News, articles and information about Jewish art, architecture, and historic sites. This blog includes material to be posted on the website of the International Survey of Jewish Monuments (www.isjm.org).
Monday, October 20, 2008
Ukraine: Attack on Kirovograd Synagogue Thwarted
Ukraine: Attack on Kirovograd Synagogue Thwarted
(ISJM) The Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union reports (in BIGOTRY MONITOR, Volume 8, Number 41, October 17, 2008) an attack on the historic Great Choral Synagogue of Kirovograd in Ukraine was foiled by the local SBU, a successor to the KGB. A group of far-right extremists allegedly planned to blow up the century-old synagogue, according to an October 7 report by Interfax. The SBU uncovered the group early this year but only just announced the fact.
The Kirovograd synagogue, located at Dzherzhinsky St., 90/40, was returned to the Jewish community in 1991. It also houses a small Jewish history museum on the upper floor, has been the site of previous anti-Semitic attacks.
In January 2006, Kirovograd inaugurated new square near the synagogue dedicated to victims of the Holocaust. A Holocaust memorial has stood on the spot for many years, but the site was contested by a local developer. Long-term city residents recall that the site of the square was the spot where Nazi soldiers gathered Jews from the city and region on Yom Kippur of 1941 prior to murder.
This blog provides news and opinion articles about Jewish art, architecture and historic sites - especially those where something new is happening. Developed in connection with news gathering for the International Survey of Jewish Monuments website (www.isjm.org), this blog highlights some of the most interesting Jewish sites around the world, and the most pressing issues affecting them.
Samuel D. Gruber I am a cultural heritage consultant involved in a wide variety of
documentation, research, preservation, planning, publication, exhibition
and education projects in America and abroad.
I was trained as a medievalist, architectural historian and
archaeologist, but for 20 years my special expertise has developed in
Jewish art, architecture and historic sites. My various blogs about Jewish monuments, Central New York and Public Art and Memory allow me to
clear my email and my desk, and to report on some of my travels, by
passing on to a broader public just some of the interesting and
compelling information from projects I am working on, or am following.
Feel free to contact me for more information on any of the topics
posted, or if you have a project of your own you would like to discuss.
Classic Reform, Classical Synagogues and the American South
This paper documents the spread of classical-style (Jewish) temples across the South and looks at the motives of selected patrons and architects to test the idea that the use of classicism for American, and especially Southern synagogue architecture was aesthetic and ideological, and an important mechanism for shaping Jewish identity.In the South, of course, there was already a precedent for“Classical Reform” architecture in the structure of Congregation Beth Elohim in Charleston, erected in 1841 in the form of a Greek Temple.These southern architectural roots also played a strong role in the revived popularity of classicism throughout the south – and beyond.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment