Cemeteries: Who Reads Stones?

One the most important skills to have in the field of Jewish heritage research is the ability to read and understand inscriptions, especially on gravestones. It is not enough to know Hebrew, one must be familiar with different types of Hebrew usage in different places at different times, and know scores of abbreviations and recognize direct quotes, paraphrases of and allusions to scriptural passages. I can usually tell you what kind of stone it is, and whether it will stand or fall; and I'm familiar with most of the iconography one finds on gravestones and can usually tell you the name and sometimes death date of the deceased; but I can't decipher epitaphs and happily rely on those who can.

One of those people is Madaleine Isenberg, and apparently the demand for reading and tranlating Hebrew gravestones is so great that she has been making a career out of it. A recent "On Language" column in the Forward by Philologos considers her profession, and what it should be called. Isenberg calls herself a "stelaeglyphologist," - you can read why. Philologos prefers something a little more direct like "tombstone specialist." Ms. Isenberg is really what archaeologists have long called an "epigrapher."

I don't really care - to paraphrase my grandmother who used say "I don't care what you call me, as long as you call me in time for dinner," I say, "I don't care what the stone inscription reader is called, only that the translation is correct."

The column is a fun read, here it is.

Still, I'll add one note, and send my two cents to Philologos. I never call Jewish matzevot "tombstones." I prefer the Hebrew term, or "gravestone." Why? Well, in most Jewish burials and Jewish cemeteries tombs are avoided, and Jews are simply placed in the ground in simple grave - wrapped in tallit or shroud, or placed in a simple wood box. Tombs suggest stuctures - like those of pharoahs and kings - something most Jews have avoided at most times. Even those elaborate structures one often finds in 19th-century Jewish cemeteries are not really tombs. The bodies are not housed within. They are buried in the ground like all the others, and those "tombs" are really monuments - just fancier matzevot.

USA: Baytown, Texas Celebrates Synagogue Restoration

Baytown, Texas. K'nesseth Israel. Lenard Gebart, arch. (1930). Exterior.

USA: Baytown, Texas Celebrates Synagogue Restoration
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) Today (March 27, 2011), residents of Baytown, Texas are celebrating the restoration of their eighty-year old synagogue - Congregation K'nesseth Israel. The building was designed by Houston architect Lenard Gabert in 1930, and after suffering limited damage in the destructive Hurricane Ike of 2008, has now been repaired and restored. The community center was much more heavily damaged by the storm, and that, too, has been repaired and renamed the Jewish Community Center.

Baytown resulted as a consolidation of Goose Creek, Pelly and Baytown in 1948. It is located at the eastern end of Harris County, 22 miles from Houston, and Jews first settled in Goose Creek after 1915 mostly to provide retail and commercial services to the booming oil and gas facilities. This is hardly a unique situation in the Jewish world. Jewish merchants flocked to Gold rush towns in the 19th century, and they involved themselves in service industires for the oil and gas business in the 20th. I'm reminded of how Jewish retailers moved to Drohobych (now Ukraine), when oil was discovered there in the mid-19th century. My grandfather Joseph Moskowitz was a surveyor the oil companies, especially in the interwar period.

My uncles Mose and Joe Sumner moved to Goose Creek in 1922 from Brenham, Texas and opened a store. Until his death in 1966 Mose was a stalwart of the congregation in Goose Creek, which he helped found in the early 1920s.

Architect Gabert was among the first successful Jewish architects in Texas and K'nesseth Israel was the first of several synagogues he designed. In the 1950s he designed Temple Israel in Schulenberg and in 1957 Shearith Israel in Wharton. The brick building has been listed as a Texas Historical Landmark since 1992. Gabert's designed many highly regarded Art Deco buildings in the Houston area.

Read more about the history of the K'nesseth Israel and its survival here.

K'neseseth Israel has been described as conveying "a hint of the exotic." This is mostly the effect of the yellow-brick facade that rises to an arched roof line without break, fully representing the barrel vault roof. This design is, in fact, a fairly common one for synagogues in the late 1920s. Earlier variants can be seen in B'nai Jeshurun in New York City (1918) and the Breed Street Shul in Los Angeles (1923). Of these K'nesseth Israel is by far the simplest and most streamlined -pointing the way to modernist synagogues of the post-World War II period (and I can't recall another straight-forward barrel vaulted ceiling in an American synagogue until Louis Goodman's decidedly retro-Temple Israel in Greenfield, Massachusetts completed in 1991.

The interior is more traditional. The Ark is of a Palladian design, not uncommon in many Neo-Classical synagogues of the previous three decades.

Baytown, Texas. K'nesseth Israel. Lenard Gebart, arch (1930). Interior.

Los Angeles, California. Breed Street Shul, Abram Edelman, arch. (1923). The flat brick facade with a large arched roof line is an antecedent for Baytown. Photo: Samuel Gruber.

Greenfield , Massachusetts. Temple Israel, Louis Goodman, arch. (1991). The New England meeting hall style synagogue has an impressive and elegant wooden barrel vault ceiling. Photo: Paul Rocheleau.

For more on Baytown's Jewish history see Hollace Ava Weiner and Lauraine Miller, "Little Synagogues Across Texas," in Lone Stars of David: The Jewish of Texas (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis Univ. Press, 2007), 200-202.

Belarus: Students Help Clean Jewish Cemeteries

Ivenetz, Belarus. Remains of Jewish Cemetery in 2003. Photo provided by Jewish Heritage Research Group in Belarus

Belarus: Students Help Clean Jewish Cemeteries
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) I am a little late posting a link Judith Matloff's December article about the desperate need for care for abandoned Jewish cemeteries in Belarus from The Forward, but the situation has hardly changed in two months. I've written about the dire situation in Belarus before especially regarding former synagogues. The situation with cemeteries is also serious, though is some ways more under control. The great damage to most Jewish cemeteries in Belarus was done in the past, and (most of) those cemeteries that were mostly likely to be destroyed during the Soviet period have been already been built over and bulldozed. But throughout the country there remain scores of rural cemeteries whose main enemy at the moment is time and weather, both of which have been taking their toll for years.

Due in part to their location and in part due to the still slow economy in autocratic Belarus, these places are neglected, but not are not under siege. In some ways the authoritarian system in Belarus adds some level of protection - if no resources. There is less individual entrepreneurship or land speculation, or local governmental initiative in Belarus that could threaten these places than was the case elsewhere in Central Europe, and is still true in Ukraine.

Politically, this is a good time to encourage intervention to clean, fence and otherwise protect the remaining Jewish cemeteries. But economically it is a bad time to find money for the in Belarus - and the precisely because of politics most potential foreign philanthropists and investors are understandably reluctant to send money. The result is that with some encouragement from small underfunded American and European organizations, the the initial enthusiasm of American Hillel students, the small Jewish community in Belarus has begun to work on their own to protect the Jewish heritage. They have the willingness, and increasingly the hands of young people to carry out some of the needed work. But they still lack needed funds for essential skilled work and supplies.

Read Judith's piece. Like most stories about recovering Jewish heritage in Eastern Europe it is poignant, with a ray of hope - the hope here is not that this is just a group of American college kids visiting for a few weeks to cut cemetery weeds (though there is nothing wrong with this) - but that it is home-grown effort. If there are individuals, organizations or congregations who would like to contribute to Jewish efforts in Belarus to save remnants of the past - as a way of building community identity today - contact me. I'll put you in touch with people in Minsk and elsewhere doing good work for little money.

With Student Help, Belarus Rescues Its Shtetl Graves

By Judith Matloff

Published November 24, 2010, issue of December 03, 2010.

Read more: http://www.forward.com/articles/133423/#ixzz1EgkHGROb

Gomel, Belarus — Somewhere beneath the birch trees lies the Jewish cemetery of Senno. The graves have been there for 350 years, but the markers are so sunken into the earth that they look like random stones. Moss covers the Hebrew letters, and few people know about the site, which is hidden from the road by the foliage. The only visitors are mosquitoes.

The scene repeats itself across the timeless, pristine landscape of Belarus. At least 70 shtetl graveyards lie forgotten, overgrown by pasture land and forests. No one has recited Kaddish at these spots since the Nazi invasion of Belarus in 1941. German troops killed nine out of 10 Jews in the country, and shtetl cemeteries deteriorated because of the absence of returnees after the war. The subsequent ban on worship by the Soviets discouraged interments in these sacred burial grounds.

Read more: http://www.forward.com/articles/133423/#ixzz1Egjxr2Qr

Kestenbaum & Company Auction Feb 24th

Kestenbaum & Company is presenting their 50th Judaica auction since 1996 - and it features a wealth and variety of books, manuscripts, artworks and ritual objects. Browse the catalog...Buy something for your favorite Jewish Museum of University Library!

Click here for a summary of the various collection offered.

Click Here to View the Entire Auction Catalogue

Pre-Auction Exhibition:

Sunday, 20th February - 12:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Monday, 21st February - 10:00 am - 6:00 pm

Tuesday, 22nd February - 10:00 am - 6:00 pm

Wednesday 23rd February - 10:00 am - 6:00 pm

No viewing on day of sale

Kestenbaum and Company
242 West 30th Street, 12th Floor
New York, NY 10001
Tel: (212) 366-1197
Fax: (212) 366-1368
E-mail: Kestenbook@aol.com
www.Kestenbaum.net