Czech Republic --video from Boskovice Festival

Here's a youtube video of a performance in the old synagogue in Boskovice from this summer's Boskovice Festival -- a jazz version of Lecha Dodi prayer, composed by Peter Gyori (also on guitar) and sung by Lenka Lichtenberg.

Lithuania -- Jpost story on Jewish Vilnius/Vilna/Vilne

 Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

There are few physical traces of Jewish Vilnius anymore -- tour guides arm themselves with old photographs when they lead groups, to show them what was there, and where today are found plaques, information panels, a monument or two, traces of Yiddish signage, or simply empty space. Moreover, as I wrote on this blog in December, after I served as an expert during a seminar on the future of Jewish heritage in Vilnius, what to do regarding Jewish heritage -- and how to do it -- has been a controversial issue.

The Jerusalem Post runs a travel piece on Jewish Vilnius/Vilna/Vilne by Norma Davidoff Shulman.

There are fascinating traces beyond the faint Yiddish letters on ghetto buildings. Starting with the Middle Ages, Jews arrived here. By the 1700s, their numbers and influence became significant. Before World War II, Jews made up more than a third of the city.

Then the whole country seemed to disappear for 50 years behind the Iron Curtain; it was the first to break away from the USSR, in 1990. By that time most of its Jews were already gone.

Some had made Aliya, like the Litvak families of Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. Shimon Peres lived 100 kilometers from Vilnius.

Before the war, there were a hundred synagogues and study houses.

Fifteen years ago Chabad opened its doors in an apartment house. The city has but one synagogue building: the Choral Synagogue in the heart of the ghetto. This Moorish-style edifice, with its blue letters in Hebrew, had a congregation with a progressive outlook when it was built in 1894. It allowed music, thus the name “choral.”

Poland -- Shabbat in Rymanow and other festivals

I have added some new festivals to the growing list of Jewish festivals in Europe. They include a Shabbat in Rymanow festival this coming weekend, August 12-14.

It is part religious observance and part culture festival, with concerts, lectures and even food and wine tastings.

PROGRAM

THURSDAY, AUGUST12, 2010

10.00-10.45 Workshops at the Jewish cemetery in Rymanow – Explanation of
function of cemetery and symbolism of headstones and graves. Remembrance of
famous Tzadikim from Rymanow.
11.00-11-45 Ecumenical prayers at the Jewish cemetery.
12.15-12.30 Remembering those who gave their lives to save the Jews of
Rymanow – Catholic cemetery in Rymanow.
12.30-15-00 POLIN film screening with the participation of the director Jolanta
Dylewska. Next, fragments of a pre-war film from Rymanow.
(at big hall, Jas Wedrowniczek – free entry)
16.00 – 18.00 Culinary workshops ( Jewish kitchen at the Rymanow Rynek )
This will be led by a daughter if a Rymanow native, Malka Sacham Doron.
There will also be an exhibit of traditional Jewish dishes.
16.00-17.30 Historic trail of Rymanow properties. A walking tour of the long gone
Rymanow with participation of former Jewish residents. It will be
conducted in English and Polish, starting in the parking lot at the Rynek.
19.00-21.00 Artistic performance "Musical Stories of Chassidim" A dramatic
musical spectacle, which retells the story of Menachem Mendle the great
Tzadik of Rymanow, with Chassidic dancing. Performed by Mendy Cahan from
Israel accompanied by Olga Mieleszczuk.
Big hall – Jaś Wędrowniczek
Tickets -- 10zl. for purchase in the hotel.
21.30 – Rymanow encounter with Hungarian wine – tasting of wine from the
Tokay district, with the participation of members from the Portius and
Krosno district.

FRIDAY, AUGUST13, 2010

10.00-11.00 workshop in Yiddish language and singing of Niggunim. Melodies
without words – Mendy Cahan and Olga Mieleszczuk.
Big hall – Jas Wiedrowniczek
12.00-13.45 March of Remembrance, from Rynek to Wróblik Szlachecki.
Tracing the final walk of the Rymanow ghetto,
Prayer of Kaddish in Wroblik.
Starts at Monument of Victims of Totalitarianism at the Rynek.
15.30-16.30 Monodram " We Also need a Miracle "
Big Hall – Jas Wedrowniczek, free entrance
19.00 – 19.30 Singing of Nigunim in front of Synagogue
19.40 – 21.00 Kabbalat Shabbat and greeting the Shabbat at the Synagogue,
Services will be conducted by Rymanow native Moshe Barth.
21.30 – Shabbat in Rymanow, Festive Shabbat dinner for all participants.
Hotel Bogmar in Rymanow

SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 2010

8.30-11.30 Prayers at the Synagogue
13 .30-15.00 Historic trail of Rymanow properties. A walking
tour of the long Rymanow with the participation of former Jewish residents.
It will be conducted in English and Polish, starting in the parking lot at
the Rynek.
19.30 – 20.30 Havdallah, saying goodbye to the Sabbath.

Poland/Belarus -- Seminar on Jewish heritage preservation

Catching up on some backlog, I have learned about a seminar on Jewish heritage preservation in Poland and Belarus that took place recently at the Borderland Foundation in Sejny, northern Poland.

The seminar was a part of a project called “Polish-Byelorussian summer school for culture animators. Transfer of experience concerning protection of Jewish heritage”, which is financed from a program “Przemiany w Regionie-RITA” launched by Fundacja Edukacji dla Demokracji (Education for Democracy Foundation). “Holocaust” Foundation from Mińsk and “Ośrodek Brama Grodzka-Teatr NN” (The "Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre” Centre) from Lublin were partners in the project’s implementation.

Italy -- Synagogue in Sabbioneta to Reopen after Restoration

The charming little synagogue in Sabbioneta, near Mantova in northern Italy, will reopen next month after a year-long restoration process. The re-opening is timed to coincide with this year's European Day of Jewish Culture, which takes place Sept. 5.

Sabbioneta was built in the 16th century by Vespasiano Gonzaga and laid out as an ideal Renaissance city. The synagogue that stands was built much later -- in 1824 -- to a design by Carlo Visioli on the site of a much older Synagogue

Poland -- Jewish Presence vs Presence of Jews

My latest Ruthless Cosmopolitan column for JTA again explores the situation in Poland, where the intensity of the Jewish presence dwarfs the number of Jews who actually lives in the country.

In Poland, Shabbatons for non-Jews to combat anti-Semitism

By Ruth Ellen Gruber · August 2, 2010

PIOTRKOW TRYBUNALSKI, Poland (JTA) -- Whenever I visit Poland, I'm struck by how the intensity of the Jewish presence dwarfs the tiny number of Jews who actually live in the country. Even with the resurgence of Jewish life since the fall of communism, organized Jewish communities exist in fewer than a dozen Polish cities, and only the Warsaw community numbers much more than a few hundred people.

Yet each year sees hundreds of Jewish-themed festivals, conferences, educational projects, commemorative activities, publications and other initiatives throughout the country.

"I often joke that the mayor of every small town now feels obliged to make excuses if he or she has no Jewish festival," said Anna Dodziuk, a Jewish activist in Warsaw. Dodziuk published a book this year on Poland's largest and most famous Jewish festival, the nine-day Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow, which has been going strong since 1988. "To put it in short," she said, "it is politically correct now to explore the Jewish history of the local communities, to commemorate Jews of a shtetl who perished in Holocaust, to celebrate somehow Jewish culture."

The activities are meant to educate and memorialize, but they coincide with a Jewish presence that is glaringly visible in more negative contexts, too, and this is also part of the paradox.
Anti-Semitic graffiti is shockingly widespread. Spray-painted Stars of David hanging from gallows deface countless walls.

Much of this, however, likely has little to do with actual Jews. The ugly scrawls are the work of soccer fans who may have no idea what Judaism is but have adopted Jewish symbols as pejoratives with which to bash their opponents.

Meanwhile, figurines of Orthodox Jews clutching coins fill souvenir stalls in Warsaw, Krakow and some other cities. The imagery harks back to the stereotype of Jews as greedy moneylenders, but the figurines are marketed today as abstract good-luck talismans.

"When a member of the city council from a Polish town came to visit me in the States not long ago, he brought a present," said Michael Traison, an American Jewish lawyer who has offices in Chicago and Warsaw. "It was a painting of a Jew counting money, with a dollar bill stuck in its back. He obviously had no idea that the image could be offensive."

Trying to make sense out of the disparity is a cottage industry among scholars, educators, policymakers, communal leaders and ordinary citizens.

How do you balance an abstract evocation of Jews and Jewish life with the real thing? And how do you prevent stereotypes and skewed templates from dominating discourse?

Traison believes a sort of "public display of Judaism" can be useful.

Toward that end, over the past four years he has helped organize Shabbatons that have brought actual Jews and Jewish practice to half a dozen provincial towns where few or no Jews have lived since the Holocaust. Religious services are held in long-disused synagogues, and local officials and ordinary citizens are invited to join in for prayers, kosher meals and Shabbat study.

Traison says he has four main goals: remembrance; demonstrating that the Jewish people -- and Judaism -- are still alive; outreach to Poles; and enabling Jews and local Catholics to participate in a Jewish religious experience.

"This is all very important for young people in Poland, who often only know Jews through imagery and mythology," he said.

Stanislaw Krajewski, a Warsaw Jew who has attended several of the Shabbatons, agreed. "It doesn't just show pictures but is doing something that is really alive," he said. "It is such an innovation -- a way of bringing a sort of circulation of blood in these places."

A Catholic man who attended last year's Shabbaton in Kielce put it this way: "I could feel myself what I already knew theoretically, namely what the Shabbat means for Jews who treat their faith seriously.”
The song “Boi Kala” – “Come, Sabbath Queen” – “is also a challenge or a question on how I, a Christian man, treat my 'shabbat’ -- Sunday," the man said. "Thanks to Jews' testimony of how they treat their holy day, I treat my one more seriously."

Most of these elements were evident at the latest Shabbaton, which took place this summer in Piotrkow Trybunalski, a rundown industrial town in central Poland where city walls are scarred by anti-Semitic soccer graffiti but also bear commemorative plaques recalling the town's rich Jewish past.

The Shabbaton coincided with a city-sponsored Days of Judaism festival, and posters advertised the religious events along with lectures, exhibits and a klezmer concert. Piotrkow's mayor and other officials took part in a Holocaust commemoration ceremony, a kosher Shabbat dinner and an open-air Havdalah celebration in a public park near the center of town.

Schoolchildren staged a play based on a Holocaust story, and Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, led services in Piotrkow's former synagogue, which was defiled by the Nazis and then turned into the public library in the 1960s.

Most of the participants were Piotrkow Holocaust survivors and descendants from Israel, the United States and other countries. They included the former Israeli diplomat Naftali Lau-Lavie, who was called to the Torah that Shabbat to celebrate the 71st anniversary of his bar mitzvah. Lavie's father was Piotrkow's last chief rabbi, and his brother is Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, a former Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel and now the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv.

Many in the group had visited Piotrkow before. Some had sponsored commemorative projects such as placing plaques and cleaning up the Jewish cemetery. They came to honor the dead, relive memories and make a positive statement simply by walking the streets.

It was "surreal" to pray where both "fame and infamy reigned," said Irving Gomolin, a survivors' son from Mineola, N.Y., who was making his third trip to Piotrkow. But, he added, "It also helps send the message to the town that we have not forgotten, that the Jewish nation and Piotrkower Jews survive and remember and do not want to forget or have their past in this place forgotten."

Read full story on JTA.org

Prague -- New Kosher Shop

There's a new kosher shop in Prague, which Dinah Spritzer writes about in the New York Times. It is located in the Old Jewish Quarter at v Kolkovne 4, around the corner from the kosher King Solomon restaurant, which is run by the same management, the Gunsberger brothers.

As only a few thousand Jews currently live in Prague, the store initially targeted temporary residents who struggled to find Passover staples like matzoh and gefilte fish. But now the Günsbergers want their deli to be a hot spot for anyone seeking a taste of something Jewish, like rugelach (stuffed and rolled pastries), babka (cakes filled with chocolate, cinnamon-nut or almond paste) and kishka (beef intestine stuffed with matzo meal).

“We are especially popular with kids going to schools in New York who are spending a few months here,” said Michal. “They don’t care about the kosher part, but they love that we have Israeli cookies and huge pickles.”

The shop also carries a mix of packaged products like crackers, goat cheese and (milk-free) chocolate from France, Britain, Israel and the Czech Republic.

Read full story here

Hungary -- Bankito festival coming up

My latest article for JTA looks at Budapest's progressive Jewish music scene, as a sort of preview to this year's Bankito Jewish culture festival, held near Budapest August 5-8.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to get to Bankito -- I'm going to southern Italy with my father and brother to attend a conference on the art work that my mother carried out in a small Calabrian village in the 1970s and 1980s.

But the Bankito line-up looks good -- and fun.

Jewish fusion music key to Budapest’s ‘Jewstock’ festival

By Ruth Ellen Gruber · July 22, 2010

BUDAPEST (JTA) -- Flora Polnauer, 28, tilts back her head, half closes her eyes and hums a few bars of a song by her hip-hop/funk/reggae band HaGesher. The song is "Lecha Dodi," the Shabbat evening prayer -- sounded over a Yiddishized version of the Beatles song "Girl." It's just one of the many unconventional songs of the band, whose vocalists rap their own lyrics in Hebrew, Hungarian and English.

"It's modern Jewish music because it's influenced by Jewish things, but it's not the replaying of old Jewish songs," says Daniel Kardos, 34, a composer and guitarist who plays with Hagesher and several other bands. "I pick up many things and mix them."

Hagesher is one of about half a dozen bands in this city of European Jewish cool blending jazz, hip hop, rap and reggae with Israeli pop and traditional Jewish folk tunes and liturgy to form an eclectic urban sound.
"It's a big mix of contemporary Jewish musical identity," said vocalist Adam Schoenberger, the son of a rabbi. "All of us find Jewish culture very important. Hagesher is a platform for us to articulate musically our different musical interpretation of Jewish cultural heritage."

As the program director of the popular Siraly club, whose dimly lit basement stage is a regular venue for Hagesher and other groups, Schoenberger, 30, is a leader in Budapest's Jewish youth scene. He is also one of the organizers of Bankito, sometimes referred to as "Jewstock" -- a youth-oriented Jewish culture festival Aug. 5-8 on the shore of Bank Lake, north of Budapest.

Bankito includes concerts, exhibitions, performances, workshops, seminars and lectures, a poetry slam, sports events, movies, and Jewish and interfaith religious observances. A number of events at this year's festival will highlight Roma, or Gypsy culture, and focus also on social and civic issues such as the rights of the Roma and other ethnic minorities.

Music is a highlight of Bankito. Hagesher, the Daniel Kardos Quartet and other Jewish bands such as Nigun and Triton Electric Oktopus will perform. "We're at a fascinating moment in Jewish music: It's hip again," said Michigan's Jack Zaientz, who authors the Teruah Jewish music blog. "There's an amazing gang of musicians who are young, smart, urban and Jewish, and making their Jewish identities a core part of their music and stage identities."

Read full story at jta.org

Lviv Klezmer Festival next Sunday

    




The second "LvivKlezFest" will take place Sunday in and around the inner Jewish quarter of L'viv, near the ruins of the Golden Rose synagogue -- a final late-night concert will take place in the square next to the ruins.

Participating bands come from Poland, Germany, Israel, Russia, and Ukraine, and there will be workshops, guided tours and other participatory events as well as concerts.
It's wonderful to the the (rather crumbling) district used in this way.



Here's the press release:

The Festival of Klezmer music “LvivKlezFest”  will welcome its guest for the second time on July 25, 2010 from 10.00 a.m. until 23.00 p.m.

You will enjoy the theatrical Jewish wedding procession on the streets of medieval Jewish quarter which will be adorned by playing of  Klezmer groups from different countries. Then the ceremony will fluently turn into a great long-lasting gala-concert on the ancient square near the legendary synagogue “Golden Rose”.

You will be also offered the master-classes on Jewish dance and handicrafts, walking tours in Jewish quarter and, certainly, you will taste traditional Jewish cuisine.

Those who will visit this big holiday of Jewish culture in Lviv  in the very heart of Eastern Galicia will get unforgettable feelings due to the combination of natural scenery in conjunction with unique Klezmer music.

The Festival is organized and supported by  All-Ukrainian Jewish Charitable Foundation  “Hesed-Arieh” (Lviv),   “Joint Center”(Kiev), Company of Emotions “!Fest”(Lviv).

ALL LOVERS OF JEWISH MUSIC, DANCES AND SONGS ARE WELLCOMED!

The Schedule of «LvivKlezFest-2010» (July 25, 2010)

10.00–13.30     Every half-hour free tour walks in  the Jewish quarter  of the city (the tour walks will start  from the cafe "Diana", Rynok square)

from 12.00  -  Theatrical performance "А hаsеnе in Galitsie" - "Jewish wedding-party in Galicia" accompanied by  Klezmer orchestras - (cafe "Diana", Rynok square); Treating, master-classes on Jewish handicrafts  -  (Br.Rogatyntziv street); Jewish workshops - (Staroyevreyska street).

14.30–23.00    Gala-concert ”Muzl Tov!” - “Happiness”! with participation of klezmers from Ukraine, Russia, Germany, Poland (Arsenalna square, across the  synagogue “Golden Rose”).

Ukraine -- Hebrew University research expedition to Galicia begins

Researchers from  Hebrew University in Jerusalem have begun another foray into Ukraine as part of the ongoing Jewish Galicia project. The group, headed by Dr. Vladimir Levin, will document Jewish heritage sites, including former synagogues, around the town of Nadvorna.

I posted about the project last year, after I met  Levin at a conference in Vilnius. Click HERE for that post.

Read a story about the expedition in Jerusalem Post story by clicking here

India -- Jewish Heritage Trail here, too!

The Jerusalem Post runs a lengthy article by Shalva Weil about a nascent Jewish heritage trail in southern India. It is pegged to the situation of the 17th century synagogue in Parur, which is currently being renovated by public authorities after remaining abandoned and somewhat derelict for decades.

Last month, the government of Kerala, India’s southernmost state, armed with a matching grant from the central government, started the reconstruction of the Parur synagogue that used to be frequented by Cochin Jews before they came on aliya, largely in the 1950s. The last of the community immigrated in the 1970s, leaving behind a mere handful of people, and the synagogue has remained in disuse since then. Today, fewer than 40 Cochin Jews remain on the Malabar coast.

The conservation is progressing at such a pace that the chief architect in charge of the project, Benny Kuriakose, believes it will be completed by the autumn. This governmental and federal project could be a beacon for other countries, which pay lip-service to the preservation of Jewish heritage.

“I was very excited to hear that the Kerala government is renovating the Parur synagogue and restoring it to the glory of its past,” said Tirza Lavi, a native of Parur, and a today a curator of the Heritage Center for Cochin Jews at Nevatim, south of Beersheba. “We hope that Parur will be a showcase to the younger generation, displaying our communities’ rich and interesting history. I am sure that Cochin Jews in Israel will be glad to take part in the project and share their knowledge and memories.”

Weil writes that the Jewish heritage trail and Parur synagogue are part of a much larger project.

The reconstruction of the Parur synagogue is only a small cog in the wheel of a huge project called the Muziris Heritage Project, which includes archeological excavations and the reconstruction of other historical monuments in the area, such as temples, churches and mosques. The idea is to create a tourism trail from the ancient port of Muziris, today known as Kodungallor, through Cochin, Parur and other nearby areas, and develop the already-existing tourism boom. Today, Kerala is the eighth most favorite tourist destination in the world.

The seeds of the monumental project were planted only a few years ago. The beautiful Paradesi synagogue in Jew Town, Cochin, constructed in 1568, has been a well-known tourist site ever since Indira Gandhi attended its quatercentenary celebrations in 1968 and the Indiangovernment issued a special commemorative stamp on the occasion. In more recent history, however, the Kerala government agreed to undertake the renovation of another abandoned Cochin Jewish synagogue belonging to the Malabari Jews in the village of Chendamangalam, near Cochin. In February 2006, the synagogue was reopened with an exhibition on the Cochin Jews, and the synagogue has become a popular tourist destination.

Read full article here

Poland -- New Schindler's Factory museum in Krakow

 Schindler's desk. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

When I was in Krakow for the Festival of Jewish Culture, I had the opportunity to visit the new Schindler's Factory museum -- a branch of the city's History Museum that tells the story of the Nazi occupation of Krakow in 1939-45 and is located in the administration building of what was Oskar Schindler's enamelware factory.

 Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The museum is a wonderful combination of traditional objects and interactivity and in particular uses sound in a remarkably evocative way.

I wrote a piece for the International Herald Tribune and New York Times web site.

On June 11, the factory’s sprawling administration building opened as Krakow’s newest museum, an ambitious, multimedia evocation of Krakow’s experience under Nazi occupation from 1939 to 1945. Three years in the making, Schindler’s Museum (4 Lipowa Street, www.mhk.pl) cost €3.7 million, or about $4.7 million.

The new museum uses Schindler’s famous story as a springboard to recount a broader narrative that encompasses oppression and resilience, heroism and deceit.

“The history we see here is a reminder that there is an alternative to inaction, a reminder that when we learn of crimes that cry out against our conscience we cannot stand by in quiet revulsion, hoping the world will fix itself,” said the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who toured the museum during an official visit to Krakow July 3.

Formally a branch of Krakow’s Historical Museum, Schindler’s Factory is “a museum of the occupation that shows what the wartime experience was like in Krakow and shows the context of all the stories — of Jews in Krakow, of Oskar Schindler, of Cracovians, of the German occupiers,” said Edyta Gawron, a historian who was part of the team that developed the museum concept. “Such a museum was needed,” she said. “People visit Auschwitz, but they have no idea of what life was like here in Krakow.”The new museum combines photographs, artifacts and other traditional objects with interactive components, sound, set-piece reconstructions and film and photo projections to provide a full-immersion effect.

You can watch contemporary film footage out the windows of a wartime-era tram, for example — film of traffic, pedestrians, soldiers and roundups. Or peek into cramped family quarters or the hideout of underground resistance fighters. Or read posters announcing everything from circus performances to executions.

A labyrinthine route leads through exhibit sections based on chronology, specific themes, and the experiences of individuals. Personal testimony and interviews are used throughout. The choices people had to make in order to survive also form part of the story, and some sections deal with collaboration and betrayal.

Sound effects ranging from music to reproduced radio broadcasts to ordinary city noises heighten the impact of the visuals.

The symbolism is sometimes tangible. One section is paved with floor tiles that bear the Nazi swastika.

“It was a dilemma how to show Nazi symbols without seeming to promote them,” Ms. Gawron said, “but in this case, though some people are shocked, it clearly works — the swastikas are there, but they are being trampled underfoot.”

Read full story HERE

The one aspect of the museum that has raised criticism (among people I talked to) is the section on the role of the Catholic Church during the occupation, and in particular that of the Archbishop of Krakow, Adam Sapieha. The information panel on Sapieha states that he aided Jews by intervening with German authorities and urging local clergy to help hide Jews and issue false baptismal papers.

 Photo: Emily Finer

But it ignores the general anti-semitic attitudes expressed by the church and Sapieha himself. I was told, however, that more information including interactive material would be added to this section of the museum exhibit. I hope this is true and that the full context will be presented.

Czech Republic -- Singer records Yiddish CD in synagogues

 Inside the synagogue in Mikulov, now a museum, Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

by Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Czech-born Canadian singer Lenka Lichtenberg is recording Yiddish and Jewish liturgical songs for a new CD in several former synagogues scattered around the Czech Republic --  in Prague, Plzen, Radnice, Liberec, Turnov,  Boskovice, Mikulov, Polna,  Hartmanice. Some of these synagogues are used now as museums.

Lichtenberg told the Czech news agency CTK that she envisaged the CD as a "certain homage to synagogues, their atmosphere and the local Jewish communities that do not exist any longer".

She said it crossed her mind to record Jewish liturgic songs in synagogues in the country last year when she had a concert in the synagogues in Liberec, north Bohemia, and in Plzen, west Bohemia. Each of the 14 songs will be recorded in a different synagogue as every synagogue has specific acoustics and every venue will fill the song with a different content and spirit, Lichtenberg said. Apart from traditional liturgic songs, the CD will offer two songs that she has written and four by modern authors from Toronto. Lichtenberg has also recorded one song, a prayer for the dead, in a hidden synagogue in Terezin, north Bohemia, where an internment camp for European Jews was set up during WWII. Her mother was interned there, she recalled. The CD will include a booklet with photographs of the synagogues and information about the local Jewish communities. It should also be sold in the synagogues where it was recorded.

Read full CTK story here

Poland -- Piotrkow Trybunalski cemetery photos

I have posted a photo gallery of images of the Jewish cemetery in the Polish town of Piotrkow Trybunalski on the web site of my (Candle)sticks on Stone project. They show women's tombstones and a variety of candlestick images, including broken candles, as well as mythical animals and other imagery and iconography.

Poland -- CNN on Jewish cultural and other revival

CNN has run a piece on Poland's rediscovery of its Jewish past I'm delighted that it mentioned the Jewish culture festival in Bialystok, as well as that in Krakow.
  

This phenomenon has, of course,  been going on for several decades already. By now, at least a score of Jewish culture festivals of one sort or another take place in Poland each year -- I've listed quite a few of them in the sidebar of this blog. Krakow's is the oldest and biggest; founded in 1988 it marked its 20th edition this year.

The success of the Krakow Festival  helped spark other Jewish festivals of various types around the country. In 2000, the a mapping of Jewish culture project by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research i London identified seven of them. In 2009, I counted more than 20, including at least two Jewish film festivals. Some were one-day affairs, others spanned a weekend or longer.

Some took place in towns with small Jewish communities, such as Wroclaw, Poznan and Gdansk. Others took place where no Jews live today. These included the sixth edition of a festival dedicated to the Yiddish author Shalom Asch, scheduled for early December in the central town of Kutno, the third edition of an annual Jewish culture festival in the village of Checiny, a Jewish theatre festival in Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski, the annual Jewish culture festival in Chmielnik, a Jewish culture festival in Bialystok, another in Szczekonciny, another in Przysucha, and so on. Festivals celebrating a diversity of cultures and religions, including Judaism, took place in Lodz, Wlodowa and Szczebrzeszyn.

‘I often joke that now the mayor of every small town feels obliged to make excuses [if] he/she has no Jewish Festival in his/her town,’ Anna Dodziuk, a psychotherapist who is also a Jewish activist and editor, told me. ‘To put it short: it is politically correct now to explore the Jewish history of the local communities, to commemorate Jews of a shtetl who perished in Holocaust, to celebrate somehow Jewish culture. So more and more Jews start to feel secure enough to be openly Jewish (or to be visible).’

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

Auschwitz -- US Pledges Aid to Restore Camp

 Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

On Saturday, U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton visited the brand new Schindler's Factory Museum in Krakow -- a branch of the city's history museum dedicated to the period of Nazi German occupation in World War II. During her visit she announced U.S. plans to pledge $15 million over five years to help restore and maintain the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, not far from Krakow. The site was made into a memorial/museum after World War II but has suffered considerable deterioration over the years. Flooding this year forced it to be closed to the public.

Below is the US government statement. For a full text of Clinton's speech click HERE

Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation Announcement

Office of the Spokesman

Washington, DC

July 3, 2010

---

In a speech today, July 3, at the Schindler Factory Museum in Krakow, Poland, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced the U.S. intention to contribute $15 million over five years to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, subject to Congressional authorization and appropriations. The World War II-era factory of Oskar Schindler, the German entrepreneur who saved hundreds of Jewish factory workers from the Holocaust and, Krakow, the closest major city to the camp and an important center of Jewish life before WWII, provide a meaningful setting for the U.S. announcement. The Secretary’s announcement of the anticipated U.S. contribution illustrates the significance of the Auschwitz-Birkenau site, helps commemorate the 1.1 million victims who perished there, and demonstrates America’s commitment to Holocaust education, remembrance, and research.

U.S. Contribution

*Subject to Congressional authorization and appropriations, the United States’ contribution of $15 million over five years will begin in FY 2012.

*The U.S. contribution will help fund a €120 million endowment to preserve and safeguard the remains of the camp. Due to the temporary nature of the camp’s initial construction, the buildings and other artifacts at Auschwitz-Birkenau are in poor condition and in serious danger of irreversible deterioration.

*The United States strongly encourages other nations who have not already done so to follow suit and to contribute to the Auschwitz-Birkenau fund to preserve the site for future generations.

Importance of Auschwitz-Birkenau
*The Auschwitz-Birkenau death and concentration camp is one of the most widely recognized symbols of racism, bigotry, and hatred where untold millions suffered unthinkable and heinous treatment under Nazi tyranny. While there are hundreds of other historically important camps and mass grave sites, Auschwitz-Birkenau has become a symbol of the Holocaust.

*In 2009 alone, more than 1.3 million people from around the world visited the museum and memorial, among them survivors of Nazi persecution and their descendents, students, educators, and many who only for the first time learned of the horrors that went on at this infamous camp.

*The preservation and continuation of Auschwitz-Birkenau is essential so that future generations can visit and understand how the world can never again allow a place of such hatred and persecution to exist. It is also an important educational tool to show those who doubt that the Holocaust ever existed that indeed, tragically, it did.

Poland Backlog

 Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

I'm in Poland, and I have a lot to post about Jewish heritage in the little (rather depressed and depressing) town of Piotrkow Trybunalski -- and also my impressions from Krakow, where I am attending the latest edition -- the 20th --  of the Festival of Jewish Culture.

I doubt if anyone out there is holding their breath for these reports..... but I'll get to them! Meanwhile a photo or two from the wonderful Jewish cemetery in Piotrkow....

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Italy -- Jewish Heritage Route in Pesaro opens

A Jewish heritage route in the Italian city of Pesaro will be operative this summer, as in past years, every Thursday afternoon through September.The route includes the old Jewish quarter, the synagogue, whose complex includes a mikvah and a matzo oven, and the Jewish cemetery.

 The synagogue, probably dating from the early 17th century, is noted for its beautifully decorate vaulting, is on via delle Scuole and will be open from 4-7 p.m. .The cemetery is nearby on the San Bartolo hill, and will be open from 5-7 p.m.


For information, call +39 0721 400858, or +39 335 1746509

For Italian speakers, here's what the newspaper Il Resto di Carlino says:

Collocata nel cuore dell’antico quartiere ebraico, la sinagoga sefardita (o di rito spagnolo) è uno degli edifici storici più suggestivi del centro che risale alla metà del XVI secolo. E’ questo un periodo d’oro per Pesaro che vede il suo porto ampliato, per boicottare quello di Ancona, da Guidubaldo II Della Rovere. In città accorrono molti ebrei portoghesi che hanno l’esigenza di continuare i propri studi mistici.

Infatti la struttura in cui è inglobata la sinagoga (o scola, termine con cui un tempo si indicava appunto la sinagoga), ospitava anticamente le scuole di studi cabalistici, di musica e materna. All’interno dell’edificio, perfettamente recuperato, si possono ammirare ancora oggi gli elementi architettonici legati alle funzioni che quel luogo svolgeva per la comunità, come il forno per la cottura del pane azzimo o la vasca per i bagni di purificazione.

Accanto alla sinagoga, anche il cimitero ebraico (strada panoramica San Bartolo c/o n. 161), è aperto da giugno a settembre il giovedì dalle 17 alle 19 (info Ente Parco Naturale Monte San Bartolo 0721 400858, 335 1746509). Adagiato sulle pendici del colle San Bartolo, fino a metà novecento lo spazio appariva come una scoscesa pendice campestre con rade alberature; nel 2002 è stato poi recuperato dalla Fondazione Scavolini che ne ha reso possibile la fruizione.

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

Bosnia -- Jewish cemetery in Zenica

If people know anything about the Jewish history and sites of Bosnia-Hercegovina, it is about Sarajevo, where there is a wealth of fascinating attractions.

Here is link to a collection of photos I have run across about the Jewish cemetery in Zenica, a town in the center of the country, northwest of Sarajevo, which has been cleaned up.

Todays Flower

If you look close you can see a lonely butterfly , actually there was a lot of butterflies but that is the only one i could get.

Click on the side bar and join others from around the world for more beautiful flowers

Meme's combined in this post/Hole in the Rock

Click on the top name to get the photos of the inside of the house in the rock
Because i wanted to put this set of photos all together i decided to put all the memes i am on together on this post so please check out all the meme;s on the side bar .

If ever in the Utah area and want to see a artsy place please be sure and check out Hole in the Rock,Several yrs ago we stopped here and they allowed you to tour the inside of the house in the rock,which they still do have tours but your not allowed to take photos anymore so click here to see some photos that is on there website to see a few of the photos they have posted. The lady there said they don't allow it anymore because of the tourist taking the pictures decided to sell some of the photos for profit so that is why they don't allow it anymore
Click on the photos to enlarge them the details are amazing

Book -- Catalogue of Synagogues in Lithuania

 Two former synagogues in Kedainiai, Lithuania, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Center for Jewish Art in Jerusalem has announced the publication of the first volume of its ambitious catalogue of Synagogues in Lithuania.

This publication offers a catalogue of the extant synagogues in Lithuania: 96 buildings in 59 cities and towns, among them 17 synagogues built of wood. Until World War II there were about 1,000 Jewish prayer houses in Lithuania, while today only 10% exist, many abandoned and in different state of deterioration. Only three synagogues are active.

The catalogue consists of 59 geographical entries. Each entry includes a short overview of the history of the Jewish community in the town where a synagogue is preserved, comprehensive information about the vanished synagogues in that town and a detailed description of the extant synagogue building or buildings. The entries are richly illustrated with archival historical photographs and architectural designs of the synagogues, and recent documentation of the extant buildings with measured architectural drawings. The catalogue has two introductory articles: “Synagogues in Lithuania: A Historical Overview” by Dr. Vladimir Levin and “Synagogue Architecture in Lithuania” by Dr. Sergey Kravtsov.

The first volume of the catalogue includes the following entries:
Alanta, Alsedžiai, Alytus, Anykščiai, Balbieriškis, Biržai, Čekiške, Daugai, Eišiškes, Jonava, Joniškelis, Joniškis, Kaltinenai, Kalvarija, Kaunas, Kedainiai, Klaipeda, Krekenava, Kupiškis, Kurkliai, Laukuva, Lazdijai, Linkuva, Lygumai, Marijampole, Merkine.

The second volume is due for publication at the end of 2010 and will include the entries:
Pakruojis, Panevėžys, Pasvalys, Plungė, Prienai, Pušalotas, Raguva, Ramygala, Rietavas, Rozalimas, Salantai, Seda, Šeta, Šiauliai, Šilalė, Simnas, Širvintos, Skaudvilė, Švėkšna, Telšiai, Tirkšliai, Troškūnai, Ukmergė, Utena, Vabalninkas, Veisiejai, Vilnius, Vištytis, Žagarė, Zarasai, Žasliai, Žemaičių Naumiestis, Žiežmariai.

Watery Wed/Wolverton Mill

Hanksville Utah
Wikipedia information:

Hanksville is a small town in Wayne County, Utah, United States, at the junction of State Routes 24 and 95. The town is just south of the confluence of the Fremont River and Muddy Creek, which together form the Dirty Devil River, which then flows southeast to the Colorado River. Its population was estimated at 203 in 2006.^[1]

The town was settled in 1882, and known for a time for the name given to the surrounding area, Graves Valley. It took the name of Hanksville in 1885, after Ebenezer Hanks, who was the leader of the group of pioneers who established the small Mormon settlement.^{[citation needed]} It was not incorporated until January 6, 1999.^[2]

The REA brought electricity to the community in 1960. Today agriculture, mining, and tourism are the main drivers to the local economy. Tourism is particularly important with people coming for recreation at Lake Powell, Capitol Reef National Park, the Henry Mountains, the San Rafael Swell, Goblin Valley State Park, and the solitude of the surrounding deserts and slot canyons.

Hanksville was a supply post for Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch, who would hide out at Robbers Roost in the desert southeast of town.

During the uranium mining frenzy following World War II, Hanksville became a supply center for the prospectors and miners scouring the deserts of the Colorado Plateau. Many abandoned mines can be found in the deserts surrounding the town.

The Hanksville-Burpee Quarry is located nearby and the Mars Desert Research Station is located seven miles northwest of town.

Dirty Devil River

This is the gas station and grocery store pretty neat that they built this in the rock. Be sure to come back when i post about another interesting place built in a rock

Click here for more information on the history of this mill

Please click on the side bar and join others from around the world with more watery wed photos

Lithuania -- Jewish Library in Vilnius is Opening

After years of fighting, it looks as if Wyman Brent has won the battle to establish a Jewish library in Vilnius. An article in the Baltic Report covers  an inaugural event and says the Library will open this summer.

Brent, a native of San Diego and a Christian, came to Vilnius in 1994 and said he fell in love with the country and with the Jewish history of Vilnius, which stretches back around 700 years. The library currently has no permanent home, but it already has around 5,000 items, which will eventually increase to around 200,000. It is expected to open to the public by late July and will likely be based at Gedimino 24, the building that houses the Vilnius Small Theater.“Jewish culture was and is a part of Lithuania’s past, present and future. I came here and I fell in love, but I did not know for what reason — then when I had the idea for the library, Vilnius was again the Jerusalem of the north. It is the greatest center of Jewish culture in Europe,” Brent said at the opening in the Lithuanian Culture Research Institute in Vilnius.

Read full story HERE

For prior posts on this ambitious project, click HERE

This is My World/Dinosaur Museum

Our next adventure was stopping at the Dinosaur Museum
The Dinosaur Museum is in the city of Blanding, Utah, which is located in beautiful San Juan County. The vacation spots of Moab City and Arches National Park are to the north, and historic Bluff and Monument Valley are to the south. Fresh air, spectacular scenery, and rich cultural experiences await the traveler to this region.

I won't bore you too much with photos of dinosaurs as some may not be interested and if you are i am sure you have seen a few. But did want to show a few things of interest.

Ok so my question has always been, how did they come up with those names that one can not pronounce? you know there was no writting back in those days so why are they named such long names?

Please click here and join others from around the world for more photos from around the world

Greece -- The synagogue in Rhodes

The Jerusalem Post runs a story about the synagogue in Rhodes, the oldest in Greece.

The spacious, Sephardi-style house of worship has a beautiful wooden bima in the middle of the men’s section and an exquisite, traditional white pebble floor with black pebble decorations. Behind the synagogue is a museum, funded by far-flung descendants of the Jewish community, displaying textiles and documents which explain the daily lives and the rituals of the Jews of Rhodes.

Read more HERE