Romania -- Romanian Jewish Heritage Event in London

Close up of the Ark, synagogue in Roman, Romania, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Readers in London can get a taste of the wonderful architecture of Romanian synagogues by attending a little festival of Romanian Jewish culture June 11-17 at the Romanian Culture Institute. The opening event takes place June 10.

Centerpiece is the exhibit of Christian Binder's photographs of synagogues of Romania, organized by Julie Dawson (who will speak at the London events).

The Romanian Cultural Institute London, in partnership with Mihai Eminescu Trust (MET) and with the support of Spiro Ark organises an event highlighting Romania's rich Jewish cultural heritage: Synagogues of Romania, an exhibition of photographs of synagogues in southern Transylvania, accompanied by presentations from Andrei Oisteanu, Julie Dawson and Letitia Cosnean and klezmer music live concert with Kosmos Ensemble.

"In the wake of the Holocaust and subsequent mass migration of the vast majority of Romania's Jewish population, countless synagogues fell into various stages of disrepair and decay. This photo exhibition aims to capture the transitional stage in which Romania now finds itself. With the entrance of foreign investors and NGOs, some synagogues are being restored, turned into cultural centers or finding alternative uses. Others remain abandoned, assuming a central location in the town's center and representing an evocative, stubborn reminder of the recent and troubled past."
Julie Dawson, curator
Photography: Christian Binder | http://www.pbase.com/binderch/synagogues

The event brings together:

• the photographic exhibition;
• presentations: Julie Dawson and Letitia Cosnean will lecture about "The Plight of Romanian Synagogues" and the "Restoration of the Medias Synagogue" respectively, Andrei Oisteanu will talk about "Jewish Culture in Romania".
  Mr Oisteanu will also present his recent book Inventing the Jew. Antisemitic Stereotypes in Romanian and Other Central-East European Cultures, published by University of Nebraska Press, USA.
• klezmer music live concert given by the Kosmos Ensemble.

The event will take place in the presence of HE Dr Ion Jinga, the Ambassador of Romania in the UK.

Julie Dawson works in Romania and has traveled extensively throughout Eastern Europe visiting both shtetls and former centers of Yiddish culture. She has been instrumental in organizing regional Yiddish/Jewish cultural events including klezmer and Yiddish song concert tours, photo-documentary exhibitions and community education programs.

Letitia Cosnean is MET's architect in Sighisoara and her lecture will shed light on the restoration process of the Medias Synagogue.

Andrei Oisteanu is a Romanian historian whose research fields include: ethnology, cultural anthropology, history of religions and mentalities. His writings are seen as a considerable contribution to researching magical and ritual practices as well as mythical and religious symbols. He is also noted for his work in Jewish studies and the history of anti-Semitism; Oisteanu has been the first researcher to have developed a complete study in image ideology focusing on the way in which Jewish people were represented within the Romanian mentality and folklore.

Kosmos is an innovative ensemble that composes original music in which there is space for improvisation. Offering a unique sound free from borders or labels, the ensemble aims to explore the boundaries of Western Classical music with Eastern European, Gypsy, Balkan, Klezmer and Tango with contemporary influences. Since their debut in 2005, Kosmos has been enthusiastically acclaimed by audiences at festivals and music societies across Europe.

When: Opening: 10 June 2009, 6 - 8 pm
Photography exhibition: 11-17 June, 10 am - 6 pm
Where: Romanian Cultural Institute, 1 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8PH
Admission: free for the exhibition. Opening: by invitation. We have a limited number of seats - please get in touch if you want to attend.

New York/Poland -- Mayer Kirshenblatt Exhibition

Mayer Kirshenblatt and his daughter, Barbara Kirshenblatt Gimblett, Krakow 2008. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

An exhibition of Mayer Kirshenblatt's paintings is on at the Jewish Museum in New York -- and it received a wonderful review in the New York Times.

Sometimes it takes a family, and a persistent one at that. So it was with Mayer Kirshenblatt, a reluctant painter and accidental memoirist whose words and images form an extraordinary exhibition at the Jewish Museum.

The exhibit, “They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust” includes nearly 70 canvases and a dozen works on paper -- most depict pre-war scenes of Jewish life in Kirshenblatt's hometown, Opatow (of Apt, in Yiddish) Poland.

I interviewed Kirshenblatt and wrote a lengthy article about him and his work last summer, when he and his daughter -- the scholar Barbara Kirshenblatt Gimblett, who currently heads the project of the upcoming Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw -- took part in the Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow, carrying on a dialogue in front of an audience to mark the publication of a beautiful book of Mayer's paintings and also an exhibition in Opatow itself.

KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) – When Mayer Kirshenblatt was born, the town of Opatow in south-central Poland was known to most of its inhabitants as “Apt.” That’s because most of the population was Jewish, and Apt was Opatow’s name in Yiddish.

The Holocaust left Yiddish Apt a distant memory, glimpsed dimly in sepia-tinted photographs or locked up in the hearts of the few people still alive who had known it before the destruction.

Kirshenblatt was one of them until 1990 when, at the age of 73, he taught himself to paint and began to record in colorful detail the vibrant lost world of his childhood hometown.

“I only paint one thing – that’s Apt,” he said. “I paint not from my imagination but what actually happened.”

- - - -

The recollections were published last year along with nearly 200 of Kirshenblatt’s paintings as a book, “They Called Me Mayer July.” The title stems from Kirshenblatt’s childhood nickname, “Mayer Tamez,” or “Mayer July” – slang at the time for “Crazy Mayer.”

The book has won several awards and brought international attention to the work of Kirshenblatt, who left Poland for Canada in 1934.

In recent months Kirshenblatt’s paintings have been exhibited in San Francisco, and in the coming two years they are slated to be shown in Atlanta, New York, Amsterdam and Warsaw. This summer, for the second year in a row, Kirshenblatt’s work was featured at the annual Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow.

And on June 28, Kirshenblatt and his daughter brought his memories of Apt back to present-day Opatow with an exhibition of 50 full-scale digital prints of his paintings, on display at the Opatow District Office building.

“It was absolutely fabulous,” Kirshenblatt later said. “We had over 200 people and they made a tremendous display. The event was well advertised all over the city with posters – even the priest mentioned it.”

He added, “I’ve had exhibitions elsewhere, but here the people, the atmosphere, was absolutely the best I ever had.”

It was, Kirshenblatt said, a far cry from the first time that he returned to his hometown. That was in 1988, when Poland was still in the grip of communist rule. “I was crying,” he recalled. “I came to the town and there was not a sign of Jewishness.”

Since then, Kirshenblatt and his daughter have returned on other occasions and established good relations with Opatow’s residents.

“I enjoy going back there, and Opatow is beautiful,” he said. “But it’s not Apt.”

Displaying the energy of someone far younger than 91, Kirshenblatt and his daughter have toured extensively, accompanying slide shows of his paintings with lively discussions of the incidents and people portrayed.

“At my age,” he said, “to have another career like this is most terrific.”

Detailed, wry and often witty, Kirshenblatt’s paintings are peopled by sometimes crudely drawn characters, each of which seems to come to life as an individual. They crowd around dinner tables or cluster in the synagogue. They peer into windows, carry water in wooden buckets, play music, walk to school, mourn the dead, even commit a crime.

To a certain extent, the paintings recall the work of the American Grandma Moses, another self-taught artist who took up the brush in her 70s and created remembered scenes of rural life in 19th-century America.

History, though, has given Kirshenblatt’s work a special edge.

The titles of his paintings alone reflect complex, even convoluted tales that defy common stereotypes. Some examples: “The Kleptomaniac Slipping a Fish Down Her Bosom,” “Boy with a Herring,” “The Hunchback’s Wedding,” and “Jadzka the Prostitute Shows off her Wares at the end of Market Day at Harshl Kishke’s Well.”

“What I’m trying to say is, ‘Hey! There was a big world out there before the Holocaust,’ “ Kirshenblatt told his daughter in one recent conversation. “There was a rich cultural life in Poland as I knew it at the time. That’s why I feel I’m doing something very important by showing what that life was like.”

“It’s in my head,” he said. “I will be gone, but the book will be here.”

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Prague -- Heads Up for Summer Exhibition on Rabbi Löw

Sign for Golem Restaurant in Prague. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

This Sept. 7 marks the 400th anniversary of the death of the famous Rabbi Judah Löw ben Bezalel --a renowned scholar known as the Maharal and also the legendary creator of the Golem, the artificial man brought to life to defend Prague's Jews who then ran amok, was deactivated and then hidden in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue.

Prague is gearing up to mark the date with events including a major exhibition jointly sponsored by the Jewish Museum in Prague and Prague Castle.

This exhibition aims to trace the Maharal’s life and work and to examine the image of this scholar in the eyes of his contemporaries and succeeding generations. Few people have attracted such a broad range of admirers, including those with starkly contrasting religious, philosophical and cultural views. There is a cavernous divide between the historical Maharal and the predominant image of him today. This fact is of such importance that it serves as the basis for the exhibition concept.

The exhibition, called "Path of Life," runs August 5-November 8 at the Royal Stables . The exhibit is divided into two main parts, one focusing on the historical Maharal and the authentic traditions connected with him, while the second will look at Rabbi Löw's legacy and the origin of the legends that are linked to his name.

The idea of the Maharal as the personification of the mystery of the ghetto, a miracle worker, mathematician and creator of an artificial being may not be historically grounded but it has provided immense inspiration for literature, drama and art. The historical and the imaginary Maharal both have a right to exist.

A major catalogue of the exhibition will be published in Czech and English, and other events and exhibits are also planned.

Already on June 3, an interactive installation called Golem, by the artist Petr Nikl will open at the Jewish Museum’s Robert Guttmann Gallery (it will run until Oct. 4).

Germany -- "Juden" streets exhibit

Here's a head's up for an upcoming exhibit -- OK, it's in San Francisco, at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, and OK, it doesn't open until June, but it deals with Europe and the Museum web site already has a good interactive preview on line.

The exhibit is called The J. Street Project, by photographer/artist Susan Hiller. Hiller became fascinated by the number of streets in Germany referred to Jews and set out to track them down. Explains the Museum press release:

Artist Susan Hiller's chance encounter with a Berlin street called Judenstrasse (Jews Street) in 2002 was the unexpected experience that set into motion an arduous three year journey to find and photograph every street in Germany with the prefix Juden (Jews) in its name - a surprising 303 sites in all. Hiller was initially shocked, but mostly confused by this strangely ambiguous commemoration of people who had been exterminated not so long ago. "The Jews are gone," she says, "but the street names remain as ghosts of the past, haunting the present."

The J.Street Project, an evocative exhibition that includes Hiller's photographs and a film, is the result of her long and fascinating look at this ambiguity. It is on view at the Contemporary Jewish Museum June 18 through October 6, 2009. A limited edition companion book is also available in the Museum's gift store.

At the heart of the exhibition are the more than 300 color photographs of busy boulevards, quiet country alleys and run-of-the-mill suburban streets. Pigment printed in an almost painterly fashion on watercolor paper and identically sized and framed, the images are hung in a seven-foot grid - a silent procession of thoroughfares and the signs that mark them. The mood of each image is distinct as the season, time of day and location change, but in each there is a sense of the unresolved nature of the historical status of these places. A snowy country lane lying along the railroad tracks, while charming, attests to a long and bleak legacy of discrimination and segregation when Jews were not allowed to use main roads and were restricted to paths on the outskirts of villages and towns. Some streets mark ancient Jewish settlements from as early as the 11th Century indicating the historical depth of Jewish life in Germany. A narrow city alley is a testament to how cramped and oppressive ghetto streets were.

And while most of the images are devoid of people, Hiller's camera captures many incidental and transient details - weather, buildings, cows, cars, a few children. "It's their everyday matter-of-fact-ness that makes the photographs unsettling," she says. "They convey an uncanny resonance by revealing connections between some very ordinary contemporary locations, history and remembrance, as the street signs repeatedly name what's missing from all these places."

The exhibition also features Hiller's 67-minute single-channel video that further interrogates the ordinariness surrounding the 303 street signs, which appear to be entirely overlooked by the current residents. Traffic stops at a light, an old man's hat blows off his head, birds flit by, people chat. But these banal moments exist in an uneasy tension with scenes that seem rife with a darker meaning - under a sign that reads Judengasse, another sign points the way to the train station. In the background, trains regularly appear and rush off. Hiller's footage, coolly shifting from emptiness to weightiness, makes no conclusion, but does make the appeal that the traces of history in our surroundings merit interpretation.

Displayed alongside the video and the photographs is a large-scale map of Germany with each location listed and pinpointed. "The multiplicity of these places over the entire country is very special," she says. "And it opens a very different picture of what happened during the Holocaust. Somehow my image had always been of people being rounded up in Berlin and taken away ... But thinking about what happened in a tiny rural village on an old street next to the church, where there had been a Jewish community for generations, evokes a very different picture."

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