USA: My article about architect Albert Kahn in The Forward

USA: My article about architect Albert Kahn in The Forward

In honor of the Detroit Auto Show now on in Detroit, I've written a piece about architect Albert Kahn for The Forward. There are pictures in the print edition.

The Rabbi’s Son Who Built Detroit
The Other Kahn: Architect

by Samuel D. Gruber

Albert Kahn is America’s forgotten architect — even though in his lifetime, he (and his firm) produced more buildings than any other architect, and his design and production method changed the face of the country. Eighty years before the bailout of the auto industry, just before the Great Depression, Kahn built the most opulent of Detroit’s new corporate skyscrapers — the Art Deco-style Fisher Building. Facing the GM headquarters, Kahn’s grandest expression of civic architecture defined the unique American union of commercial and civic identity.

to read the full story click here

Publication: New Catalog of Jewish Cemeteries of Masovian Region, Poland

Publication: New Catalog of Jewish Cemeteries of Masovian Region, Poland
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) A report on the current state of Poland’s Jewish cemeteries published last October has revealed that dozens still lie unmarked and neglected while many others have been built over completely. Commissioned by the Lo Tishkach Foundation, the report Jewish Cemeteries of Poland: Masovian Region, focuses on the 126 Jewish burial grounds of the Masovian Voivodeship, Poland’s largest region.

For me, reading the report is mostly distressing, since it indicates that there has been a change for the better for only a small number of cemeteries sites since I published (with Phyllis Myers, Lena Bergman and Jan Jagielski) the first comprehensive survey of Polish Jewish cemeteries in 1994 (updated and revised in 1995). It is important that that survey, undertaken in partnership between the US Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad and the World Monuments Fund, be up dated for all of Poland. In the Masovian Region - which as the result of administrative reorganization comprises several of the districts listed in the US Commission survey report - 126 cemeteries listed in the new survey, only 20 (15.9%) of which are deemed protected - that is identified, delineated and maintained. All the other sites remain in some manner at risk.

Still, there are some successes, and these frequently involve local non-Jewish communities. To read summaries of some local cemetery preservation projects in Poland click here.

For more on Lo Tishkach see my earlier blog post: Lo Tishkach Works to List All European Jewish Cemeteries.

Poland: Short Film on Orla Synagogue

Poland: Short Film on Orla Synagogue

Tomek Wisniewski, the indefatigable chronicler of Jewish sites in the Bialystok Region and author of several guides to Jewish history and monuments in the area has recently adapted to video. He sent one his most recent projects...a short film highlighting the wonderful architecture of the great synagogue of Orla, and the terrible neglect the synagogue has suffered for decades. On-again off-again restoration projects have preserved the building, but it has been shuttered and almost forgotten. Tomek records a recent event that opened the building and brought flocks of local residents to see its grand interior for the first time in years.

I first visited Orla in 1990 when the building was still covered scaffolding. A photo from this trip was the "teaser" for the exhibition "The Future of Jewish Monuments" that traveled the USA beginning in 1990 (photo). Sadly, while many of the other building pictured in the exhibition have subsequently been restored, Orla has been "forgotten." As Tomak makes clear, it is time to remedy that situation.

Click here for the film on Youtube

Here are some of my photos of the synagogue.




Ruth Ellen Gruber has posted the video and these comments about the synagogue at Orla:

The striking synagogue, with a distinctive scalloped facade, was originally built in the 17th century. Its sanctuary has nine bays and a vaulted ceiling, and there are still some traces of marvelous painted decoration -- vines, garlands, floral motifs, and animals.

The building dominates the little town, where before the Holocaust Jews made up nearly 80 percent of the local population.

The synagogue was listed as a cultural heritage monument before World War II. Tomek reports that when it was all but destroyed in a huge fire in 1938, the Polish government stepped into to reconstruct and restore the building.

The synagogue was reconsecrated in 1939, but then the Nazis used it as a field hospital and later turned it into a warehouse for chemical fertilizer. For decades it has stood empty and in ever-deteriorating condition.

To read Ruth's full comments click here.

Jamaica: Review in Forward of Painter of the Caribbean

Jamaica: Review in Forward of Painter of the Caribbean

In November I mentioned the publication of a lavish new book about Jamiaican Jewish artist Isaac Mendes Belisario.

Edward Gomez has reviewed the book for The Forward:

Painter of the Caribbean
In Colonial Jamaica, a Jewish Artist and the Slaves

By Edward M. Gómez
Wed. Dec 31, 2008

Jewish families who trace their roots back to England, Spain, Portugal and beyond have distinguished themselves for generations as merchants and financiers in the Caribbean. Reminders of the contributions they have made to the varied cultures and societies of the region can be found in the graveyards and in postcolonial, national archives of what are now its many small, independent countries.

With this history in mind, Jamaica’s Mill Press has published “Belisario: Sketches of Character.” A large, lavishly illustrated volume that looks like a coffee-table art book, it is, in fact, a sweeping saga of overlapping family histories, a high-drama page-turner complete with a Central American property-sale scam (the offering of an entire, imaginary country, that is) that makes the Bernard Madoff and not-so-long-ago Enron frauds look, in its publisher’s words, “like child’s play.” Part biography and part cultural history, the book sets the stage for a look at the work of the 19th-century, Jewish-Jamaican artist Isaac Mendes Belisario (1794–1849), about whom little hitherto was known. Exquisitely produced by a small publishing company based in Kingston, Jamaica’s capital, it offers a vivid portrait of colonial-era Caribbean Jewry in general, and of merchant-class Jews in Jamaica in particular.

Read the full story here.