Publication: The Turei Zahav (Golden Rose) Synagogue in L'viv

Publication: The Turei Zahav (Golden Rose) Synagogue in L'viv

L'viv, Ukraine. Golden Rose Synagogue ruin. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2008).

Ukraine-born, L'viv-trained and Israeli-based architectural historian Sergey R. Kravtsov, has been studying the history and architecture of Golden Rose Synagogue, destroyed in the Second Wold War and surviving as a ruin, for at least a decade.  He has now produced a handy history of the building based on a variety of source materials and recent archaeological excavations that must be the starting point for any consideration of its future conservation, rebuilding and use -- for religious, commemorative or cultural purpose.

Sergey R. Kravtsov,   Di Gildene Royze. The Turei Zahav Synagogue in L’viv (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2011) Kleine Schriften der Bet Tfila – Forschungsstelle für jüdische Architektur in Europa, herausgegeben von Aliza Cohen-Mushlin und Harmen H. Thies. Band 3. ISBN 978-3-86568-138-6 

L'viv, Ukraine. Golden Rose Synagogue.  Commemorative plaque at synagogue ruin. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2008).

L'viv, Ukraine. Golden Rose Synagogue ruin.  Sergey Kravtsov discussing the building's history and architecture. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2008).

    

The book is the newest publication on historic synagogue architecture from Bet Tefila - Research Unit for Jewish architecture in Europe.  Bet Tefila is a joint effort of the Technische Universität Braunschweig and the Center for Jewish Art, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

The future treatment of the ruins of the Turei Zahav Synagogue in L'viv, Ukraine  (Lemberg, Lvov) is still being debated.  For the last three years at least the historic synagogue has been a focal point for all discussions of commemoration, preservation, and development in the Old Jewish Quarter of the historic, once multi-ethnic,  Renaissance planned city.  The discussion is an important one for the future of the building, for the memory of a lost population and for the direction this beautiful city will take in coming years.  Will it be a welcoming city of art and culture on the border between east and west?  Or, will it be an insular, xenophobic, and nationalist center.  In truth, the future L'viv will probably be a combination of both, and much will depend on broad political and economic trends in Ukraine and Europe as on rational or emotional appeals. But the ground work has been laid since 2008 for a progressive and inclusive recognition of the city's diverse and complex past, and how this past can serve present and future needs.

L'viv, Ukraine. Golden Rose Commemorative plaque at synagogue ruin. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2008).

L'viv, Ukraine. Golden Rose Synagogue ruin. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2008).

Kravtsov's well-illustrated account shows the synagogue in the city maps, architectural drawings, photographs, and numerous works of art depicting the structure during particular stages of its history. As much as possible, computer-aided reconstructions recreate the synagogue in its original state.

Kosovo: Can New Treaty Stop Continued Deterioration of "New" Jewish Cemetery of Pristina?

Pristina, Kosovo. "New" Jewish Cemetery. Photos: Ivan Ceresnjes (2012)

Kosovo:  Can New Treaty Stop Continued Deterioration of "New" Jewish Cemetery of Pristina?
by Samuel D. Gruber 

(ISJM)  The fate of long-neglected Jewish sites in the newly independent small and poor country of Kosovo has recently received some attention.  On December 14, 2011, U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton  and Kosovo’s President Atifete Jahjaga signed the Agreement on the Protection and Preservation of Certain Cultural Properties between the U.S. and Kosovo in Washington, D.C. The agreement, one of many originated over the past two decades by the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, sets commitments and procedures for each side to protect cultural heritage sites, especially of religious and ethnic minorities.  In the past two decades the Commission has given special attention to the documentation and protection of Jewish and Holocaust-related sites mostly through sponsoring site surveys and encouraging U.S. donors to support conservation, restoration and commemoration projects.

According to Secretary Clinton "this is a really important agreement that we are signing today, because the United States has a special interest in helping to preserve cultural heritage sites in countries around the world, because the vast majority of Americans are immigrants and descendents of immigrants. So the work of this commission is of great importance to us."  You can read all of Secretary Clinton's remarks here.

Pristina, Kosovo. "New" Jewish Cemetery. Examples of deteriorated gravestones. Photos: Ivan Ceresnjes, (2012).

Ivan Ceresnjes, former head of the Bosnia Jewish Community and now a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has been visiting Kosovo regularly for the past decade and reporting on the continued deterioration of the Jewish sites.  Ceresnjes, who has organized surveys of Jewish sites of Bosnia and Serbia for the U.S. Commission is particularly concerned about the fate of the "New" Jewish cemetery in the capital city Pristina.  He feels this would an ideal project for international protection and conservation in the wake of the new treaty.

This month (January 2012) he made his fifth visit since 2002  to  Pristina's  "New" Jewish cemetery on Dragodan, next to Serbian Orthodox cemetery.  From Kosovo, Ceresnjes emailed the International Survey of Jewish Monuments (ISJM) these pictures:



He wrote: "Last time, a year ago ... I tried to see what is going on with the New Cemetery since I have seen from afar the huge infrastructural works being held around it but it was impossible to approach due to flooding of the area of both cemeteries (Jewish and Serbian) with sewage.  [Now] in light of recent signing of the agreement between government of USA and present government of Kosovo I am just informing all of you about the sad reality on the ground - the quick and merciless destruction and disappearance of the heritage of one of the smallest and maybe the most endangered minority in Kosovo - the Jewish one."

Pristina, Kosovo. "New" Jewish Cemetery. Photo: Ivan Ceresnjes (2012)

In addition to the continuing process of destruction by neglect at the "New cemetery and other sites, their was been vandalism against Jewish sites, too.   Just last month, in December, 2011shortly before the cultural heritage treaty was signed in Washington, the Old Jewish Cemetery in Pristina, which had been cleaned last June by a group of students from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and their peers from the American University in Kosovo was vandalized and swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans were spray painted on old gravestones.

In 2008, Ceresnjes wrote at length about the difficulty of protecting Jewish hertiage sites - and memory of Jewish history - in the former Yugoslavia. (The Destruction of the Memory of Jewish Presence in Eastern Europe: A Case Study: Former Yugoslavia, 2008):  Of Kosovo he wrote: "there were about 500 Jews before the Second World War, of whom 250 were handed over to the Germans by Kosovar Albanians. There were also a few examples where Kosovars killed Jews, and there was also a Kosovar SS unit. About twenty righteous gentiles helped the other 250 Jews escape to Albania where the Jews were protected.  After the war, in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, a huge memorial was erected for all victims of Nazism including the partisans and the Jews. When the Serbian-Albanian fighting broke out in Kosovo in 1999, almost all names were removed, also including most of the Albanians who were considered communists. Kosovo is such a tightly knit society that everyone knows who was or wasn't a communist." 

Publication: Images: A Journal of Jewish Art and Visual Culture, 5

Publication: Images: A Journal of Jewish Art and Visual Culture, 5

The fifth volume of the journal of Images: A Journal of Jewish Art and Visual Culture (2011) is published and is available online and in print at:
http://www.brill.nl/images

The special issue focuses on the Eruv, with multiple articles addressing the history, forms and contemporary expression of the eruv and related issues of defining Jewish, and especially Orthodox, urban space.

Here is the Table of Contents:

Introduction: The Poetics of the Eruv
Margaret Olin

Diaspora Cartography: On the Rabbinic Background of Contemporary Ritual Eruv Practice
Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert

Imaginary Space Meets Actual Space in Thirteenth-Century Cologne: Eliezer Ben Joel and the Eruv
Micha J. Perry

Presumptive Eruv and the Percolation Transition
Robert Savit

Portfolio; The Poetics of the Eruv
Ben Schachter, Ruth Schreiber, Mel Alexenberg, Elliott Malkin, Ellis Nadler, Jean-Mathis Fritsch,
Jesse M. Kahn, Suzanne Silver, Alan Cohen, Sophie Calle, Daniel Bauer, and Avner Bar Hama

PRIMARY SOURCE
All Rise
Helene Aylon

REVIEWS
Jerilynn D. Dodds, Mara Rosa Menocal, and Abigail Krasner Balbale,
The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Making of Castile.
Reviewed by Leslie Ann Blacksberg

The Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Wing for Jewish Art and Life, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
Reviewed by Sara Offenberg

Yigal Zalmona, 100 Years of Israeli Art. Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 2010 [Hebrew].
Reviewed by David Sperber

A Land and Its Dolls: Israeli Souvenirs and National Identity, Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv, 2011. Catalog edited by Shelly Shenhav-Keller and Haim.
Reviewed by Maya Balakirsky Katz

Crossroads: Jewish Artists during the Holocaust, National Museum of Art of Romania.
Reviewed by Dana Mihilescu

The Promise. The Land. Jewish-Israeli Artists in Relation to Politics and Society. O.K. Center for Contemporary Art Upper Austria, Linz, 2003. Catalog edited by Thomas Edlinger.
Reviewed by Diana Popescu

Gershom Scholem, Magen David: Toldotov shel Semel (The Star of David:
History of a Symbol), ed. A. Shapira, tr. and eds. G. Hazan-Rokem [Hebrew].
Reviewed by Steven Fine

Rose-Carol Washton Long, Matthew Baigell, and Milly Heyd, ed., Jewish Dimensions in Modern Visual Culture.
Reviewed by Peter Chametzky

Melissa Muller and Monika Tatzkow, Lost Lives, Lost Art: Jewish Collectors, Nazi Art Theft, and the Quest for Justice; Peter C. Sutton, Reclaimed: Paintings from the Collection of Jacques Goudstikker.
Reviewed by Menachem Wecker

Vincent Brook, Driven to Darkness: Jewish Directors and the Rise of Film Noir.
Reviewed by Sonja L. Mekel

Cynthia Young, ed. The Mexican Suitcase; Richard Whelan, This is War! Robert Capa at Work; Richard Whelan, Robert Capa: The Definitive Collection.
Reviewed by Nick Underwood

Jewish Heritage Europe: Retooled, Redesigned and Relaunched

Jewish Heritage Europe Retooled, Redesigned and Relaunched

Jewish-Heritage-Europe.eu, an ambitious website intended to collate new and information about Jewish historic, religious and cultural sites in Europe funded by the Rothschild Foundation and active especially in 2006-2007, has been entirely redesigned and updated. The version of the site which is much more user friendly and contains more up-to-date information and news was given a "soft-launch" in Prague in December.

The new site will include most of the old site detailed information on Jewish sites in European countries, but will update and expand this information, include many more photos, and link this material to news items, new publications and broader topics ad issues relevant to the study, preservation, protection and presentation of Jewish sites.

According to new home page:

"Jewish Heritage Europe is a comprehensive web site aimed at facilitating communication and information exchange regarding projects, initiatives and other developments concerning Jewish heritage and Jewish heritage sites: restoration, funding, ongoing projects, best-practices, advisory services and more. We hope to foster contacts among Jewish communities, private individuals or bodies, foundations, state and civic organizations, monuments protection authorities and other stakeholders and interested parties.

As a project of the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe, our goal is for JHE to be a clearing house for a variety of such information and a go-to online resource for people involved or interested in Jewish heritage to find addresses, contacts and news. You can also find us on Facebook and follow our Twitter feed."

To contribute information to Jewish-Heritage-Europe.eu write here.