Videos of some of my public appearances

I've made quite few public appearances over the past year -- and videos of some of them are posted online.

Take a look!

At the conference Jewish Heritage Tourism in the Digital Age, held in Venice October 23-25, 2017, there was an event celebrating 25 years year the first edition of my book Jewish Heritage Travel was published — and 15 years since my book Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe.

The event was a conversation between me and Shaul Bassi, of Ca’ Foscari University and Beit Venezia, looking back on my involvement in Jewish heritage over the past nearly 30 years.

Watch it here:






The Center for Urban History in Lviv has posted the full video of a lecture I presented in Lviv July 27, 2017 at the conclusion of the lecture series “Jewish Days in the City Hall: (Un)Displayed Past in East European Museums.”

As in the Venice conversation, in the talk I reflected on the changes that have taken place in Jewish heritage tourism since the publication of the first edition of my book “Jewish Heritage Travel” in 1992.

You can watch the entire talk here:

I'm interviewed in USAToday -- 10 great places to experience Jewish history

The bimah and top of the ark in the synagogue Mikulov, CZ, part of the 10 Stars project

The newspaper USAToday has run an interview with me by Larry Bleiberg, in which I note 10 of my favorite Jewish heritage sites -- not just in Europe, but also a couple in the United States.

I gave him a much, much longer list, but he had to pare it down to just 10, to keep variety and also geographic spread -- alas, as he had to leave out some of my very favorite places. The article runs in the travel section as 10 Great Places to Experience Jewish History.

The 10 include: the art nouveau synagogue in Subotica, Serbia; the ghetto in Venice; the Amsterdam Jewish Cultural Quarter; the Hamburg Altona Jewish cemetery; the synagogue in Iasi, Romania; the pioneer Jewish cemeteries in the American west; KKBE synagogue in Charleston, SC; the Belzec Nazi death camp memorial in Poland; the 10 Stars project sites in Czech Republic; and Sataniv and other fortress synagogues in Ukraine.


Read the full USAToday article

In the Venice ghetto

When my book National Geographic Jewish Heritage Travel, a Guide to Eastern Europe came out in 2007, JTA also ran a story asking me to list my favorites -- the geographic scope was more limited, so the list is a bit different, though it does include some of the same sites, such as the synagogue in Subotica, the Belzec memorial, fortress synagogues including Sataniv, synagogues (like Iasi) in northern Romania, and the synagogues and Jewish quarters in the Czech Republic -- see it HERE.

It includes: the historic Jewish cemeteries and painted synagogues in northern Romania; the Jewish cemeteries and fortress synagogues in Ukraine, including Sataniv; the baroque synagogue and Jewish cemetery in Mad, in northeastern Hungary; the synagogues in Lancut, in southeastern Poland, and in Tykocin, in northeastern Poland; the old Jewish quarters, synagogues and cemeteries in small towns the Czech Republic; anything to do with the Hungarian architect Lipot Baumhorn (1860-1932), modern Europe’s most prolific designer of synagogues, such as the grand synagogue in Szeged, Hungary, and Baumhorn’s tomb in the Kozma utca Jewish cemetery in Budapest; the remaining few wooden synagogues, about a dozen of which survive in out-of-the way villages in Lithuania; the elaborate synagogue in Subotica, Serbia; the Holocaust monument complex in Belzec in southeastern Poland; The Holocaust memorial in Plunge, Lithuania, which features a profoundly moving installation of massive wooden sculptures by the late Jewish wood-carver Jakob Bunkas and his artist friends.

Read the JTA article

Check out the latest Jewish Heritage Europe Newsletter

Painted ceiling, replica of Gwozdziec wooden synagogue, in the POLIN museum.

The Jewish Heritage Europe newsletter this month has links to posts and pictures from Poland, Italy, Germany, Romania, Serbia -- and more!

This month's theme is "Dedication! Celebration!"

Links include links to photo galleries on the new POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and the Old and New Jewish cemeteries in Venice, Italy.

Click here to access the Newsletter online

Please sign up to get automatic delivery to your inbox!

Italy -- Festival of Polish Jewish Culture in Venice

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Later this month there will be a festival of Polish Jewish culture held in Venice -- with concerts, exhibitions, lectures, etc. I am scheduled to speak at the closing "Day of Study". The festival is organized by the Polish Institute of Culture in Rome, the Venice Jewish Community and the association organizing events for the upcoming 500th anniversary of the institution of the ghetto in Venice.

Here's the schedule (In Italian).

In occasione della presidenza polacca nel Consiglio dell’Unione Europea. Nell’imminenza delle celebrazioni per i 500 anni del Ghetto di Venezia. Venezia, dal 20 al 29 novembre 2011.

Su proposta dell’Istituto Polacco di Roma e del suo direttore Jaroslaw Mikołajewski, la Comunità ebraica di Venezia e l’Associazione per i 500 anni del Ghetto di Venezia hanno voluto organizzare un Festival della Cultura Ebraica Polacca. Si tratta del primo evento culturale di un lungo percorso che condurrà nel 2016 alle grandi celebrazioni in occasione dei 500 anni dall’istituzione del Ghetto di Venezia, il primo ghetto al mondo. Gli organizzatori delle odierne manifestazioni hanno voluto dare particolare rilievo ai concetti di vita e di cultura, ! tentando di offrire al pubblico proposte culturali che spaziano cronologicamente dal ‘500 alla contemporaneità. Non è assente il tema della Shoah, che naturalmente trattandosi di ebrei e di Polonia non può essere trascurato, e tuttavia l’intento è quello di non farsi schiacciare dalla catastrofe dello sterminio e proporre ai visitatori tracce culturali spesso inesplorate e inedite. Gli ebrei e la Polonia nel passato e nel presente, con uno sguardo al futuro.

L’idea di organizzare questo evento a Venezia assume particolare significato per la collocazione geografica e storica della comunità ebraica lagunare in rapporto alla Polonia. Basterà pensare agli importanti rapporti culturali e famigliari fra esponenti del rabbinato veneto e polacco a partire dal Cinquecento, ed è utile ricordare che all’indomani del rogo del Talmud (1553) che mise fine alla stampa a Venezia della principale opera della tradizione ebraica, il testimone venne preso dagli stampatori di Cracovia che produssero la loro prima edizione già nel 1559. E da Venezia provennero gli ebrei (sefarditi) che andarono a fondare la comunità ebraica nella lontana Zamosc, nuova città costruita da un architetto padovano e disegnata sul modello rinascimentale.

Il Festival prevede i seguenti appuntamenti:

- Una mostra sui rabbini di Cracovia presso il Museo Ebraico! di Venezia

- Un dibattito sul rapporto fra ebrei e Polonia con la partecipazione di Adam Michnik, intellettuale ebreo polacco, giornalista, protagonista della rinascita democratica e animatore del movimento Solidarnosc.

- Un evento “concerto e parole” con il decano dei musicisti klezmer di Polonia, Leopold Kozlowski

- Una rassegna cinematografica dedicata allo sguardo del grande regista polacco Andrej Wajda sul rapporto fra ebrei e Polonia.

- Una Giornata di Studi incentrata sulle dinamiche insediative degli ebrei fra Venezia e l’Europa orientale.

In particolar! e la Giornata di Studi rappresenta l’ evento iniziale del lungo percorso di valorizzazione della storia del Ghetto di Venezia e dei suoi 500 anni.

Programma

20 novembre

Rabbini di Cracovia – ore 16, inaugurazione della mostra presso il Museo Ebraico

Ebrei-polacchi, polacchi ed ebrei: riflessioni su una storia comune – ore 17-19 presso la Sala Montefiore (Cannaregio 1189) Tavola rotonda con Adam Michnik, Francesco M. Cataluccio, Laura Mincer

Leopold Kozlowski, l’ultimo klezmer della Galizia – ore 20 presso la sala concerti del Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello, Palazzo Pisani, San Marco 2810, concerto di musica e parole.

22 – 29 novembre

Ho sentito la voce del dottor Korczak – rassegna cinematografica dedicata ad Andrej Wajda e al suo sguardo sull’ebraismo polacco. La rassegna si svolge presso la Casa del Cinema.

Martedì 22 novembre : ore 17.30 GENERAZIONE (Pokolenie, 1955) di Andrzej Wajda; ore 20.30 SANSONE (Samson, 1961) di Andrzej Wajda

Giovedì24 novembre : ore 17.30 PAESAGGIO DOPO LA BATTAGLIA (Krajobraz po bitwie, 1971) di Andrzej Wajda; ore 20.30 DOTTOR KORCZAK (Korczak, 1991) di Andrzej Wajda

Martedì 29 novembre : ore 17.30 SETTIMANA SANTA (Wielki tydzien, 1995) di Andrzej Wajda;

ore 20.30 DYBBUK (Der Dibuk, 1937) di Michal Waszynski

27 Novembre

Ore 10-18 Giornata di Studi: LA CITTÀ DEGLI EBREI: GHETTI, QUARTIERI, SHTETL FRA PASSATO E PRESENTE

Italy -- Jewish Venice

 Chabadniks outside Chabad house in the Ghetto square. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

My latest Ruthless Cosmopolitan column is about disconnects and complexities of Jewish Venice.

In Venice, a Jewish disconnect between locals and visitors

By Ruth Ellen Gruber · June 16, 2010

VENICE, Italy (JTA) -- It was a Friday afternoon in the heart of the historic Venice Ghetto, and I was chatting with the city's chief rabbi, Elia Richetti, when his cellphone beeped.

"It's a text message from Gam-Gam Goodies, the Chabad-run pastry shop around the corner," said the bespectacled Richetti, whose wispy white beard spills down to his chest.

He read me the message, a reminder that there were still some chocolate, poppy-seed and cream-filled kosher pastries left -- and still time to pick them up before Shabbat.

"They really know how to use technology," Richetti said, smiling.

Many of the circles that make up Jewish Venice converged in that moment.

Richetti, who is also the president of the Italian Rabbinical Assembly, was speaking with me in the well-stocked Jewish bookstore and kosher cafe that form part of the Venice Jewish Museum, an institution founded by the Jewish community in 1953 that encompasses several of the ghetto's centuries-old synagogues.

Jews have lived in Venice since the Middle Ages; the old Jewish cemetery on the Venice Lido was founded in the 1300s. Venetian rulers established the ghetto as Europe's first enclosed place of Jewish segregation in 1516 on the site of an old foundry -- or getto, in the Venetian dialect.

The museum draws nearly 70,000 visitors a year, and locals say the annual number of Jewish visitors to Venice far exceeds that.

But the Venice Jewish community itself numbers fewer than 450, only a handful of whom live in the ghetto area. Only a few local Jews seek contacts with the tourists, other than as customers in their shops or bodies to make up a minyan.

"There is a paradox here," said Shaul Bassi, who heads the Venice Center for International Jewish Studies, an institution founded last year aimed at fostering intellectual and cultural interaction between Jewish visitors and Jewish Venetians.

"The Jewish community as such is eroding, and many are unaffiliated or disaffected," Bassi said. "But at the same time the ghetto has never been so famous. There has never been such a profound interest in the ghetto as a site of memory."

Picking up the slack, as far as foreign tourists go, is Chabad-Lubavitch, which in two decades of activity here has become the most prominent public face of Judaism in Venice.


Read full story HERE

I spent several days in Venice a couple of weeks ago, in part to visit with an aunt and uncle who were there on vacation, and in part to update myself on the varied components of Jewish life in the Lagoon City, which I wrote about in this piece.

Besides sampling the new Chabad-run pastry shop, Gam-Gam goodies (down the street from the long-established Chabad kosher restaurant Gam-Gam), I also stopped in a new glatt kosher restaurant and cafe garden, Balthazar, located in what used to be the Jewish old-age home (and where a few elderly members of the Venice Jewish community still live.)

 Outside the Balthazar restaurant. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

I also made it a point to go out to the Venice Lido to visit my friend Aldo Izzo, a retired sea captain who takes care of the historic Jewish cemeteries there. The old cemetery dates from the 14th century. Here are some pictures of it.

 

 Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

 

 Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

 

 Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Venice -- Wall to ancient Jewish cemetery damaged in storm

A rare snowfall has resulted in damage to the wall surrounding the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Lido island in Venice. The heavy snow caused several trees to topple onto it, causing two sections to crumble. The tombstones and monuments were apparently unharmed.

You can see pictures on the Italian travel blog "il reporter"  by clicking HERE.

The cemetery dates back to the 14th century and several years ago underwent an extensive restoration to shore it up in the wake of damage caused by water seepage and neglect.

Italy/New York -- Sam Gruber to speak on Venice Jewish history

For those of you in New York, Sam Gruber, the president of the International Survey of Jewish Monuments (ISJM), will be speaking in New York May 7 on the "prehistory" of the Venice Ghetto.

The lecture will be at the Colony Club in New York on Thursday, May 7th, at 6:30 pm, followed by cocktails. Tickets are $40 and must be purchased in advance from Save Venice. Mail checks to 15 East 74th Street, New York, NY 10021.

Its not a talk about the Ghetto per se, but of the social, political and topographical background of Venice in the late 15th and early 16th century that encouraged the Ghetto's creation.

For full information click HERE