Southern Transylvanian Synagogues

Following the exhibition of photographs by Christian Binder of synagogues in southern Transylvania held in Sighisoara, Romania, a photo gallery of images has been posted online. View it by clicking HERE.

Synagogues pictured include those in Targu Mures, Brasov (designed by Lipot Baumhorn), Reghin, Faragas and others.

Grodno (in Italian)

Paolo Rumiz's latest piece in La Repubblica deals evocatively, among other things, with the synagogue and Jewish cemetery in Grodno, Belarus. The article includes a photo of the synagogue and a description of an encounters with a non-Jewish woman who has "adopted" the cemetery and tries to clean the tombstones, one by one, one each day.

"Adonai", "Elohim" ripetono i vecchi nella sinagoga corale ormai vuota, e tutto sembra appeso al filo di queste antiche parole che garantiscono la continuità del mondo. Ma è proprio questo che spaventa: quando esse non saranno più ascoltate da nessuno, allora sarà l'Europa a perdere definitivamente se stessa. E già te ne accorgi quando nello spazio corale torna il silenzio, carico di nostalgia del canto che non c'è più. C'erano diciassette sinagoghe a Grodno, ora ce n'è una sola.

Marija, la vecchia custode, è un'ortodossa convertitasi all'ebraismo e la sua fede è un ibrido perfetto tra le due religioni. Dice, con gli occhi febbrili: "Tutti aspettano l'arrivo del Messia. Arriverà quando tutti si armeranno contro Israele: allora il cielo si aprirà e lui andrà in suo soccorso. Sarà il secondo arrivo di Cristo. Il momento arriverà presto, così è scritto nella Torah. Allora gli ebrei crederanno, Gesù li benedirà, e Israele sarà il primo di tutti i popoli".

Sull'altra riva del fiume c'è un vecchio cimitero ebraico. Immenso, coperto di sterpaglia, devastato dalle radici delle betulle. Per entrare scavalchiamo un muro sbrecciato coperto di ortica. Poljakov Abram Lazarevic. Rosenzweig David Bulfovic. Le tombe con la stella di Davide emergono dalla vegetazione come menhir, coperte di licheni grigi e giallo-senape. Qualcuna ha la stella rossa. Su tutto, la luce incendiaria della sera. Migliaia di morti, e sono la minoranza. Gli altri sono passati per il camino.

Nella boscaglia, una donna in vestito rosso-papavero spazza una tomba. Sembra una visione, una Morgana. Con lei un bambino che l'aiuta. Poco lontano, un uomo che falcia la sterpaglia. La donna in rosso chiama Lilia e racconta una storia straordinaria. "Io e mio marito siamo ortodossi, ma abbiamo adottato questo luogo.

Da quando siamo in pensione, ogni giorno puliamo una tomba. Abito in quella casa lì in fondo, accanto al muro di cinta e da anni lotto perché questo spazio non decada. Conosco tanti di quelli che abitano qui". Dice "abitano", perché ne parla come se fossero ancora vivi.

Il piccolo Igor dice a Monika: "Vieni, ti porto a vedere la tomba di un santo", e si arrampica su un pilastro coperto di caratteri ebraici. "Era un rabbino, vengono in tanti a salutarlo. Gli chiedono sempre qualcosa".
Abbaiano due cani lupo. Sono i guardiani della casa di Lilia. Hanno fiutato estranei oltre la cancellata. Lilia vede ragazzi che cercano di entrare; urla, li minaccia, li fa scappare.

News on Jewish Genealogy Resources

The latest issue of the Avotaynu email newsletter "Nu? What's New?" is now online, with information on new genealogy resources, events and publications.

Seeking family roots forms a major piece of the Jewish travel mosaic. The newsletter includes links to a wide range of material and can be subscribed to direct to your inbox.

Detailed info on Jewish heritage in Bosnia online

The Jewish Heritage Europe web site, an expanding database of information on Jewish heritage in European countries, has added material on Bosnia.

I'm not quite sure why I am listed as the author of the material -- but I think that much of it comes from a report I prepared several years ago for the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad. The main source of info on Bosnia remains Ivan Ceresnjes and his name should be up there. I have included a fair amount of what it included in this report in Jewish Heritage Travel.




(Jewish cemetery, Mostar. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber)

Synagogue Gives Shelter in South Ossetia

This AP story evokes echoes of the so-called Fortress Synagogues in Eastern Europe, which served as defenses for the local Jewish communities and also the towns in which they stood. Striking examples of such synagogues, mainly in ruins, can be seen now in Poland (Szydlow, Zamosc) and Ukraine (Brody, Sokal, Sataniv, Shargorod, etc).


Abandoned synagogue gives shelter in Ossetian war

By YURAS KARMANAU

TSKHINVALI, Georgia (AP) — When Georgian rockets began falling on this sleepy capital of the breakaway province of South Ossetia, Zemfira Tibilova and her neighbors ran to a century-old brick synagogue.
During four days of fighting in the town, she said, four dozen Orthodox Christians hid in the building's dark basement with little food and water.
"These holy walls protected us," said Tibilova, 60. "God is still present here."
When the Georgian army launched an offensive late on Aug. 7 seeking to regain control of the region, about 50 people on Tskhinvali's Shaumian Street — mostly women and children and several elderly men — grabbed all the bread and water they could carry and took refuge in the synagogue.

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(Ruined fortress synagogue in Sokal, Ukraine, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber)

Article on Synagogue in Ludza (Lutsin) Latvia

For those who read Italian, the journalist Paolo Rumiz has a colorful piece in La Repubblica about the synagogue in Ludza, latvia, once known in Yiddish as Lutsin. Paolo specializes in lengthy travel stories that weave in history, politics and culture.

La sinagoga dei destini alternati

di PAOLO RUMIZ

Questa è la storia di una sinagoga che un giorno fu trasformata in stalla da uomini bestiali in divisa. Le bestie dichiararono "alieni" la gente che la popolava, la uccisero e la seppellirono nei boschi. Ma un giorno la stalla tornò a ospitare uomini pii e divenne luogo di festa, musica e allegria.

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Sergei Kravtsov wrote about the synagogue in his survey of synagogues in Latvia, carried out for the Center for Jewish Art.

Heritage Travel by Cleaning Cemetery

One way of gaining deeper knowledge through travel is to go somewhere to do something.... like clean up a Jewish cemetery in Belarus....Siena College is an independent Catholic Liberal Arts college near Albany in upstate New York.


Students return to Jewish cemetery in Belarus


First published: Sunday, August 10, 2008
COLONIE -- A group of Siena College students made their second summer trip to restore a Jewish cemetery destroyed by the Nazis during World War II and neglected by generations of villagers in Rubezhevichi, Belarus.

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A Book Replies to "Virtually Jewish"

I've discovered, thanks to a review in the online "H-Net" Humanities and Social Sciences Online, that a book was published in Austria in 2005 that in a sense can be, as reviewer Deborah Holmes put it "understood as a reply" to my own book "Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe" (University of California Press, 2002).

The new book is called "Der 'virtuelle Jude': Konstruktionen des Jüdischen" (Schriften des Centrums für Jüdische Studien. Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2005), and is a collection of essays edited by Klaus Hödl.

It is bizarre to me that a whole book could be dedicated to responding to my own work, but I was never contacted and knew nothing about it! From what Holmes writes, I'm not sure that what I was saying in my own book was actually interpreted the way I meant it to be -- and in some cases I apparently was misinterpreted.

Holmes writes:

"The most detailed criticism of Gruber's concept of "virtual Jewishness" comes in Hödl's own essay "Der 'virtuelle Jude'--ein essentialistisches Konzept?" Although Gruber is concerned with the commercialization of Jewishness and Shoah tourism in particular historical constellations, and not at all with theoretical identity discourse, Hödl is naturally justified in questioning her terms. On the other hand, he does seem to misread her at times. She does not set out to prove or discuss the existence of an "authentic" Jewish identity, and often sets this and other potentially problematic notions ("real Jews," "goyish") in quotations, indicating that she is well aware of the minefield she is crossing. It would of course be difficult to discuss the phenomena she sets out to investigate without using some abbreviations, and she defines her idea of "virtually Jewish" at great and satisfying length. Whether or not one concurs with her on the importance of "living" memory to cultural identity is another matter. Hödl is so intent on deconstructing her suggestion that there can be such a thing as an organic cultural legacy that he somewhat loses sight, in his own contribution at least, of the very valid question of what difference it makes that there are now so few Jews (or even "Jews") living in Europe as compared to previous centuries: "Die Annahme, dass vor der Shoah aufgrund des Vorhandenseins eines 'lebendigen jüdischen Milieus' statt Virtualität Authentizität bestimmend gewesen sowie der Geschichtsbezug weniger durch Bedürfnisse motiviert, sondern durch Rückgriffe auf Erinnerung hergestellt worden sei, ist ... zu hinterfragen. Konstruktionen sind immer schon mit historischen Deutungen einhergegangen, sie stellen kein Phänomen allein der Gegenwart dar" (p. 60)."

Anyway, it's interesting to see that my book has "legs," as it were, and that the concepts that I developed have led and are leading to further thought.

Actually, I've just checked back in my email, and this volume seems to collect papers given at a conference in Graz, Austria in 2003 on "Der Virtuelle Jude". I remember seeing a reference to this conference back then -- and I remember trying to get in touch with the organizers, as it seemed clear that already this was a response of some sort to my book. But I never received a reply to my emails....

European Day of Jewish Culture schedules up

The 9th annual European Day of Jewish Culture will take place Sept. 7, with music this year's theme. Schedules for events in Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom can now be accessed at the Day's web site.

This represents fewer than half of the 30 countries that are supposed to be taking part, and I hope that the schedules for the remaining countries get posted soon.....

European Day of Jewish Culture meeting set

According to the web site of the European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Heritage, a meeting of national coordinators of the European Day of Jewish Culture will be held in November, probably in Spain. (Heritage Day is on the first Sunday of September, this year Sept. 7.)

The meeting, the web site states, "not only will allow the different coordinators to get to know each other personally, but it will also offer a forum for the exchange of experiences, projects and ideas, thus contributing to enhance and strengthen the collaboration between countries."

All of this is much needed. Due to funding and sponsorship issues as well as local interest and possibilities, there is little consistency in the organization of the European Day of Jewish Culture. Some countries, such as Italy, have public sponsorship and a skilled organizational team that enables about 50 cities and towns to program events. Other countries manage only token participation.