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

Visiting Jewish Heritage in Padova, Italy

In the 16th century Jewish cemetery on via Wiel, Padova. Photo: Gadi Luzzatto Voghera

On a stiflingly hot day a couple weeks ago, I spent an afternoon in Padova (Padua), Italy, visiting some of the centuries-old Jewish heritage sites in the city -- they are being developed now as both a resource for local people and as an attractive itinerary for tourists and other visitors.

The sites I visited included the new Museo della Padova Ebraica (Museum of Jewish Padova) which opened in June. As I wrote on the Jewish Heritage Europe web site ahead of the opening, it is housed in the former “German,” synagogue, Sinagoga Tedesca, used by the Ashkenazic community, which was inaugurated in 1525 in the heart of the Jewish quarter, or ghetto, in the city’s historic center.  (Note -- part of this post is a repost of my article on Jewish Heritage Europe.)

The synagogue, on via delle Piazze, was severely damaged during World War II when it was torched by local Fascists, and it stood derelict until it was completely rebuilt in 1998 (the ark was transferred to Tel Aviv in 1956). The museum exhibition includes before and after photos.

The exhibit includes items from the Jewish community’s extensive collection of Judaica objects from past centuries to the present. Among them are a very rare Mameluk parochet from Egypt dating back to the 15th or 16th century.

There is also an 18th century Megillah of Esther,  a 16th century Torah scroll, exceptional silver torah ornaments, and several ketubot. A backlit photographic reproduction of the Ark occupies the space where the Ark once stood — the ark now being in Tel Aviv.

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Two films are included in the exhibition. One is a general introduction to the history of the community. The other — projected on the walls of the sanctuary where the exhibit is located — tells the story of Padova Jews through the life stories of several prominent members of the community over the past five centuries or so, portrayed by actors. I was somewhat dismayed that this film does not include reference to any women in Padova Jewish history....perhaps there were no famous women, but it was the women who kept the community alive, and I believe that their role must also be highlighted, even if it simply means through exhibits dealing with food and marriage customs.....

Other sites I visited included the 16th century  Italian rite synagogue, which is still used by the small local Jewish community, and the Jewish cemetery on via Wiel — dating from the 16th century and the oldest of the five Jewish cemeteries in the city. (You can download an article about these cemeteries HERE.)

Bimah in the Italian rite synagogue. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

The sanctuary of the Italian synagogue is a small, rather long and narrow space, with an elaborately carved Ark and a delicate wooden Bimah positioned to face each other from the middle of the long sides of the room. The Bimah is believed to have been carved from the wood of a single tree that fell in the botanical gardens.

Ark in the Italian rite synagogue in Padova. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Jewish cemetery behind a high brick wall in via Wiel, in central Padova near the Old Town and of ghetto, has been restored and is beautifully maintained by the Jewish community. Opened in 1529, with more than 90 16th century tombs, it is the oldest surviving Jewish cemetery in Padova and one of  five Jewish cemeteries that remain in the city. (Fragments from two 15th century gravestones from a cemetery destroyed in 1509 are displayed in the city museum).

Jewish cemetery on via Wiel, Padova, founded in 1529

The most famous people buried there are Me’ir Katzenellenbogen, or Maharam, a renowned Ashkenazic rabbi who died in 1565, and his son, Samuel Judah, who succeeded him and died in 1597.

Mainly because of them, Padova is believed to be the only place in Italy where devout followers make pilgrimages to the tombs of their masters. Indeed, Jewish community leaders say that these pilgrims often do not contact the Jewish community to obtain the key to the cemetery, but climb over the wall to pray, leave kvittlach (written messages) and light candles.

Katzenellenbogen gravestones are (rather charmingly) marked by the crest of a crouching Cat (“Katze” in German).

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Another noted personality interred here is Anselmo Del Banco (Asher Levi Meshullam) who died in 1532. A powerful banker (owner of several loan-banks in the Venice area), he was the head of the Jewish community in Venice and represented the community when in 1516 the authorities decreed that Jews there must live in a ghetto. His gravestone is notable for its fine and unusual carving.

Gravestone of Anselmo Del Banco (Asher Meshullam) d. 1532

Balagan Cafe in Florence is Back for the Summer

by Ruth Ellen Gruber

Going to Florence this summer? Well, Balagan Cafe is back -- the weekly open house/garden party on the tree-shaded grounds of the city's magnificent synagogue.

Just about every Thursday evening through August, the Jewish community invites the public for what they call an "apericena" -- a combination aperitivo drink and cena, or dinner -- with kosher food, wine and fancy cocktails.

In addition to the edibles and libations, each night programs concerts, talks, performances or other events, not to mention stands selling books, CDs and souvenirs.

Click here to see the full program.

The first edition of the Cafe was a big hit last summer -- with hundreds of people attending each week. They included members of the Jewish community but also many members of the mainstream public.

As I wrote last November in an article for The Forward:

Each Café featured music, lectures, discussions, performances and other events. There were free guided tours of the synagogue and stands selling books, CDs, Judaica and Balagan Café T-shirts depicting a full moon over the synagogue dome. Performers and featured participants included nationally known figures such as the rock singer Raiz, the Tzadik label klezmer jazz clarinetist Gabriele Coen, and the architect Massimiliano Fuksas, who designed, among other things, the Peres Peace House in Israel.
Meanwhile, food stands sold kosher meals and kosher wine to crowds eager to sample couscous, baked eggplant, beans with cumin and harissa, spicy chickpeas, Roman-style sweet and sour zucchini and other specialties. One evening saw a “competition” between Sephardic and Ashkenazic cooking; another featured a lesson in challah-making.
[...]
About 300 people turned up for the first Café in early June — most of them Jewish community members and their friends. But each week the numbers grew, thanks to enthusiastic local media coverage as well as word of mouth.
“It conquered the city,” journalist Fulvio Paloscia wrote in La Repubblica. By the summer’s last Café, on Aug. 29 — where I was featured in a public conversation ... about Jewish culture and mainstream society — the event drew 800 people. Crowds milled about the garden and listened to two concerts, one by a klezmer band and one by Sephardic singer Evelina Meghnagi. They also mobbed the food stand, where some 450 kosher meals were sold.

This past week's updates from Jewish Heritage Europe

Murals of the Holy Land from Beit Tefilah Benjamin in Chernivtsi, Ukraine. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

As I did last weekend, I'm posting here this past 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 from Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Italy and the UK....

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've run this past week:

Plans for Holocaust Museum in Budapest prompt debate 

My article about a complex situation, published in Tablet Magazine

Lublin: Exhibition of photographs of Jewish cemeteries

Call for applications: fellowship at Center for Urban History in Lviv

Niš Jewish cemetery: new signage, possibility to visit

Great news, thanks to the indefatigable Jasna Ciric

Launch of online catalogue of Romanian archives

Rich new resource

New digital uploads of old synagogue postcards from the Rosenthall collection

Fantastic images and great resource -- for the armchair traveler, too

Technology: 3d scanners help digitize weathered inscriptions

Science in action to benefit historic research!

Update: Bradford Synagogue received first tranche of lottery funding for restoration

A shining example of Jewish-Muslim cooperation

“Visions of the Holy Land” in northern Romanian synagogues

Explanation of beautiful murals that decorate synagogues

Florence synagogue highlighted at Cafe Balagan this past summer

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Almost every week last summer, from early June through the end of August, the palm-shaded garden of the Florence synagogue was the scene of "Cafe Balagan" -- a sort of mini-Jewish culture and food festival aimed at opening up the Jewish community to the city -- and encouraging the city to recognize and embrace its Jewish history.

I took part in the last edition, at the end of August, engaging in a public conversation about Jewish culture and mainstream society, with Enrico Fink, the musician (and director of cultural affairs for the Florence Jewish community) who devised the event.

I wrote about it all for The Forward, in an article published this past week:

Putting Florence's Jewish History into the Spotlight 

By Ruth Ellen Gruber 

Nov. 5, 2013 

If you look out over Florence from Piazzale Michelangelo, high above the Arno, two domes catch your eye. One is Filipo Brunelleschi’s masterpiece, the immense ribbed dome of the Duomo. The other, off to the right, is much smaller but in its way also distinctive: It is the tall, bright green copper dome of the Florence synagogue. 

“Anyone who looks at the Florence skyline sees the Duomo and the synagogue,” said Enrico Fink, a musician and actor who last December took up the post of cultural affairs director of the Florence Jewish community. 

Dedicated in 1882, the synagogue is a monument to 19th century Jewish emancipation and a grand example of Moorish style architecture, with a soaring arched façade and two slim side towers. 

But while the Duomo is one of the most famous attractions in Italy, visited by millions, the synagogue and the Jewish history of the city remain largely unknown to most Florence residents as well as to the vast majority of tourists. 

Fink and other recently installed leaders of the 800- to 900-member Jewish community want to change this. Breaking with past policy, they have embarked on a plan to actively engage with mainstream Florence. They endeavor to make the Jewish community more visible and accessible, demystifying Jews and Jewishness for local non-Jews, while putting Jewish heritage on the local tourist map. 

“We want people in Florence to understand who we are, and to understand that the Jewish community belongs to the city, that we are part of the fabric of the city,” community president Sara Cividali, an energetic woman with a mass of silver hair, told me over lunch at Ruth’s, a kosher vegetarian restaurant next door to the synagogue. “It isn’t assimilation; it’s different, it’s participation,” she said. 

This new strategy was launched this summer with the Balagan Café, an unprecedented experiment in outreach that turned the synagogue’s palm-shaded garden into a mini-Jewish culture festival almost every Thursday night from June through August. Balagan, more or less, means “chaos” — and, said Fink, the idea behind calling the summer’s experiment “Balagan” was “an acceptance of confusion that’s not easy to define.” 

Each Café featured music, lectures, discussions, performances and other events. There were free guided tours of the synagogue and stands selling books, CDs, Judaica and Balagan Café T-shirts depicting a full moon over the synagogue dome. Performers and featured participants included nationally known figures such as the rock singer Raiz, the Tzadik label klezmer jazz clarinetist Gabriele Coen, and the architect Massimiliano Fuksas, who designed, among other things, the Peres Peace House in Israel. 

Meanwhile, food stands sold kosher meals and kosher wine to crowds eager to sample couscous, baked eggplant, beans with cumin and harissa, spicy chickpeas, Roman-style sweet and sour zucchini and other specialties. One evening saw a “competition” between Sephardic and Ashkenazic cooking; another featured a lesson in challah-making.


Read more: http://forward.com/articles/186528/putting-florences-jewish-history-into-the-spotligh/?p=all#ixzz2k8wSvZGS

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!

Moldova -- Fire Damages Ruined Chisinau Synagogue Listed as Historic Monument

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Here's a cross post from Jewish Heritage Europe -- Claude Cahn, who lives near this synagogue in Chisinau, says he will check the site and provide more information:

According to a report (including video) on Moldovan TV, fire -- possibly due to arson -- has damaged what had been the already gaping ruins of an early 20th century synagogue, located on Rabbi Tirelson street. The fire was doused within half an hour and the extent of the damage was not clear.

The media quote neighbors as saying the ruined synagogue - which despite its condition was listed as a local historic monument -- had been bought recently by a group of Jews who wanted to rebuilt it.

Slovakia --1966 footage of synagogue & destruction of Bratislava Jewish quarter

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Thanks to David Kraus, here is some extraordinary footage from Bratislava in 1966, showing the beginning of the destruction of parts of the Old Town, including the historic Jewish quarter, to make way for the construction of the New Bridge. There are some remarkable shots of the twin-towered, Moorish style synagogue before its demolition in the path of the construction.

Off Geographical Topic -- historic synagogues being razed in US

By Ruth Ellen Gruber


Every so often I like (or actually dislike) to post news demonstrating how some of the issues regarding what to do with deteriorating or dilapidated synagogues also affect buildings in the United States. Of course, the history is different: the buildings in the US did not lose their congregations because of the Holocaust (or communist pressure) but by normal demographic shifts. Still, there are parallels about preservation versus urban development; funding, memory, and the significance of built heritage.

Two cases in the U.S. are current: the planned demolition of the historic Anshe Kenesseth Israel synagogue building in Chicago, and the threatened demolition of the former Ahavath Sholom synagogue, in Buffalo, NY.

In Chicago, architectural blogger Lee Bey reports that

The old Anshe Kenesseth Israel temple, 3411 W. Douglas Blvd, will come down by force of an emergency demolition order issued by a judge last December. Preservationists, neighborhood residents and the building's owners, Abundant Life World Outreach ministry, had been working to delay demolition and develop a fundraising and reuse plan for the building, As recently as last Sunday, they cleaned up the building's exterior in hopes of convincing the city not to raze the structure.

The owners changed their mind, he reports, and demolition was expected to begin very soon. The once-grand synagogue was built in 1913,  when the neighborhood was largely Jewish. Later, as the neighborhood changed, it became an African-American Baptist church, where Martin Luther King spoke in the 1960s. It closed about a decade ago and has since stood empty. Lee Bey provides vivid photographic documentation  that shows its dual history.

There is a lengthy article, with pictures, about the Buffalo synagogue on the FixBuffalo blog. Built in 1903,  too became a church,  Greater New Hope Church of God in Christ, in the 1960s and has stood empty for a decade. The demolition order was issued in December, despite the fact that the building has been designated a local landmark.

In December, Housing Court Judge Patrick Carney issued an order to demolish the City's oldest synagogue, one of the last remaining vestiges of Jewish life on the City's East Side.    The familiar onion domed landmark on Jefferson Avenue was designed by A. E. Minks and Sons and built in 1903.  With the cooperation of Rev. Jerome Ferrell and his congregation, the Greater New Hope Church of God in Christ, this historic structure was designated a local landmark by the City's Preservation Board in 1997. 

Samuel D. Gruber discusses the case of the Buffalo synagogue on his blog. 

The structure is now empty and in disrepair.  The building is one of the last standing synagogue of the "facade-dome" type that was popular at the end of the 19th century.  

Architecturally, the building is most readily notable for its single 'onion' style dome set over the central entrance bay of the facade.  Variations of this type of arrangement are known in synagogue architecture beginning in Europe in the mid-19th century.  One example is the destroyed synagogue of Jelgava, Latvia.  The style was especially common in Moorish style buildings such as Ahavath Sholom.  Major American examples include Temple Sinai in Chicago (Dankmar Adler, arch.) and Temple Beth El in New York (Brunner & Tryon, archs.) which were demolished decades ago. Tiny Gemiluth Chassed in Port Gibson, Mississippi survives. Time may not be long for Buffalo's Ahavath Sholom, but local efforts to save the building may stave off the wrecking ball. [...] 

You can read more about the synagogue in this article by Chana Kotzin from the February 10, 2012  issue of the Buffalo Jewish Review.  Kotzin runs the Buffalo Jewish archives and has been collecting history about the building, its congregation and the old East Side Jewish neighborhood. 

 There is a Flickr feed of photos of the synagogue HERE.

From New York not Europe, but relevant

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

My friend Julian Voloj, who was born in Germany, has been photographing former synagogue building in New York City for nearly a decade. He has amassed an important collection of images -- 12 of which are on display at an exhibit in Sag Harbor, NY.

One would think that because American Judaism is alive and well in New York City, there would be lots of people advocating to protect some of these sites. But Voloj found himself in “a race against the clock to make sure what I was documenting would still be there. There was one place that was torn down before I could get inside.”

Of the 1200 photos that Voloj took on his expeditions around New York, he has selected 12 for his exhibition at Temple Adas Israel in Sag Harbor.

“One photo is of a now-supermarket that used to be a Jewish site, and you can see two lions and The Ten Commandments,” said Voloj. “Another is a cross nailed on a Star of David, and there’s one image from the oldest Jewish cemetery in North America, in Chinatown. There’s one gravestone that stands alone. It’s a nice link because the gravestone goes back to the roots of North American Judaism.”

Read full article

Slovakia -- in the Presov Synagogue, a musician deals with a cellphone interruption

Presov synagogue. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This is too good not to post..... at a concert last year in the magnificent synagogue in Presov, in eastern Slovakia, a young violinist (or violist), Lukas Kmit, deals with consummate class with a cellphone interruption..... there have been suggestions that this might be a viral ad for Nokia -- but it looks and sounds real to me! (You can hear the concert audience).

Way off geographic topic but relevant: lost synagogues in New York

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I -- and others -- have written much about and, hey, even taken part in, the  process of seeking out, rediscovering and documenting former synagogues that have been transformed for other use in Europe.....Here's a fascinating story by Benjamin Kabin Weitzenkorn from the local newspaper the Queens Chronicle about a woman's  search for  "lost synagogues" in outer districts of New York City.

On her birthday in 1999, Ellen Levitt decided to look for her mother’s former synagogue in Flatbush. The building was still there, but the congregation was gone, replaced by a Pentecostal Christian one. The news dismayed her mother, but for Levitt, it sparked an idea: to find and document other former synagogues, and to create a record so others could find them as well.

In 2009, her project became a book called “The Lost Synagogues of Brooklyn,” and this past November, Levitt released her latest installment, “The Lost Synagogues of the Bronx and Queens.”

As the project grew, Levitt discovered that synagogues that had not been burned or torn down were adapted for other uses. Some became private homes, one is a correctional facility, another is used for city maintenance and one is even a mosque — but most are now churches.  Read more

In New York, these transformations usually came about because of normal demographic changes that saw Jews moving from one neighborhood to another (often from small towns to cities or from to urban centers and suburbs), while in post-World War II Europe synagogues were most often orphaned by the murder of their community in the Holocaust,  suppression by post-war communist regimes, or emigration of survivors. In Bulgaria, for example, whose Jews survived the Shoah, synagogues were left abandoned when almost all Jews moved to Israel.

Levitt found that many of the former Jewish sites still -- as in Europe -- often retained evidence of their original function.

The former Corona Hebrew School on 53rd Avenue, for example, boasts large stars of David on either side of its gate. Names written in Hebrew are displayed on pillars and walls on the porch. After the Jewish congregation left, the building became a private residence and music studio, and was home to Madonna, pre-fame, in the late 1970s.

Another great example is the former Young Israel of Laurelton on 228th Street. It’s a boxy 1956 building that displays a cornerstone with the Hebrew and secular dates. But its most intriguing feature is the huge window above the main entrance in the shape of a Jewish star, an emblem that the Jamaica-Queens Wesleyan Church has kept as is.

Read full article 

Netherlands -- In Amsterdam, the Dutch Queen attends reopening of the Portuguese synagogue after restoration

By Ruth Ellen Gruber


Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands attended the dedication ceremony in Amsterdam Dec. 20 of the Portuguese Synagogue -- or "Esnoga" -- which was reopened after renovation. She also attended the the first presentation of the synagogue's treasure rooms with many special ceremonial objects.

The synagogue's web site called the occasion "an important moment in the history of this monumental complex."

In January 2010 the current restoration project began. This restoration was necessary because the annexes were in very poor condition and had never previously been restored from the foundations. The aim of the restoration and provision of access was to maintain the Synagogue's authenticity.


Renovation of and rearrangement to ensure easy access to the Portuguese Synagogue is a wonderful and unique addition to the city's cultural features. It will reinforce the cultural and economic infrastructure and make the city and region more attractive for residents and visitors. This heritage is unique, in that it remains a lively building with an equally vibrant community that uses it to this day.


The Esnoga is a pearl for Amsterdam and the Netherlands. In use for centuries, it is now literally opening its doors to the general public. Visitors will be able to view the art treasures, which are maintained according to museum preservation standards, in their natural context. The functional areas will also be made visible and accessible to visitors, who will thus feel like guests in the community. Visiting this historic complex is like taking a stroll through the past and present of a community that has been celebrating its religion and culture for three centuries within these walls.

To see specifics of the restoration, click on the following links:  

Photo from: www.portugesesynagoge.nl

The "Esnoga" and annexes

The main building has undergone quality restoration to the gables, the roofs, the cast-iron windows and the sandstone ornaments. The interior of the synagogue, however, has remained in its original state following the restoration. The building will continue to be lit by nearly one thousand candles in the copper chandeliers.

• Treasure chambers
  
  
  Special climate-controlled spaces will accommodate the valuables of the Portuguese Synagogue. In the future, the concealed treasures will be on public display here.

Very off geographical topic -- synagogue in Mumbai celebrates 150th anniversary

A ceremony Tuesday celebrated the 150th birthday of the Magen David synagogue in Mumbai, India. The synagogue, which underwent restoration last year, was built in 1861 by the philanthropist David Sassoon at a time when hundreds of Baghdadi Jews were migrating to India to escape religious persecution.

“This is probably the largest synagogue in India and, if you exclude those in Israel, probably the largest in Asia,” Solomon Sopher, chairman and managing trustee of the Sir Jacob Sassoon Charity and Allied Trusts, told India's Daily News & Analysis news agency.


He told the Mumbai Mirror (which also publishes a picture of the ceremony): “The Magen David synagogue is easily the biggest in India. Its beauty has been enhanced after the second renovation last year, at the cost of Rs 70 lakh.” He said the first renovation of the synagogue was done in 1910 by David Sasoon’s grandson Jacob.

Poland -- Restoration Work Completed on pre-war Private Synagogue in Bedzin

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Restoration work has been completed on a richly decorated private Jewish prayer room in Bedzin, in southern Poland. The so-called Mizrachi synagogue, believed to date from the mid-1920s, is located in a building at ul. Potocki 3 in the former Jewish quarter.  It was used by the members of the Mizrachi religious Zionist organization. The founder was probably the owner of the entire building, a man named Wiener, who was active in the movement.

The prayer room will be opened to the public in the spring.

The Bedzin town web site has a slide show of pictures showing the completed work -- you can view it  HERE

There are also a lot of pictures on Wiki commons of the "before" condition

Photo (c) Leszek Maszczyk

The photographer Jono David has also posted four dozen pictures documenting the poor state of the synagogue when renovation began and then the  painstaking process of restoration. You can see them HERE

It is the second private prayer house in Bedzin to be restored recently. The other is under the care of a private organization called Cukierman's Gate.  I have posted about them in the past HERE.

Art -- Sotheby's auctions Chagall (and Moyse) paintings of synagogue interiors

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

In its upcoming auction Dec. 14 of  Israeli and International art, Sotheby's will be auctioning three rare large oil paintings from 1931-35 by Marc Chagall showing interiors of synagogues, and also two paintings showing synagogue interiors by the 19th century French painter Edouard Moyse. The paintings all come from the collection of  a descendant of the art collector Max Cottin who acquired the Chagalls in 1945.

Chagall's paintings include a 1935 oil on canvas work showing the interior of the now-destroyed Kloyz of the Vilna Gaon in Vilnius, as well as two paintings of synagogues in Israel.

Chagall's 1935 oil of the Kloyz synagogue in Vilna. Photo courtesy of Sotheby's.

as well as

Belarus -- Synagogue vandalized

File photo from Chabad.org

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The synagogue in Babruysk in eastern Ukraine was vandalized twice in the past week.

The synagogue's secretary, Maya Savatseyeva, told RFE/RL that vandals smashed the synagogue's windows at about 2 a.m. on November 18. On November 11, a swastika and "Death to Jews!" was daubed on the fence surrounding the synagogue.

The town's Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Shaul Habobo said that the local government is providing security for the synagogue while the police continue to search for the perpetrators.
“Everything is pretty much repaired,” he said. “Thank God, we have put this behind us.”

The local Jewish community numbers about 50, mostly elderly, people.