Hidden gravestones unearthed at Vienna's oldest preserved Jewish cemetery

Samson Wertheimer's tomb -- it's actually a mausoleum, and this is one end. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Three years ago, I posted about Vienna's oldest preserved Jewish cemetery, the graveyard on Seegasse that dates from the 16th century, now hidden amid new buildings and entered through an old-age home on the site of what was a Jewish hospital. Many 17th and 18th century luminaries are buried here, including the financier and Court Jew Samuel Oppenheimer (who founded the Jewish hospital and restored the cemetery at the end of the 17th century) and Samson Wertheimer, who succeeded him as Court Jew.

News has now come that during the ongoing restoration of the cemetery, an important trove of buried matzevot has been discovered.  According to Jewish community officials in Vienna, the stones appear to have been among those that were buried there in 1943 to protect them from the Nazis. A score of stones have been recovered in recent weeks, but hundreds more may be buried, according to Vienna Jewish officials.

It has long been known that gravestones from Seegasse were buried for protection during World War II – as I noted in my post in 2010, the guidebook “Jewish Vienna” published in 2004 by Mandelbaum Verlag, wrote that some were buried them on the spot and others were transported to the Central Cemetery and buried there.

In the mid-1980s, after the discovery of these stones, the cemetery underwent a full restoration -- and the surviving stones were set up in their original places thanks to a map of the cemetery that had been made in 1912. Many of the stones are massive and feature elegant calligraphy, lengthy epitaphs and some vivid carving of Jewish symbols and floral and other decoration, similar to that on tombs in the Jewish cemetery in Mikulov, Czech Republic, and elsewhere in Moravia. Fragments that could not be put together were used to construct a memorial wall, similar to those that exist in other countries at restored cemeteries.

The Associated Press published pictures of the new find and reported:

Vienna’s Jewish leaders say it is not clear exactly how many were buried by the small group of Viennese Jews determined to save their heritage from the Nazi bulldozers. They also say they have few further details of the act, with none of the participants surviving the Holocaust and their location unclear — until now. 

After workers scored the ground with radar as part of restoration work, they say they are sure there are hundreds beneath the grass. The 20 unearthed in the past few weeks have convinced officials they have a historically significant find, they said. 

Raimund Fastenbauer, a senior official with Vienna’s Jewish community, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he believes many of the up to 600 missing stones are still below ground and partially or fully recoverable.

Seegasse cemetery, surrounded by buildings. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Austria -- Vienna Jewish Museum Reopening

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Just a brief note -- the Jewish Museum in Vienna re-opened Tuesday after being closed for about a year for a fullscale -- and controversial -- restoration and revamping of its exhibition. I have yet to see it, but the next time I go to Vienna (probably in early December) I will make sure to give a full report, as I am very curious to see the new facility. The opening (temporary) exhibition is a sure-fire crowd pleaser on 100 years of Jewish experience in Hollywood...

Here's a video of the opening ceremony:

The Jewish Museum Vienna is now open - Welcome back! from Jewish Museum Vienna on Vimeo.



As for now, according to one brief (and dry) article:

Not only the technical infrastructure and visitor facilities were renovated, but visitors will also be offered new and exciting insights into the collections − of Jewish past and present − as well as a new atelier for children and several other services.

Visitors will get to know whom the Jewish Museum Vienna has to thank for its collections and take a virtual tour through the synagogues that existed in Vienna before 1938. They will also be invited to view the new permanent exhibition, but also to Hollywood − the location where the first temporary exhibition will take place. This will be an introduction to the founding fathers of the film metropolis, the men who left their shtetl in Galicia and Ukraine to invent the American dream in Hollywood. This journey will take one across 100 years of Hollywood and trace this Jewish experience as far as the present."

I posted here earlier this year about the controversy over the museum renovation, in the process of which the holograms that had formed part of the museum's historic exhibition, mounted in 1994, were destroyed during their removal.

Vienna -- controversy over destroyed Holograms during renovations

Aftermath of the destruction of the Vienna Jewish Museum holograms. Picture taken from http://www.juedisches-museum-blog.de

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Wow. I'm just catching up with the controversy in Vienna over the destruction of the the Jewish Museum's acclaimed signature permanent exhibition of Holograms during renovation of the building and creation of a new exhibit. As JTA (and German-language media) reported,  directors of European Jewish museums and other educational institutes wrote an open letter to Vienna Museum Director Danielle Spera condemning the destruction of the 21-Hologram display, which had been installed in 1994 as the museum's main permanent historical exhibit.

The letter's signatories included directors or high-ranking staff members of Jewish museums in  German, Holland, France, Austria and Belgium. They said they expected colleagues to "show dignity and respect for their own institutional history. And the same dignity and respect should be shown to our colleagues and their work." The holograms, they said, "were among the most remarkable presentations of Jewish history in the world of Jewish museums and beyond."

The issue prompted criticism after pictures  showing the shattered glass of the destroyed holograms appeared in museum blogs and elsewhere.

The Vienna Museum, located in the Eskeles Palace in downtown Vienna, closed down in January for a six-month overhaul that will bring it up to building standards and also  install new exhibits throughout.

Writing on the web site of the Vienna Jewish Museum, Peter Menasse, director of the financial and organizational department, said that the team had wanted to preserve the holograms which had "become almost a trademark of our house." He said the Technical Museum was going to take some of them and the rest were to have been stored and conserved.

However, suddenly the steelwork and glazing experts we assigned found they had an unsolvable problem. The more than 100 kilo heavy glass shields were not only screwed to the floor with steel cross braces, but were also glued in place. The shields could not simply be taken out, as that would require the use of heavy machinery. The glass shields in question are made of safety glass similar to the glass used in car windshields. Even the smallest damage to any part of the glass would result in the complete destruction of the entire shield.
Preserving the shields, as we had originally intended, proved impossible. The pictures of the broken glass shields have upset us, as well as many museum experts. The one drop of comfort we have is that we have two smaller series of holograms, meaning the technology will not be lost forever.

The shocking destruction of the Holograms (an exhibit designed by Felicitas Heiman Jelinek and Martin Kohlbauer) and the polemics in its wake seem part of a general series of disputes and politics on various levels at the Museum. (Politics that have been exacerbated with the total renovation of the institution and also the nomination of Danielle Spera as museum director last summer). Critics accuse the new administration of failing to recognize the value of the older exhibit. According to

Hannah Holtschneider, of the University of Edinburgh, writing in Museologien, an Austrian Museology blog:

There is no recognition on the part of the Museum of the critical acclaim of the exhibition. This is astonishing as the international community has commented favourably on the innovative design and critical features of the exhibition which had the holograms as a centrepiece. Among the critics and international commentators on the exhibition, the holograms were appreciated both as a significant medium of display and as artefacts on display which were able to involve the visitor physically in the discovery of approaches to Jewish history in a post-1945 exhibition in Europe. Thus the holograms were not simply a display technology, such as a glass case or television screen, but part of the collections of the Jewish Museum Vienna. Critics point to the principles of ICOM which explicitly state that such artefacts need to be preserved and cared for.

I must say, I loved the hologram exhibit, and the entire museum -- though it was clearly time for an update and overhaul.

It was really cutting-edge when it opened, perhaps the European Jewish museum where the questions, theories and dilemmas embodied in Jewish representation and the Jewish museum experience had most consciously and to such a degree been translated into the actual practice of exhibition. I looked at the museum closely in my book Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe, (which BTW is now available on Kindle) and also at that time -- in 1997, so not long after it was opened -- interviewed Felicitas. This is what I wrote:

Visitors to the Museum’s permanent historic exhibition [...] are confronted not by traditional display cases presenting documents, torah scrolls, Holocaust memorabilia or Jewish ritual objects, nor do they find dioramas or didactic installations. Missing, too, is a commemorative section or memorial dedicated specifically to the Holocaust. Instead, they step within a bare room housing 21 holograms: ghostly three-dimensional images of ritual objects, paintings, photographs, documents, and architectural models, rather than the real thing.

Each hologram represents a specific stage, facet or theme associated with Austrian Jewish history and the relationship between Jews and Austrian society: "Out of the Ghetto," for example. "Houses of God," "Zionism," "Anti-Semitism," "Loyalty and Patriotism," "From Historism to Modernism," "Shoah," "Vienna Today …" Most of the images are holographic still lives that combine groupings of various source material, some of which are easily understood objects in themselves, while others are defined by context or elaborate back stories recounted in the ample information notes that accompany each piece. The hologram entitled "Banishments," for example, shows what is described as a seventeenth century Torah curtain that a Viennese couple took with them to Prague when they were expelled from Vienna in 1670, along with a pile of film canisters described as containing a copy of the classic movie Some Like It Hot, which was directed by Vienna-born Billy Wilder, who fled Berlin after the Nazis took power in 1933. The hologram representing "Fin de Siecle" includes images of an array of artifacts owned, used or associated with turn-of-the-century Jewish cultural figures: writer Karl Kraus' glasses, a candlestick from a music stand used by Gustav Mahler, a book by Arthur Schnitzler with a flyleaf dedication to Theodore Herzl, Sigmund Freud's bookplate, playing cards designed and used by Arnold Schönberg.

Eerily glowing red and green and yellow, the images are captured on sheets of plexiglass that look totally transparent until the visitor stands directly before them; unless the panels are approached, the room, indeed, looks empty: even in the museum catalogue, the photograph captioned "The Historical Exhibition" shows a room with seemingly nothing in it but windows, lights, a parquet floor and scattered, three-meter-tall transparent sheets. The hologram images appear, move and shift with changed angles of vision; the objects seen are virtual objects; the scenes are glimpses of a virtual reality -- one even includes a holographic film clip; they are seemingly three-dimensional images that exist but don't exist: a "real" virtual Jewish world.

"Holography could prosper only in America, a country obsessed with realism, where, if a reconstruction is to be credible, it must be absolutely iconic, a perfect likeness, a 'real' copy of the reality being represented," wrote Umberto Eco in the mid-1970s.[1] Yet the curators of the Vienna exhibit had the opposite in mind. Their aim was precisely to reject any attempt to present a "real" real image of Austrian Jewish history and experience through the conventional use of the objects, documents and displays typical of museum exhibits. The use of the incorporeal holograms attempts to show the imprecise nature of memory and the role played by imagination and interpretation in viewing and presenting the past. History is not an absolute; physical objects represent the historical meaning that we ourselves assign to them. Even what is "carved in stone" is subject to interpretation. The use of holographic objects and scenes that are "there" but "not there" at the same time is also, obviously, a striking means of elaborating a sense of Jewish absence and the continuing impact of the Jewish past on the present. The exhibit, which opened in 1996, is called a "place of remembering." We see the objects, but we see through them, too. The holograms are nothing -- but many things altogether, "mnemonic devices" or "memory aids in the form of abbreviations". [2]

"A historical exhibition cannot show or explain everything," the museum's then chief curator Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek, who designed the Hologram installation, told me in 1997. "So why not say from the beginning that, in principle, we cannot do it. Perhaps it makes more sense to think about the relativity of history and historical presentations than to say this object means this, and this year was that, and this event meant such and such, and so on – because it's not true. We cannot reconstruct history; we should openly say that we are only its interpreters, and nothing else." The Jewish Museum of Vienna thus offers a radical and highly sophisticated approach to the problem of dealing with history, memory and absence. For Heimann-Jelinek, the function of the exhibit is to force its audience think and reflect about the Jewish experience and the impact of the Holocaust on the present. "This installation gives people the opportunity to think about what would have been possible, what could have happened, what could be different today," she told me. "The hologram room is a very peaceful surrounding; it is a bit like a prayer room because on the one hand it is so spacious and on the other hand it is very calm. People don't talk loudly; they read the information panels and look at the holograms. There is a very contemplative atmosphere."

---

[1] Eco, Travels in Hyperreality, pg 4

[2] Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek, "On the Historical Exhibition at the Jewish Museum of the City of Vienna," in Jewish Museum Vienna, Vienna (catalogue of the museum), pg 62. See also her article "On the Re-Organization of the Jewish Museum of the City of Vienna," in Jewish Museum Vienna Newsletter, No. 8/9, March 1996, pg 2.

Austria -- parliament approves funding for Jewish cemeteries

Jewish cemetery, Eisenstadt, Austria. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The AP reports that the Austrian Parliament has approved €20 million euros for the restoration and upkeep of the more than 60 Jewish cemeteries around the country. As I reported at the time, the funds were initially pledged last December.

The bill foresees annual government payments of €1 million ($1.4 million) into a special fund over the next 20 years. The country's Jewish community will supplement the government's contributions each year through €1 million in donations.

The measure, which takes effect in 2011, also asks local municipalities where such cemeteries are located to maintain them for at least 20 years after they have been restored.

 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.

Vienna -- Pebbles on Gustav Mahler's grave

 Pebbles on the top of Mahler's tomb, following Jewish tradition. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

We are in the midst of Gustav Mahler year -- a double whammy anniversary: July marked the 150th anniversary of his birth; next May marks the 100th anniversary of his death.

Researching a couple of articles (see my article in the nytimes.com here), I spent much of the past few days following the footsteps of  young Gustav  in central Moravia -- the lovely Vysocina upland region, one of my favorite parts of the Czech Republic. I stayed in the pension that now occupies the house Mahler was born in in the village of Kaliste, found the gravestones of his grandparents in the Jewish cemetery in Ledec nad Sazavou, visited various Mahler haunts including Zeliv, the village where his first love lived (and committed suicide), and the house in Jihlava, where the composer lived until the age of 15 and which is now a Mahler museum; I also spent hours driving through the wonderful landscape, listening all the while to Mahler symphonies on the car stereo..... (more on all this in a later post, with pictures).

I skipped over his adult life as a composer, conductor, world star and -- because of anti-Semitism -- a convert to Catholicism in order to get the job of director of the Vienna Opera.

But I did conclude my Mahler weekend with a pilgrimage to his grave in the Catholic cemetery in Grinzing, a wine-making village now on the northern outskirts of Vienna.

Mahler's tomb is a simple upright slab. And on its top, in Jewish tradition, visitors to the grave have placed little stones in his memory (I did so myself). As far as I can see, his is the only tombstone in the cemetery where people have done this.

PS -- Mahler's widow, Alma, is also buried in the cemetery in the next row (other family members are also interred there, too). Which compels me irresistibly to attach this video of the classic Tom Lehrer song about Alma and her three prominent husbands: Mahler, Walter Gropius and Franz Werfel.

Lehrer wrote his song after Alma died in 1964. As he put it:

Last December 13th, there appeared in the newspapers the juiciest, spiciest, raciest obituary that has ever been my pleasure to read. It was that of a lady name Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel who had, in her lifetime, managed to acquire as lovers practically all of the top creative men in central Europe, and, among these lovers, who were listed in the obituary, by the way, which was what made it so interesting, there were three whom she went so far as to marry.

One of the leading composers of the day: Gustav Mahler, composer of Das Lied von der Erde and other light classics. One of the leading architects: Walter Gropius of the Bauhaus school of design. And one of the leading writers: Franz Werfel, author of the song of Bernadette and other masterpieces. It's people like that who make you realize how little you've accomplished. It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age he had been dead for two years. It seemed to me, I'm reading this obituary, that the story of Alma was the stuff of which ballads should be made so here is one.

Prague/Vienna

 Prague. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

I'm slow: still processing my recent visits to Warsaw, Piotrkow Trybunalski and Krakow (and Festival of Jewish Culture.) Meanwhile, here are links to my two latest columns for Centropa.org -- on Jewish Prague and Jewish Vienna.

Prague 

by Ruth Ellen Gruber 

PRAGUE -- Lying between the Vltava River and the Old Town Square, Prague's medieval "Jewish Town," Josefov, is one of the most popular attractions in a magical "golden city" that draws millions of tourists a year. Here, amid historic synagogues, the Old Jewish Cemetery, the Jewish Town Hall and other major sights, is the Ground Zero of Jewish Prague: the stomping ground for heroes and villains and the evocative background setting for a host of old legends, not to mention the cradle of present-day Jewish life. Here, Jewish heritage and legacy are cultivated and exploited as an integral part of the ancient city. At peak season, tourists swarm through the district, making it sometimes difficult to navigate the cobbled streets, and souvenir hawkers sell everything from miniature golems to embroidered kippot.

I imagine the Jewish presence in Prague as a series of concentric circles centered on this medieval ghetto area and then expanding outward, like widening ripples of water, to the edge of the city and beyond. Physical sites, as well as Jewish memory and contemporary Jewish life, are concentrated in the innermost circle: there are a Jewish education center, kosher facilities and Jewish communal offices, and regular services take place in several venues. But there are many places of Jewish interest well away from the city center, too. These are much less visible and well off the beaten track of most visitors to the city, but they, too, form an integral part of the Jewish experience in Prague. The following itinerary will let you sample some of these outer circles of Jewish history and culture as well as the city's inner core.

The Inner Circle

Tourists aside, Prague's old Jewish quarter today bears very little resemblance to the dense welter of narrow alleys, tiny squares, dark passageways and crowded courtyards where generations of Jews were compelled to live from the Middle Ages to the mid-19th century, when the Habsburg monarchs granted them civil rights. After emancipation, many Jews moved out, and Jewish Town became a slum. An urban renewal project in the late 19th century swept away almost everything but a handful of synagogues and a few other historic sites, and the medieval ghetto was replaced by the handsome complex of buildings we see today. On the façade of the building at Maiselova 12, across from the Old-New Synagogue, you can see Jews symbolized by the star of David, money and stereotype profiles.

Jewish Town is still, though, where the city's main Jewish sights are concentrated. And if you can brave the crowds, you will see some of the finest and best preserved and presented Jewish heritage sites in Europe.
These include the 13th-century Old-New (or Alt-neu) Synagogue, the oldest synagogue in Europe still in use. Built about 1270, the compact Gothic building has a high peaked roof and distinctive brick gables. The twin-naved sanctuary features soaring Gothic vaulting and a central bimah enclosed by a late Gothic iron grille. Carvings of grape vines surround the Ark.

Across narrow Cervena alley is the High Synagogue, built in 1568, which, like the Old-New Synagogue, is today an active house of prayer and study. Right next door to the High Synagogue is the Jewish Town Hall (entrance at Maiselova 18), which still serves as the headquarters for Jewish community offices and activities. Built in the 1560s, the Jewish Town Hall is one of the landmarks of the Jewish quarter, with a distinctive tower and big clock with Hebrew letters, that seems to run backwards.

Prague's Jewish Museum occupies several historic synagogue buildings in the district. The museum was originally founded in 1906 to preserve items from the synagogues that were demolished in the urban renewal clearance of the old ghetto. Most of its collections, however, come from the more than 150 provincial Jewish communities in Bohemia and Moravia that were destroyed by the Nazis. The Nazis brought the loot to Prague, and even during World War II used the empty synagogues to exhibit precious relics of the people they sought to annihilate. The museum was run by the communist state after World War II, but it was returned to Jewish administration in 1994.

Read full story HERE

Vienna 

by Ruth Ellen Gruber 

Vienna looms large in Jewish history and memory. The imperial Habsburg capital was the vibrant hub of a vast, multi-national Empire that stretched across Europe and encompassed a colorful and sometimes contentious mix of peoples, languages, religions and local cultures.

Jews lived here for centuries. Surviving pendulum-swing periods of tragedy and triumph, prosperity and persecution, they made key contributions to the cultural, economic and intellectual development of the city.
Nineteenth and early 20th century Vienna in particular was home to some of Europe's most influential artists, authors, musicians and thinkers -- from the writers Joseph Roth, Arthur Schnitzler and Stephan Zweig, to the composers Arnold Schoenberg and Gustav Mahler, to the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Vienna was also the cradle of some of the icons of popular culture: the filmmaker Billy Wilder grew up in the city, and the novelist Vicki Baum, the author of Grand Hotel and other best-sellers, was born here and wrote about her Viennese childhood in her memoirs. "To be a Jew is a destiny," she once said.

The Holocaust swept this world away. But monuments, museums and other vestiges of this long and creative Jewish presence can be found in many parts of the city.

What's more, Vienna is home, now, too, to a new flowering of Jewish life and creativity, both religious and secular. Vibrant schools, synagogues and other Jewish centers bear living witness to a remarkable Jewish rebirth in the decades since the Shoah. And Jewish writers, artists, musicians and filmmakers are putting their stamp on contemporary culture.

Visitors to Vienna can get a taste of both worlds. Most Jewish historical sites and monuments, as well as most active synagogues and Jewish centers, are located in central parts of the city, embedded in a historic urban setting that conjures up the grandeur of the past amid the contemporary bustle of modern-day life.
The following itinerary highlights some of the most important (and most easily visited) Jewish sights, but still, alas, gives only a brief taste of the richness of Jewish experience in the city.

Read full story HERE

Vienna -- Secret Garden-like Hidden Jewish Cemetery

 Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

It's always a pleasure to come across new sights and experiences in places you think you know pretty well.... A case in point is the Jewish cemetery on Seegasse, in Vienna, which I visited for the first time on Friday. (Shame on me, I know, for never having gone there before...)

If you didn't know about it, you would walk right by.... the cemetery, the oldest preserved Jewish cemetery in Vienna, is entered by walking through the lobby of a modern municipal old age home at Seegasse 9, in Vienna's 9th district, a five minute walk from the Rossauerlaende U-Bahn stop. (This may seem a cruel juxtaposition, but from 1698 to 1934 this was the site of a Jewish hospital -- and also in Prague the Jewish community's state-of-the-art seniors' home looks out over the New Jewish Cemetery...)

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Seegasse cemetery is believed to have been founded in 1540 -- the oldest legible stone dates from 1582 -- and it operated until 1783, when the Emperor Joseph II banned issued a decree banning burials inside what today is the "Gurtel" ring around inner Vienna. Many 17th and 18th century luminaries were buried here, including the financier and Court Jew Samuel Oppenheimer (who founded the Jewish hospital and restored the cemetery at the end of the 17th century) and Samson Wertheimer, who succeeded him as Court Jew.

Samson Wertheimer's tomb -- it's actually a mausoleum, and this is one end. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

 Tourists near Wertheimer's tomb. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

According to the guidebook "Jewish Vienna" published in 2004 by Mandelbaum Verlag, some of the few local Jews still living in Vienna in 1943 managed to rescue some of the tombstones, either burying them on the spot or transporting them to the Central Cemetery and burying them there.

In  the mid-1980s, after the discovery of these stones, the cemetery underwent a full restoration -- and the surviving stones were set up in their original places thanks to a map of the cemetery that had been made in 1912. Many of the stones are massive and feature elegant calligraphy, lengthy epitaphs and some vivid carving of Jewish symbols and floral and other decoration, similar to that on tombs in the Jewish cemetery in Mikulov, Czech Republic, and elsewhere in Moravia. Fragments that could not be put together were used to construct a memorial wall, similar to those that exist in other countries at restored cemeteries.

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Vienna -- Michael Jackson and the Jewish Nose

In Vienna this weekend, I visited the Jewish Museum to see the exhibit "Typisch!" -- about Jewish and other ethnic stereotypes. The exhibition already has shown at the Jewish Museum in Berlin and at the Spertus Museum in Chicago. What should I find as one of the exhibits? Michael Jackson, who else....

So -- here's my latest Ruthless Cosmopolitan column about the experience.....

Poster for Typical!," an exhibit at the Jewish Museum in Vienna that features a photo of Michael Jackson used to illustrate how the singer tried to crush stereotypes. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)

Ruthless Cosmopolitan: Michael Jackson and the Jewish nose

By Ruth Ellen Gruber - June 29, 2009

VIENNA (JTA) -- Amid all the noisy outpouring over Michael Jackson's sudden death, the last place I expected to find him was in a Jewish museum. But there he was, his pale, mask-like, surgically engineered image featured as part of an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in the Austrian capital.

Called "Typical! -- Cliches of Jews and Others," the exhibition deals with the use (and abuse) of ethnic stereotypes in popular culture. The exhibition, which runs until October, has been shown at the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the Spertus Museum in Chicago.

It was assembled long before Jackson died June 25 in Los Angeles.

In a life-size photograph from 2002, he is shown with lank black hair framing a long, square stubbly chin, pinched red mouth, huge made-up eyes and a tiny nose with distorted pointy tip.

The photo is used to illustrate how, for better or worse, the King of Pop attempted to destroy stereotypes and, literally, to cut himself away from the confines of physical definition.

Jackson's "surgical transformations mirrored back to the culture the blurring of boundaries demarcating adulthood, sex and even race," Guy Trebay wrote in The New York Times after Jackson's death.

The "Typical!" exhibition deals with stereotypes commonly used to categorize African Americans, Muslims, women, Native Americans and others.

But given that it is mounted at a Jewish museum, much of its focus is on stereotypes about Jews. The exhibition poster employs a few sketched strokes to conjure up some: corkscrew curls, a hat and a huge hooked nose.

Indeed, the multitude of variations on the (alleged) size and shape of the Jewish nose form a major theme.

"The paradigm for the 'typically Jewish' nose originated in the craniological studies of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach," an information panel informs. A German natural scientist who died in 1840, Blumenbach "claimed to have evidence that Jews had an especially prominent nasal bone."

Exhibit installations examine the misuse of this and other paradigms in "scientific" teaching, as well as the ways in which they became part of the vernacular shorthand that shapes the way we see others and ourselves.

A section called "the schnoz," for example, shows a collection of 19th century walking sticks whose handles are formed by exaggerated noses. The contemporary artist Dennis Kardon's installation "Jewish Noses” features dozens of larger-than-life-sized casts made from the noses of actual Jews to demonstrate the silliness of such nasal cliches. Also, a modern painting ironically comments on the love and success that are supposed to result if one has a nose job.

"I am often asked whether or not Jews have a 'Semitic' nose," reads an exhibition quote by the historian Sander Gilman, who has written extensively about Jewish stereotypes. "After 54 years of experience, I can only answer that every Jew I have ever met has a nose."

The inclusion of Jackson's picture in the mix highlighted the transformations his own nose infamously went through.

It also reminded me of a book I read some years ago, a vicious anti-Semitic satire called "The Operated Jew," that was written in 1893 by a German doctor named Oskar Panizza.

An attack on efforts by Jews to assimilate into mainstream society, the book is a creepy and extremely disturbing tale about how a Jew named Itzig Faitel Stern tries to rid himself physically of the stereotypical signs of his Jewishness and become a "modern" European.

Foreshadowing Jackson's experiences under the knife, Stern submits to radical procedures, including the straightening and bleaching of his hair, "Extreme Makeover"-style cosmetic surgery and a series of horrendous operations to straighten his bones. He even gets a full transfusion of "Christian blood."

"It is impossible for me to give the reader an account of all the garnishings, changes, injections and quackeries to which Itzig Faitel Stern submitted himself," the narrator states. "He experienced the most excruciating pain and showed great heroism so he could become the equivalent of an occidental human being."

In the end, it doesn't help. At his wedding to a Christian woman, all falls apart and Stern "reverts" to the ugliest anti-Semitic cliche of the Jew.

Panizza, an early exponent of Nazi-style racial anti-Semitism, set out to "prove" that Jews could never become part of the mainstream modern world, even if they physically attempted to change their skins.

It's not exactly clear what world Jackson was trying to become part of -- or leave -- with his surgeries and other transformations.

Artistically he was the ultimate crossover, winning fans of all colors, ages, religions, nationalities and sexual orientations all around the world. Over the years, though, he alienated some African Americans by his physical manipulation of identity and apparent ambivalence about his own blackness.

Death, though, appears to have brought Jackson back to his roots -- or in any case to a warm embrace by the African-American community.

“We want to celebrate this black man," the actor and singer Jamie Foxx said to cheers at the Black Entertainment Television Music Awards Sunday. "He belongs to us, and we shared him with everybody else.”

Foxx added, "It didn't matter what he looked like, it was all about what he sounded like. It didn't matter what his nose looked like -- I loved the old nose and the new nose."

Read Story on JTA

Budapest -- Hanukkah party central

Hanukkah is in the air in Budapest, especially in the old Jewish quarter in and around the downtown Seventh District, where I have an apartment...

Chabad, of course, has huge menorahs where nightly lightings take place -- and Chabadniks also drive around town in little "Hanukkah-mobiles" -- small cars with electric menorahs standing up right on their roofs.

There are various parties, concerts and other events.

I got to town Tuesday night, after a few days in Vienna, where, among other things, I attended a first-night Hanukkah party in the main synagogue, the elegant, neo-classical Stadttempel on sloping Seitenstettengasse, in the heart of the city's core First District (the same synagogue where I attended Sukkoth services this fall) and adjoining Jewish community center.

Sponsored by Centropa, the Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation, it was structured around a meeting a club of elderly Jews who have been interviewed as part of Centropa's online database of family photos and stories. There were prayers and candle-lighting in the synagogue's graceful oval sanctuary; songs by a local Jewish school choir, and food, food, food (delicious vegetarian salads, humus, and the like). Here's a picture of the menorah lighting:



I left Vienna the next day, arriving in Budapest Tuesday night, just in time to high-tail it to the Siraly cafe, a five minute walk from my apartment, and get there in time to catch the last part of a Jewish "dance house" party, with music by Bob Cohen and Di Naye Kapelye and dance-teaching by Susan Foy. (Bob maintains the Dumneazu blog, a lively chronicle of food, travel, music and more in Eastern Europe, and Di Naye Kapelye's new CD, Traktorist, is receiving rave reviews.)

I forgot to bring my camera the other night -- but here's Bob playing a Hanukkah gig in Budapest a few years ago:


Siraly means Seagull but also, in local slang, “fantastic”. The cafe, in a three-storey building with tall arched windows on Kiraly street, is one of the most popular of the new "Jewish" cafes that have opened recently in and around the Seventh District. It is run partly by Marom, the youth organization of the Masorti, or conservative, Jewish stream (which has its office on an upper floor), and partly by a theater group.

In addition to serving up coffee, tea, schnapps and snacks, Siraly serves as something of a "alternative" Jewish culture center, with concerts, talks, book presentations, etc. A highlight each year is the Hanukkah festival Marom organizes, that lasts through the eight days of the holiday.


Each evening features the lighting of menorahs -- one set up on the bar, another an art installation positioned on the wall (the candle flames are symbolically uncovered.)


Then -- concerts, plays, "kosher cabaret" and other events, either in the upstairs gallery or in a (smokey) theater space in the basement. Last night (Christmas Eve, the centerpiece of the holiday for Hungarian Christians, when everyone is home around the groaning dinner table with their family) Marom and Siraly's chief, Adam Schoenberger, played with his own hip-hop band.

Walking over from yet another party, I got there late -- just in time to catch the very end of their set -- because I had dropped in to a neighboring church to get a taste of midnight mass....

Tonight, the concert is in a bigger venue downtown -- headliners are the French group Boogie Balagan (whose slogan is "from Paris to Palestisrael"), following the local bands Pipatorium and Chalaban, which plays Moroccan music.

From the Top Tier Gallery, Vienna

As noted in a previous post, I spent much of the High Holy Day period moving around Europe, in a sort of mini-Jewish Heritage tour of Siena, Vienna and Budapest.

Vienna on Yom Kippur provided the most traditional Ashkenazic experience -- services in the historic "Stadttempel," the lovely neo-classical synagogue on sloping Seitenstettengasse, in the heart of the city's core First District. From the outside, the synagogue, built in 1824-26, looks like a plain, anonymous building -- many synagogues across Europe (including that in Siena) are hidden behind featureless outer walls that face the street. This was either for protection or in compliance with edicts that allowed direct access to the street only for churches. (This positioning saved the synagogue during Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938; it was not torched for fear that the entire block could go up in flames and survived World War II almost unscathed. All of the other nearly 100 synagogues and Jewish prayer houses in Vienna were either destroyed or severely damaged.)

What sets the building apart these days is the security outside -- including armed guards.

Designed by the architect Josef Kornhausel, the Stadttempel features a graceful oval sanctuary encircled by two tiers of women's galleries and topped by a sky-blue dome sprinkled with gilded stars. Twelve fluted ionic columns support the galleries and partition the perimeter, and a gilded sunburst tops a rendition of the Ten Commandments that seems to float above the ark.

I arrived in Vienna just in time to enjoy a pre-fast meal with my friend Antonia before we took a taxi to services. We had to climb to the top tier of the women's galleries, where we stood at the back -- if we had been in a theater, we would have been in "the gods." From almost no seat in either of the women's galleries, however, is it possible to see anything of what goes on on the ground floor, where the men are seated. You have to lean right over the edge of the galleries and look down -- not good if you have a fear of heights.

Throughout the service, boisterous and cute little children ran in and out, and the other women around us, unable to see (and only to hear with some difficulty) used the opportunity -- as usual in such cases -- to schmooze. When I could hear, it was a pleasure. (Even though Antonia and I arrived too late to hear Kol Nidre). The cantor was excellent, and the melodies sung in the service here are the same ones I grew up with at my Conservative JCC in suburban Philadelphia...

The crowd was well-dressed and prosperous-looking; all ages represented. Afterward, we milled about on the cobbled street outside, greeting friends in the congregation -- these included Edward Serotta, the director of Centropa.org, the central European Jewish research institute. (I write a travel column for Centropa -- it was on hold for a few months during a redesign of the web site, but is now back up on line.)

My Jewish Heritage Traveling Holidays

This year, I've ended up turning the High Holy Days into a Jewish Heritage Travel (or shlep) across Europe: Rosh Hashana in Siena, Italy; Yom Kippur in Vienna; Sukkoth in Budapest.

It's been a mini-tour of three different cities, countries, Jewish traditions. Food! But sampling different Jewish cultures and traditions was a by-product, not really the aim.

I spend much of my time in a farmhouse in rural Italy, and, though nearly a 2-hour drive away, Siena is actually one of the closest places to me where there is a synagogue. Budapest, where I have a small apartment, is a second home, and I try to get here as often as I can. And in Vienna I have a close friend with whom I usually try to spend at least part of the holidays.

I've written in a previous post about the beautiful 18th century synagogue in Siena, at vicolo delle Scotte 14, just off the wonderful Campo, the huge piazza that is the heart of the city. I met some lovely people where I attended a concert there on the European Day of Jewish Culture and accepted their invitation to join them for Rosh Hashanah.

Only a few dozen Jews live in Siena, most of them members of three or four families. Under current administrative regulations they do not constitute an "official" Jewish community on their own, but a "section" of the much larger Jewish community in Florence.

Anna De Castro and Lamberto Piperno Corcos live on a big estate outside of Siena. It has been in the family for nearly 70 years and consists of a huge (now empty) villa with formal gardens (which Anna and Lamberto are attempting to restore and put back into good shape). There are a number of smaller houses, some of which have been turned into rental apartments -- the estate, Monaciano, produces excellent wine and also rents out the apartments as "agritourism" accommodation.

I arrived at Monaciano just in time to change clothes and go into town for erev R-H services.

The services marked one of the first public appearances of Eli Rabani, an Israeli who has just arrived in Siena to serve as the congregation's new "capo culto," or religious leader, replacing an elderly leader who passed away not long ago after heading the congregation for decades.

Though not a rabbi, Rabani is is there to lead prayers. He and his young family will be living next to the synagogue, and local Jews hope that they will form a dynamic new anchor for Jewish activities.

The congregation was small -- much of it seemed composed of foreign tourists and American students. Fortunately, they don't use the women's gallery, located high above and heavily screened... Women simply sit on one side of the sanctuary.

It was all very informal, and we rushed back to Monaciano for the real centerpiece of the celebration -- the dinner, or Rosh Hashana Seder. Many of Anna and Lamberto's relatives were also there for the holiday, and we sat around a huge table in one of the outlying houses.

In our Ashkenazi tradition, Rosh Hashana dinners have always consisted of just a special dinner, with Challah maybe, and apples dipped in honey -- not to mention chicken soup. But in the Italian tradition (and Sephardic) there is a "seder" -- an ordered meal during which special ritual foods are eaten. These were mostly fruit and vegetables, most of them fried... I don't have the exact order with me as I am writing this post, but we started with figs and then went on to apples and honey, pomegranate, squash, green beans, spinach fritatta, fried little fish. There were other dishes, too, including a delicious squash risotto.

The next morning, we all went back to the synagogue.

There was a palpable air of excitement as he led the prayers and read the Torah. The shofar sounded, and Rabani's two small and very cute children ran about the sanctuary.

For the first time in years, there was a Cohen in the congregation, one of Anna and Lamberto's relatives who was up for the holiday from Rome.

He stood before the Ark, reciting the priestly blessing, while families and friends stood and grouped tightly together under tallises raised to cover us like tents.

"May the Lord bless you and keep you. 
May the Lord let His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. 
May the Lord look kindly upon you and give you peace."

It was very emotional -- I don't think I was the only congregant to wipe away tears.

(On to Central Europe in following posts.)