Bob Cohen on East European Diaspora Haunts in New York

I have a link to Bob Cohen's Dumneazu blog on the sidebar of this blog, but his current post, "From Katz's Deli to Williamsburg, Let My People Go!" on visiting (and eating in) New York haunts of East European Jewish immigrants is well worth reading... the photos and his descriptions go back and forth between the Old Country and the New World, pointing out wonderful visual and gustitorial links and influences.

Italy -- Historic Synagogue in Sabbioneta Closed

                  

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The entry stairway to the early 19th century  synagogue in the historic northern Italian town of Sabbioneta has been declared unsafe and the building, now used as a museum, closed to visitors.

Sabbioneta, on the Po River near Mantova, was laid out as a walled "ideal city" in the second half of the 16th century by Prince Vespasiano Gonzaga Colonna. It is on UNESCO's list of world heritage sites, paired with Mantova as two aspects of Renaissance town planning.

Mantua shows the renewal and extension of an existing city, while 30 km away, Sabbioneta represents the implementation of the period’s theories about planning the ideal city. Typically, Mantua’s layout is irregular with regular parts showing different stages of its growth since the Roman period and includes many medieval edifices among them an 11th century rotunda and a Baroque theatre. Sabbioneta, created in the second half of the 16th century under the rule of one person, Vespasiano Gonzaga Colonna, can be described as a single-period city and has a right angle grid layout. Both cities offer exceptional testimonies to the urban, architectural and artistic realizations of the Renaissance, linked through the visions and actions of the ruling Gonzaga family.



Sabbioneta represents the construction of an entirely new town according to the modern, functional vision of the Renaissance. The defensive walls, grid pattern of streets, role of public spaces and monuments all make Sabbioneta one of the best examples of ideal cities built in Europe, with an influence over urbanism and architecture in and outside the continent. The properties represent two significant stages of territorial planning and urban interventions undertaken by the Gonzagas in their domains.

Jews lived in Sabbioneta from the town's early days -- even before it was laid out in its present form. There was a ghetto here, and the town developed into an important center of Hebrew printing.   The Sabbioneta synagogue dates from 1824 -- its present form is an enlargement and rebuilding of an earlier structure by a noted Lombard architect named Carlo Visioli.

The synagogue lay in sorry disrepair for decades until it was restored by local authorities, turned into a museum and inserted into local tourism itineraries. It has a gilded ark behind a low, elaborate grille and  flanked by Corinthian columns. The ceiling is decorated by ornate stucco work.

Austria -- Government to Help Fund Jewish Cemetery Restoration

 Historic Jewish cemetery in Eisenstadt, Austria. Photo: Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Austrian government is mandating 20 million euro over the next 20 years toward the care and restoration of abandoned and neglected Jewish cemeteries in Austria. An agreement reached Monday night broke what Austrian Jewish leader Ariel Muzicant said had been a stalemate lasting nine years, following an agreement made in 2001 under which Austria had committed to care for Jewish cemeteries as part of a compensation deal for Nazi crimes.

Vienna's Jewish community called the government's 20 million euros (29 million dollars) a "late Hanukkah gift." "Nearly nine years after the signing of the Washington Agreement, the last issue that was still open in terms of international law is settled," the community said in a statement. Under the new funding agreement reached late on Monday, Jewish communities are to raise an additional 20 million euros, while the city of Vienna and the province of Lower Austria also pledged contributions.

          Read full DPA story

          Read Associated Press story

There are about 70 Jewish cemeteries in Austria, about 20 of which are said to be in particularly bad condition. The Austrian Jewish Community web site has an extensive page listing all the cemeteries and giving their history, size, location, condition and notes on any current or recent restoration efforts.

Me -- Interviewed about the Virtually Jewish on a Canadian Radio

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

When I was in Budapest this month, I was interviewed by phone about the Virtually Jewish phenomenon by Radio613, an independent Canadian Jewish radio program. Click RIGHT HERE to listen -- but be forewarned, it runs about an hour!

The interview highlights Jewish cultural developments and other contemporary European issues that are critically examined in her book Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture and her recent essay featured in the Jewish Quarterly Review, “Beyond Virtually Jewish: New Authenticitiy and Real Imaginary Spaces in Europe”.  Ruth Ellen Gruber shares insights on the state of Klezmer in Europe with music this week from Itzhak Perlman and the Klezmatics (“Dybbuk Shers”), Brave Old World (“Berlin 1990″) and Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird (“Broken Tongue”). Tune in!

RUTHLESS COSMOPOLITAN -- Riffing on architecture bans (and destruction), from Vilnius

My latest Ruthless Cosmopolitan column is a riff about how the recent vote to ban new mosque minarets in Switzerland struck a chord -- making me recall historic bans and regulations on synagogue architecture -- and the ultimate destruction of them.

I wrote it after I got back from the seminar in Vilnius, which came a week after the Swiss vote and focused on the lasting impact of the destruction of Lithuanian Jews -- and their built heritage.

I realize that the Swiss voters who overwhelmingly approved the minaret ban were responding to scare tactics that raised the specter of an extremist Islamic takeover in their country.
Yet in a certain way, the Swiss vote Nov. 29 and the Lithuanian seminar were connected.

To me, the ban on minarets recalled centuries of restrictions on the size or prominence of synagogues. The Swiss ban is just the latest example of how governmental authorities target religious architecture as a means of limiting religious or cultural expression.

 In the story I quote Sam.

"Beginning in the fourth century and continuing through the Middle Ages, and again in the 20th century, the 'legal' restriction and destruction of synagogues quickly led to the same policies applied against individuals, and then whole communities. 

"Restricting specific types of religious or cultural expression -- especially when such restrictions are deliberate exceptions to existing building, zoning, health and safety codes -- is discriminatory."
It is, he said, "an act of denigration of cultural custom and, by extension, of the people who cherish, or the religion that requires, those very customs."

 I also noted the focus of the Vilnius seminar -- and now the destruction of nearly all traces of Jewish historic presence in Vilnius left a gaping hole that has yet to be filled.

Before World War II, about 100,000 Jews lived here. The Great Synagogue, standing in the heart of what is today's postcard-perfect Old Town, was the most magnificent of more than 100 synagogues and prayer houses in the city. The Vilnius Old Town today is on UNESCO's roster of World Heritage Sites, but almost no physical traces of its Jewish past remain. There are a few street names, wall inscriptions and plaques, but that's it.

Read full story

Moldova -- Anti-Semitism on Show

 

 Photo from jurnaltv.md

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This deviates somewhat from what I usually post here, but the video is so graphic that I decided to put it up. If you've never seen anti-Semitism in action, here's your chance. TV footage on jurnaltv.md of a group of 100-200 Orthodox Christian fundamentalists in Chisinau (Kishinev), the capital of Moldova, led by a priest, removing a Hanukkah Menorah placed by the Jewish community, replacing it with a cross, and then taking the Menorah and positioning it -- symbolically -- upside down. The priest and crowd spout paranoid anti-Semitic slurs.

Reactions have come from the Moldovan blog morninginmoldova.com and the MCA -- The Center for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism in Romania.

Lithuania -- Report from Vilnius

Plaque recalling the Gaon of Vilna. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The formal topic of the seminar in Vilnius this week was "Vilnius -- World Heritage Site: Values of Jewish Heritage and its Commemoration."

Vilnius's postcard-perfect historic center is a UNESCO site of world heritage, but almost nothing physical remains to be seen of the rich and important Jewish presence that once stood here. The early 17th-century Great Synagogue and its surrounding buildings were severely damaged in WW2 and the ruins were razed by the Soviet authorities in the 1950s. Almost no traces remain except for some plaques, a few monuments and a couple of faded Yiddish wall signs.

Yiddish signage in Vilnius. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The issue of what to do with Jewish heritage and memory in Vilnius has been contentious. It is haunted not just by the memory of the 100,000 Jews who before WW2 made up a third of the city's population, but by other factors, including the collaboration of local Lithuanians in the killing of Jews and the local nationalist narrative that associates anti-Nazi activity with support of the Soviet regime.

It has also been haunted by a huge and highly controversial $32 million project to rebuild (rather than restore) the old Jewish quarter in Vilnius, including the  Great Synagogue, which was approved (at least in principle) some years ago but never really got off the ground. See articles about this HERE and HERE and HERE. This project was promoted by MP and activist Emanuelis Zingeris, but was opposed by others in the Jewish community (and elsewhere).

I was one of three outside experts who took part in the seminar -- the others were Philip Carmel, who heads the Lo Tishkach organization that is creating a data base of Jewish cemeteries, and Vladimir Levin of the Center for Jewish Art in Jerusalem. (Magdalena Waligorska, from Poland/Florence was supposed to have come but she got the flu.)

I was impressed by the number of people who showed up for the formal session, on Dec. 7 -- and stayed throughout a long day of presentations from more than a dozen speakers, as well as the number of people who tuned up the following day for a more informal discussion of the issues. This indicates the intererest, at least in certain official spheres. One of the successes of the seminar, someone joked, was that representatives of all or almost all of the stakeholders in the Jewish heritage issue sat together in the same room and even discussed the situation.

The consensus that emerged was that it is totally unrealistic to even think of rebuilding the Great Synagogue. Even Zingeris (who denied to me that he had ever suggested it) now opposes it -- he would, however, like to see the foundations of the synagogue excavated and used as education/exhibition space, as in Frankfurt with the Judengasse and in Vienna with the Judenplatz excavation of the medieval synagogue there.

People at the meeting talked about restoring "fragments" -- uncovering more Yiddish signs, for example. Also making an archeological investigation to discover exactly where the limits of the Great Synagogue are, and then deciding what to do (this apparently has not been carried out).

During the meeting we learned of several initiatives involving Vilnius and Lithuania in general, where the state of Jewish heritage sites is perilous, to say the least.

Besides the collapse, in a hurricane apparently, of the Red Synagogue in Joniskis two years ago, and the fire that damaged the wooden synagogue in Pakruojis earlier this year, the precious wooden synagogue in Seda has also collapsed. And masonry synagogues (and maybe also the wooden synagogue) in Plunge were recently bulldozed. The wooden synagogue in Ziezmariai, which is one of the few to bear in identification plaque, is said to be under threat and there are thoughts that it should be moved to an outdoor architecture park.

(As I noted earlier, we heard from both a representative of Pakruoijis and a culture ministry official that there was a commitment to rebuild the Pakruojis synagogue, and also that funds have been found to begin restoring the structure in Joniskis.)

During the conference, we heard from the researchers who in 2006-2008 directed the compilation of  a catalogue of all the more than 90 extant synagogues in Lithuania. This massive work is nearing completion, and publication of its first volume should take place within weeks. During the seminar, a photographic exhibition of a small fraction of the material compiled was opened, showing the variety of type -- and condition -- of these buildings.

The project was initiated in 2006 by the Vilnius-based Centre for the Studies of the Culture and History of East European Jews, in collaboration with the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts. The Center for Jewish Art joined the project in 2007, and the  Gediminas Technical University in Vilnius also takes part.  


You can see a photo gallery of many synagogues at the web site of the  Center for the Studies of the Cultur and History of East European Jews.


The catalogue began as research on masonry synagogues but soon expanded  to record all synagogues of Lithuania. Students fanned out throug the country to measure buildings,  make diagrams, pinpoint their locaton and gather archival, cartographic, iconographic and other information about particular synagogues.

There have been many lost opportunities regarding Jewish heritage in Lithuania. One of them stems from the rather abortive -- if loudly proclaimed -- attempt to establish a "European Route of Jewish Culture." There was little coordination of this from its headquarters in Luxemburg, but also, on the ground, it was difficult to gain local support, and it remains difficult to convince some local authorities that the Jewish heritage of their towns and villages is part of their own heritage. 

On this note, there appear to be few initiatives such as those in Poland, whereby local Catholics have taken a lead in delving into local (Jewish) history, cleaning cemeteries, and the like -- efforts which each year are honored by the Israeli Embassy. I suggested to culture minister representatives and also to the representative of the Israeli embassy that some sort of similar honor could be organized in Lithuania as encouragement for local involvement.