Exhibition: Prague Jewish Museum "Baroque Synagogues"

Boskovice (Moravia), Czech Republic. Exhibition curator Arno Parik in restored synagogue.
Photo: Samuel Gruber (2004).

Exhibition: Jewish Museum in Prague Opens "Baroque Synagogues"

The Jewish Museum in Prague has opened the exhibition Barokní synagogy v českých zemích (Baroque synagogues in Czech Lands) curated by Arno Pařík about the. The exhibtion is at the Robert Guttmann Gallery (entrance around the corner from the Spanish Synagogue at U Staré školy 3) and will be on view until August 28th, 2011.

According to Dr. Pařík "the exhibition seeks to chart in more detail than ever before a group of lesser-known monuments that uniquely reflect the history and culture of the traditional Jewish communities in this country."

The exhibition presents a selection of the Czech Republic’s oldest synagogues, dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with particular focus on their plans, designs and decoration.
the exhibition also includes many ritual and decorative objects form the Museum collection, including a Star of David, a weather-vane, a stone alms box, a brass lavabo, and a wooden Decalogue (from Roudnice) and other items.

Jicin, Czech Republic. Restored synagogue ceiling. Photo: Samuel Gruber (2009)

Many synagogues of this period have been destroyed. In an interview published in the Museum Newsletter (2011/1) Pařík says that there were 261 synagogues from the period 1620 to 1780, but that only 63 survive. A large number were destroyed in the Holocaust. In recent years a few of the surviving buildings, such as the synagogues at Boskovice (Moravia) and Jicin (Bohemia) have been restored.

I have written about these before. The exhibition includes photograph little known buildings, and significant structures that have been virtually forgotten. Pictures of some of these buildings can be seen online. The splendid restored interiors of other Renaissance and Baroque Czech synagogues such as Kasejovice, Kolin, Holesov and Mikulov can be seen in panoramic views on the website www.synagogues360.org

According to the museum "The exhibition is intended mainly for specialists (Hebraists, Judaists, historians of art and architecture, preservationists and architects) and for members of the public (including school pupils and university students) who are interested in Jewish culture. Most of the people who see it, however, will be foreign visitors to the Jewish Museum. The show will give them an idea of the cultural wealth of the Jewish communities in the Czech Lands and of the effective care with which this heritage is now being maintained."

The museum will be publishing a leaflet with information about the exhibition in Czech and English, as well as a catalogue that focuses on selected synagogue buildings as part of the development of synagogue architecture in the Czech Lands.

USA: Former Syracuse Synagogue Opens as a Hotel

Syracuse, NY. Hotel Skyler, former Temple Adath Yeshurun. Gordon Wright, architect, 1922.

Photos: Samuel Gruber, May 2011.

USA: Former Syracuse Synagogue Opens as a "Green" Hotel
by Samuel Gruber

(ISJM) In August 2009 I wrote (and posted photos) about plans to transform the former Temple Adath Yeshurun in Syracuse, into a new "boutique" hotel. This week the hotel opened. The building is still an impressive presence on Syracuse's University Hill, though inside nothing of the old sanctuary remains. The project includes many green elements and itsi s a LEED certified building. The "greenest" element, of all, however, is the reuse of the structure. The embedded energy and labor in the old materials and construction have not gone to waste, nor to a landfill.

In antiquity synagogue was places where visitors to a community could find refuge, a meal and sometime a bed. I'm thinking, of course, of the famous Theodotus inscription found in Jerusalem:

Theodotos, son of Vettenos the priest and synagogue leader [archisynagogos], son of a synagogue leader and grandson of a synagogue leader, built the synagogue for the reading of the Torah, and studying the commandments, and as a hostel with chambers and water installations for the accommodation of those who, coming form abroad, have need of it, which [that is, the synagogue] his fathers, the elders and Simonides founded.

-- translation from Meyers, in Fine, Sacred Realm, p 9 (after Levine’s translation)

The Syracuse transformation, however, is the first I can think of where a former synagogue has been turned into a commercial hotel, though many synagogues have made into apartments and private houses.

This was a compromise solution. It left a good building and city landmark and it has made an empty site useful, and into one what will eventually pay much-needed city taxes. Any residual "holiness" of the place had long since been lost, and its Jewish identity largely forgotten since for many years the Salt City theater group which occupied the space hung a large "Jesus Christ Superstar: sigh out front. the group was promoting its annual musical production - not a religion. Still, I am sure many former congregants winced when they drove by the old building and saw this adorning the site of so community many weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Here is the article form the local paper:

Syracuse's newest hotel has grand opening
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
By Rick Moriarty/The Post-Standard
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2011/05/syracuses_newest_hotel_has_gra.html

Syracuse, N.Y. -- Syracuse’s newest hotel held its grand opening today in the former Temple Adath Yeshurun near Syracuse University. Developer Norm Swanson’s Hotel Skyler features 58 rooms on three floors at the former synagogue at 601 S. Crouse Ave.

The Skyler — named after Swanson’s 1-year-old grandson — is the developer’s third hotel. The others are the Genesee Grande, which he renovated in 2003, and the boutique Parkview Hotel, which he opened in 2005, both on East Genesee Street not far from the Skyler.

Like the other two hotels, the Skyler is close to SU and the hospitals and medical offices on University Hill. Tom Fernandez, director of marketing for Swanson, said he expects the Skyler to draw heavily from the traffic generated by those facilities.

“We feel we’re in the heart of the ‘meds and eds’ district,” he said. Standard room rates at the hotel are $199 a night.

Swanson spent $6.7 million turning the vacant building into a hotel. The work included constructing two floors that didn’t previously exist. Some of the temple’s interior architectural moldings and other features have been retained.

Fernandez said the Skyler is only the third hotel in the United States to seek platinum certification in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design from the U.S. Green Building Council. Green
design features of the hotel include a geothermal heat pump, countertops made of recycled glass, and a system that automatically turns off the lights and lowers or raises room temperatures when
guests come and go.

The hotel’s lobby features stained glass saved from the former St. John’s Church in Oswego. The hotel also features two loft-style “tree house” suites. Fifty percent of the revenues from the two suites will be donated to the nearby Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital, Fernandez said.


Though the grand opening took place today, the hotel actually opened or business on Friday.

Built in 1922, the 35,000-square-foot building housed Temple Adath until its congregation moved to DeWitt in 1968. It later housed Salt City Center for the Performing Arts.

Swanson bought the building from the city in 2007 for $352,500. The Common Council last year approved a 14-year payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement with Swanson. Under that deal, the developer could receive a 100 percent exemption from taxes on the increase in his property
assessment for three years, a 75 percent exemption in the fourth year, a 50 percent exemption the fifth year and an exemption that drops by 5 percentage points each of the next nine years.

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

Publication: Ilia Rodov on "Tower-like Torah Arks"

A tall Torah ark cabinet as represented in the Rothschild Miscellany, Italy (1450-80), now in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Photo: From Metzger, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages.

Publication: Ilia Rodov on "Tower-like Torah Arks"

Ilia Rodov has written an important and useful article on medieval Torah Arks, especially those tall tower types well-known from representations in many illuminated medieval manuscripts. The article, “Tower-like Torah Arks, the Tower of Strength and the Architecture of the Messianic Temple,” was recently published in the prestigious art historical Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, LXXIII (2010), 65-98.

Rodov's article accomplishes three tasks. First, he has inventoried the number of occurrences and described the variety of known Spanish, Italian and Ashkenazi Arks that meet a broad definition of "Tower-like Torah Arks." These include examples shown in Spanish Haggadot, such as British Library Mss 2884, where the Aron ha-Kodesh is shown as a substantial fortified architectural element; to the tall ornate Gothic-style free-standing cabinet-style Arks illustrated in Northern European manuscripts.

Florsheim Haggadah, ca 1465. Tall Torah Ark. Photo: Jewish Art, vol. 23-24.

Just bringing all these illustration together is handy. Previously, one could only find most of these illustrations in Thérèse and Mendel Metzger's (still indispensable) Jewish Life in the Middle Ages: illuminated Hebrew Manuscripts of the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Centuries (1982). Second, Rodov places these Arks in the context of other Ark designs and also, but to a lesser extent, compares them to contemporary non-liturgical and non-Jewish furniture designs (I would have liked to see more on this, especially comparisons with furniture from churches and mosques).

Cabinet style Ark from Modena, Italy, dated 1472, that resembles a rusticated tower. Paris, Musee d'art et d'histoire du Judaisme.

The real purpose of the article, however, is found in Rodov's third task - to find meaning for the use of the tower form for synagogue Arks. He reviews how an early tradition of Ark design and meaning is linked to descriptions of the movable Ark of the Covenant described in scripture. He ultimately links the tower form to well known passage of Proverbs 18, "The name of the Lord is a tower of strength (midgal oz)," which seems a reasonable association. There is much more to his discussion of the Torah Ark as a "stronghold of faith."

Tykocin, Poland. Synagogue (restored) bimah. Photo: Samuel Gruber (1990)

I am also grateful to Prof. Rodov for including in the article the identification and translation of the inscriptions form the great four-pillar bimah structure in the 18th century synagogue of Tykocin, Poland. This is a building I refer to often, but am usually so focused on the ornate - almost Rococo - style Ark (built into the wall) that i have forgotten about the significance of the inscriptions on the bimah. Here the presence of Proverbs 18 is an indication that the "tower of strength" has migrated from the place where the Torah is stored to where it is read. See this "bimah-support" structure as a "tower of strength" is natural, since it not only symbolically supports the synagogue, but actually plays an important role in the physical support of the vaults and roof. Rodov refers to the identification and reconstruction of the Tykocin inscriptions in the 1982 Polish article by A. Pakentreger in the Bulletin of the Jewish Historical Institute of Warsaw. Four inscriptions on the bimah cite biblical references to towers (Song of songs 8, Proverbs 18, Song of Songs 4, and Psalms 18).

Although I have some reservations about some minor points and conjectures in this article, these are topics that cannot be resolved and speculation is welcome. Rodov's linkage of the Ark to the rest of synagogue decorative programs and painted inscriptions is very important (and his colleague at Bar-Ilan University Bracha Yaniv is leading the way in examining the extensive wall inscriptions in Polish synagogues). The time is also right to link the manuscript and iconographic tradition to new archaeological finds, and also to renew and further the consideration of medieval Judaica to make view it in both its Jewish context, but also in its European (or north African, or Asian) cultural context.

I will add this article to the reading list for my art and architecture of the synagogue class. Surprisingly, there are relatively few articles the investigate in details the history, design and meaning of the small number of essential synagogue furnishings and decorations.

In English, I refer readers to Bezalel Narkiss, "The Heikhal, Minah, and Teivah in Sephardi Synagogues," Jewish Art, 18 (1992), 30-47, which especially explores the use of a special room for the Aron in Spanish and Sephardi synagogues.

On the bimah, and for something more contemporary, I recommend "The Architecture of the Bimah in American Synagogues: Framing the Ritual" by Lee Shai Weissbach in American Jewish History, 91: 1, (March 2003), pp. 29-51.