Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Scholar in Residence fellowship -- call for applications

Candlesticks hands in blessing mark women's gravestones in Gura Humorului, Romania. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

by Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University  has issued its call for applications for the summer or fall 2014 Scholar in Residence program.

It's a wonderful opportunity -- I was the Scholar in Residence at the HBI in early 2011, when I worked on my Candlesticks on Stone project about the visual representation of women in Jewish tombstone art.

In addition to the creation of the project web site, I present a paper about my project, which has been posted online as part of the Donna Sudarsky Memorial Working Paper Series.

You can view my paper HERE -- unfortunately it does not include the pictures, but you can see those on the Candlesticks on Stone web site.


Here are the details about the Residency and call for applications. 

The HBI Scholar-in-Residence programs provide scholars, artists, writers and communal professionals the opportunity to be in residence at Brandeis University while working on significant projects in the field of Jewish women’s and gender studies. 

Scholars-in-Residence receive a monthly stipend and office space at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center. Applicants living outside the U.S. and those whose work has an international dimension are especially encouraged to apply. 

Helen Gartner Hammer Scholars-in-Residence Program – Summer or Fall 2014 

Scholars are invited to apply for residency at the HBI to carry out significant research and artistic projects in the field of Jewish women’s and gender studies. Papers written while at the HBI are included in the Donna Sudarsky Memorial Working Paper Series. 

Residencies range from one month to the full academic semester. Scholars may begin the residency in August but should note that not all members of the Brandeis community will be available until the start of the academic year in September. 

Application deadline: January 30, 2014 

A decision will be announced by April 17, 2014 

FOR MORE INFORMATION, SEE 

http://www.brandeis.edu/hbi/residencies/scholar.html

How to mark the Kristallnacht anniversary? With glorious synagogues

Entryway, Jubilee synagogue, Prague. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This weekend marks the 75th anniversary of what we call Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass, the night of violent coordinated Nazi attacks against Jews, Jewish property, and Jewish places of worship which saw some 7,000 Jewish businesses trashed and more than 1,000 synagogues put to the torch all over Germany and German-occupied lands. Some 30,000 Jews were imprisoned and more than 90 were killed.

The destruction wrought on the night of November 9-10, 1938 foreshadowed the mass destruction of the Holocaust that followed a few years later.

To mark this anniversary, rather than dwell on the destruction, I thought I would focus on rebirth and survival, in particular the survival of synagogues whose restoration over the past two decades has been a symbol of Jewish rebirth in Germany and elsewhere in central and eastern Europe.

Here, then, just a few photographs of synagogues, still used by Jewish communities, that stand now as enduring monuments to the glory of what was destroyed -- and offer hope that the still somewhat fragile renewal of Jewish life in Europe may continue to strengthen. This is only a very small sample of the synagogue buildings that have been restored in Europe (most of them now used for cultural or other purposes).

Tempel synagogue, Krakow. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Interior, Tempel Synagogue, Krakow. Photo © JCC Krakow

Facade, Pilsen synagogue, Czech Republic. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Dohany st. Synagogue, Budapest. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Dohany st. Synagogue, Budapest. Restored in the 1990s

Dohany st. Synagogue, Budapest. Restored in the 1990s

Kazinczy st synagogue, Budapest

Ceiling, Kazinczy st synagogue, Budapest

Ark, Kazinczy st. Synagogue, Budapest

Orthodox synagogue, Presov, Slovakia. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Orthodox synagogue, Presov, Slovakia. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

And here are a couple of synagogues built in recent years. The use of glass is a real answer to Kristallnacht, no?:

Ohel Jakob synagogue , Munich (l) built 2004-2006

Synagogue in Graz, Austria, dedicated in 2000 on the site of the magnificent synagogue destroyed on Kristallnacht. Notice how the upper part of this synagogue is a glass dome. A real answer to the Night of Broken Glass. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Glass dome of the new synagogue in Graz. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

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

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

European Day of Jewish Culture -- Today!

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

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

If you're in Europe today -- Sept. 29 -- chances are that there are Jewish cultural events going on for you to visit.

Today marks the annual European Day of Jewish Culture, a pan-Europe festival that this year, with hundreds of events taking place in two dozen countries. The Day usually takes place the first Sunday of September, but was move to the end of the month because of the timing of this year's High Holidays.

Many synagogues, Jewish cemeteries and other Jewish heritage sites are open, and there are concerts, exhibits, lectures, food and wine tastings, guided tours, and more.

Depending on financial support, volunteers, local organization and other factors, some countries boast a dizzying array of events -- in Italy, arguably the most enthusiastic participant in the Day, there are events in about 60 towns, cities and villages up and down the peninsula, with Italy's president taking part in kick-off ceremonies in Naples.

In other countries there may be a few events, or even just a token event or so. I'm in Poland just now and -- despite the wealth of Jewish cultural events that go on all over Poland throughout the year -- there are only a couple of events, in Krakow, listed in the Culture Day program.

The first full edition of the European Day of Jewish Culture took place in 2000. It grew out of a 1999 conference in Paris on managing Jewish heritage in Europe. One of the presentations there was on a local “open doors” to Jewish heritage initiative in the French region of Alsace begun in 1996 as a partnership between the local tourist authority and B’nai B’rith.

After the conference, meeting of experts and activists, which I attended, decided to expand this model on a European level.

The EDJC is loosely coordinated by the European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture and Heritage (AEPJ), a body formed now by B’nai B’rith Europe, the Red de Juderias de Espana-Caminos de Sefarad, and the European Council of Jewish Communities.

Each year the Day has a theme -- this year's it's Jewish Heritage & Nature. The web site puts it: "This topic gives us food for thought – is there a link, and if yes what is it between these categories, what is the interaction between them? In order to find the answers to these questions it is necessary to look for arguments and examples and define a concept for the link between them."

This year's country participants include:

Austria, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO AND LINKS TO ALL THE NATIONAL PROGRAMS

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.

Romanian Synagogues -- so many sites, so little $$$ .....

Restoration work has been halted at the 17th century synagogue in Iasi since 2009; seriously endangering the building, the oldest synagogue in Romania. Photo: FEDROM

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The full power point of the presentation about Romanian synagogues by Lucia Apostol, of the Federation of Romanian Jewish Communities (FEDROM), at the conference in Krakow in April on Managing Jewish Immovable Heritage, has been posted online on the Jewish Heritage Europe web site. (The full video of her talk is already online here.)

The presentation is a little tricky to read, as the power point slides had to be posted as a photo gallery — and the slides open one by one. But it’s worth it to see the pictures and get an idea of the overwhelming extent of the challenges.

As Lucia points out, while there have been some successful preservation/renovation projects, the challenges are enormous -- and funds are scarce.

FEDROM is responsible for 87 synagogues scattered in all parts of Romania, 34 of which are listed as historic monuments. Only 42 synagogues are still used for religious purposes.

She focused in particular on one horror story -- the botched and stalled restoration of the 17th century synagogue in Iasi, in northern Romania, the oldest synagogue in the country and one of only two synagogue buildings standing in a town that once had more than 100.

Restoration of the building, funded only by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, began in 2007 but was halted in 2009,  when Remicon Ltd, the construction company that had won the bid to carry out the work went bankrupt, leaving the building in a perilous condition, with its future uncertain.

Dome of the Iasi synagogue stripped of protective roofing. Photo: FEDROM

In addition, Apostol noted that FEDROM is responsible for more than 800 Jewish cemeteries, 17 of which are listed as historic monuments -- and many of which have extraordinarily ornate carved decoration. 650 cemeteries are located in towns and villages where no Jews live.

Carved tombstones in the "middle" Jewish cemetery in Siret, Romania. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber