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.
This post also appears on my En Route blog for the LA Jewish Journal
The Bosnia-Herzegonia National Museum in Sarajevo, where the priceless Sarajevo Haggadah is kept, is being forced to close for lack of funds -- the latest in a number of major cultural institutions in Sarajevo forced to shut their doors due to political wrangling and the central government's halting of funds for culture.
In my brief JTA story I write that Jakob Finci, the longtime leader of the Jewish community in Sarajevo, said the museum, founded in 1888, would close on Thursday due to “lack of money, financing and support from the State.”
He called the decision “tragic,” but said he did not fear for the Sarajevo Haggadah, which, he said would be kept in a safe place. The haggadah, handwritten in Spain in the 14th century and brought to Sarajevo after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, has been owned by the museum since 1894.
During the Bosnian war in the 1990s, the lavishly illustrated, 109-page book became a symbol of the shattered dream of multi-ethnic harmony in Bosnia. After the war ended in 1995, the U.N. Mission, along with the Bosnian Jewish Community, the Joint Distribution Committee, and the Yad Hanadiv and Wolfenson Foundations, facilitated a $150,000 project to restore the Haggadah and prepare a secure, new, climate-controlled room in which to put it on display.
This was opened with a gala ceremony in December 2002. But Finci told JTA that, in recent years, the actual Haggadah was only displayed on four days a year – all the rest of the time a facsimile was shown.
In 2001, before it went on public display, I had the rare opportunity of viewing the Haggadah in the underground bank vault in Sarajevo where it was kept, when I accompanied a JDC delegation to Bosnia.
A bank functionary led us through corridors and down narrow stairways into a basement vault lined with safety deposit boxes.
Wrapped in white tissue paper, the Haggadah was removed from a sealed, blue metal lock box and placed on a table.
Wearing clean, white gloves, a staff member from the Sarajevo national museum then opened the book, turning over page after page to reveal the elegant Hebrew calligraphy and brilliantly colored and gilded illustrations.
The National Gallery closed to the public last September. It had been without a director and chief financial officer since May. The Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, also in Sarajevo, was forced to shut its doors on 4 January after running out of money for maintenance and heating. Staff at both institutions have worked without pay since the respective closures.
The National and University Library, which has had no heating since early January, is next on the list of anticipated closures. [...]
The current crisis is a result of national elections held in 2010, which failed to create a coalition with a parliamentary majority. Without a functioning government, there was no funding for cultural institutions last year.
Museum administrators in Sarajevo say that grants from the new government, formed this February, will not solve the structural problem affecting the institutions. They believe that the institutions need to be funded at a national level if they are to operate effectively in the future. They also want a national cultural ministry to be created.
For further information on the culture crisis in Bosnia see the web site www.cultureshutdown.net
The first thing that greets visitors to the museum is a memorial with digital photo frames with changing pictures of the dead, including 3,500 identity photos which the Bulgarians demanded from the Bitola Jews. The museum is not yet finished but today its main exhibition charts the history, not just of Macedonia’s Sephardic Jews, but also those of other parts of the Balkans and especially the former Yugoslavia. What is striking, in comparison with the museums in Paris and Berlin, say, is the lack of objects. The community was wiped out so comprehensively that virtually nothing remained, says Mr Sadikarijo.
For decades the spot where the new museum stands was a rough patch of ground that served as a bus station. The whole area, which was more or less empty, was the old Jewish quarter of Skopje, many of whose remaining houses collapsed in a devastating earthquake in 1963. When the Macedonian government began its post-communist programme of returning property nearly a decade ago, it was found that there were no heirs to much of the former Jewish property. So a fund was established, which in turn created the museum.
The memory of this community has been saved from oblivion in a way that is neither flashy, political, nor full of raw emotion. Perhaps it will serve as an exemplary model of sober remembrance in the Balkans in years to come.
On Sept. 6, during my trip to Romania to work on my (Candle)sticks on Stone project, I made a day trip to Chernivtsi, Ukraine -- A.K.A. Czernowitz or Cernauti -- just across the border. The city has changed, at least in outward appearance, since my last visit three years ago: 2008 marked the 600th anniversary of the town, and there was considerable investment expended in clean-up, paint-up and fix-up.
We strolled down the lovely main pedestrian street, admiring the fine buildings along it, newly painted in pastel candy colors. Suddenly, we heard the familiar strains of Jewish music -- first a Yiddish folk song, and then Hava Nagila.
The music was coming from up ahead, it wasn't exactly clear from where. I thought it might be something connected to the European Day of Jewish Culture, which was being celebrated that day. But no -- it was just a wedding (or, rather, an apparent series of weddings). Not Jewish, though. The couples and their friends exited the church and came to dance on the pedestrian way, near a little park. Here a band was set up under a red, white and blue tent. And, we were told, face-paced klezmer and Israeli songs were a big hit.
I had come to Czernowitz, in fact, to take part in a European Day of Jewish Culture event -- the presentation of Simon Geissbuehler's new book on Jewish cemeteries in the Bucovina.
Local Rabbi Kofmansky at the book presentation. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber
There had been a presentation event in Radauti the day before, hosted at the new Gerald's Hotel, which had contributed some sponsorship to the book, but in Czernowitz it took place at the Jewish culture building (Jewish National House) and was organized by Jewish institutions. I was gratified that in his talk Simon quoted from the Introduction of my "Jewish Heritage Travel" to describe his own feelings:
When I first researched this book, I became absolutely mesmerized, even a little obsessed with what I was seeing. I wanted to visit, touch, see, feel as many places as I could. I almost felt it a duty. As I entered broken gates or climbed over broken walls into cemeteries where a Jew may not have set foot in years, I wanted to spread my arms and embrace them all, embrace all the tombstones, all the people buried there, all the memories.
Jewish National House. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber
The building is where the historic international Yiddish congress took place in 1908. The meeting drew 70 delegates representing many political and religious factions -- they included luminaries such as the authors I.L. Peretz and Sholem Asch. There were heated debates over when Hebrew, which was then being revived, or Yiddish, whch was spoken by millions of Jews, could be considered the Jewish national language. In the end, a resolution was adopted that declared Yiddish "a" national language of the Jewish people, along with Hebrew. ClickRIGHT HERE for a web site that includes papers, photographs and other material from that congress.
The Jewish National House was built at a time when all major minorities in the city erected imposing cultural headquarters. On our walk through the city, we passed the German National House and the Romanian National House.
Today it houses a number of Jewish organizations as well as new new little Jewish museum, opened in 2008. It's just a two-room exhibit, and there are not a lot of artifacts on display (many of them, though are quite interesting every-day objects, including advertisements, houseold items and even a fur streiml), but the story of Czernowitz Jews is told in photographs and narrative panels that are -- amazingly -- translated into English.
Wintertime view of the Dohany st. Synagogue. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber
By Ruth Ellen Gruber
The Jewish Museum and the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest are participating in the annual "Night of the Museums" -- which this year takes place Saturday night, that is, tomorrow, June 20. Museums all around the country will stay open late -- sometimes very late, even all night -- and will feature a variety of special programs and events. I'm told that it is the first time that Jewish community operations are taking part.
The Jewish Museum is located next door to the splendid Dohany St. Synagogue (which this year celebrates its 150th anniversary), in an annex built in the 1930s on the spot where Theodore Herzl was born. There will be jazz, classical, Gypsy and Klezmer music and special exhibits, games, guided tours and other activities.
Hungarian Jewish Museum
1077 Budapest, Dohány utca 2.
Music of Happiness, gypsy-jewish music festival at the Night of the Hungarian Jewish Museum
The Federation of Jewish Communities of Hungary is participating first time on the Budapest event „Night of the Museums”. You will have the opportunity to hear concerts, literary conversations and to visit on free guided tours in the Jewish Museum and on Herzl square from 22:00 till the morning.
The program at the Holocaust Memorial Center, on Pava street, just outside the city center, looks even more interesting. The center is a striking modern building -- it looks as if it should be in a German expressionist film -- built around the restored Pava Street synagogue, designed by my favorite architect, the prolific Lipot Baumhorn. (I have written extensively about L-B, who is one of my heroes.) Anyone in town should try to see the concert by the great Roma cimbalom player Kalman Balogh, which runs from 8 p.m. til midnight. Kalman takes part this summer in "the Other Europeans" project, and later this month and in July will be performing with that group -- mixed Yiddish and Gypsy musicians -- in Vienna, Krakow and Weimar, Germany.
On the Night of Museums, there is a lively mood beginning from the afternoon. Family programs entertain the smallest ones, special guided tours begin every hour in Hungarian, English and German. From 6 o’clock we take visitors back to the world of old newsreels, we investigate – with the help of a discussion – the responsibility of the media then and today. The evening is devoted to music and dance. You can listen to klezmer, gipsy and jazz, and dance with a champion of swing. If you feel like doing so, you can change books and ideas in the History Corner, or glance into the Mirror of Tolerance. Hungry and thirsty wanderers can refresh themselves in the Bar of Acceptance.
Historical marker at the B'nai Abraham synagogue, Brenham, Texas. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber
This, as I indicated in the title, is off topic -- geographically. In honor of May -- American Jewish Heritage Month -- Moment Magazine has published the first of what it says will be an annual Guide to Jewish Heritage in its current issue, which is also available online.
The average American knows more about the Jews who left Egypt 3,000 years ago than about the Jews who came to America over the past 355 years. When American history textbooks mention Jews, it’s often in connection with the Holocaust. But as the presidential proclamation makes clear, Jews have been part of the fabric of American life since their first steps on American soil in 1654. Jews have extended the boundaries of American pluralism, serving as a model for other religious minorities and expanding the definition of American religious liberty so that they and others would be included as equals. Jewish American history offers us the opportunity to explore how Jews have flourished in a free and pluralistic society where church and state are separated and religion is entirely voluntary. The institutions listed in this guide—archives, historical societies, museums and more—have taken the lead in preserving and recounting that story. Thanks to them, people here and abroad are becoming versed in the American Jewish experience. During Jewish American Heritage Month, in particular, we owe these institutions our gratitude.
The list includes Jewish Museums, Archives, Historical Sites and Historical Societies in North America and the Caribbean. Moment posts the following as a sample selection:
Washington, DC
Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington/Lillian & Albert Small Jewish Museum 701 4th St., NW, Suite 200 Washington, DC 20001 (202) 789-0900 www.jhsgw.org
New York City
Museum of Jewish Heritage Edmond J. Safra Plaza 36 Battery Pl. New York, NY 10280 (646) 437-4200 www.mjhnyc.org
Spertus Museum 610 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605 (312) 322-1700 www.spertus.edu
Berkeley, CA
Judah L. Magnes Museum 2911 Russell St. Berkeley, CA 94705 (510) 549-6950 www.magnes.org
Denver
Mizel Museum 400 S. Kearney St. Denver, CO 80224 (303) 394-9993 www.mizelmuseum.org
Tulsa
Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art 2021 East 71st St. Tulsa, OK 74136 (918) 492-1818 www.jewishmuseum.net
Los Angeles
Simon Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance 9786 West Pico Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90035 (310) 553-8403 www.museumoftolerance.com
Skirball Cultural Center 2701 North Sepulveda Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90049 (310) 440-4500 www.skirball.org
Toronto
Beth Tzedec Reuben & Helene Dennis Museum 1700 Bathurst St. Toronto, Ontario Canada M5P 3K3 (416) 781-3511 www.beth-tzedec.org/museum
Virgin Islands
Weibel Museum/St. Thomas Synagogue Originally built in 1796 by Sephardic Jews who migrated as a result of the Spanish Inquisition, the synagogue is one of the New World’s oldest. 15 Crystal Gade Charlotte Amalie St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands (340) 774-4312 www.onepaper.com/synagogue
Online
Jewish Women’s Archive The archive functions as an online “Museum of the Jewish Woman.” www.jwa.org
Kudos to Moment and to the Taj Hotels, Resorts and Palaces, which sponsored the guide.
