Sky Watch Friday /The Golden Gate from above

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My son took this photo from his flight to Calif.

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.

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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.

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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.

This is My World Tuesday/ John Day Fossil

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Today's Flower/ Yellow Mellow Monday

Today I am combining Today's flower and Yellow Mellow Monday again. So please click on the side bar for each and join others from around the world.

Today is Easter and one of the fellows that is renting a room here came back from church with this beautiful Easter Lily, So of course i had to take a photo for this special day.

This flower is just beginning to open up

Poland -- synagogue in Bedzin renovated and reopened

 Before and After pictures from the Cukierman Gate web site

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Mazel Tov! The Cukierman prayer house, the little private synagogue found hidden in an apartment block in the Silesian town of Bedzin in southern Poland, has been renovated and reopened to the public thanks to a grant from the province. The striking wall paintings that show scenes of Jerusalem, musical instruments and other motifs, were preserved and restored during the six-month restoration project. The prayer house will be open every Saturday afternoon.

Thanks to the last year’s subsidy from the Śląskie Province Conservation Officer it was possible to renovate and partly reconstruct the surviving polychromes. Apart from renovating the paintings, the interior of the prayer house was also slightly rearranged, so that it would be adapted for meetings with young people and all participants of cultural events. [...]  The Cukerman prayer house is one of about forty prayer houses that have survived and are open to visitors in Poland, and it is the only relic in the Śląskie Province, reminding of its past and its Jewish community.

For more information see the Cukierman Gate foundation Web Site -- there are lots of photos documenting the restoration process.

I visited the hidden prayer house last summer and wrote about it on this blog, describing how it is always inspiring to meet  people who take it upon themselves to care for and promote sites of Jewish heritage in Poland (and elsewhere).

London -- More on New Jewish Museum (by someone who's actually seen it)

The Times of London reports on the new Jewish museum in London -- writer David Aaronovich has actually seen it.

Five years ago I first went to an exhibition at the small Jewish Museum in North London. I suppose I saw it as a rather charming bijou museum, mostly about Jews showing things to other Jews. On March 17, however, it will be relaunched as a much bigger enterprise: the museum I was taken round last week by its director, Rickie Burman, was altogether a different proposition.

The Jews are the nation’s oldest minority, and the first Jewish Museum, mostly of objects from the practice of Judaism in Britain, was opened in 1932. Much later a second museum, devoted to the distinctive history of the Jews of the East End of London, started up in Finchley. In 1995 these two institutions merged into one museum located in two terraced houses in a street not far from Camden market. The museum had already bought the premises backing on to the terrace — a piano factory — for some £4 million. Two major benefactors helped to raise nearly £6 million, to set alongside £4.2 million granted by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The museum closed in 2008 to be reshaped under the old skin of the building. Now it’s ready to emerge. 

[...]

You enter the museum through a series of moving images projected onto five screens, depicting the life and words of a variety of modern British Jews. They include an Edward Lear-bearded, accented Hasidic rabbi; a young gay Jew; an ex-army Jewish princess; the concentration-camp survivor and former British weightlifting champion Ben Helfgott; a London cabbie who had fought in the Yom Kippur war of 1973; a woman Chinese convert to Judaism; a smoked-salmon magnate; and a Guardian journalist. The films are beautifully made and the idea of representing “different ways of being Jewish” is, I think, realised.

Then, right in front of you, is the museum’s “scoop” item. In 2001, excavators in Milk Street in the City of London uncovered a sunken bath made out of green sandstone, 4ft wide and 4ft deep, reached by seven steps. Its location, on the site of a house owned by a Jewish family in the late 13th century, identified it as a mikveh, or ritual bath, typically used by women after menstruation or before attendance at synagogue.

[...]

 There is an interactive “ask the rabbi” feature, in which those who enjoyed A Serious Man can put questions to four rabbis of different denominations (Jews like to argue), and an electronic Ten Commandments. The largest gallery tells the tale of the Jews of Britain through history: the 18th-century Jewish pedlars, the Jewish bare-knuckled boxers, the Jew Bill of 1753 which had to be repealed because of public outcry over naturalisation rights given to Jews, the first Jewish public men, and so on.

Part of the display is in “street” form, representing life in the Jewish East End, and allows visitors to follow members of a Jewish family circa 1900 in their daily lives. There’s even a pot, where you lift the lid and it smells of chicken soup. Very poignant is the small collection of items left and never reclaimed from the deposit boxes in the Poor Jews’ Temporary Shelter. For children and exhibitionists there’s a chance to dress up like characters from the old, lost Yiddish theatre.