamin synagogue in Chernivtsi, Ukraine. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Zodiac on ceiling of disused synagogue in Siret, Romania. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

My article on the Museum of the History of Polish Jews - cover story in Hadassah Magazine

The "Three Hares" motif in the painted ceiling of the Gwozdziec synagogue repica. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This post also appears on my En Route blog for the LA Jewish Journal

I’m delighted to have the cover story in the current Hadassah Magazine — an article about the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.

I’ve followed the development of this museum, which opened its doors in April but minus its core exhibition, since the mid-1990s, when the idea of such a museum was first broached, and I’ve written about it on various occasions — including a JTA piece when the building opened.

Since the core exhibition won’t be open to the public until probably next fall, I focused my Hadassah piece on the broader context of the museum: how it fits into Poland's developing museum landscape; how it fits within the context of the search for national and individual identity.

The museum is not an isolated institution, nor is its mission totally unique. Though its scope and prominence far surpass other initiatives, it is representative of a new crop of Jewish exhibits and venues that focus not on static displays of Judaica and not on the Shoah but on the living Jewish world that was destroyed. 

This trend has been exemplified most recently by the new permanent installation “Shoah,” curated by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and opened in the Block 27 barracks at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. This, like “Letters to Afar,” employs a variety of prewar film clips showing Jews carrying out all sorts of activities. Its soundtrack merges spritely music with sounds of celebrations, street life and snippets of conversation. 

Nearby, in Oswiecim, the town where the Auschwitz camp was built, a small museum at the Auschwitz Jewish Center, located in the town’s one surviving synagogue, presents prewar Jewish life in a town that before the Holocaust had a predominantly Jewish population. “No one knows that there were Jews here before the war—they only know the death camp,” noted Shlomi Shaked, a volunteer at the center. His mother, born in Oswiecim in 1949 and a resident there until her family immigrated to Israel in 1962, is featured in the exhibit. “I think people who visit Auschwitz should come here first to see the life before they visit the camp,” he said. 

A new Jewish museum housed in a restored synagogue in the small town of Chmielnik, north of Krakow, also showcases prewar Jewish life: After all, noted local historian Piotr Krawczyk, before the Holocaust, 80 percent of Chmielnik’s population was Jewish. That means, “local history is Jewish history,” he said.
One of the key roles of the Warsaw museum will be to support local initiatives. “Until our museum was established there were no proper models in Poland for what to do,” Kirshenblatt-Gimblett said. “We can open a new perspective on how Jewish history and heritage can be presented to the public.”

Read the full article here

Hotel to open in famed former Polish Yeshiva building

Entry of former Yeshiva building, showing Hotel Ilan sign as well as sign noting its former identity. Photo: Hotel Ilan/Jewish Community Warsaw

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Care to spend the night in the building that once housed one of pre-Holocaust Poland's most famous and influential yeshivas?

From October you'll be able to do so, when the four-star Hotel Ilan opens in the huge building in Lublin, Poland, that once housed the Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin, founded in 1930 by Rabbi Yehuda Meyer Shapiro.

According to the Hotel's web site and Facebook page, the new hotel will include 44 rooms, four suites, a restaurant called Olive that will feature Jewish cuisine, a lobby bar, a conference center and a spa/welness center. Its logo includes the slogan “feel the tradition.”

The building is owned by the Warsaw Jewish Community, which will run the hotel. (The community already runs a guest house, Beitenu, located in the former synagogue in Kazimierz Dolny.) That synagogue was used as a movie house after World War II and was restituted to Jewish ownership in 2002. The Beitenu complex  also includes a Jewish museum, Judaica and kosher shop, and a cafe.

The Yeshiva function in Lublin only until 1939. After World War II, the enormous building became part of the Lublin medical school. It was returned to Jewish ownership in 2004, and parts of it have been renovated to include a synagogue, mikvah and Jewish communal offices as well as exhibition space.

Round-up of Jewish cemetery restoration news in Poland

Volunteers clearing up the Jewish cemetery in Zambrów. Photo courtesy of FODZ

By Ruth Ellen Gruber


There's quite a lot going on in Poland regarding the restoration and preservation of Jewish cemeteries, most of which lay neglected and abandoned for decades.

Check out this post on the Jewish Heritage Europe web site for a round up of various initiatives from Żarki, Zambrów, Błędów, Łabiszyn and Strzelno.

It includes a link to a comprehensive Jewish Culture Trail in Żarki financed by local and regional authorities. It takes in the surviving local synagogue (used as a culture center), the surviving Jewish cemetery, houses, shops, urban structure and the WW2 ghetto.

My reflections on the Krakow Jewish Culture Festival

Steve Weintraub & heads of carved Jewish figurines. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

I’ve been writing about the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow for about 20 years, maybe even longer…so I have some historical perspective and memory in its regard.

Here’s my latest piece, a first-personer published in The Forward. People who also have long experience with the Festival and with the Jewish development of Krakow praised it for presenting a nuanced view….other people, predictably, didn’t get what I was getting at…

Onward and Upward with Matisyahu in Krakow

ARTS FEST SHOWS TRANSFORMATION IN POLAND’S REPUTATION

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

July 19, 2013

KRAKOW — In the sultry darkness of a summer night, a tall, skinny figure with close-cropped hair and a purple T-shirt threaded through a beer garden during Krakow’s Jewish Culture Festival, the annual nine-day extravaganza of performance, exhibition, debate and intensive interaction that for a quarter of a century now has been a catalyst of Krakow’s Jewish cultural revival.

Bridging the open space between the city’s lively Jewish community center, which hosted dozens of festival events, and the grandiose Tempel Synagogue, venue for many of the concerts, the garden served as an informal salon where public and performers, Jews and non-Jews alike, could shmooze.

Whispers trailed in the newcomer’s wake: “Matisyahu’s here!”

The American singer, much less recognizable since he shed his Hasidic garb, blended with the dozens of other folks sipping their drinks as he made his way through the slatted wooden tables and sat down with a group that included Jonathan Ornstein, director of Krakow’s Jewish community center, and Janusz Makuch, the bearded, non-Jewish Pole who co-founded the festival in 1988 and is still both its director and its main driving force.

Matisyahu wasn’t on the program, though he has performed here in the past.

This time, en route to a gig in northern Poland, he had simply dropped in to hang with the festival crowd in Kazimierz, Krakow’s historic Jewish district.

Over the past two decades, Kazimierz has famously been transformed from a rundown slum, the quintessential Jewish graveyard, into a major tourist attraction: a burgeoning hub of revitalized Jewish culture, life, consciousness and commercial kitsch — as well as the city’s liveliest center of clubs, pubs and other late-night venues.

“We must have been out till 5 in the morning,” Ornstein told me the next day.

I’ve been writing about Kazimierz since 1990 and about the festival itself for nearly that long, returning each summer, at least for a few festival days, to monitor changes in the place, the program and the issues that swirl around both of them.

To me, Matisyahu’s under-the-radar appearance brought home one of the most striking of these changes. Clearly for him — and for the hundreds, maybe thousands, of other Jewish tourists who now flock here — the long post-Holocaust taboo on visiting Poland for pleasure has been broken.

This is no mean feat and has taken years to come about. Auschwitz is just an hour’s drive from Krakow, and the new attitude is by no means universal. But I heard it echoed clearly by a Canadian woman staying in my hotel.

“There’s no downside to Krakow,” the woman told me over breakfast. “As for the festival, it’s great. I’m doing as many activities as I can, and I’m already planning to come back with friends in two years.”

One of the factors in this change has been the increasingly high profile of the JCC, which opened five years ago as a neutral Jewish space accessible to all streams and forms of Jewishness and Jewish expression, normative or not.

Now one of the hubs of the festival, the JCC is, importantly, recognized as a “Jewish” Jewish space, in contrast to most of the city’s other Jewish-oriented venues and institutions. Its involvement has changed radically the dynamics of an event that long was viewed as a Jewish festival produced by non-Jews for a non-Jewish audience. Non-Jewish Poles still make up the vast majority of the festival’s attendees.

Among the JCC’s annual festival offerings is a kosher Sabbath dinner. This year, hosted in the 17th-century Izaak Synagogue, the dinner drew nearly 400 people.

“Visitors to Krakow now understand that they are not coming to a museum, but rather to a place with a small but increasingly active Jewish community,” Ornstein told me. “Understanding that fact puts the festival in a different context from a Jewish point of view. It is not only connecting Poles to Jewish culture, but helping create an environment in which the local Jewish community feels welcome and can thrive. This festival can make a claim that few others can: It is helping to rebuild a Jewish community long thought by many to be without a future.”

This year, the concepts of “Jewish” and “Jewishness” — and the ways they are defined, perceived, described and enacted — formed one of the main themes confronted in the many festival lectures, workshops and discussions.

I took part in a public conversation at the JCC, called “Jewish. Jewish? ‘Jewish’ Jewish!” It addressed shifting definitions, particularly in Kazimierz, where the transformations have created a complex of new Jewish authenticities that are quite different from the Krakow Jewish world that was destroyed in the Holocaust but are still real components of today’s living city.

After all, few if any of the young Poles and visitors who now throng the district’s many new cafes or volunteer at the JCC have any direct memories of Kazimierz before the festival began drawing crowds, when no modern Jewish museums and culture centers offered their programs, and no Jewish (or Jewish-style) commercial venues plied their trade.

“The resonance of the festival has become larger than the festival itself. And maybe this is the important thing,” the noted Yiddish singer Michael Alpert commented backstage during the festival’s traditional marathon open-air final concert on Kazimierz’s main square, Szeroka Street. “There’s ‘normalization,’” Alpert said, “and if it’s normal, it’s not as exotic.”

Nonetheless, he said, the festival’s main museum exhibition demonstrated an unsettling deep-seated sense of the “weird” that still surrounds Jewish issues.

This provocative show confronted the perception of what is understood as Jewish or “Jewish.” Titled “Souvenir, Talisman, Toy” and curated by Concordia University anthropologist Erica Lehrer, it explored the history, meaning and symbolism of the ubiquitous carved wooden figurines of Jews, frequently seen at Polish souvenir stalls and which often perpetuate sometimes toxicstereotypes.

The exhibit placed these figures in the context of both folk art and folk fantasy. In doing so, particularly against the pervasive good vibes of the festival, it served to highlight — and confront — the contradictory ways that “Jews” and “Jewishness” are perceived and represented in contemporary Poland.

One particular focus was on the myriad “Jewish” figures that clutch money and are used as “good luck” charms said to bring purchasers prosperity. Some observers actually view such “penny Jews” as embodying “positive” stereotypes, without ill intention. In exhibition video interviews, vendors and purchasers alike spoke openly about the magical properties of such figures, some of which are so abstract that, though bought, sold and recognized as “Jews,” they look more like aliens than human beings.

“As a Jewish dancer, people look at my physicality as a Jew,” said Steve Weintraub, the festival’s Jewish dance teacher, with whom I visited the exhibit. “What does this mean about how people are seeing me?”

That, of course, was the question. Or one of the questions. Only days after the festival’s conclusion, the lower house of Poland’s parliament voted down a bill that would have allowed Jewish (and Muslim) ritual animal slaughter.

It’s not for nothing that the exhibition advertisement featured the grotesque head of a wooden Jew, all staring eyes, fur hat and flaring peyes, or sidelocks. From posters and banners it glared proudly — even defiantly — out at the manifold new realities of Jewish Kazimierz with an expression of amazement, inquiry and possibly apprehension.

Read full article at: http://forward.com/articles/180634/onward-and-upward-with-matisyahu-in-krakow/?p=all#ixzz2ZaSVeCa9

Big events in Poland next weekend

by Ruth Ellen Gruber

(This post also appears on my En Route blog for the LA Jewish Journal)

Two long-awaiting events are happening in Poland next weekend -- the opening of the Jewish museum installed in the restored synagogue in the little town of Chmielnik, and the opening of the restored synagogue in the town of Wielkie Oczy, which will now be used as the public library.

I've actually never seen the elegant synagogue in Wielkie Oczy, located in the southeastern corner of Poland on the Ukrainian border -- but I have long loved it from its photographs: its state of disrepair made it a particularly poignant image. Distinguished by its arched windows and doors, it was built in 1910 but rebuilt in 1927 after suffering serious damage in World War I. It was long used as a warehouse and office after World War II but had languished derelict for years in a steadily deteriorating condition.

A series of events  on June 16 will celebrate its reopening after a restoration funded by the town, with support from the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland. These will include the unveiling of a memorial plaque to the destroyed Jewish community, speeches, and a concert.

The development of the Jewish museum in Chmielnik, north of Krakow, is something that I have followed for years -- and it all comes to fruition June 15-16, with two days of events including a conference, concerts, talks and more.

Partially restored synagogue, July 2012. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

I first saw the ruined synagogue, one of the largest buildings in the little town, back in 1990, when I made my first forays into documenting Jewish heritage sites. Originally built in the 1630s, it was, though derelict, still a splendid building, a massive masonry structure with barrel vaulting. The Nazis turned it into a warehouse, but the interior still retained stucco work dating from the 18th century, and the walls still bore traces of delicate polychrome decoration, including frescoes of lions, neoclassical geometric forms, and signs of the zodiac. 

Me and Piotr Krawczyk outside the synagogue under renovation, July 2012.

About a dozen years ago, young local activists, in particular Piotr Krawczyk, became interested in the Jewish history of the town -- which Krawczyk noted to me actually meant the history of the town: before the Holocaust, Jews made up about 80 percent of the population, but their memory and the memory of their contribution was long suppressed or forgotten.    

Inspired by the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, Krawczyk and other activists, cooperating with the municipality, launched an annual Jewish culture festival in Chmielnik, held each June. They also started other initiatives, including clean-up of the ravaged Jewish cemeteries and erection of the memorial, as well as a web site about Jewish heritage, history and culture of the region.

The museum project has been the most ambitious project, entailing the renovation and transformation of the synagogue -- the design has been somewhat controversial because of a glass bimah installation.

Belatedly.... links to the Jewish heritage conference in Krakow

Opening plenary. Photo: JCC Krakow

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I know, I've really let things slide on this blog. Partly it's because there has been so much going on that I have not found time to write a decent post. Partly it's because I've been putting a lot of energy into the news feed of the web site www.jewish-heritage-europe.eu, which I coordinate as a project of the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe.  I urge everyone to subscribe to the Jewish Heritage Europe news feed -- you can do it from the home page of the web site, or from any of the news pages. (And -- why not like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter, too...?)

One of my main projects over the past few months, linked to Jewish Heritage Europe, was being the main hands-on organizer of the working seminar on Managing Jewish Immovable Heritage, which took place in Krakow April 23-25. Our partner on the ground in Krakow was the Jewish Community Center, whose young staff and volunteers were fantastic to work with and did an extraordinary job and making everything work....and everyone agreed that the kosher food provided from the JCC kitchen was the best anyone had ever had at such a gathering.

We had about 100 participants from about 20 or 22 countries -- as broad a mix of people involved in Jewish heritage preservation, documentation and promotion as possible: culture ministry representatives; Jewish community representatives; academics; architects and architectural historians; grass-roots activists -- and more.

All the sessions (except for a session with funders) were recorded -- and I have posted all of them, in their entirety -- on the web site. Click here to see them. I have also posted the texts or power points of some of the presentations.

There were three plenary sessions -- an introductory session with keynote by Samuel D. Gruber; a session on managing Jewish heritage in Poland; and a summing up "looking toward the future" session. All were held in the ornate, 19th century Tempel Synagogue, in mark to mark the 20th anniversary of the start of the restoration of that building.

Managing Jewish Built Heritage Conference this week -- opening to be live-streamed

Restoration work in synagogue in Spisske Podhradie, Slovakia, 2011. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This post also appears on my En Route blog for the LA Jewish Journal

I've spent much of the past five or six months working on the organization of an international conference called Managing Jewish Immovable Heritage in Europe: A Working Seminar on Projects, Challenges and Strategic Thinking -- a three-day, invitation-only working seminar convened to discuss a wide range of issues, challenges, strategies and successes regarding the care, maintenance, preservation, use and promotion of Jewish material heritage. It is a direct follow-up to a seminar on Jewish heritage management that took place in Bratislava, Slovakia, in March 2009 and issued the Bratislava Statement, including best practices recommendations.

The conference takes place April 23-25.

The opening session April 23 will take place in the historic Tempel Synagogue, whose restoration, spearheaded by the World Monuments Fund and initiatied in the early 1990s, was one of the first major post-communist Jewish heritage restorations in Poland.

The session -- at 2 p.m. CET -- will be live streamed on internet. Keynote speaker will be Dr. Samuel D. Gruber, a pioneer in Jewish heritage preservation and documentation. You can watch it on the www.jewish-heritage-europe.eu web site, or right here:

The seminar is being convened by the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe; the David Berg Foundation; the Cahnman Foundation, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee; the World Monuments Fund; and the Taube Foundation, in cooperation with the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland; the Jewish Community Centre in Krakow; the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow; and the European Council of Jewish Communities. The U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad will also have a presence.

WHY: The restitution of Jewish property seized by the Nazis or nationalized by post-war communist regimes has been a hot-button international issue since the Iron Curtain fell. But the slow and often painful legal battles to gain restitution have often overshadowed the pressing practical concerns of what to do with such properties, whether they are owned by Jewish communities or by others. Many of them are huge. Many are dilapidated. Many are recognized as historic sites. And most stand in towns where few if any Jews now live. Even basic care and maintenance can stretch already strapped financial and professional resources. How to preserve, manage and promote these historic Jewish properties is a key issue faced by Jewish communities, civic bodies, NGOs., governments, municipalities, grassroots activists and others.

WHO: About 90 invited participants from about 20 countries, including experts in the field as well as a variety of direct stakeholders: Jewish community representatives, grassroots activists, NGOs, civic bodies, funders, researchers, government officials, etc.

ISSUES: Sessions will examine the issues that arose and the recommendations that emerged out of the Bratislava meeting, as expressed in the final Bratislava Statement of best practices. They will also consider new conditions that have arisen in the past four years – including new technology developments; the financial crunch and changed funding possibilities; changed local attitudes, etc. – and look toward the future.

The meeting will include general discussion as well as thematic workshops, and there will be a half-day trip to visit Jewish heritage solutions near Krakow.

Focal points of discussion will include:

– Sharing experience/strategic thinking: Though each situation is specific, there are many shared problems and needs that can be addressed collectively. Importantly, there are also solutions that can be shared.

– Making information available/using new digital technologies: Information on Jewish sites is most useful when it is most widely available. Efforts should continue and expand to make documentation available in publicly accessible research centers and through publications and on-line presentation, all the while considering safety, security and privacy concerns. New technology – ranging from smartphone apps to digital documentation to enhanced scanning – needs to be addressed as part of research, documentation and promotion of Jewish heritage.

– Networking and collaboration/strategic thinking: Jewish communities and institutions should work together as much as possible to share existing information, methodologies and technologies, and to develop new and compatible goals and strategies to optimize the care and management of historic Jewish properties. They should also seek partners among NGOs, local, civic and government bodies, and individuals outside the Jewish community. And vice versa.

– End-user development: Jewish communities and local heritage, cultural and tourist bodies (as well as NGOs, civic bodies, individuals and others) should work together to develop regional, national and trans-border heritage routes as well as local projects.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE CONFERENCE PROGRAM, INCLUDING SPEAKERS

Museum of the History of Polish Jews dedicated at last

I view the spectacular painted Gwozdziec ceiling

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This post also appears in my En Route blog for the LA Jewish Journal.

I've been in Warsaw for events marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising -- and  filed a story for JTA on the "soft" opening of the long-awaited, long-delayed Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

Though I am not in love with the exterior of the buildng -- except for its location opposite the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes Memorial -- I was very impressed with the interior. In particular the way the big glass gash of an entrance frames the memorial when you look out from inside.

For me, who has followed the development of the museum for nearly 20 years, it was a rather emotional (and emotionally satisfying) moment to finally be inside -- and to connect and reconnect with so many people I've encountered here in Poland since the 1980s.

WARSAW, Poland (JTA) -- Krzysztof Sliwinski, a longtime Catholic activist in Jewish-Polish relations, gazed wide-eyed at the swooping interior of this city's Museum of the History of Polish Jews. 

Nearly two decades in the making, the more than $100 million institution officially opens to the public this week amid a month of high-profile, state-sponsored events marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. 

“It’s incredible, incredible, incredible how things have changed,” Sliwinski told JTA. “I remember commemorations of the ghetto uprising under communism when only a few people showed up. How good it was that we were optimistic.”

Sliwinski organized Jewish cemetery cleanups and other pro-Jewish initiatives under communism, when Jewish practice and culture were suppressed by the regime. 

In 1995, then-Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, an Auschwitz survivor, appointed him post-Communist Poland’s first official ambassador to the Jewish Diaspora, part of the state’s unprecedented outreach policy. 

On Sunday, both Sliwinski, now 73, and Bartoszewski, 91, joined hundreds of local Jews and other VIPs as Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, unveiled a mezuzah at the museum’s main entrance.

Read the full story

In writing this piece, it was fascinating to go back and see what I -- and others -- had written back in the 1990s.

New York Times 1996 piece on opposition/ambivalence regarding the museum project
My 1996 story on Sliwinski as Poland's ambassador to the Jewish Diaspora

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

Wonderful Exhibit in Warsaw of Gwozdziec synagogue panels

A version of this post appeared on my En Route blog for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal

Preview of the Exhibition. Photo courtesy of Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

A wonderful exhibition opens today at the Arkady Kubickiego (Kubicki Arcade) of the Royal Castle in Warsaw and runs til the end of the month—the colorful ceiling panels that have been painted this summer as part of the Gwozdiec synagogue reconstruction project.

The reconstruction of an 85 percent scale model of the tall peaked roof and richly decorated inner cupola of the wooden synagogue that once stood in Gwozdziec (now in Ukraine) is a project of the Handshouse Studio and the forthcoming Museum of the History of Polish Jews—I wrote about the first stages of the project last summer, when students, master timber-framers and volunteers gathered in Sanok, southeastern Poland, to build the structure, using hand tools that would have been used centuries ago. The reconstructed roof and cupola will be a major installation at the new Museum, which is due to open in the autumn of 2013.

Its elaborate structure and the intricate painted decoration on the cupola ceiling will reproduce a form of architectural and artistic expression that was wiped out in World War II, when the Nazis put the torch to some 200 wooden synagogues in Eastern Europe. Many of them, like that in Gwozdziec, were centuries old and extraordinarily elaborate, with tiered roofs and richly decorative interior painting. 

The Gwozdziec Synagogue, built in the 17th and 18th centuries, was a “truly resplendent synagogue that exemplified a high point in Jewish architectural art and religious painting,” the architectural historian Thomas C. Hubka, an expert on the building, has written.

This summer, at workshops held in synagogues around Poland, teams of students and volunteers have been carrying out the colorful, elaborate paintings that cover in the interior of the cupola—and it is these that will be displayed for the next two weeks in Warsaw.

It’s terrific—and fascinating—work, and this will be a rare chance to see the panels up close before they are mounted as part of the cupola installation!

Staying in Krakow

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




By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I've just been to Krakow for the last few days of the annual Jewish Culture Festival - the best party around. This year I did a couple of lectures to groups who were attending (and observing) the festival. It led to some reminiscing with friends who -- like me -- have been going to the Festival since the early 1990s.

One of the things we talked about what where we had stayed in Krakow in those early years -- because, until the late 1990s, there were very few if any places to stay in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter where the Festival now takes place. Nowadays, there is a wide variety of choices all over the city -- from top flight hotels to inexpensive hostels and rental rooms and apartments.

In the early years, the artists at the Festival used to be put up at the Forum Hotel -- I should say, the late Forum Hotel, because the Forum as it was then does not exist anymore. It is a hulking empty relic on the Vistula that serves as a prop for huge advertising posters....

I used to stay at the Hotel Pollera, an old-fashioned place in the Old Town near the main market square, or Rynek, about a 20-minute walk (or more) from Kazimierz.

For the past dozen years, though, I've stayed in Kazimierz itself whenever I've been in Krakow -- usually at one of two hotels that, I have to say (full disclosure), are run by friends.

One is the Klezmer Hois, operated by Wojtek and Malgosia Ornat, the couple who founded the first Jewish-style cafe in Krakow. I still remember vividly sitting with Wojtek in 1992 or so, at an umbrella-shaded wicker table, eating strawberries and looking out at the devastation of Szeroka street, the main square of Jewish Kazimierz, which then was a ring of dilapidated buildings.

The Ornats opened Klezmer Hois -- their third locale -- in the mid-1990s, in a building that once housed a mikvah. It evolved into a hangout for Krakow Jews and visiting Jewish artists and others -- and it still fulfills that purpose, at least for us older crowd. Sitting in the garden during Festival time, is a delight, a constant round of people dropping by, conversing, eating, drinking. Klezmer Hois is, actually, the one "Jewish style" cafe in Krakow that I go to. The Ornats also run the Austeria Jewish publishing house (which has published my book "Letters from Europe (and Elsewhere)") and the associated Austeria bookstore.

The hotel rooms are old-fashioned and up creaking flights of stairs -- and the breakfast is spectacular, a delicious combination of table service and partial buffet.

Breakfast at Klezmer Hois Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The other hotel in Kazimierz that I stay in is the Hotel Eden, on Ciemna street, a wonderfully friendly place, founded in the mid-1990s by the American Allen Haberberg, that started out as a kosher hotel. Though no longer kosher, the Eden still caters to Jewish travelers and has a mikvah -- which has been used for conversions as well as ritual baths. Each room has a mezuzah on the door, and there is also wifi throughout the building. I asked Allen not long ago why the Eden was no longer kosher (although it will still provide kosher food for those who ask) -- he told me one reason was that there are now good kosher caterers as well as an upscale kosher restaurant (the Olive Tree) in Krakow.

Rabbi Edgar Gluck and Allen Haberberg in front of the Eden Hotel. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Also on this trip though, for the first time in a long time, I stayed for a couple of nights near the Rynek, at the Hotel Saski -- where I think I stayed with my mother in about 1992.

It doesn't seem to have changed much -- but the Old Town has.... Krakow is the city that doesn't sleep ... at 3 a.m. the streets were as lively as in the middle of the afternoon.

Lobby of the Saski. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber