JTA Opens Digital Archive of 250,000 Articles From 1923 to Present

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) Opens Digital Archive of 250,000 Articles From 1923 to Present

JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People today opened its digital archive containing some 250,000 articles covering Jewish news around the world, 1923-present. This is an essential resource for any student of modern Jewish life, or just the curious reader and researcher. Browsing the archive helps keep modern troubles and passions - terrorism, bigotry, anti-Semitism,. assimilationism, and factionalism - in historic perspective.

On H-Judiaca historian Jonathan Sarna write that "JTA closely tracked antisemitism at home and abroad, and played an especially important role in documenting the Holocaust as it was taking place. The Shoah looks entirely different on the pages of JTA than in the New York Times." JTA also offers a rich archive of information about Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Societ Union under Communism.

The JTA archive is available at: http://archive.jta.org/

JTA is especially valuable to students of American Jewish history, preserving stories of major and minor events throughout the country. There are palnty of articles about Jewish monuments, synagogues, Holcoaust sites and memorials and a wide variety of cultural topcs.

An article on the new JTA Archive is available here:
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/05/04/3087568/jta-launches-online-archive-containing-quarter-million-articles.

The article references a Youtube video that may be found online at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DyB5I5wiL41A&feature=3Dyoutu.be

Conference: German-Jewish Immigration and Presence in New York City

Woodmere, NY. Congregation sons of Israel. Fritz Nathan and Eugene Schoen, archs. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber (2011).
Nathan was a refugee architect important in redefining the American synagogue after World War II (I am presently writing a chapter about him and fellow German refugee artist and architects for a forthcoming edited volume on German-Jewish trans-nationalism).

Conference: German-Jewish Immigration and Presence in New York City

(ISJM) The Jewish Studies Center at Baruch College, together with the Leo Baeck Institute, is sponsoring a day-long conference on German-Jewish immigration and presence in New York City on May 5, 2011.

Three panels and roundtables will be held at the Leo Baeck Institute: "The German-Speaking Jewish Presence in New York" (10-11:45); "German-Jewish Troubles with Immigration in the 1930s: A Lesson for Today's Immigration Debates?" (1:30-3) and "Roundtable Discussion: Memorializing and Representing German-Speaking Jews in New York City Museums and Institutions" (3:15-4:45). There will be a reception with light refreshments at Baruch College, in the Performing Arts Center, from 6-7 PM. This will be followed by a screening of the film "We were so beloved: The German Jews of Washington Heights" and a discussion with director Manfred Kirchheimer.

More information is available at: http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/wsas/JSC_BAECK_CONFERENCE.htm

Conference: Transforming Berlin's Urban Space

Conference: Transforming Berlin's Urban Space

(ISJM) This October the Centum Judaicum in Berlin and the Berlin Jewish Museum and local academic partners team up to present what looks like a fascinating and important conference.

The conference focuses on the spatial dimensions of the migration experience and also inquires into how migrants perceived and shaped urban space. We will be particularly interested in exploring the diverse functions and meanings of Berlin as a crucial migration center between East and West.

Here is the schedule:

Transforming Berlin's Urban Space: East European Jewish Migrants in Charlottengrad and the Scheunenviertel, 1918-1939

Osteuropa-Institut, Freie Universitaet Berlin

In cooperation with Juedisches Museum Berlin and Wissenschaftliche
Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Leo Baeck Instituts

Berlin 2009, Centrum Judaicum and Juedisches Museum Berlin, October 17-19

Saturday

19:00 Centrum Judaicum
Opening Gertrud Pickhan
Key note Dan Diner, The Short Jewish Axial Time: 1918-1938 as an
Existential Constellation

Sunday

9:00
Introduction Gertrud Pickhan, Verena Dohrn

9:30-11:00
Topography

Chair: Trude Maurer
Anne-Christin Sass, The Scheunenviertel: A Transnational Social Space in Weimar Berlin
Gennady Estraikh, Weimar Berlin as an International Yiddish Press Center
Shachar Pinsker, The Urban Cafes of Berlin as Spaces of Hebrew and Yiddish Modernism

11:00 Coffee Break

11:30-13:00
Perceptions

Chair: Dan Laor
Mikhail Krutikov, Afterlifes of Weimar Berlin in Yiddish Literature
Marc Caplan, The Corridors of Berlin: Proximity, Peripherality, and Surveillance in Dovid Bergelson's Boarding House Stories
Karin Neuburger, Artificial and Real Spaces: Micha Yosef Berdyczewski's Life and Work in Berlin (1912-1921)

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:30
Negotiations

Chair: Michael Brenner
Barry Trachtenberg, Weimar and Yiddish Universalism: the making of Di algemeyne entsiklopedye
Vladimir Khazan, The Brothers Aaron and Isaak Steinberg's Contribution to the History of the Russian-Jewish Berlin
Tamara Or, Berlin, Nachtasyl and Capital of Hebrew Diaspora

15:30-16:00 Coffee Break

16:00-17:30
Identifications

Chair: Karl Schlogel
Avidov Lipsker, Berlin: Heterotopia of Hesitation and Decisiveness. The Case of Benjamin Harz
Albert Baumgarten, The Russian Identity of Russian Jews living in a Third
Space: Joseph Bikerman and the Patriotic Union of Russian Jews Abroad
Markus Wolf, Russian Jews against Jewish Bolshevism: The Example of the Patriotic Union in 1920s Berlin

Monday

9:00-10:30
Transfers

Chair: Oleg Budnickij
Alexander Ivanov, Berlin's ORT and German Jewry: Communication, Interaction, Cooperation (1920/30s)
Alexandra Poljan, Productive Help in Russian-Jewish Berlin. The Union of the Russian Jews in Germany: Charity and Politics
Arndt Engelhardt, Disseminating Knowledge: Jewish Intellectuals and the lieu of the Encyclopedia Judaica (1928-1934) in Weimar Berlin

10:30-11:00 Coffee Break

11:00-12:30
Translations

Chair: Matthias Freise
Olaf Terpitz, Translatio imperii: How Russian Jews negotiated Russia in Berlin
Britta Korkowsky, The Narrator that Walks by Himself: Sklovskij's Narrator, Kipling's Cat and the Paradox of Freedom in "ZOO or Letters not about Love"
Zsuzsa Hetenyi, Nomen est ponem? Names and Identity in Emigre Literature

12:30-13:30 Lunch

13:30-15:00
Transformations

Chair: Monika Richarz
Susanne Marten-Finnis, Artist-Animators: Russian Display Culture in 1920s Berlin and the Transformation of Domestic Space in the West
Rachel Seelig, A Yiddish Poet in Berlin: Moishe Kulbak's "Naye lider"and the Flourishing of Yiddish Poetry in Exile
Anat Feinberg, "Wir laden Sie hoflich ein": The Grungard Salon and Jewish-Zionist Sociability in Berlin in the 1920s

15:00-15:30 Coffee Break

15:30-17:00

Transitions
Chair: Gertrud Pickhan

Tobias Brinkmann, Passage City: Berlin as a Focal Point of Jewish (Trans-)Migration after 1918
Gerben Zaagsma, The Place of Berlin in the Transnational Networks of Jewish Migrant Radicals
Jeffrey Wallen, Migrant Visions: The Scheunenviertel and Boyle Heights, Los Angeles

17:15-17:45
Conclusions David Myers

Slovenia: More on Exhibition in Maribor

Slovenia: More on Exhibition in Maribor

(ISJM) I've received more information about the exhibition set to open in Maribor, Slovenia on September 6th. Curator Janez Premk informs ISJM that the exhibition consists of 13 information panels (see the first panel, above)that collate much of the documentary information - including archival sources, building measurements, etc.- carried out by Dr. Premk, Ivan Ceresnjes and a research team from the Center for Jewish Art at Hebrew University, beginning in 2000. The work builds on the Commission report that I co-authored with Ruth Ellen Gruber in 1996 and that I mentioned in my previous post, but it includes much more priomary source material and has involved much closer scrutiny of existing sites, including measured drawings. This material now is part of the Jewish Archive of Slovenia.

It is expected that the exhibition will be on view at Maribor for about two months, and then it will probably move to Lendava. The exhibition may be available for further travel - if interested please contact Dr. Premk directly. Eventually, the exhibition may return to Maribor for a more permanent installation. - SDG

Guess What? May is Jewish American Heritage Month. Is a Jewish Cultural Institution Closing in Your Community?

Guess What? May is Jewish American Heritage Month. Is a Jewish Cultural Institution Closing in Your Community?
by Samuel D. Gruber

Who knew? Since 2006, May is officially Jewish American Heritage Month. Is this an opportunity to celebrate, or have we (or the US government) created a new calendar ghetto in which to isolate American Jewish Heritage from the rest of the year's events? Something similar happened with Black History - every media outlet saves its best stories of African American history and culture for February.

According to the official Jewish American Heritage Month website:

On April 20, 2006, President George W. Bush proclaimed that May would be Jewish American Heritage Month. The announcement was the crowning achievement in an effort by the Jewish Museum of Florida and South Florida Jewish community leaders that resulted in resolutions introduced by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida and Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania urging the president to proclaim a month that would recognize the more than 350-year history of Jewish contributions to American culture. The resolutions passed unanimously, first in the House of Representatives in December 2005 and later in the Senate in February 2006.

The month of May was chosen due to the highly successful celebration of the 350th Anniversary of American Jewish History in May 2004, which was organized by the Commission for Commemorating 350 Years of American Jewish History. This coalition was composed of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, the American Jewish Historical Society, the Library of Congress and the National Archives and Records Administration.

Leading the way in implementation of the annual celebration is the Jewish American Heritage Month Coalition, formed in March 2007 and convened by United Jewish Communities, the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives and the American Jewish Historical Society.
About the Site

This Web portal is a collaborative project of the Library of Congress and the National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Even though I think celebratory months like this are silly - I will not deny the accomplishments of the participating institutions in improving our knowledge of American Jewish History and their taking steps to protect and preserve valuable archives and material culture collections. PLEASE DO look at the website to see some of the variety of initiatives - many especially featured this month. Visit the websites of the various institutions AND visit and use their facilities (May is a beautiful month to be in Washington, DC).

Ironically, as we celebrate this month, rumors circulate about the possible closing of the historic Cincinnati campus of Hebrew Union College, home of the Klau Library and the American Jewish Archives. For an update on the Cincinnati situation see last weeks article in the Cincinnati Enquirer. In the article, Rabbi David Ellenson is reported as saying that even if HUC moves, it could keep the library and Archives open on the Clifton campus. "I cannot imagine those would be easily replicated anywhere else," said Ellenson "I can envision a scenario in which Cincinnati would be an intellectual center for research. It's not a probability but it is a possibility." Ellenson the first HUC president to be based in New York. HUC has invested millions of dollars over the years in the Library and Archive facilities - who knows what it would cost to replicate the institution in New York or elsewhere.

Severe financial troubles continue to plague New York's Center for Jewish history (touted as the "Jewish Library of Congress" when it opened) and all of its constituent organizations. The recent economic downturn and the Bernie Madoff crimes have hit all American Jewish cultural organizations very hard, but some problems pre-exist these situations and are due to excessive institutional expansion and competition, which has outstripped a committed audience (often leading Jewish organizations to turn to public funding sources for contributions (read: bailouts).

So, as we celebrate American Jewish History this month, we are all encouraged to look at a vibrant past, but we are also so forced to look at an uncertain (at least for institutions) future.

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett to lecture in NYC about Museum of the History of Polish Jews

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett to lecture in NYC on May 6th about Museum of the History of Polish Jews
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) New York University Professor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett will speak at Temple Emanuel in New York City at 6:30 pm on May 6th about "Creating the Museum of the History of Polish Jews: A Work in Progress " Barbara is head of the international core exhibition planning team the long-awaited Warsaw Museum, where groundbreaking took place in 2007 and which is expected to open in 2011. She will discuss the challenges and methods for creating a narrative for this important museum.

I had the opportunity to hear Barbara speak twice about the new museum at conferences last fall, and to share a seven-hour car ride with her (and Sergey Kravtsov) from Poland to Ukraine. I was impressed with the vision for the new museum’s presentation, and with the apparent competence with which it is being implemented. Barbara is a great story teller, and I am sure in her New York lecture she will inform and entertain.

The museum site is in the area of the former Warsaw Ghetto, immediately across from the Warsaw Uprising Monument, designed by Natan Rapoport. Currently, there is a large blue tent – the OHEL – on the spot, as a site of small exhibitions and educational programming.

Amazingly, that grand, simple and now iconic monument continues to be the most visible and expressive source of information and misrepresentation about Jewish history in Poland’s capital (I say this in no way to denigrate the position and thoughtful efforts of the Jewish Historical Institute, but only to recognize that public role of the Uprising Monument).

The stated purpose of the museum is to preserve "the lasting legacy of Jewish life in Poland and of the civilization created by Polish Jews in the course of a millennium." In short, the museum must convey everything (well, at least some of) the rich and complex and long and contradictory material the Monument avoid. This is to be done in a number of innovative ways. Many of the exhibitions have to be composites, synopses or surrogates – since the Jewish history of Poland is so vast and deep. The Museum must balance the documentary and the material, and the stories of a culture and civilization’s building, and its destruction.

One of the intended installations in which I am most interested is the plan for one gallery to be surmounted by an 80% scaled replica – or recollection – of the panted wooden ceiling of Gwodziec (Ukraine), now well know from Thomas Hubka's book Resplendent Synagogue. This ceiling is to be hand-built in eight sections, each to be crafted and assembled in a different region of Poland, each in a former (alas, only masonry) synagogue space. According to Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, it is the process of collectively remaking, and of learning the skills that were lost, that will literally raise the rebuilding effort to a new level. The craft work will be overseen by the talented Handshouse Studio of Massachusetts, in partnership with Polish woodworkers. The methods will be taught to new apprentices, the project will be filmed. As performance, it will be as much a part of the resurrection of the Jewish past in Poland as any permanent museum exhibition in the country – past or future (For more on the persistence of memory through Wooden Synagogues see my previous blog and article on Nextbook.com)

Most difficult, The Museum must combat the combination of still profound ignorance and misconception about Polish-Jewish history within Poland, and in the Jewish community worldwide. I continue to be amazed as I lecture and teach at the extraordinary historical ignorance I encounter. The public (Jewish and non-Jewish) prefers being comforted by repeated stereotypes and myths (good and bad) than to be challenged to confront and absorb new information. I am sure that no matter what the content of the final exhibitions that Prof. Kischenblatt-Gimblett and her colleagues will be the subject of both praise and verbal brickbats for their efforts.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is professor of performance studies at the Tisch School of the Arts (NYU) and an affiliated professor of Hebrew and Judaica Studies.

The program is free. Temple Emanu-El is located at 1 East 65th St, New York City.

USA: Thoughts About Touro Synagogue as Public Tours are Cancelled

Touro Synagogue Cancels Public Tours
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) On March 5th journalist Richard Salit reported in the Providence Journal that the Touro Synagogue Foundation had laid off the last of is staff, including Executive Director Steve Sitrin, and Malka Benjamin, coordinator of public programs. You can read the article here:


Update: Touro Synagogue tours suspended; museum on track


The immediate result is that tours of Touro Synagogue, the most historic and probably best known synagogue building in the United States have been canceled. Closing the synagogue is a dramatic step - since it is an important link in Newport's tourism network, and also the flagship Jewish tourist site in the country. Since almost everything about Touro has been elevated into the realm of national symbol, the symbolism of this move is very important.

Obviously the current financial situation which has hit all not-for-profits hard is at least partly to blame for the demise of the Foundation. Presumably the Foundation counted on grants and gifts to help cover salaries. There are probably other factors in play, too. The Foundation has been erecting an expensive - but to me somewhat problematic - visitor and interpretive center on a lot adjacent to the synagogue. My guess is that as happens with so many small organizations, the strain of expansion - even though funded primarily by a donor (former Ambassador John Loeb, a descendant of Newport Jews for whom the new Center is to be named) - was too great, especially when the new facility is forcing the organization to reinvent itself. Matters are, of course, complicated by the fact that the synagogue is owned by the historic (Sephardi) Congregation Shearith Israel in New York, and leased for a nominal fee to the active Orthodox Congregation Jeshuat Israel of Newport (which though its members are Ashkenazi, by agreement follows Sephardi ritual). Many other players have gotten involved over the years, most noticeably the U.S. Park Service - playing a role I have never quite understood. The Foundation exists beside the congregation, entrusted to protect and preserve the historic building, and to properly present it to the public.



According to the Providence Journal article, the 3,100 square foot Loeb Center for Religious Freedom is still scheduled to open in August. At that time, according to the article, tours will begin again (though I had previously been told when I visited Newport last summer and met briefly with recently fired Executive Director Sitrin that the presentation of the Center would, in fact, replace formal synagogue tours.)

I was impressed with Foundation's program that brought college students to Newport for the summer to serve as guides - I was even looking forward to encouraging some of my own students to apply. But was troubled but what I perceived to be a lack of legitimate historical and social inquiry in what I learned of the program of the new center. Like much of the work on Touro's history over the past century, the presentation as presently made known seems to lean more to the ideological and hagiographic view of Newport. We will have to wait and see what the new center's content is. My requests on behalf of ISJM and this blog for more information last fall went unanswered. I am concerned that even when open there may not be sufficient funds available, for now money will be needed for maintain and staff both synagogue and interpretation center.

Will the exhibition be static, or will there be an historian and/or curator at work? Will the Center encourage new research and interpretation (about Rhode Island and New England Jewish history, synagogue architecture, historic preservation, etc.) or will it maintain what the fairly static view of Touro and Newport's Jews which has been fine-tuned since Touro became a National shrine more than a half century ago? In the past there seems to have been a serious disconnect between history taught at Touro and the more wide-ranging work of the Rhode Island Jewish Historical Society. It would a boon to both organizations if George Goodwin or some historian of similar qualification were brought in to link the two.

The website of Loeb's organization focuses almost entirely on the earliest history of Newport's Jewish community - and its religious freedom guaranteed by President George Washington in his famous letter to the congregation which stated that the new nation would give "bigotry no sanction." Still, that episode is just one small part of Touro's history, since the original Sephardi community dissolved not long after Washington's pronouncement.

Touro as the Foundation of Jewish Heritage Preservation

It is because Touro's greatest legacy may be its pioneering efforts at historic preservation (the very reason it is called the Touro Synagogue is because of an early endowment made to protect and preserve the empty and unused synagogue by Abraham Touro that the building survives today. More than a half-century before the Anti-Demolition League was formed to save Bevis Marks Synagogue in London, and more than 150 years before the World Monuments Fund started its Jewish Heritage Program, a few early American Jews had the foresight to plan the preservation of Touro.

As early as 1822 the Rhode Island American and General Advertiser wrote: We are told that the Jewish Synagogue at Newport is still standing, and with little expense might be long preserved, as a “handsome specimen of ancient architecture." A few months after this notice appeared, Abraham Touro made a bequest of $10,000 to the legislature of the state for “supporting the Jewish Synagogue in the State.” The following year, in the June 1823 session of the General Assembly there is mention of “An Act to Secure and Appropriate the Touro Jewish Synagogue Fund.” Endowing the building, even when it was not in use, protected it. It was in today’s terminology “mothballed,” until it would come into regular use again when Eastern European immigrants reconstituted the Newport Jewish community.

Thus began a nearly two century tradition of conserving the historic synagogue, which remains today the oldest standing synagogue buildings in North America. Most recently, the Touro Synagogue Foundation funded and oversaw an extensive restoration of the building that reversed some earlier work, and notably saw the complete restoration by Newman's, Ltd. of Newport of the synagogues many metal light fixtures and other valuable fittings (for a full and exemplary preservation report click here). The new Visitors’ Center will open in 2009, and I hope it tells this story, too. The interest shown by Abraham Touro established a precedent among American Jewish congregations of care and reverence for their synagogue buildings. Still, the vicissitudes of man and nature have caused most of the oldest synagogue buildings in American to be destroyed or demolished (and donors often prefer to build new synagogues than maintain older ones) so Touro remains among American Jewry's most precious possessions.

For further readings on the architectural and preservation history of Touro see:

Allen, T.J., 1948. "Touro Synagogue as a National Site," in Touro Synagogue of Congregation Jeshuat Israel. Friends of Touro Synagogue, Newport, R.I.

Goodwin, George M., 2000. “The Politics of Preservation: How Touro Synagogue Became a National Historic Site,” Rhode Island Jewish Historical Notes, 13:2 (Nov 2000), 177-207.

Schwartz, Esther I., 1958. “Touro Synagogue Restored, 1827-29,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, XVII (summer 1958), 23-26.

Schwartz, Esther I., 1959. “Touro Synagogue Restored,” Rhode Island Jewish Historical Notes, III (Oct 1959), 106-131.


More general histories include are varying reliability include:

Gutstein, Morris A. et al, 1948. Touro Synagogue of Congregation Jesuat Israel, Newport, Rhode Island, Society of Friends of Touro Synagogue National Historic Shrine, Newport.

Gutstein, Morris, A., 1958. To Bigotry No Sanction: A Jewish Shrine in America 1658-1958. New York: Bloch Publishing Company.

Lewis, Rabbi Dr. Theodore, 1975. "History of Touro Synagogue." Newport History: Bulletin of the Newport Historical Society 48, Part 3, No. 159 (Summer 1975):281-320.

Pool, David de Sola, 1948. “Some Notes on the Touro Synagogue,” Touro Synagogue of Congregation Jesuat Israel, Newport, Rhode Island, Society of Friends of Touro Synagogue National Historic Shrine, Newport, 7-13.

Schless, Nancy Halverson, 1973. “Peter Harrison, The Touro Synagogue, and the Wren City Church,” in Winterthur Portfolio 8 (1973), 187-200.

Publication: New Book About NYC's Eldridge Street Synagogue

photo: Samuel D. Gruber. For more photos click here.


Publication: New Book About NYC's Eldridge Street Synagogue
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) A new book by my friend Dr. Annie Polland, the VP of Education at the Museum at Eldridge Street will be presented Sunday, December 7th at a book launch at the Museum (the Eldridge Street Synagogue), from 2-4 pm.

The book is Landmark of the Spirit: The Eldridge Street Synagogue and it is published by Yale University Press. Annie is an historian. Her Columbia University dissertation in history is The Sacredness of the Family: New York's Immigrant Jews and Their Religion,1890-1930. The new book is about history and community and the synagogue's position on New York's Lower East Side. Still, I expect there will also be some talk of architecture and historic preservation.

Besides being a "flagship" synagogue for Ashkenazi immigrant Jews in New York when it opened in in 1887, the Eldridge Street Project - the 20 year effort to restore the crumbling edifice - helped inspire an entire generation of historic preservation activists and architects across America and abroad.

Annie's book sounds like a great resource and Hanukah gift, too!

USA: Film & Exhibition Tell Story of North Carolina Jews

USA: Film & Exhibition Tell Story of North Carolina Jews

The Jewish Heritage Foundation of North Carolina (JHFNC) premiered its new documentary film Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina with showing in Greensboro, NC on October 11^th and October 19^th. The film will next be screened in Charlotte on February 22, 2009. You can read about it here: Greensboro News & Record Article.

The Down Home Documentary film is the first component of larger project to document the Jewish history of North Carolina.

JHFNC was established in 1996 and is North Carolina’s only statewide Jewish historical organization. The Foundation seeks to promote understanding of the Jewish people by educating both Jews and the general public about the history, culture, and religion of the Jewish people and by encouraging appreciation of the beauty of Jewish ritual and practice. The JHFNC collects and preserves artifacts and records the history of Jewish settlement in North Carolina, as well as conducting programs that examine and portray the Jewish experience in North Carolina. The JHFNC also seeks to strengthen Jewish communal bonds among North Carolina’s diverse Jewish and non-Jewish communities by maintaining networks that connect collections and educational resources across the state and by creating bridges between the older established communities and our many newly arriving residents.

In September the Foundation announced the design team for the final design and installation of the Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina museum exhibit. The exhibit will chronicle the 400-year story of Jewish life in the state. In 2010 the exhibit will travel to North Carolina’s major history museums including those in Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, Wilmington and Asheville. The exhibit is a major component of the Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina multi-media project which also includes a TV-quality documentary film, educational DVDs and teaching curricula for the state’s public schools, and a richly illustrated book to be published by UNC Press.

North Carolina is also the home of many historic and well preserved synagogues. The Foundation is looking at ways to promote the history and architecture of the synagogues and to ensure their continued use and preservation.

Restoration of Baroque Synagogue in Jičín (Czech Republic) complete

Restoration of Baroque Synagogue in Jičín (Czech Republic) complete.

By Samuel D. Gruber (ISJM)
(June 20. 2008)

Following nearly eight years (2001-2008) the restoration of the magnificent Baroque synagogue in Jičín, North Bohemia (Czech Republic) is complete. The Prague Jewish Community will officially open the building to the public on Thursday, June 19, 2008. The restoration project is part of a continuing effort by the Czech Jewish Community to reclaim, protect and preserver its historic, cultural and artistic heritage.

A Jewish settlement is known to have existed in Jičín in the second half of the 14th century, but Jews were expelled from the town in 1542-45 and again in 1557-63. The now-restored synagogue was erected in 1773, more than a century after Jews are known to have been readmitted to the town. According to Dr. Arno Pařík of the Prague Jewish Museum, "this is an exceptionally pure example of a small, late Baroque synagogue." It is a rectangular building, approximately 12.5 meters long and 8.2 meters wide, with a fairly high saddle roof over a barrel-vault, supported on traverse arches and 90 cm. thick walls. The sanctuary is well-lit by three tall arched windows on the south and north walls. Smaller windows are set in the west (façade) and east walls, the latter dominated by the well-preserved masonry Ark, flanked by twisted columns. The vivid wall paintings – mostly in reds and blues – have been restored to their 1840 appearance.

These photos taken in May 2008 near the end of restoration work are provided by Dr. Arno Pařík and the Jewish Museum of Prague. Additional photos of the restored building will be posted soon at www.isjm.org

The building is now one of best preserved late Baroque synagogues remaining in Central Europe.

The restoration of the synagogue was supervised by engineer Mojmír Malý at Matana a.s., Administration of Buildings and Cemeteries. Heritage supervision is provided by the Zecher Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Monuments through Dr. Arno Pařík, and the National Heritage Institute – specialist department in Pardubice. Financing has been provided by the Jewish Community of Prague, the Czech Ministry of Culture, the District Authority of Hradec Králové, and the Municipal Government of Jičín. Financial support for the synagogue renovation has also been provided by the Jewish Heritage Program and World Monuments Fund.

A Torah scroll from Jicin is now in the possession of Temple Shir Tikva in Wayland, Massachusetts (USA).

For more on the history and architecture of the building see Arno Pařík, "History and Renovation of Jičín Synagogue," Judaica Bohemiae (40/2004), 104-122.