Synagogues in Hungary: A Conversation with Rudolf Klein

Synagogues in Hungary: A Conversation with Rudolf Klein

Two of my colleagues will be teaming up in conversation on Tuesday, October 25^th, to discuss the synagogues of Hungary. They are celebration the publication of Rudolf Klein’s massive new book on Hungarian synagogues which is being presented in New York next week. Gavriel Rosenfeld, who was my host at Fairfield University last spring, and with whom I will be presenting at the upcoming Association of Jewish Studies meetings in December, will “interview” Klein. Both are extremely knowledgeable and good talkers, so it should be lively, interesting and informative evening.

Tuesday, October 25, 6:30 pm

Center for Jewish History

15 West 16th Street New York, New York 10011 • Tel: 212.294.8301

Admission: $10 general; $5 CJH members, seniors, students

The book, which I still have not seen in its entirety, is massive - and in Hungarian, but it is packed with hundreds of photos with extensive English captions, and an impressive English "summary" that in itself is almost book length. This work is more than a book about synagogues - it is also about Jewish settlement and activity, and even what it has meant - religiously, culturally, symbolically and physically to be Jewish at different times in Hungary's history. The geographic reach is also greater than Hungary's present-day borders, including much territory once part of the Austro-Hungary.

One aim of Rudi's visit to the United States is to find support for a full translation and the publication of an American edition.

Readers with ideas - or funding suggestions - can contact me.

Conference on Merchants Jews in the New World 1800-1900

I pass on information about an interesting upcoming conference to be held in early November. The Gomez House in Marlboro, New York, is one of only a few secular structures associated with early American merchant Jews, but it was these very Jews who funded the building of the first synagogues, including the famed Touro synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. In the 19th century, the focus of this conference, merchant Jews - large scale and small - helped pave the expansion of America west. Some were peddlers (like my great-grandfather in Texas), and some operated large markets and stores. All helped supply farmers, miners, artisans and townsmen in cities and towns in nearly every state.

Conference on Merchants Jews in
the New World 1800-1900

Focus on Jewish Contributions to Economic Expansion of Retail, Industry and Finance in 19th century America

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Dr. Ruth Abrahams (212) 294-8329

New York, NY (September 29, 2010) The lesser-known aspects of the Jewish contribution to economic expansion in the United States during the 19th century will be the focus of a conference to be held at the Center for Jewish History on Sunday, November 7, 2010.

Called "Merchants Jews in the New World: 1800-1900," it is being sponsored by The Gomez Foundation for Mill House. It is part of their lead-up to the 300th anniversary of the construction of the Mill House, situated on the upper Hudson River, which was built by one of the earliest Jewish merchants in this country. Sessions will include a panel of presentation on 19th Century developments in three key areas: retail, industry and finance.

Gene Dattel, author of the recently published Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Costs of Economic Power, will deliver the keynote address. He will be followed by a series of roundtable discussions, roundtable summaries, moderated discussions and more.

Participants will include Andrée Aelion Brooks, Jewish historian, journalist and author; Gene Dattel, financial historian and author; Kenneth Libo, Adjunct Professor of History, Hunter College; Bonnie S. Wasserman, Lecturer, Fordham University; Ainsley Henriques, historian; Kate Myslinski, genealogy researcher and writer and Ruth Abrahams, executive director of the Gomez Foundation.

The conference is the second of three to explore the theme of Jewish Merchants in the New World. Ruth Abrahams, executive director of the Gomez Foundation said, "We hope to encourage further dialogue on the topic of Jewish contributions to the founding and development of America." The prior year's conference, she noted, covered the early period, 1500-1800, and the 2011 conference will focus upon 1900-present.

The Center for Jewish History is located at 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011. A kosher continental breakfast and buffet lunch will be served. General registration costs $75. Seniors 60 and over, and students under 21, will be offered discount tickets at $65, along with members of the Center for Jewish History, their affiliates and Channel Thirteen. For more information email: gomez@cjh.org. To register, click here.

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Jewish Merchants in the New World:1500-1800, is sponsored by The Gomez Foundation for Mill House, a not-for-profit organization registered in the State of New York and established to support the preservation, conservation and public programs of the Gomez Mill House Historic Site and Museum in Orange County, New York, the oldest Jewish dwelling in America. The Gomez Mill House was founded in 1714, by Colonial American Jewish merchant and pioneer, Luis Moses Gomez, and was home to Revolutionary patriot Wolfert Acker, gentleman farmer William Henry Armstrong, Arts and Crafts paper artisan Dard Hunter, and social activist Martha Gruening. The Mill House is on the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places.

Turkey: ASF's Publication and On-line Photos Archive of Nearly 3,000 Photo of Turkish Synagogues

Turkey: ASF's Publication and On-line Photos Archive of Nearly 3,000 Photo of Turkish Synagogues
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) The American Sephardi Federation has published a book about Turkish Synagogues and posted nearly 3,000 photos on-line.

Over a two month period in 1996, New York-based architect (and ISJM member) Joel Zack and photographer Devon Jarvis; along with Turkish architectural student Ceren Kahraman and Muharrem Zeybek, driver and guide, traveled 6,000 miles documenting fifty Turkish synagogues and former synagogues, producing a rich descriptive, graphic and photographic archive. The project was funded by the Maurice Amado Foundation and the Mitrani Family Foundation. The selection of photographs from the expedition was first exhibited at the 92nd Street Y in New York, and then in a traveling exhibition.

On the occasion of the exhibition of work at the Topkapı Palace Museum in Istanbul last fall the American Sephardi Federation (ASF) published an exhibition catalog by Joel A. Zack, The Historic Synagogues of Turkey / Türkiye’nin Tarihi Sinagoglari (ISBN 978-0-615-23948-4). More importantly, ASF created as part of the digital archives of the Center for Jewish History, an on-line archive of 2,827 of Devon Jarvis’s Turkish synagogue photographs.

The work of Zack, Jarvis and Kahraman adds significantly to a growing body of documentation about Turkish Jewish monuments. Since 1992 a number of research and documentation projects have been carried out in the country, including the recording of cemetery epitaphs by a team lead by Mina Rozen of Hebrew University; photography and film making with an ethnographic slant by Ayse Gursan-Salzmann and Laurence Salzmann; documentation of Turkish synagogues and Judaica by the Center for Jewish Art; and the photography of Turkish synagogues by Erson Alik. There is also a new 2-volume book on Turkish synagogues by Izzet Keribar and Naim Guleryuz published last year, that I have not yet had a opportunity to see.

All these projects, together with other documentation efforts in Morocco, Egypt and Syria, are greatly altering the Eurocentric view of architectural achievements in synagogue building, and also putting to the test long-established theories of architectural influence. Clearly, now that so many more synagogue are known - or can be known - to scholars, it seems clearer that there has been at the very least, for many centuries, a formal, functional and stylistic give-and-take between Judaism's east and west, and south and north.

Other scholars have been working on other aspects of synagogues of the former Ottoman Empire, and we can expect soon publication on the synagogue Greece by Elias Messinas and of Syria by David Cassuto. ASF has also put on-line digital versions of much photographs taken by Isaiah Wyner as part of a survey of Moroccan synagogues directed by Zack for the World Monuments Fund in 1989 (I will write more about these at another time).

Zack’s book is a useful guide to Turkish synagogues, but is only introductory in nature. He briefly describes the various types of synagogues he found throughout the country, and some of their distinguishing features. Much of the text is in the form of picture captions; some are detailed, but others offer little information...presumably because there is little yet known. Because of the geographic expanse of Turkey, and because of cultural connections of the Ottoman Age, there are many different types of synagogues that served diverse Jewish communities. Turkey was fertile ground for synagogue design. Besides local ancient, Byzantine and Ottoman sources, there was a near-constant Ottoman cultural exchange with Russia, Central Europe, Italy, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. Future research will need to further examine these associations in the context of Jewish art and architecture. Perhaps the most clearly indigenous Ottoman synagogue type is that of the rectangular plan with a central four column feature, usually surrounding a tevah and sometimes surmounted by a dome. This type was common around Izmir and is also known in Northern Greece, and Bulgaria. But it is also known in Morocco, and even earlier in a simpler form from Tomar, Portugal; so the actual origins of the type remain unknown.

Zack’s book, as an exhibition catalog, lacks a strong historical framework, but he leaves the door open for any researcher to provide more information about the history, architecture and context of any individual building.

By making the entire photo archive accessible to all, Zack and Jarvis provide an opportunity heretofore lacking for an in-depth study of Turkish synagogues. They would be the first to admit that their project poses as many questions as it answers. Indeed, one of the most telling parts of the short text is the section "Issues and Lessons." Zack poses the difficult questions about what is to be done – if anything – to preserve this architectural legacy, since most of the synagogue are either not in use, or serve very small congregations. He asks what legacy this is – a Jewish one, a Turkish one, or something else, the reminder of a still-recent past where Jews, Muslims and others all (reasonably) peacefully co-existed in the Middle East.

Zacks writes: “The answers are complex. Through the lens of today’s world and the immediacy of today’s headlines, Jewish communities like those of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey seem perhaps like an anomaly or an anachronism. I would argue that we look through that same lens, but with a more expansive view – a view that encompasses the breadth of the history of these buildings and the significance that they might hold for us and for the future.”