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.

Conference: Life and Work of the Maharal of Prague

Conference: Life and Work of the Maharal of Prague

(ISJM) The Jewish Community of Prague will host a conference dedicated to the life and work of the great thinker and rabbi, the Maharal of Prague (Judah Lowe Ben Bezalel) from September 7-9, 2009 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of the learned and legendary Rabbi and community leader.

The conference seeks to bring about a full discussion on such topics as the Prague Maharal’s role in the life of Ashkenazi Jewry at the beginning of the modern era, his position in the Jewish religious philosophy of his period, and the importance of his spiritual legacy to modern Jewish philosophy and life. This special event will be attended by internationally renowned experts across the rabbinic and academic world. The official languages of the conference will be English and Hebrew.

The following events will be held as part of the conference:

• Group visit to the Maharal’s grave
• Ceremonial opening of the conference
• Gala reception at an historical venue
• Visit to the exhibition on the Prague Maharal
• Visit to the Jewish Museum in Prague

The event is being organized in cooperation with the Department of Religious Affairs in the Diaspora (the Sochnut) and other institutions, including the Ariel University Center of Samaria, Charles University in Prague, the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic and the Jewish Museum in Prague.

For more information please visit the website at: www.maharal.name

Conference: Governments and Jewish Groups Get Ready for June Meeting in Prague on Holocaust-Era Assets

Governments and Jewish Groups Get Ready for June Conference in Prague on Holocaust-Era Assets

(ISJM) Ten years after the international conference on Holocaust-era assets held in Washington, DC, a new conference will convene in Prague in late June to assess progress on restitution issues. The conference is sponsored by the Government of the Czech Republic, in cooperation with the Documentation Centre of Property Transfers of Cultural Assets of WW II Victims, the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic, the Jewish Museum in Prague, the Terezín Memorial, the Institute of Jewish Studies at the Hussite Theological Faculty of the Charles University in Prague and the Forum 2000 Foundation.

The Prague conference scheduled for Prague on June 26-30, 2009 is intended to evaluate progress in identifying and recovering assets of Holocaust victims since the Washington Conference. Immovable property (synagogues, cemeteries, etc) is one of many categories around which the Prague conference in organized.

At present it is hard to get an accurate schedule of the conference or a list of participants. Potentially, there will be scores of delegations from countries and from NGOs. Many countries are still holding back on announcing who will be in their delegations, waiting to see what high-level dignitaries will be attending from the United States and other countries. Most likely, there will be formal and public sessions in which platitudes will be reiterated, and sound-bites recorded. There will be some lecturing by "good" countries, and some defensive posturing by "bad" countries. It will be behind the scenes that working groups of diplomats, Holocaust experts, historians, lawyers, and Holocasut victim advocates will be pressing their cases, and trying to negotiate policy.

The objectives of the conference are:

• To assess the progress made since the 1998 Washington Conference on Holocaust Era Assets in the areas of the recovery of looted art and objects of cultural, historical and religious value (according to the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art and the Vilnius Forum Declaration 2000), and in the areas of property restitution and financial compensation schemes.

• To review current practices regarding provenance research and restitution and, where needed, define new effective instruments to improve these efforts.

• To review the impact of the Stockholm Declaration of 2000 on education, remembrance and research about the Holocaust.

• To strengthen the work of the Task Force on International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research, a 26-nation body chaired by the Czech Republic in 2007-2008.

• To discuss new, innovative approaches in education, social programs and cultural initiatives related to the Holocaust and other National Socialist wrongs and to advance religious and ethnic tolerance in our societies and the world.

Herbert Block, Assistant Executive Vice President of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, a co-coordinator of the recent Bratislava Seminar, and an upcoming participant in Prague, recently published a summary of the present state of property restitution in much of Central and Eastern Europe.

Czech Republic: US First Lady Michelle Obama in Prague's Jewish Quarter

Michelle Obama, Leo Pavlat and Micheala Sidenberg at Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague; Michelle Obama at Tomb of Rabbi Loew; Michelle Obama and Prague Jewish leaders at Altneushul. Photos: Prague Jewish Museum

Michelle Obama in Prague's Old Jewish Quarter

By Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) We know that US First Lady Michelle Obama has a cousin who is a rabbi in Chicago, and is no stranger at Chicago's Temple Isaiah-KAM, located right across the street from the Obama's Hyde Park House. But now Mrs. Obama has added some history to her Jewish Studies curriculum by visiting Prague's Jewish quarter, and spending time at the Pinkas Synagogue and Altneushul, and at the Old Jewish Cemetery. Read the Prague Jewish Museum press release here.

I am a big fan of Michelle Obama, and not just because we are both Princeton alumni. I just think she smart, cool, elegant, beautiful and seems to know how to have fun, too. My admiration grew this week as Michelle took the time on the presidential European tour to visit some of the landmarks of Prague’s Jewish quarter. Her interest was probably a politically smart move, but I think her interest is real, and her understanding is deep enough to know that these sites – though very old – resonate with meaning and still carry great relevance today. Indeed, every generation can retell the story of Prague Jewish monuments and their history and learn new lessons. For the most part the Prague Jewish Museum and the Czech Jewish community have done a good job doing this. But in this recession, visitorship to the Museum has been down. I hope Mrs. Obama’s visit stirs new interest.

Congratulations to my colleagues in Prague - especially Prague Jewish Museum Director Leo Pavlat who was Michelle's guide, -but also to Chairman of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic Jiří Daníček, and Executive Director of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic Tomáš Kraus, whose hard work and dedication for almost 20 years laid the foundation for the "Czech Jewish Miracle," that has seen the revival of Jewish life, and also an amazing organizational commitment to the protection and preservation of Jewish sites throughout all of the Czech Republic (I had the pleasure of being in the Czech Republic a few weeks ago and seeing some of the newest achievements, and I will be writing about them soon).

Mrs. Obama visited the 16th-century Pinkus Synagogue built up against the old cemetery. It is an important example of the mix of Gothic and Renaissance styles, but today is mostly celebrated as an extremely effective and moving memorial to the approximately 78,000 Czech Jews sent to their deaths in the Holocaust. This monument – with the inscribed names and dates of birth and death of the victims, was first created in the 1950s as one of the earliest Holocaust memorials. Its form – the long lists of names - has been copied in many subsequent memorial monuments (including Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC), not far from the Obama’s new residence. But the names were destroyed and the memorial was closed from 1968 until the Velvet Revolution in 1989. One of the first acts of new President and former dissident Vaclav Havel was to promise the memorial’s renewal – a task carried out between 1992 and 1995. I don’t know if Mrs. Obama was told all this, but the Pinkas is now a monument to Jewish life in the Prague Ghetto, a Memorial to the Holocaust and a monument to contemporary democratic ideals. The building was damaged again in the floods that hit Prague in 2003. It was quickly restored with help of local and international donors (including the Jewish heritage Program of the World Monuments Fund).

Mrs Obama spent time in the upstairs exhibitions at the Pinkas Synagogue, where copies of artworks of the child victims of Terezin and Auschwitz are on view. I am sure that she will with her many lessons – though no doubt she is already intensely aware of them – about the preciousness of children, the madness of bigotry, and power of art.

Mrs. Obama then visited the Old Jewish cemetery. She stopped at the grave of Rabbi Loew, the MaHaRaL, the most famous gravestone in the cemetery. This year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of the Rabbi Loew, and a major exhibition about his life, work and times will open in Prague this coming August (more on this later).

I hope that Mrs. Obama was also shown the elaborate gravestone of Hendl, the wife of Jewish financier (and first Jew raised to the nobility) Jacob Bashevi, from 1628. This is the only elaborate sarcophagus style tombstone for a woman in the entire Old Jewish Cemetery. Hendl was honored (as was Michele) for being the wife of a famous leader (but she may have been honored in her own right for her learning and charitable deeds). The epitaph states in part:

“…The gracious Hendl, daughter of Ebrl Gerorim, may the memory of the just be blessed, wife of the head and noble leader of his generation, k’m’r’ Jacob, son of k’m’r Abrahamb(at)’ Sche(eba), may the memory of the just be blessed. And Jacob set up this memorial I sorrow / and all the people cried and lamented / over this noble lady, our leader / buried and hidden here / gone is her glory, gone her magnificence / as the voice of the crowds in the city of the faithful / we all follow her paths / Alas! for the pious, the model of humility / virtue, chastity and purity / she left this world as pure as when she entered it / hastening to fulfill the commandments, the lesser and the greater / and ever stood in the front rank / hastening morning and evening to prayers / and her heart was turned towards God in faith / in awe, in pious modesty, with clear speech / in the order and according to the commands of Rabbi Hemenun / commandments for a light and learning for a torch / her hand stretched out, her right hand grasping firmly / …(translation from Milada Vilimjova, The Prague Ghetto (Prague: Aventinum, 1990), English edition translated by Iris Urwin, 1993), p. 178.

Perhaps Mrs. Obama was also shown the grave of Rivka, daughter of Meir Tikotin, who died in the early 1600s. She is known as the first Jewish woman author in Prague. Her works (known only in fragments) on infant and child care, and her handbook for midwives and young mothers, might resonate with Michelle in her role as “First Mom”

Mrs Obama ended her visit to the Jewish Quarter with a visit and presentation ceremony at the Altneushul, the Jewish treasure of Prague. Needless to say, the group photo was taken in the main sanctuary, with Czech Jewish leaders lined up along the north wall. As this was a visit, it was OK for Mrs. Obama to view the space, though of course no woman can enter here for prayers. I wonder if Michelle was shown the little “listening window” visible in the photo to the upper left.. It’s the window from the women’s annex.

There are many inscriptions on the walls of the Altneushul, mostly abbreviations of well known passage from scripture. I hope Mrs. Obama was also shown the abbreviation recalling Psalm 34:15: “Shun evil and do good.” This may already be the Obamas’ motto. If not, it should be.

Restitution: Jewish Museum of Prague to Return Art Collection

Restitution: Jewish Museum of Prague to Return Art Collection

The Associated Press has reported that the Jewish Museum of Prague is ready to return to relatives an art collection of 32 paintings that belonged to Emil Freund, a Jewish lawyer from Prague he died in the Lodz Ghetto in 1942. The contested collection includes works by Signac, Derain and Utrillo. How the collection will be returned and when and where items can be sold remains unclear. Czech law requires that at least some of the most notable works remain in the Czech Republic. The claimants would like the right to sell works abroad.

Read the article in the International Herald Tribune here.