Hungary -- Jewish Heritage Travel Hungarian edition to be launched April 23

For anyone in Budapest April 23 -- the launch is at the Budapest International Book Festival, Kner Imre terem, 5 p.m.

Warsaw -- Festival of New Jewish Music

A reminder that the Festival of New Jewish Music in Warsaw starts today and runs til April 12. Information and program HERE.

For other Jewish music and culture festivals throughout the coming months, see the link in the sidebar of this blog!

Sarajevo -- travel article in Jewish Week

Old Synagogue, Sarajevo. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Jewish Week runs a travel piece by Hillary Larson on Sarajevo,  describing the Bosnian capital as "safe, restored and beautiful." Afterall, the Bosnian war ended 15 years ago....and even when I last visited, five or six years ago, it had regained much of the lively vitality of its pre-war days.

Larson writes:

Now is the time to visit Sarajevo, which has developed a welcoming tourism infrastructure but has yet to be blanketed with Western chains. Bosnia and Herzegovina is still inexpensive by European standards: You can eat well in a restaurant for under $10, enjoy a wide range of hotels for less than $100 per night and take buses all over the country for the cost of a New York taxi ride.

 Larson briefly describes Sarajevo's several important Jewish sites, such as the Old Synagogue (now a Jewish museum), the New Synagogue (a gallery), the Ashkenazic synagogue, and the Old Jewish Cemetery. (But fails to mention the Sarajevo Haggadah, the 14th century manuscript, preserved in the National Museum, that was brought to the Balkans from Spain and is the enduring symbol of Jewish presence in the region.)

 Sarajevo Ashkenazic synagogue. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

 
See the much fuller report that I posted here last year, which also links to a wonderfully colorful description of Sarajevo by Bob Cohen.

List of Jewish festivals is growing

Just a reminder for readers to check the list in the sidebar -- of Jewish culture/arts/music/film, etc festivals coming up in Europe this spring/summer/fall.

So far, I have put nearly 30 festivals on the list.... with more, I'm sure, to come.

Click HERE to see the full list.

Poland -- Long, interesting article on the presence of the Holocaust in Polish art

A long and detailed article.

See full article HERE


 By Katarzyna Bojarska

Polish artists - those born before the war, those who survived the Shoah and its witnesses alike - produced several works pointing to both the presence of war trauma and the impossibility to represent it by means of traditional imagery. Nevertheless, art did not dissolve into silence, nor did culture disappear by the mid 20th century. Attempts at the artistic representation of reality and at overcoming both the lack of Holocaust iconography and the decline of mimetic representation have not vanished. What Eleonora Jedlińska²
and many other authors call "the end of man" was taken up by many artists and in many ways, although - let us put it directly - it has not at all been the only subject of postwar art. It is not easy to give priority to one manner of depicting this historical phenomenon, and it seems obvious that particular generations of viewers and artists favoured different tendencies. The tone which seemed to be dominant for quite a long time was serious meditation connected with lamentation and the limiting of means of visual expression, on the one hand, and screaming associated with the imperative to testify, on the other. War experience gave birth to a conflict between the desire to tell the truth, to testify, and the awareness of the unsuitability of traditional visual conventions as well as of the insufficiency of the hitherto existing language of art.

"Cień człowieka / A Shadow of a man"	"Uwięziony / Imprisoned"
Zbigniew Dłubak, series "Wojna / War" courtesy of the Museum of Art in Łódź, photo: Piotr Tomczyk

After the war it seemed that on the terrifying phenomenon of dehumanised mass death, one could either scream or cease to speak.

Read full article

A New Take on the Shtetl

 The road to the old wooden synagogue, Pakruojis, Lithuania 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Alana Newhouse has written a long article in the New York Times magazine that highlights the way -- possibly the deliberately manipulated way -- that Roman Vishniac's famous photographs molded our imaged and collective memory of the shtetl.

She profiles Maya Benton, a young curator who has uncovered thousands of unpublished photographs by Vishniac and also revealed the extent to which he apparently made up captions and descriptions to give his published pictures a more dramatic narrative -- a narrative that highlighted poverty, fear, persecution and poignancy.

As Benton has discovered, Vishniac released, over the course of a five-decade career, an uncommonly small selection of his work for public consumption — so small, in fact, that it did not include many of his finest images, artistically speaking. Instead the chosen images were, in the main, those that advanced an impression of the shtetl as populated largely by poor, pious, embattled Jews — an impression aided by cropping and fabulist captioning done by his own hand. Vishniac’s curating job was so comprehensive that it would not only limit the appreciation of his talents but also skew the popular conception of pre-Holocaust Jewish life in Europe.

Read the full article

Listen to Alana interview Maya Benton on Tablet Magazine

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is quoted in the article, and the sort of "revivisionist" take triggered by the new discoveries regarding Vishniac's photos sent me back to read Barbara's introduction to a 1995 edition of the classic book Life is with People: The Culture of the Shtetl, by Mark
Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog, originally published in 1952 by Schocken.

Though a great popular success, Life is with People poses several vexing problems, among them the identification of East European Jewish culture with the shtetl. During the fall of 1948, as the researchers struggled over what to call the culture they had been studying, they identified shtetl with the prototypical "enclave community" that carried the "core culture" of East European Jews. Shtetl became, in their thinking, a microcosm of the East European Jewish culture area, visualized as a sea of Christian culture dotted with little Jewish islands. Encapsulated in self-contained shtetlekh, the perfection of this hermetic world was sustained, the team argued, by isolation, hostility, and resistance to change. So palpable was this sense of the shtetl's hermetic seal that Elizabeth Herzog, one of the book's authors, suggested that the researchers ask their informants "Were you ever curious about the world outside the shtetl? Did you ever want to go outside the shtetl and walk around?"

You can read the full introduction at google docs by clicking HERE

Budapest -- My latest Centropa column, a guide to the Seventh District

In my latest travel column for Centropa.org, I provide a guide to some of the restaurants and cafes I like to patronize in Budapest's new "bar vortex" -- the former Jewish quarter. Venues I profile include the cafes and restaurants Siraly, Szoda, Szimpla, Dupla, Szimpla kert, Carmel (kosher), Hanna (kosher), Spinoza, Kadar, Barladino -- and more.

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

BUDAPEST -- The last time I wrote about Budapest on Centropa I provided an itinerary of Jewish sights and resources, most of them in and around the city's Seventh District, the old downtown Jewish quarter anchored by three grand synagogues forming a so-called "Jewish triangle."

That was eight years ago, and the former Jewish quarter still had the reputation of being one of the city's poorest inner districts. There were some signs of incipient gentrification, but World War II bullet holes pocked many crumbling facades, vacant lots yawned, and the grimy streets were dark and uninviting.

A lot has changed since then. Much of the District is still neglected. But already at the end of 2007 the New York Times ran a travel story called "Out of Darkness, New Life" that described how the district's "history and recent rise to trendiness" evoke "comparisons to the Lower East Side of New York." A recent issue of Time Out Budapest magazine went even further, terming the Jewish quarter a major city "bar vortex."

In fact, the district burgeons with new cafes, clubs, bistros and wine bars that attract a young, hip -- and often Jewish -- crowd. At the same time, though, this type of growth has been paralleled by controversial urban renewal projects that have seen many old buildings torn down and replaced by rather soulless modern structures.

A citizens group, OVAS, has been formed to lobby for the protection of what remains -- particularly in light of real estate corruption involved in some of the development schemes. The Mayor of the Seventh District himself, in fact, was jailed last year on suspicion of bribery and abuse of office related to property transactions.

I've maintained a small apartment in the Seventh District for more than a decade. Though I only spend part of my time here, I've been observing the changes in the quarter up close; after all, it's my neighborhood.

In particular, I enjoy the new venues and Jewish haunts that have nothing to do with a nostalgic sense of a vanished past but everything to do with how Jews in Budapest -- and particularly young Jews in Budapest -- are experimenting with ways to build a lively present and, one hopes, a sustainable future.

With this article, I would like to introduce readers to some of the haunts in and around the Jewish quarter that I tend to frequent: whether for breakfast cappuccino or afternoon espresso, for an inexpensive lunch, or for dinner or late night drinks and conversation. Or simply as somewhere to sit and use the free WiFi internet that most venues in the district seem to offer.

Read full story

London -- Great NYTimes Review of Newly Revamped Jewish Museum

Congratulations to Rickie Burman, director of the newly reopened Jewish Museum in London, and her team! The reviews of the museum, which just reopened after a multi-million dollar expansion and redesign, are glowing. The latest is in the New York Times.  The article, which describes the museum as a "carefully thought-out museum" whose expansion and redesign has established it "as an important addition to a new generation of Jewish institutions in cities including San Francisco and Warsaw,"       also has a slide show.

Egypt -- Formal opening of restored synagogue cancelled

L'Chaim, everyone. This makes one question the definition of "provocative."

Egypt cancelled Sunday's formal ceremony opening the a renovated Maimonides synagogue in Cairo -- protest at what antiquities chief Zahi Hawass called "provocative" Jewish and Israeli actions. The even was to have taken place one week after the synagogue was rededicated in a ceremony attended by about 150 people, including the US and Israeli ambassadors.

AFP reports that both Hawass and Culture Minister Faruq Hosni had been due to attend Sunday's cancelled event.

Citing press reports, Hawass said in a statement that the cancellation comes after "provocative" acts during the March 7 ceremony in Cairo's ancient Jewish quarter.

He referred to "dancing and drinking alcohol in the synagogue, as reported by several newspapers," and said such acts "were seen to provoke the feelings of millions of Muslims in Egypt and across the world."

The decision was also taken at "a time when Muslim holy sites in occupied Palestine face assaults from Israeli occupation forces and settlers," Hawass said.

He was referring to clashes at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound and plans to include two contested West Bank holy shrines on a list of Israeli heritage sites.

Read full story

AP reports  that "The cancellation was largely symbolic as the restoration is complete and the synagogue has been reopened."

The March 7 dedication ceremony at the synagogue, named after the 12th century rabbi and intellectual Maimonides, was closed to media and included half a dozen Egyptian Jewish families that long ago fled the country. No Egyptian officials attended the ceremony. A group of about 11 Hassidic Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis also came to Cairo from the United States and Israel and sang at the event. Attendees also said toasts were made.

Read full story

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.