Symposium: The Art of Being Jewish in the City

This will surely be a day of interesting discussion...unfortunately the schedule doesn't go into more detail about specific topics.

THE ART OF BEING JEWISH IN THE CITY

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Edward H. Rosen Hillel Center
Temple University (Philadelphia)
1441 Norris (corner of N. 15th Street)
Philadelphia, PA 19122

A day-long symposium exploring arts-led urban development and the role that Jews play in envisioning new forms of urban life. Free and open to the public.

Temple University's Feinstein Center for American Jewish History brings together scholars and urban practitioners to consider the public and private forces that shape urban art and culture. The culminating event of two years of programming on "Jews and the American City," this symposium invites the public to join in conversation with some of the most important urban thinkers today. How are Jews imagining, funding, and creating urban arts and culture for the future?

SCHEDULE

9:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m. Registration and breakfast 9:30 a.m. - 9:45 a.m. Opening Remarks, Lila Corwin Berman, Director of the Feinstein Center and Murray Friedman Professor of American Jewish History, Temple University 9:45 a.m. - 11:45 a.m. Jewish Centers of Urban Arts and Culture Elise Bernhardt, President and CEO, Foundation for Jewish Culture Rachel Chanoff, Founder and Director, THE OFFICE performing arts + film, and Artistic Director, Celebrate Brooklyn! Daniel Belasco, Henry J. Leir Associate Curator, The Jewish Museum of New York Dan Friedman, Arts and Culture Editor, the Forward Dan Schifrin, Director of Public Programs and Writer-in-Residence, Contemporary Jewish Museum Julia Foulkes, Associate Professor of History, The New School, and author of To the City: Urban Photographs of the New Deal (2010) MODERATORS: Warren Hoffman, Director of Arts and Cultural Programming, the Gershman Y, and Josh Perelman, Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Collections, National Museum of American Jewish Histor 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.   Private Funds and Public Urban Missions Andrew Eisenstein, Managing Director of Ironstone Strategic Capital Partners and real estate developer Jeremy Nowak, President, William Penn Foundation, and former CEO, The Reinvestment Fund Zannah Mass, Director, Brooklyn Creative Lab, and former Cultural Affairs Director, Two Trees Management Company, and General Manager, St. Ann's Warehouse Michael Royce, Executive Director, New York Foundation for the Arts Sharon Zukin, Professor of Sociology, Brooklyn College and City University Graduate Center, and author of Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places (2010) MODERATOR: Bryant Simon, Professor of History, Temple Universit 3:15 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.   Visions of a City and Its Public Meaning Cara Schneider, Media Relations Director, Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation Alan Greenberger, Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Director of Commerce, City of Philadelphia Mark Oppenheimer, Author of the Beliefs column for the New York Times, and Director, Yale Journalism Initiative Jane Golden, Executive Director, Mural Arts Program MODERATORS: Carolyn Adams, Professor of Geography and Urban Studies, Temple University, and Beth Wenger, Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania

For a full program and to register, visit:

http://www.temple.edu/feinsteinctr/symposium/index.html

Exhibition: Photographs of Chaim Gross Sculpture

Sculptor Chaim Gross at work on Harvest at 1939 New York World's Fair. Photo by Eliot Elisofon, courtesy of Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation

Exhibition: Photographs of Chaim Gross Sculpture

The current exhibit of photographs of the sculptural work of Chaim Gross (1904-1991), “Displayed: Stages for Sculpture,” is on view until December 16 at the Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation in New York. Gross practiced what he (and contemporaries) called “direct carving” and created totemic human figures out of wood and stone. According to the exhibit organizers he "was a perfect subject for photographers who wanted to capture his creative process." Sculpture, as one of the most active, physical and, of-course, 3-dimensional forms of art, and one that could be represented well in black and white with light and shadow, appealed to photographers and was frequently featured in the many photo and news magazines of the early 20th-century.

According to the Foundation's press release:

"The photographs chart the “stages” in the making of sculpture, and public “stages” displaying Gross’s work, such as the 1939 World’s Fair, educational carving demonstrations, and commercial print media. The exhibition, curated by the Foundation's archivist Zak Vreeland, features images from the Foundation’s collection by renowned photographers Arnold Newman (1918-2006), Eliot Elisofon (1911-73), and Rudy Burckhardt (1914-99). It also includes works by less known, yet equally compelling photographers Robert M. Damora (1912-2009), Soichi Sunami (1885-1971), Walter Rosenblum (1919-2006), and Arnold Eagle (1909-92).

Chaim Gross knew many of these photographers at the beginning of their careers and became particularly close with Arnold Newman and Eliot Elisofon. Gross hired them to record the process of sculpting, both in the privacy of the studio as well as various public venues. The photographers also featured Gross, his house, studio, and sculpture in news stories, fashion spreads, and advertisements in publications such as Life and Glamour. The exhibition explores this relationship between sculpture and photography. It also considers the convergence of two modes of production: Gross’s signature process of hand carving and the mechanical reproduction of the photograph. Of particular interest are photographs of window displays that featured Gross’s sculpture in arrangements with mannequins and merchandise from c. 1940-50 at Bonwit Teller, Saks Fifth Avenue and Lane Bryant. These include an eight-window display for Bonwit Teller designed by the preeminent window designer Gene Moore (1910-98)."

Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/139204/#ixzz1QrP1DBfb

View the 1957 film The Sculptor Speaks (17 minutes) on the Gross foundation website.

Read more about the life and work of Chaim Gross at artnet.com.

As it happens, the Syracuse University Special Collection Research Center has four boxes of Gross papers. I'm looking forward to finding time in the next year to examine these, or to interest a student in the project.

Remembering My Mother, Artist Shirley Moskowitz

Refugees (1942) by Shirley Moskowitz. Marble. Collection of the National Museum of Jewish History

Remembering My Mother, Shirley Moskowitz
by Samuel Gruber

It is hard for me to accept that it has been four years this weekend since my mother, artist Shirley Moskowitz, died in Santa Monica, California at the age of 86.

I've written about some of her art on this blog before, and though Jewish themes were not a major preoccupation in her work, I thought I would remember her on this Jewish Art and Monuments Blog by posting a few of her explicitly Jewish works, many of which will be unknown to her friends and even family members. Several of Shirley's earliest works - or at least those that survive - are of Jewish subjects, reflecting a strong Jewish presence in her life, especially through the Susnitskys, her mother's extended Texan-Jewish family. Her first published drawing is of her Hebrew teacher, submitted to the Jewish youth magazine Young Israel when she was fifteen.

"Undecided about what to draw, I thought of my first Hebrew teacher who has since passed away,"
First published drawing by Shirley Moskowitz, Young Israel (1935).

One of her first large works of sculpture is a marble carving (above) from 1942 of two tired seated figures called "Refugees." If there was any doubt as to the subject of this work, it was made clear when she donated it to the Museum of American Jewish History (now the National Museum of American Jewish History).

Later, in the early 1960s she carved a series of Jewish figures that are essentially nostalgic, and these look back to her childhood memories of attending religious services at her grandfather's synagogue in Brenham, Texas and perhaps again to her Hebrew teacher. Three works - Der Chazin, The Rabbi and Olenu were carved during a period when she most involved with a Jewish community, but in a thoroughly modern way. My family moved into its second suburban home in 1959, a new split-level house in a new housing development outside of Philadelphia. We three children were soon all attending afternoon Hebrew school twice a week and "Junior Congregation" on Saturdays at the Norristown Jewish Community Center, in nearby Norristown, Pa.

Der Chazin (1961) by Shirley Moskowitz. Cherry wood carving. Private Collection.

The Rabbi (1962) by Shirley Moskowitz. Cherry wood carving. Private Collection.

Olenu (1963) by Shirley Moskowitz. Walnut wood carving.

These three sculptures were carved during her Wednesday night carving group that met at the studio of Hans Huneke in Norristown, and they reflect Shirley's then acute awareness of Jewish tradition, but seen through a nostalgic lens. Though I never heard her talk about it, these works might also be as much about a lost Jewish Europe as about a lost Jewish Texas. All her carving companions at Hans's studio were acutely aware of what had happened in Europe. Artist Steffi Greenbaum was a refugee from Berlin. Hans was a non-Jewish anti-Nazi Socialist from Germany and his wife Dini was Jewish. Bernard and Ruth Petlock were also sometime part of the group, and Bernie was born in Bialystok. Another good friend of this group was local artist and Holocaust scholar Mary Costanza.

After 1963, however, Shirley moved away from these themes and subsequently most of her carving centered on groups of figures, usually with children, representing families. This theme more clearly reflected the suburban world around her, where streets, sidewalks and backyards always seemed full of us babyboom kids.

Bar Mitzvah (ca. 1960). Lino-block or woodcut print by Shirley Moskowitz.

About the same time Shirley was making her "Jewish" carving she also tried made a few collages and several lino-block prints based on Jewish holidays and celebrations. I think the prints were primarily made to have a ready source of gifts for the seemingly-never ending births, weddings and bar and bat mitzvahs of the 1960s.

Most of Shirley's work during these years was based on her travels, especially long family trips to Europe in 1959, 1962, 1966 and then a three-year stay in Italy from 1970-1973. She tended to sketch and paint landscape and city scenes outside but often work these into collages and, especially after 1970, prints. Though we often visited Jewish sites on our travels, she only sketched a few. One of her favorite pen and ink works is a beautiful view of the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague done when we spent the summer in Czechoslovakia in 1966. She later made fine print from this. She also turned a little sketch of the Western Wall (Kotel) in Jerusalem made on a visit to Israel with her mother and aunt in 1971 into a lino-block print, shown here. Later, when two of her three children were involved in the world of Jewish monuments and travel, she made a few more works as I have previously shown.

Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague (1966). Sepia and ink drawing by Shirley Moskowitz.

Western Wall '71 (1971). Lino-cut print by Shirley Moskowitz (artist's proof).

In sum, my mother was more an "Artist who was Jewish" than a "Jewish Artist." She would not reject the title but would insist - correctly - that while her Jewish work was important to her, it is not representative in quantity or quality of her artistic output as whole. She was, however, as Rabbi Laura Geller stated in her eulogy four years ago, a woman of valor in the Jewish tradition.

For more about Shirley Moskowitz click here.

Exhibition: Chagall Illustrations for Gogol's Dead Souls at Tel Aviv Museum of Art

Marc Chagall, Illustrations for Gogol's Dead Souls. Photos: Courtesy of Tel Aviv Museum of Art

Exhibition: Chagall Illustrations for Gogol's Dead Souls at Tel Aviv Museum of Art (ISJM) Art Knowledge News reports on a current exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art of etchings by Marc Chagall illustrating Gogol's Dead Souls. The collections was given by Chagall to the Museum when he visited Tel Aviv during his visit to Tel Aviv in the 1931, where he had been invited by Mayor Meir Dizengoff, who had met Chagall in Paris the previous year. Chagall had joined the Paris Committee to promote the new art museum in Tel Aviv which opened the following year. At the time Tel Aviv was a quickly growing city establishing itself through art and architecture as a world capital of modern art and design.

Marc Chagall's Illustrations for Gogol's "Dead Souls" at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art

At the center of Gogol's "Human Comedy" Dead Souls is the character of Chichikov, a charming, shrewd scoundrel, who buys from landowners dead serfs whose names have not yet been taken off the official census, that is, the "dead souls" that must be disposed of in order to avoid paying serf tax for them. Chichikov intends to present these souls as living persons, "deposit" them as collateral against a bank loan, settle in a far province and establish himself as a respectable country gentleman. Through Chichikov's journey the reader is exposed to Russia's people and social classes: the lazy, greedy landowners; the power-hungry, honor-craving bureaucrats; the destitute serfs who are nothing but their masters' chattel – in life as well as after death. They are all described by Gogol – and illustrated by Chagall – with exaggeration, as a larger-than-life yet compassionate grotesquerie.

Gogol wrote Dead Souls, a penetrating yet affectionate novel, in 1842 while far from Russia, in Rome, and that Chagall, too, made his witty prints when he was far from Russia, in Paris. The satirical prints are characterized by an acerbity that at times verges on cruelty, and are reminiscent of the work of expressionist artist Georg Grosz, whom Chagall had known in Berlin. Distorted, diagonal scenes and a top angle view evoke a sense of movement and instability. This arrangement of form and space, so typical of Chagall, appears in this series for the first time.

From 18 January 2010 Grotesque, exaggerated figures that are more than slightly critical of 19th century Russian society, with its characteristic corruption and bureaucracy.

The Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel's main art museum, first opened to the public in 1932 in the home of Tel Aviv's first mayor, Meir Dizengoff. The Museum quickly became the cultural center of the Tel Aviv, presenting local and foreign artists.

Visit : http://www.tamuseum.com/index.html

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Exhibition: Newly Acquired Chagall Apocalypse Painting on View in London

Marc Chagall, Apocalypse in Lilac: Capriccio (1945)

Exhibition: Newly Acquired Chagall Apocalypse Painting on View in London

by Samuel D. Gruber
 

Many of you have probably already read that the Ben Uri Gallery: London Jewish Museum of Art has acquired an important work by Marc Chagall – one of a series of depictions of Crucified Jewish Jesus – an image he favored in the late 1930s and early 1940s as he watched German Nazis and German, Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, Bylorussian and Ukrainian Christians participate – actively or as passive bystanders – in the murder of millions of Jews. The painting was acquired through the sharp and adroit acquisition policy of my friend David Glasser, Chairman of the Museum, which was founded in 2001 and has since then built an impressive collection and staged important exhibitions – though the institution is still looking for a permanent home.  

The painting is on view until January 31st at Osborne Samuel, 23 Bruton Street, London W1 (Opening hours: Monday – Friday, 10am-6pm, Saturday 10am-2pm, Sunday, 12-4pm). The new acquisition is a gouache (a heavy dense watercolor) made by Chagall in 1945, who kept it his private collection. It was first sold in 1985, two years after the painter’s death. It is titled in pencil in Russian, “Apocalypse in Lilac, Capriccio." You can read more about the acquisition in an article from the New York Times. 

Despite the title’s use of the term Capriccio, the work is remarkable for its depiction of anger – much more pronounced here than in Chagall’s earlier crucifixion works which are more infused with helpless pathos than any other emotion. Here Jesus is identified as Jewish not only because he wears a tallit (prayer shawl) but also, as in Yellow Crucifixion of 1943, with tefillin (phylacteries). In the Yellow Crucifixion, which is linked to the sinking of the Struma, this Jewish Jesus is paired with an image of the Torah scroll.

In the “Apocalypse in Lilac, Capriccio” Jesus’s facial expression is similar to that of the Jewish Jesus in the large painting Resurrection, which Chagall began in 1937, but continued to work on through 1947. In 1944, the year before the gouache, Chagall painted The Crucified, but in that work there is no Jesus, only village Jews who have been nailed to crosses placed along a shtetl street. This is a variation on Chagall’s 1941 painting The Martyr, set in a very similar scene. Here, however, in the foreground is a Jesus-like figure, not crucified, but bound to an upright post. He is a young man, wearing a tallit-like covering, with tefillin-like strips on his arms, and the cap of Jewish worker. At his feet is a grieving woman, presumably a conflation of a Jewish mother of the shtetl, the traditional grieving Mary at the cross, and a more general allegorical representation of grief. The 1944 painting is a reaction to the news, known at this time, of the “liquidation” of the Ghettos, the suppression of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, and the destruction of Jewish Vitebsk – Chagall's home town, which he had depicted so lovingly in previous decade.

The theme of Jewish Jesus in Chagall’s art and in the work of other artists since the 19th century has been explored by several art and cultural historians. The best and most thorough treatments are by Ziva Amishai-Maisels in her classic work Depiction and Interpretation: The Influence of the Holocaust on the Visual Arts, especially Part II, chapter 3, “ The Crucified Jew,” pp 178 197. The topic is further explored in Amishai-Maisels article “The Jewish Jesus” in Journal of Jewish Art 9 (1982): 84–104. Prof. Amishai-Maisels has advised the Ben-Uri on the current exhibition.

USA: Exhibition by New Haven's Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Artists Project

USA: Exhibition by New Haven's Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Artists Project

Last week I wrote about the 1925 Orthodox Beth Israel synagogue in New Haven, Connecticut, popularly known as the Orchard Street Shul. I mentioned the upcoming exhibition at the John slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art in New Haven organized by the artists' group known as the Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Artists Project. The exhibition opens next week and continues through January, with a rich program of associated events.

The Public is Invited to the Opening Reception for the Participating Artists, on Sunday, December 6, from 12:00 Noon to 5:00 pm. To set the mood for the launch of “The Orchard Street Shul Artists Cultural Heritage Project”, the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale for Jewish Life at Yale will host a Jazz jam session on December 5 at 7:30, celebrating the swing dance music of 1924 and beyond, when the cornerstone of this Synagogue was put in place in a ceremony attended by Mayor Fitzgerald and much of the entire New Haven community.

The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art is open W-F, 11:00 am to 4:00 pm, and weekends 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm. Schools and other organizations who would like to arrange a group visit outside of regular hours may do so by sending an email to: arts@orchardstreetshul-artistsproject.org.

Below is more information about the synagogue, the project and the exhibition provided to ISJM by Cynthia Rubin, one of the Project and exhibition organizers. Cynthia explained to me that the Project overall was inspired by the many instances of contemporary art installed within or inspired by historic synagogues in Europe. In the case of the Orchard Street Shul, the group wanted to draw attention to the historic, architecture and preservation needs of the congregation while still respecting the fact the building remains as dedicated house of worship. Thus, the exhibition is being help elsewhere (also to save on the winter heating bills for the near-destitute congregation) , and certain parameters were placed on the art created for the event. The art pieces must be somehow relevant to the specific location, history, art and architecture of the Orchard Street Shul and its location, and it must be respectful of the congregation.

"Respect" of course is a subjective term...as I have previously written in my accounts of archaeology of cemeteries in Spain and in other contexts. Still, I believe that for art as for all types of public discourse and behavior, context is everything. When context is understood, than respect should be a natural result - and when it is not, it is usually the result of deliberate and often provocative disrespect. In art, there is often a place - and an important place - for intentional disrespect and shock value. In community building (and that is what is part of the goal in New Haven) the same disrespect and shock can be counter productive.

My preliminary review of the art in this exhibition - through photos and description only- shows that much of its interesting, much is innovative and clever. I appreciate the organizers' decision to encourage thought, but not to shock.

Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Artists Project

During the months of December 2009 and January 2010, The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art in New Haven, Connecticut will come alive with memories, recollections, and recreations of an important community heritage site, in an innovative group installation designed to both stimulate reflection on the legacies of past generations and engage the public in dreams for the future.

The Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Artists Project is an art exhibition, a history lesson, a point of cultural exchange, and meeting place for dreamers, both nostalgic and visionary. Artists, researchers, and scholars have joined together to celebrate an important historic New Haven landmark which was once central to the life of a large Jewish immigrant population in the Oak Street neighborhood.

Urban changes in the last 50 years have all but erased evidence illustrating the importance of the Oak Street neighborhood in the lives of the newly arrived immigrants and migrants who populated much of the area now known as the "Oak Street Connector", Route 34. Where some see open space, or a new hospital, or a school, or a parking lot, others with longer memories see shops bustling with activity, voices shouting in Yiddish and Italian, sprinkled with a variety of accents from elsewhere, including near and distant regions within the USA.

Contributions to the installation offer a range of approaches. Some artists researched the history of the Orchard Street Shul and its neighborhood, uncovering multiple stories of this community: stories of women working together to aid refugees, stories of hard-working fathers and mothers who dedicated themselves to making a better life for their children, and stories of teenagers who giggled and mingled on the steps of the Shul. Others built on their own experiences, reaching into their hearts to create depictions of the Shul that are evocative of deeper connections with history and community. Still others focused on the issues of urban renewal, making real the shifts in our urban landscape that are difficult to imagine as we visit the site today.

Included in the Project are presentations by researchers from Yale University who developed innovative ways to document the building, including virtual reconstructions exploring new digital methods, ground-breaking research by computer scientists that promises to change the ways that cultural heritage sites will be documented in the future. Some contributing artists used this digital data in their creative work.

The Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Project is organized by Cynthia Beth Rubin, a New Haven based artist, in collaboration with participating artists and researchers: Nancy Austin. Meg Bloom, Donnamarie Bruton, Jeanne Criscola, Roz Croog, Linda Drazen, Paul Duda, Gonzalo Escobar, Maya Escobar, Alan Falk, Greg Garvey, Shalom Gorewitz, Jaime Kriksciun, Leslie J. Klein, Beth Krensky, Seth Lamberton, Mary Lesser, Lisa Link, David Ottenstein, Bruce Oren, Robert Rattner, Cynthia Beth Rubin, Holly Rushmeier, Janet Shafner, Frank Shifreen, Suzan Shutan, Sharon Siskin, Christina Spiesel, Yona Verwer, Julian Voloj, Laurie Wohl, Chen Xu, and Howard el-Yasin. The group includes artists from California, Florida, Utah, Missouri, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New York, who traveled to New Haven to contribute to the project alongside artists from the region.

A Project Book is being published in conjunction with the exhibition, including essays by Hasia Diner, the eminent scholar of Jewish immigration history, Walter Cahn, renowned historian of art and and architecture, and Hana Iverson, known for her remarkable multi-media installation "View from the Balcony" that was instrumental in helping attract attention to the renovation project of the Eldridge Street Shul. The book will also feature photographs of the works in the exhibition and memories of the Orchard Street Shul, with commentary by Karen Schiff. The innovative book design is by Criscola Design.

An exciting series of public events includes:
Saturday, December 5, 7:30
Music from the 1920s-1930s jam session
Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale

Sunday, December 6, noon - 5:00
Opening Reception with the Artists
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Wednesday, December 9, noon
Lunch and Learn, in Partnership with the Jewish Historical Society of Greater New Haven
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Sunday, December 20, 2:00 pm
Panel Discussion
Memoirs and Remembrances
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Sunday, January 10, 2:00 pm
Panel Discussion: Documentations: Photography, Recordings and Recreations
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Sunday, January 17, 2:00 pm
Informal Community Conversations
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Thursday, January 21, 4:00 pm
Presentation by Yale Computer Science Graphics Group on
The Orchard Street Shul: Case Study in Three - Dimensional Digital Representations of Culture Heritage Sites.
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Sunday, January 24, 2:00 pm
Panel Discussion: Art and the Echoes of Spirituality
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art


Sunday, January 31, 2010
Open Forum:
Artists Reflect on Cultural Heritage Project as Process
Closing Party
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

====================================
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art:
Hours
Wednesday - Friday, 11am - 4pm
Saturday & Sunday, 2pm - 5pm
(203) 624-8055

For directions and information on the John Slade Ely House visit:
http://www.elyhouse.org
For information on the Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Project visit:
http://orchardstreetshul-artistsproject.org
contact:
arts@orchardstreetshul-artistsproject.org
Contact:
Cynthia Beth Rubin, Project Director
Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Artists Project
arts@orchardstreetshul-artistsproject.org
Paul Clabby, Curator
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art
203-624-8055

Conference: Jews of Spain: Past and Present

Conference: Jews of Spain: Past and Present

(ISJM) On December 5-7, 2009, the American Sephardi Federation will host a symposium about the Jews of Spain: Past and Present. The complete schedule can be consulted here.

Of special interest to blog readers will be Dr. Vivian Mann's presentation on the "Unknown Jewish Artists of Spain." Dr. Mann is curator emeritus of Judaica at the The Jewish Museum (New York) and has curated many important exhibitions about Sephardi Jewish art and culture. She is now director in the Master degree program in Jewish art at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

USA: New Haven's Orchard Street Shul (1925)

New Haven, CT, Orchard Street Shul (1925). Facade and Interior.
Photos: Samuel D. Gruber, 2009

USA: New Haven's Orchard Street Shul (1925)
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) In a previous blogpost I described the former Temple Mishkan Israel building in New Haven, Connecticut, designed by Brunner & Tryon in 1896, and now used as a performing arts center. On a visit last week to New Haven, I had the opportunity of spending the morning at The Orchard Street Shul (Congregation Beth Israel) another important New Haven Jewish landmark and the region’s oldest intact and in use purpose built Orthodox synagogue. While all of Beth Israel’s physical features are intact, its congregation has dwindled. Today, there is only a small occasional minyan, and all those who still profess membership also belong to other synagogues in the areas. The future of the building is in question (for more photos click here).

Congregation president Sam Teitelman remains active at age 87 – but he knows that hard decisions about the fate of the building need to be made soon. He doesn’t want the building, which in the past few years has received some assistance for window repairs and other limited restoration work, to fall victim to a “last one out the door turn off the light” scenario that has been common for older congregations. Teitelman and others in the congregation are reaching out to others in the Jewish and non-Jewish community for ideas and support about how to save the building and its history, even if the future use is different from that the building now (just barely) enjoys.

New Haven, CT, Orchard Street Shul, Interior details.
Photos: Samuel D. Gruber, 2009

Teitelman has been looking at what’s been done at Boston’s Vilna Shul and New York Eldridge Street Synagogue to see if aspects of those solutions would be applicable – and affordable – at Orchard Street. He and other congregation members have also been supportive of a effort by local and national artists - the Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Artists Project - to use the synagogue and its history for inspiration for art projects – some of which will be exhibited for the first time in a group exhibition opening at New Haven’s John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art on December 6th. While the art doesn’t directly impact the future preservation of either the building or its congregation, it is aimed in part to raise awareness of the synagogue’s existence as an historic and cultural site in New Haven. According to New Haven-based digital artist Cynthia Rubin, one of the prime organizers of the exhibition, “included in the Project are presentations by researchers from Yale University who have developed innovative ways to document the building, including virtual reconstructions exploring new digital methods, ground-breaking research by computer scientists that promises to change the ways that cultural heritage sites will be documented in the future.”

Cynthia Rubin and Sam Teitelman at Orchard Street Shul, New Haven.

Photo: Samuel D. Gruber, 2009

Beth Israel Synagogue was erected in 1925 at 232 Orchard Street, on designs by local Jewish architect Jacob Weinstein, who had offices on State Street (more information is needed on this architect). The area was then heavily Jewish, though other immigrant groups lived there, too. Much of what was once Jewish housing, as well as several important Jewish buildings, was demolished in the 1960s. Beth Israel draws architectural inspiration from both Temple Mishkan Israel, but also from the impressive Beth Jacob synagogue on George Street, built in 1912 (and demolished in 1962). Like Mishkan Israel, the Orchard Street Shul is brick, has two (small) tower features flanking the façade, and is articulated with Colonial revival details. The exterior is noteworthy for its two rows of windows, indicating the men’s sanctuary and the raised women’s gallery. The windows are large and filled with clear glass, and the upper windows are round arched. Both Mishkan Israel and Beth Jacob had tall, narrow double height windows serving main floor and gallery together, and both those congregation used stained glass.

Yale University art historian Walter Cahn, who has written a short essay about the synagogue for the catalogue of the upcoming exhibition, suggests a link with Amsterdam’s Esnoga (Portuguese Synagogue), especially since that building was so known in the early 20th century from graphic representations.

The interior arrangement of ark, bimah and seating follows the traditional Eastern European Orthodox arrangement, very common in American immigrant synagogues from the 1880s through the 1920s, but Orchard Street is a late example. It is noteworthy that there are two aisles dividing the seats in to three sections, with the bimah and the projecting Ark platform (duhan) occupying much of the space of the central section. The marvelous Ark with its carved lions and a eagle recall the the Ark carved by craftsmen such as Samuel Katz, represented by Murray Zimilas in his Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses exhibition last year. The ark is adorned with light bulbs in a manner similar to the arks at Chevra T’helim in Portsmouth and at Eldridge Street (among others).

New Haven, CT, Orchard Street Shul. Windows have been repaired and the roof no longer leaks, but restoration of the wall finishes, as well of many or other parts of the building, is still needed. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber, 2009

For more information about pre-World War II synagogues in Connecticut see the excellent and still essential survey by David F. Ransom, "One Hundred Years of Jewish Congregations in Connecticut: An Architectural Survey," Connecticut Jewish History, Vol 2: 1 (Fall 1991). 1-147 (entire issue).

USA: Adolph Gottlieb Stained Glass Windows at Kingsway Jewish Center

USA: Adolph Gottlieb Stained Glass Windows at Kingsway Jewish Center
You can read my latest article in Tablet: Magazine: A New Read on Jewish Life here:

Paned Expressions

Though a bit tarnished, the Abstract Expressionist windows at Brooklyn’s Kingsway Jewish Center still glimmer

By Samuel D. Gruber

There is no shortage of synagogues in Brooklyn. Many are beautiful and some are unusual, but most are unknown except to their congregants. In order to help protect this heritage of often aging religious buildings, the New York Landmarks Conservancy embarked in 2006 on a project to survey them.

As a result, several synagogues have been nominated to the National Register of Historic Places, and among these is one special for its place in modern art: the Kingsway Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue in the borough’s Flatbush section. Built from 1951 to 1957, the sanctuary was decorated with a suite of stained glass windows designed by Adolph Gottlieb. These little known windows are precious examples of the position of New York’s abstract art outside the world of galleries and museums. They also provide positive evidence of a Jewish component in Gottlieb’s work. The windows are in poor condition, but the Kingsway congregation and the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation anticipate that National Register designation would help spur fund raising for their conservation. Ann Friedman, director of the Sacred Sites Program of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, says that it was when viewing Kingsway in 2004 that she realized “the great but under-recognized synagogue architecture in New York.”

read the full article and see more pictures here

Poland: Monuments and Memory in Warsaw

Umschlagplatz Monument (top) and Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Monument (bottom)
Photos: Samuel D. Gruber 2008

Poland: Monuments and Memory in Warsaw
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) In my recent blogpost about President Obama’s visit to Buchenwald, I mentioned in comparison to Buchenwald's Little Camp (Kleine Lager)monument the older – and I think still exemplary – monument erected by the City of Warsaw at the place known as the Umschlagplatz (Ul. Stawki close to the intersection of ul. Dzika), the assembly and transfer point where Jews were herded from the Warsaw Ghetto and from whence they were placed on the trains that took them to their deaths at Treblinka.

I first saw the monument in 1990, shortly after it was constructed, and was struck then by the clarity of its design and the directness with which it spoke to the visitor. Unlike most Holocaust monuments I had seen up until that time, it was entirely devoid of the claptrap, bombast, false sentimentality and empty rhetoric common to memorials of all sorts. The Monument especially stood in start contrast to the granite and bronze Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Monument designed by L.M. Suzin and sculpted by Nathan Rapaport, which stands not far away and which, since its dedication in 1948, has been the iconic image of post-Holocaust Jewish Warsaw.

The dynamic tension between these monuments, which are now connected by the very subtle “Remembrance Walk,” is going to be changed with the construction of the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews, to be built immediately opposite Rapoport’s monument, and where construction begins this summer (see my previous post). No doubt the new museum will re-focus some interest on the history of the Ghetto period, but it is also likely to steal the thunder (whatever thunder is left) from the earlier memorials.

I had the opportunity to revisit both monuments last fall, after the Umschlagplatz monument was fully cleaned and restored by the City of Warsaw, which owns and is responsible for the site.


The monument is even smaller than I remembered it. Every time I visit I recall how delicate a structure it is, which surprises me given its continued power to arouse in me a powerful response – a reaction that is essentially rational, but that teeters on the edge of a deep well of grief. Of course the quiet of the monument is in contrast to what must have been the loud, tense, dangerous and tragic situation on this spot in 1943 (reenacted in the film The Pianist).

Like the monument at Treblinka, the destination point of Jews from the Umschlagplatz (and to my mind, one of the greatest memorials ever made), the monument is essentially abstract, and through the use of a few simple forms, materials and distilled inscriptions to uses abstraction to allow the mind and heart to meld in deep contemplation.

This is very different from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Monument, which is a more in-your-face presentation of a heroic struggle and tragic lose. As James Young has carefully documented (Texture of Memory, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, Chapter 5, “The Biography of a Memorial Icon: Nathan Rapoport’s Warsaw Ghetto Monument,” 155-184), the monument to the Ghetto Uprising was designed by Nathan Rapoport and unveiled in 1948. The sufferings and deaths of hundreds of thousands on and near this site are diminished, and even neglected in the selective memory that underlies Rapaport’s celebration of the Ghetto fighters.

The distinction between the two monuments is due in large part to the times in which they were built. The area of the ghetto, though a place of acute grief to many, was even more a site of shame – for those who perpetuated the cruelty of the place, but also for those who witnessed it, and for those who failed to act to prevent it. Thus only those aspects of the Warsaw Ghetto site that were deemed heroic were, until recently, officially remembered.

Though grand when first unveiled atop the rubble of the Ghetto, the Rapoport monument seems smaller now. It still commands the plaza on which it sits, but the plaza now has the intimacy of a familiar room. When I was last there a few old people were sitting on benches near the shrubbery, and a few children were playing. While the monument was originally pitched to a stadium-sized audience, now it is quieter, more like chamber music, but richer and subtler than it was before. Sixty-five years has not dimmed its message, but it has broadened it. While the children played, one man came and placed flowers at the monument base.

We now want much more from the monument, and I wish that for a generation or so it could be turned around so that the little-viewed (and rarely-reproduced) low relief on the back of the monument that shows the Jewish victims processing (to their deaths) could a greater focus of memory. Viewing that moving relief – that recalls the procession of Roman soldiers carrying the spoils of the Temple on the Arch of Titus in Rome, and thus a history of Jewish tragedy – is the first step toward transition to the Umschlagplatz.

Ghetto Uprising Monument (top), Arch of Titus, Rome (bottom)
Photos: Samuel D. Gruber

That relief is also rooted in the Jewish social art of the turn of the 20th century - works like Maurycy Minkowski'sJews Leaving the Town (ca 1910) and Jacob Weinles' Jews Fleeing a Pogrom (ca. 1914); both works lost or destoryed in the Holocaust; and Samuel Hirszenberg's Exile (1904)and The Black Banner (1905). Dr. Eleanora Bergman, Director of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw tells me that she, at least, always begins her tours of the Ghetto from the rear side of the monument.

Maurycy Minkowski, Jews Leaving the Town (ca 1910)

It is well known that Post-war selective rebuilding in Warsaw led to highly selective memory, not just of the Holocaust, but also of the entire pre-War and Jewish history of the city. It took a half-century for some of the elements of the earlier topography to reemerge - in the form of the unobtrusive Remembrance Walk, consisting of nineteen stone blocks sited on a route from the Ghetto Uprising Monument, culminating at the Umschlagplatz. The route and monument were designed by Hanna Szmalenberg and Wladyslaw Klamerus and dedicated in 1988 on the 45th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The simple blocks are dedicated to notable figures that died in the Ghetto and who are surrogates for thousands of unnamed others (but since the texts are only in Polish they are there for the local audience, not tourists - unlike the new series of monuments erected to remember the Ghetto wall, which are in Polish and English).

The subtle but still more visible Umshlagplatz monument, however, combines literal and symbolic elements in a formal memorial language. The enclosed space next to the former Jewish hospital provides a refuge for contemplation, but the enclosure also conveys the feeling of separation. The black band in the white wall recalls the tallit, Jewish shawl in which a man prayers, and in which a pious Jews is buried. Over the entrance is a matzevah (tombstone)- shaped lintel showing a broken tree, within a forest of broken trees symbolizing untimely death of an individual and of a community.

Inside, glimpsed through a cut in the wall, one sees a living tree, symbol of hope, renewal, revival. Is it the Tree of Knowledge? Or the Etz Hayyim, the Tree of Life? In a place like Warsaw, were the two the same? If people had known, would they have died? Or did they know, but did not act?

The artists chose four hundred first names, typical of Warsaw Ghetto Jews and engraved on the walls - to allow the viewer a glimpse of the individuality of the dead, and to associate with them. It’s as if we went to a Warsaw city directory of the period and picked out people, who became names, and then numbers, and then victims. Anyone and everyone is included. Whenever I visit I see my own name – Samuel – and know that I would have been a victim, too.


Inside the striped walls of the memorial, with its benches around the perimeter like an old prayer hall, one can almost hear an old Jew – or all the Ghetto Jews – chanting El Maleh Rachamim (the memorial prayer).

Four plaques in Polish, Hebrew, Yiddish and English explain, “Along this path of suffering a death over 300,000 Jews were driven in 1942-43 from the Warsaw Ghetto to the gas chambers of the Nazi extermination camps.” Like the monument itself, the text is simple, direct and true.

Poland: Commemorative Plaque to be Unveiled on Former Przemysl Synagogue

Poland: Commemorative Plaque to be Unveiled on Former Przemysl Synagogue

(ISJM) On June 22, 2009 a commemorative plaque will be unveiled at the former Scheinbach Synagogue building (today the town library) in Przemyśl, Poland. The building was designed by Stanislaw Majersji (1872-1926) a graduate of the Lwów Politechnical School, and built between 1910 and 1918. Majerski had also designed the Rundbogenstil Reform Synagogue built in 1890.

The Scheinbach Synagogue survives, although much of it exterior decoration was stripped off in the post-War period, and its vivid interior painting of biblical scenes are view of the Holy Land (especially on the vaulted ceiling) is no longer visible (unknown whether was destroyed or is merely covered over). According to Diana Muir Appelbaum writing about the synagogues on the Jewish Przemyśl Blog, the building also had notable stained glass windows; both windows and paintings were by a Jewish Przemyśl artist named Adolf Bienenstock (1888-1937), a graduate of the Krakow Fine Art Academy who taught art at the Przemysl Gymnasium. I will try to post more information about this artist, until now unknown to me.

The ceremony begins at 12:30 PM at 15 Slowackiego St.

The plaque is a joint project of the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland and Mr. Michael Freund of Raanana in Israel.

Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses, The Synagogue to the Carousel: Jewish Carving Traditions at Fenimore Art Museum

Publication & Exhibition: Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses, The Synagogue to the Carousel: Jewish Carving Traditions at Fenimore Art Museum through September 1, 2008.

I recommend the book by Murray Zimiles (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press in association with American Folk art Museum, New York, 2007)
[ISBN: 1-58465-637-9]

By Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) In my work I see a lot of exhibitions about Jewish art and history. Some are good, some bad, and some ugly. Every so often there is a great exhibit, and Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses is such an occasion (I went to see it three times when it was at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City earlier this year). If you have not seen it, there is still a chance this summer at the excellent Fenimore Art Museum in beautiful Cooperstown, in Upstate New York (also home to the Farm Museum and the Baseball Hall of Fame).

Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses is a small exhibit, but meticulous. And every carving and papercut deserves attention. The premise seems slight and even amusing – that Eastern European carvers of Ark ornaments came to Brooklyn and made carousel horses. But this realization sent the curator, artist Murray Zimilas on a decade long search that has brought together evocative, exciting and beautiful Jewish folk art to make his point. Nowhere before has there been assembled such a menagerie of Jewish lions and other animals. These carvings – all of which are vividly painted – breath life into the old images of European and immigrant shuls. These were not somber and dour places in black and white, but could be vibrant and joyous in their architecture and decoration, opening up fantastic worlds of imagination to hungry hearts, souls and minds. Not only did immigrant Jews turn to carousel carving, but they turned to all manner of visual arts when the opportunity arose.

Almost all of the exhibited pieces can be seen in excellent color photographs in the fine accompanying volume published by Brandeis University Press. This book, which has already won awards, should become a standard in any library of Jewish and/or folk art. There is a broad-ranging introductory essay by Vivian Mann that blends scholarship and accessibility and puts the Gilded Lions and their progeny in an art historical context useful to experts and laypeople alike.

See: http://www.fenimoreartmuseum.org/node/586