Friday, November 11, 2011

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

2 comments:

  1. Hi,
    Very good blog post I love your site keep up the great posts.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I would love to do that tour especially Marroco intrest me very much, and I didnt know that in Sudan excist jewish heritage.

    ReplyDelete