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.

England -- an "old Jewish quarter" tour in London

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

By now, "old Jewish quarter" tours in places like Prague, Venice and Krakow (or Boskovice, Trebic, even L'viv and beyond) are normal -- and popular -- niche itineraries. Here's a story in the London Jewish Chronicle about an old Jewish quarter tour in London's East End.......a district long the hub of Ashkenazi life in London that is now largely Asian.... but which I am old enough to remember when it was still at least something still of a Jewish district.....visiting the market in Petticoat Lane (and hearing about how Jewish it was) is a vivid memory from childhood.

The tour is offered by London Walks, a wellknown walking tour operation, which provides a video preview of the walk, which it describes as "set amid the alleys and back streets of colourful Spitalfields and Whitechapel ... a tale of synagogues and sweatshops, Sephardim and soup kitchens."

Here's some of what Monica Porter writes in the Jewish Chronicle:

The highlight of the tour [is] a visit to the country's oldest surviving synagogue at Bevis Marks. [...]

Maurice Bitton, the shamash of Bevis Marks, welcomes us into the beautiful building, which dates from 1701. Tucked away in a courtyard, because Jews were not allowed to build on public thoroughfares at the time, it is virtually unchanged since it was built. The great brass hanging candelabra, austere dark oak benches, magnificent ark - everything is original.

Bitton recounts with relish the history of the Sephardi synagogue, and regales us with tales of the congregation's most famous son, the 19th-century philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore. He shows us the great man's seat, now roped off. The congregation has shrunk since then, but Bitton says it is starting to grow again, as young Jews move back into the area.

For me, the visit brings back memories. In the 1970s, long before the City was redeveloped, I worked for a magazine whose creaky Dickensian offices overlooked this synagogue. On dusky winter evenings, I peered down through its windows into the warm, candlelit glow, mesmerised by the sound of chanting.

From here we walk north-east to Petticoat Lane (aka Middlesex Street), home of the shmutter trade. This is in Spitalfields, the beginning of the East End proper. Jews fleeing the pogroms in the late 19th century set up their stalls in the market here. Later, Alan Sugar, too, started life as a Petticoat Lane stallholder. Now it is abuzz with Asians, hawking shmutter of their own.

Germany -- Travel story in Huffpost on Jewish sights in Worms

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Worms, near Frankfurt in (western) Germany, is home to some of the most historic Jewish heritage sites in Europe -- the thousand-year-old Jewish cemetery (believed to be the oldest in Europe aside from ancient Roman-era catacombs) and the rebuilt 11th century Rashi synagogue with its museum.  The synagogue was totally reconstructed from rubble between 1959 and 1961 -- one of the few synagogues of recognized historical importance in Europe that in the first three decades after World War II  were reconstructed or restored in ways that retained their Jewish identity.

Alan Elsner reflected on his recent visit there for the Huffington Post.

Middle East Digital Jewish Heritage Tour -- Off Geographical Topic but Relevant

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I want to highlight the Diarna project, a web site devoted to a digital tour of Mizrachi culture and Jewish heritage in the Middle East and North Africa. There are photographs, videos, descriptions and digital reconstructions of synagogues, etc.

Border guards, plane tickets, and security concerns don’t exist inside Diarna’s unique digital tour. Instead, join a multimedia journey to the region’s captivating yet rarely-visited Jewish heritage sites, from Saharan outposts in southern Morocco to remote Kurdish villages in Iran, to epic sites in the Arabian Peninsula.

Diarna, “Our Homes” in Judeo-Arabic, is a project dedicated to virtually preserving Mizrahi (“Eastern”) Jewish history through the lens of physical location. Satellite imagery, photographs, videos, oral history, and even three-dimensional models offer a unique digital window onto sites and communities disappearing before our very eyes. As structures decay and the last generation to live in these locations passes on, we are in a race against time to preserve priceless cultural treasures.

Four ways to begin your journey:

• View Diarna’s Media Gallery, including video tours of the Jewish cemetery in Khartoum, Sudan and the ancient synagogue in Oufrane, Morocco.
• Download a sample Diarna Google Earth tour layer, featuring sites in Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Iraq.
• Make a Virtual Pilgramage to Moroccan Anti-Atlas Mountain Shrines
• Tour a 3-D Reconstruction of the Magen Avraham Synagogue in Beirut, Lebanon

Italy -- Festival of Polish Jewish Culture in Venice

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Later this month there will be a festival of Polish Jewish culture held in Venice -- with concerts, exhibitions, lectures, etc. I am scheduled to speak at the closing "Day of Study". The festival is organized by the Polish Institute of Culture in Rome, the Venice Jewish Community and the association organizing events for the upcoming 500th anniversary of the institution of the ghetto in Venice.

Here's the schedule (In Italian).

In occasione della presidenza polacca nel Consiglio dell’Unione Europea. Nell’imminenza delle celebrazioni per i 500 anni del Ghetto di Venezia. Venezia, dal 20 al 29 novembre 2011.

Su proposta dell’Istituto Polacco di Roma e del suo direttore Jaroslaw Mikołajewski, la Comunità ebraica di Venezia e l’Associazione per i 500 anni del Ghetto di Venezia hanno voluto organizzare un Festival della Cultura Ebraica Polacca. Si tratta del primo evento culturale di un lungo percorso che condurrà nel 2016 alle grandi celebrazioni in occasione dei 500 anni dall’istituzione del Ghetto di Venezia, il primo ghetto al mondo. Gli organizzatori delle odierne manifestazioni hanno voluto dare particolare rilievo ai concetti di vita e di cultura, ! tentando di offrire al pubblico proposte culturali che spaziano cronologicamente dal ‘500 alla contemporaneità. Non è assente il tema della Shoah, che naturalmente trattandosi di ebrei e di Polonia non può essere trascurato, e tuttavia l’intento è quello di non farsi schiacciare dalla catastrofe dello sterminio e proporre ai visitatori tracce culturali spesso inesplorate e inedite. Gli ebrei e la Polonia nel passato e nel presente, con uno sguardo al futuro.

L’idea di organizzare questo evento a Venezia assume particolare significato per la collocazione geografica e storica della comunità ebraica lagunare in rapporto alla Polonia. Basterà pensare agli importanti rapporti culturali e famigliari fra esponenti del rabbinato veneto e polacco a partire dal Cinquecento, ed è utile ricordare che all’indomani del rogo del Talmud (1553) che mise fine alla stampa a Venezia della principale opera della tradizione ebraica, il testimone venne preso dagli stampatori di Cracovia che produssero la loro prima edizione già nel 1559. E da Venezia provennero gli ebrei (sefarditi) che andarono a fondare la comunità ebraica nella lontana Zamosc, nuova città costruita da un architetto padovano e disegnata sul modello rinascimentale.

Il Festival prevede i seguenti appuntamenti:

- Una mostra sui rabbini di Cracovia presso il Museo Ebraico! di Venezia

- Un dibattito sul rapporto fra ebrei e Polonia con la partecipazione di Adam Michnik, intellettuale ebreo polacco, giornalista, protagonista della rinascita democratica e animatore del movimento Solidarnosc.

- Un evento “concerto e parole” con il decano dei musicisti klezmer di Polonia, Leopold Kozlowski

- Una rassegna cinematografica dedicata allo sguardo del grande regista polacco Andrej Wajda sul rapporto fra ebrei e Polonia.

- Una Giornata di Studi incentrata sulle dinamiche insediative degli ebrei fra Venezia e l’Europa orientale.

In particolar! e la Giornata di Studi rappresenta l’ evento iniziale del lungo percorso di valorizzazione della storia del Ghetto di Venezia e dei suoi 500 anni.

Programma

20 novembre

Rabbini di Cracovia – ore 16, inaugurazione della mostra presso il Museo Ebraico

Ebrei-polacchi, polacchi ed ebrei: riflessioni su una storia comune – ore 17-19 presso la Sala Montefiore (Cannaregio 1189) Tavola rotonda con Adam Michnik, Francesco M. Cataluccio, Laura Mincer

Leopold Kozlowski, l’ultimo klezmer della Galizia – ore 20 presso la sala concerti del Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello, Palazzo Pisani, San Marco 2810, concerto di musica e parole.

22 – 29 novembre

Ho sentito la voce del dottor Korczak – rassegna cinematografica dedicata ad Andrej Wajda e al suo sguardo sull’ebraismo polacco. La rassegna si svolge presso la Casa del Cinema.

Martedì 22 novembre : ore 17.30 GENERAZIONE (Pokolenie, 1955) di Andrzej Wajda; ore 20.30 SANSONE (Samson, 1961) di Andrzej Wajda

Giovedì24 novembre : ore 17.30 PAESAGGIO DOPO LA BATTAGLIA (Krajobraz po bitwie, 1971) di Andrzej Wajda; ore 20.30 DOTTOR KORCZAK (Korczak, 1991) di Andrzej Wajda

Martedì 29 novembre : ore 17.30 SETTIMANA SANTA (Wielki tydzien, 1995) di Andrzej Wajda;

ore 20.30 DYBBUK (Der Dibuk, 1937) di Michal Waszynski

27 Novembre

Ore 10-18 Giornata di Studi: LA CITTÀ DEGLI EBREI: GHETTI, QUARTIERI, SHTETL FRA PASSATO E PRESENTE

Russia -- Replicate? Replace?

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This Jerusalem Post story about the battles with a circus over the site of the destroyed synagogue in Kaliningrad, where Chabad wants to build a replica/reconstruction of the building, is somewhat off topic, but encompasses some of the dilemmas involved in Jewish heritage preservation and memory.

Jews in the Russian city of Kaliningrad want to reconstruct a grand synagogue on the same spot where it stood before the Nazis destroyed it, but first they have to evict the current tenants: the local circus.

Rabbi David Shvedik told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday he has been trying for years to relocate the circus from the vacant plot where the majestic Konigsberg Synagogue once stood but to no avail.

“We own the land but they won’t leave,” he said on the phone from Kaliningrad. “They’ve threatened us by saying if they were forced to leave and then all the children will be angry at the Jews because there’d be no more circus in town.”

The Chabad emissary said members of the local Jewish community have tried to pay the circus to move.

“We don’t want a war,” Shvedik said, “which is why we’ve offered them 400,000 euros to go but they said no.”

 Read full store HERE