Poland: New Director at Krakow's Galicia Jewish Museum

Krakow, Poland. Galicia Jewish Museum. All photos Samuel D. Gruber, 2008.

Poland: New Director at Krakow's Galicia Jewish Museum

The Galicia Jewish Museum founded in April 2004 in Krakow's Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, has appointed a new director, Kazimierz-born Jakub Nowakowski. Nowakowski has worked at the museum since 2005, most recently as its education direction. The museum is located in a former mill building (see photo above) on the edge of Kazimierz, the former suburb to Krakow's Old Town where Jews were permitted to live, and where a vibrant Jewish culture developed over a period of five centuries. The mission of the museum is "to challenge the stereotypes and misconceptions typically associated with the Jewish past in Poland and to educate both Poles and Jews about their own histories, whilst encouraging them to think about the future."

Nowakowski will replace Kate Craddy who has returned to England, to take up an appointment at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham. Craddy herself became director after the death in 2007 of the museum's founder, the British photographer Chris Schwarz. The museum's core exhibition is formed by Chris's photographs of Jewish heritage sites, taken mainly in the 1990s -- they also form the basis for the book Recovering Traces of Memory, with text by Jonathan Webber.
I congratulate Kate on all she has achieved at the museum, and wish Jakub all the best in his new position.

Nowakowski has an MA in History from the Department of Jewish Studies at the Jagiellonian University, as well as a postgraduate diploma in Management and Marketing from the Kraków School of Economics and Computer Science. He also holds a Tour Leader’s License from the City of Kraków.

In addition to its permanent photographic exhibition, the museum hosts traveling exhibitions about history and art, and also has one of Poland's best Jewish book stores and gift shops, and a hospitable cafe that provides a good rest and meeting place in Kazimierz. My family was pleased to donate one of my mother's (Shirley Moskowitz) monoprints from her Polish synagogue series to the museum in 2009, based on her visits to ruined synagogues in 1993. The wntire series had previously been exhibited at the museum.

The Galicia Jewish Museum employs over 20 full- and part-time staff, in Museum Operations; Education and Research; Projects and Publications; External Relations and Communications; and Finances and Administration. New Museum Director Nowakowski is supported by an active Board of Directors in Poland and a Board of Trustees in the UK, led by Chairman Prof. Jonathan Webber (UNESCO Chair of Jewish and Interfaith Studies, University of Birmingham).

Ruth Ellen Gruber Looks at Contemporary Jewish Cafe Culture in Krakow and Budapest

Ruth Ellen Gruber Looks at Contemporary Jewish Cafe Culture in Krakow and Budapest

by Samuel D. Gruber

In my line of work I hear many of the same remarks over and over. Two common ones are "Jewish culture (or Yiddishkeit) isn't just about synagogues and cemeteries," and "Why care about old monuments where there is no Jewish life." There are many variants on these remarks - and depending on the place, time and my mood (optimistic or frustrated) my replies vary a lot.

My sister and colleague Ruth Ellen Gruber spends much more time in Central and Eastern Europe than I do (she lives part-time in Budapest), so she gets asked these questions more frequently. In several of her articles in recent months she's given some sense of what she sees in non-synagogue/cemetery contemporary Jewish life in two of the liveliest of the region's Jewish cultural centers. These articles are view from the cafes (which for many European Jews are still considered quintessential Jewish institutions) of Krakow and Budapest.

Though the articles are not about the presence, protection or preservation of Jewish monuments per se, it is clear that the presence of the tangible pieces of past Jewish culture - religious and secular - are essential components for defining contemporary Jewish identity and ensuring new developments and creativity in contemporary Jewish life by Jews - and appreciation for Jewish culture by people of other religions and faiths and of non-believers. The physical remains create something recognizable as a Jewish space, and the lives led there are free to develop (or not) some version, new or nostalgic) or Jewish culture.

One cannot predict the cultural results of any effort to save of piece of the past. But one can - with some certainty - predict that some things will not develop - if no effort to remember and preserve the past - including its physical remnants - are made. The preservationists active in the 1990s in Krakow's Kazimierz and Budapest's Seventh District created hte canvas upon which new Jewish activities and interactions now take place.

Ruth's most recently article is from Krakow in Moment Magazine (Jan/Feb 2010):

Scenes from a Krakow Cafe

"It's a sunny morning in early July, and I'm having breakfast at an outdoor cafe table in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter of Krakow. I have been sitting at cafes in and around Szeroka Street, the main square of Kazimierz, for nearly 20 years, watching the paradoxical Jewish components of post-communist Poland unfold, and Kazimierz itself evolve from a deserted district of decrepit buildings—some with grooves on their doorposts from missing mezuzahs—into one of Europe's premier Jewish tourist attractions, a fashionable boom town of Jewish-style cafes, trendy pubs, kitschy souvenirs and nostalgic shtetl chic...."

click here to read full story

In December, Ruth had stories in the International Herald Tribune and online New York Times and in Hadassah Magaziune about celebrating Hanukah in Budapest's historic Jewish Seventh District.

A Nod to Budapest’s Future in a Grass-Roots Celebration of Its Past

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Published: December 8, 2009

Night and Day in Jewish Time

by Ruth Ellen Gruber

Hadassah Magazine (December 2009/January 2010 Vol. 91 No. 3)

"With a new wave of cultural hot spots, dance clubs and restaurants catering to them—not to mention the growing numbers of spiritual and religious venues created to assist with questions of faith and identity—for young Jews in Budapest these may be the best days of their lives."

Poland: Time for Krakow Jewish Festival

Krakow, Poland. Top: Tempel Synagogue interior. Bottom: Matzevah of Moses Isserles (Remu).
Photos: Samuel D. Gruber 1996, 2008).

Poland: Time for Krakow Jewish Festival
by Samuel D. Gruber

The 19th Annual Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow will be held form June 27th to July 5th, 2009. The full program can be consulted here.

Over the past twenty years Ruth Ellen Gruber has written a lot about the annual Krakow Jewish Festival. On her blog, she looks ahead to this festival. The festival has grown, evolved, and matured in two decades. Growing from what was first described as an event "where Poles dressed up as Jews to entertain German tourists," the Festival has developed in to one of the most vibrant and popular showcases of Polish and International Jewish culture in Europe. Jews from Poland, surrounding countries, Israel and America have made the Festival a regular destination; and thousands of non-Jews are exposed every year to new, exciting, engaging aspects of Jewish culture. So may still perpetuate stereotypes, but most break them, but showing Jewish culture to both traditional and contemporary.

Ruth writes that the "articles are beginning to appear in newspapers and online....click here for one in the Jerusalem Post. According to the Festival's web site, the Festival recently took first place in a survey on what is Krakow's best product for tourists."

Besides being a active week for Jewish music, dance, art, lectures and happy schmoozing, the Festival is one of the best times to see Krakow's historic - and mostly restored - synagogues and other Jewish sites. Concerts are held in the 19th-century Tempel and other synagogues. There are regular tours of the synagogues, and my good friend Rabbi Edgar Gluck, Chief Rabbi of Galicia will give a tour of the Remu Synagogue Cemetery on July 1st.

Rabbi Edgar Gluck at Jewish Cemetery, Belz, Ukraine. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2006

Each year the Festival is bigger and bigger, so if you are planning on going, you should book your accommodation now.

Poland: Krakow's Henryk Halkowski Dies of Heart Attack at 58

Henryk at the Kupa Synagogue, October 2008. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber

Poland: Krakow's Henryk Halkowski Dies of Heart Attack at 58

Henryk Halkowski, the heart and soul of Jewish Krakow, died suddenly of a heart attack in Krakow the night January 1-2. Henryk was full of history, opinions and stories. Among his projects at the time of his death is a volume of translation and commentary of Rabbi Nachman's Stories.

I first met Henry in 1991 or 1992, when I was just beginning the Tempel Synagogue restoration project for the World Monuments Fund, and he introduced me to Jewish Krakow. I last saw him only two months ago. It had been many years since our last visit, but we picked up immediately...almost in mid-sentence from before.

Many people will remember Henryk for a long time to come, and they will hear his voice and his laugh, even when he is gone, as if he is picking up the conversation in mid-sentence.

My sister Ruth know Henryk very well, and she will be writing something about him soon.

Poland: Impressions of Krakow's Kupa Synagogue

Poland: Impressions of Krakow's Kupa Synagogue
By Samuel D. Gruber




(ISJM) Not long ago I posted an historic photo of the Ark wall of the synagogue of Zhovkva (Ukraine) which showed an elaborate painting (c 1920) of Jerusalem. The image is interesting for many reasons, but I just want to point out the juxtaposition of the descriptive landscape (possibly derived from a postcard or Bonfils photo) and the symbolic elements of the ancient Temple, also represented near the Ark. The contrast demonstrates the long history of invoking the ancient Temple and Jerusalem in the synagogue, but also a shift in emphasis that began in the late 19th century and accelerated in the 20th, along with the spread of tourism and Zionism. When you start looking you’ll see all sorts of references to the temple, Jerusalem and Eretz Israel in synagogues. Some of symbolic, some are architectural, some are textual and some are representational. But after 1900 representational views become more common.
 
Some very vivid views of the Holy Land painted in 1929-30 in the Kupa Synagogue (see photos) in Krakow were restored a few years ago, and I had the opportunity to see them on my recent visit to Krakow a month ago (I want to thank my old friend Henry Halkowski for making it easy for me enter on short notice). The “restored” synagogue is difficult to understand since elements from different phases of its existence now co-exist, and because the essential elements that make a synagogue (bimah, seats, etc) are gone. The Kupa was seriously damaged during the German occupation in World War II. It was restored ca. 2000 and now serves as a lecture, concert and exhibition hall for community events and also can be rented for special occasions.

Located on a plot between Warszauera Street and Miadowa Street, the building is adjacent to the old walls of Kazimierz. It is thought that the synagogue name derives from the Hebrew world for "donation box" and that the synagogue was probably funded by donations. The Kupa was also known as the "Hospital" and "needy" synagogue because it cooperated with the Jewish hospitals and with the Jewish poorhouse.

Founded in 1643, the Kupa has been remodeled many times. The remains of the Baroque Ark can still be seen, but most other aspects of the interior date from the 19th and early 20th centuries, including unusual Gothic arches in the women's gallery. The two-story annex was added with entrance hall and washrooms in 1830-1834 and the western wing was built in the 1860s. The synagogue was connected to the adjoining building at the end of the 19th century. These annex spaces now serve the Jewish community as guest rooms.

There is much to see in the small space, and I only a short time. Four elements are worth noting here, especially since they relate to others items I have posted, or about which I plan to write.

1. First, on the south wall under the women’s gallery , the conservators have revealed part of a large wall painting of the lower part of a Menorah, flanked by painted ewers, signs of the Levites. Again, we have the Temple reference, but here it is not near the Ark. Prof. Bracha Yaniv of Bar Ilan University, an expert on Krakow Synagogue wall decorations, is writing about this image, and she points out that the Menorah is in exactly the right place in the synagogue, against the south wall just as it was in the Tabernacle (Exodus 25:35: Put the table outside the paroches, and the menorah opposite the table, toward the southern side of the mishkan. The table should be placed on the northern side). So actually this Tabernacle/Temple reference is stronger and more explicit than those synagogues which scatter images of Temple and festival implements along the East wall.

2. A second decorative element that interests me a lot is the painting around the Ark, which is a large and impressive Baroque construction. On the wall behind the projecting stone Ark is painted a large red curtain, drawn apart just above the apex of the Ark. Of course this too, can have Temple associations, since a curtain in the Temple hung before the entrance of the Holy of Holies. Here, though, the curtain is hung behind the Ark, and it is open. What does it mean? Is it an earthly curtain, intended to create the illusion of greater synagogue space? Is it a symbolic curtain, representing either Temple or perhaps the revelation of the Torah? Or perhaps is it a curtain allowing a glimpse from this world into another? It could be all these things, or none. I’m not going to decide. But since I’m looking I am seeing these curtains almost everywhere - and they are one of the favorite European (or Polish) synagogue decorative devices carried over by immigrant artists from the old world to the new. I'm still looking for some contemporary user - a rabbi or congregant - who commented on their position and use.

3. Another interesting feature of the Kupa Synagogue is a dedicatory inscription set into the introdos of the window just south of the Ark. This inscription in high relief (see photo) refers to the Society of Cohens and Levites in Krakow that donated the window in 1647. According to Eli Valley, the text reads: "This window was donated to the synagogue by the Holy Society of Cohens and Levites for the glory of God and the glory of the synagogue, for its enlightenment." The text then quotes Numbers 6:25-26, "May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you! May the Lord lift up His countenance unto you and grant you peace." The letters highlighted indicate the Hebrew year 5407 (1647). I think this inscription is a very important one as it is an early textual source in which the functional role of the window is linked to God's light (his shining face), and a general sense of enlightenment beyond the strictly physical sensation. Prof. Yaniv tells me of a very different window inscription in the Shakh (after Shabtai ben Meir ha-Kohen, known as Shakh), Synagogue in Holesov, Moravia (Czech Republic). At Holesov, the patrons and painters employed an explicit biblical text that mentioned the Temple's windows (I Kings 6:4 וַיַּעַשׂ לַבָּיִת, חַלּוֹנֵי שְׁקֻפִים אֲטוּמִים / And for the house he made windows broad within, and narrow without), and inscribed this above the windows of the synagogue.

4. Most of the painted decorations - especially those on the ceiling - date from either the late 1920s or 1930s. These depict sites in the Holy Land: Hebron, Tiberias, Jerusalem's Jaffa Gate, The Western Wall, Haifa, the terebinths (trees) of Mamre, the Flood, and the Temple Mount. The inclusion of these suggests a Zionist program, as I hinted above. The political and social situation for Jews was getting pretty bad in Poland in 1930. The Holy Land – as a spiritual and an actual retreat probably looked pretty good.

According to the Center for Jewish Art: "There are also Biblical scenes and illustrations to verses in Psalms, such as the painting showing people standing by the rivers of Babylon (Psalms 137:1-3), or musical instruments (Psalms 150:3-6). Another painting depicts Noah's ark including the figure of Noah – quite unusual since the use of human images was very rare in Jewish art. The signs of the Zodiac are painted over the women's gallery. The artist, although unidentified, was clearly professional.”

About the Restoration / Renewal

 I did not see these wall paintings before they were restored, so I cannot say how much of the work is original and how much is new painting. A comparison with published (black and white) photos from before the restoration suggest there is a lot of new work, including substantial new painting of scene or over painting of the earlier work. I have mixed feeling about this type of restoration (not conservation). On the one hand in continues (perhaps unwittingly) an old synagogue tradition of renewing wall painting by simply over painting earlier work, but often maintaining the basis of the earlier design. In some American synagogues where paint tests have been carried out as many as 2 dozen layers of paint have been found in buildings hardly more than a century old. Even in the Kupa, the older photos sow the patterns of an earlier design showing through some of the 1920s scenes. Still, with the Kupa (and with other synagogues in Poland, Ukraine and elsewhere) all normal traditions and patterns of maintenance have been broken. What remains of the pre-War years – even when in less than perfect condition takes of new meaning and added value. These are works of artist who quite likely met their deaths in the Holocaust. These are tangible remnants of a lost culture. Careful decisions need to be made about how to maintain them. Sometimes decaying plaster or flaking paint requires major new work. But more often it requires more serious thinking about what to preserve and why. The new work at Kupa is bright and vivid, perhaps as it was when first painted. A great deal of the history of the place, however is lost.

Jewish Heritage Signage: Lviv and Krakow, A Tale of Two Cities

Jewish Heritage Signage: Lviv and Krakow, a Tale of Two Cities
by Samuel D. Gruber

Jewish Heritage Route sign in Kazimierz, Krakow (Poland)

In my presentation last week in Lviv,Ukraine, at the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, I addressed the practical and theoretical questions of "Can Lviv Be Developed as a Jewish Heritage Center?" While part of the presentation and paper dealt with historical, political, and economic questions, a good deal of what I said was about simple practical solutions. I have been traveling to Lviv for almost a decade and in that time I have seen no significant positive change in the identification and reclamation of Jewish space, with the exception of the marking of the Kleparov Train station, from where Jews were deported.


Inscribed commemorative plaque at the Kleparov Train Station, Lviv

There has been talk and there have been legal actions, but a visitor to the city today receives as little information about the Jewish past as he/she would have ten years ago, or even under Communism. There were many talks during and after the conference that suggest there might be changes, and I have and others have agreed to be part of an advisory committee to move these suggestion forward. But for now, the visitor is left very much at sea when searching for the location and history of Jewish heritage sites. To my knowledge, the only signs or plaques about Jewish heritage in Lviv are a few memorial inscriptions. These are commemorative, not didactic signs, and they focus more on the destruction of Jewish heritage rather than explaining the circumstances of Jews in the the city for centuries. Still, they are a welcome start, and an important recognition of the fate of tens of thousands of the city's Jews during the Holocaust.

There are three easy things that can be done almost immediately to reverse this situation. They are

1) the preparation and distribution of reliable guides and maps locating Jewish sites,

2) the preparation of on-line resources with guides, maps, histories and illustrations,

3) the installation of informative signs identifying the location of Jewish historic sites in Lviv.

Even though the Jewish past of Lviv is not unified and Jews themselves were often divided (most dramatically in the conflicts that led to the murder of Progressive Rabbi Abraham Kohn in 1848), it is important today that Jewish heritage take on a unified identity, so that all sites and program can be promoted and developed together, and that each historic site in some way is used to promote the others. In short, Lviv’s Jewish heritage sites needs to be unified into a route that tells a coherent narrative. For the more interested and more discerning, there can be series of routes that delve a more deeply into the history, religion and art of Jewish Lviv. The concept is not difficult, and it has been pioneered already in many cities for many reasons and even in some cities for Jewish past.

In some cities, such as Krakow (Poland) some of what is in the guidebooks has also been created as signage on the streets themselves. I include here photos from Krakow, Poland, where since the mid-1990s there have been many efforts to both identify and reclaim Jewish historic sites. There have been guidebooks and annotated maps, the most recent a highly detailed map and guide of Jewish Kazimierz written by Jakub Nowakowski and produced by the Galicia Jewish Museum). In Krakow, the signage route for Jewish Kazimierz is just one of many designated historic routes in the city (there is a University Route, a Royal Route, etc.). Thus Jewish history is integrated into the overall history of the city and its populations. The same should be done in Lviv.


Jewish heritage site signs in Krakow, Poland

Happily, there is some movement to achieve these tasks in Lviv. The "Lviv Interactive" section of the website of the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe is expediting the inclusion of information about Jewish heritage sites. According to the Deputy Mayor of Lviv, the city is developing a comprehensive signage program for historic sites, too. But if they decide to install all the signs at once,I still expect a long wait.

This blog will keep you posted...

Poland: Krakow’s Wysoka (High) Synagogue Open to Public

Poland: Krakow’s Wysoka (High) Synagogue Open to Public
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) Krakow’s Wysoka (High) Synagogue at 38 Jozefa Street in Kazimierz, one of Europe’s oldest surviving synagogue buildings, reopened to the public this past summer. The High Synagogue (so-called, because its worship space is located on the first main floor above ground level) was built in the second half of the 16th century, possibly as early as 1556-63, and certainly by 1597).

Although only part of the original Aron-ha-Kodesh and a small part of its original wall decoration survives, this has been restored and is worth viewing. The Aron is notable for its prominent paired Griffins. Painting mostly survives on the south wall which faces the street and has large window openings. Portions of prayers and high quality floral decorations in the intrados of the window arches have been revealed, cleaned and restored (see photos). I do not know if the full texts – complete and fragmentary – have been identified and studied (viewers of the photos can let me know their thoughts). Normally in synagogues of this period prayers were painted on the walls. Sometimes special variants of prayers were painted to help direct the worshippers on special occasions.

The Kazimierz District walls ran adjacent to the synagogue site, and adjacent properties were not owned by Jews. The upper floor placement of the sanctuary may have been for security reasons. The building was remodeled on many occasions, and the current form of the building is from the 19th century. This arrangement in turn was heavily damaged during the German occupation and then during the use of the building as conservation workshop space by the City of Krakow.

In Krakow, only the Staary (Old) and Remu Synagogues are older. The ground floor was originally used for rent-producing shops, and this situation has been re-created in the restituted property. A Jewish bookstore with an extensive collection occupies the space. A similar situation exists in Prague, where the 16th century High Synagogue served as the prayer space for the Jewish nearly-adjacent Jewish town hall.



The entire space, which was restituted to the Krakow Jewish community, is also used as an exhibition hall. An entrance fee of 9 zlotys (about $3.00) cover entrance to the synagogue and the current exhibit, photographs by Menachem Kipnis (1878-1942), who died of a stroke in the Warsaw Ghetto. Kipnis, who was among the foremost experts on Yiddish folklore – especially music – published these photos in the American Yiddish newspaper the Forvarts (Forward).