Romania: Radauti (Radautz) Jewish Heritage Documented and Posted On-Line

Romania: Radauti (Radautz) Jewish Heritage Documented and Posted On-Line

(ISJM) Descendants of the Jews of Radautz in Bukovina, (now Radauti, Romania) have banded together to work with the local Jewish Community and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania to document the town's Jewish heritage –including all of the gravestones in the cemetery - and to make this information available on-line.

See: http://www.radautz-jewisheritage.org/index.html

Since 2005, the group has amassed thousands of photos of the cemetery gravestones and epitaphs, and these have now been listed in an online database.

Last year there were tensions between the "outsiders" and the local Jewish community which produced a flurry of accusations that spilled into the local media. Now, however, misunderstandings seem to be resolved, and both groups are united in their commitment to maintain the historic cemetery and to develop a restoration program for the synagogue, which is, overall, still in good condition.

Click here for an online slideshow of the synagogue showing where repairs are needed. It was built in 1879.

The synagogue, which is listed as a protected historic site, has recently been included in the "Action Plan for the Protection of the Jewish Heritage" adopted by the Romanian Government. A good portion of the costs for restoration, for which planning began in 2007, will be covered from this source. Additional funding for the project will certainly be needed.

Conference: Urban Jewish Heritage and History in East Central Europe, Lviv (Ukraine), October 29-31, 2008

Conference: Urban Jewish Heritage and History in East Central Europe, Lviv (Ukraine), October 29-31, 2008

In October 2008, the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe will hold an international conference dedicated to Urban Jewish Heritage and History in East Central Europe. The conference will coincide with the opening in Lviv of the exhibit Wo ist Lemberg? that originated in Berlin.

The conference is the first such gathering in Lviv and one of the first in Ukraine, and will address the physical and cultural legacies of the Jewish civilization destroyed by the Holocaust have long been neglected in Eastern and Central Europe. One goal of the conference is to bring the experiences of other Jewish heritage centers to Ukraine, where planning, preservation and education have lagged since 1989.

According to the organizers, “With the end of the Soviet Union and the fundamental liberalization of politics and society, which accompanied it, however, the region's Jewish heritage, too, has entered processes of rediscovery and reconstruction. With respect to urban space, the regeneration or revitalization of historic Jewish quarters has become one main focus of attention, where several complex and challenging fields of theory and practice overlap: The relationship between the past, memory, and history; questions of reality, authenticity, and virtuality; urban-planning and economic aspects of regeneration. The Center seeks to bring together an interdisciplinary as well as international group of scholars and practitioners to discuss these issues in Lviv, which used to be a main center of Jewish urban life in East Central Europe but which is also still marked by oblivion and neglect of this past.”

My sister, Ruth Ellen Gruber, author of Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe (2001) and Jewish Heritage Travel, 4^th edition (2007) will keynote the conference.

I will be speaking on “Jewish Heritage in Lviv in the Context of International Experience.” I'm using the months leading up to the conference to reacquaint myself with the most pressing Jewish heritage issues in Lviv (former Jewish cemetery, now the Krakowski Market; the TaZ synagogue and adjacent areas; Judaica collections in musuems and aechives; the Tzori-Gilad Synagogue; and the Janowska Road Concetration/Death Camp). Most important is to look to see how to knit these sites together to create a meaningful hertiage landscape for local people and visitors alike. Changing hearts, minds and pocketbooks in Ukraine is not easy - but there have been enough small successes to make us hope for bigger changes in the future.

Other anticipated speakers at the conference include Eleonora Bergman (Warsaw), Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (New York University), Sabine Offe, Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek (Vienna Jewish Museum), Cilly Kugelmann (Berlin Jewish Museum), Vasyl Rasevych, Shelley Salamensky, Michał Szulc, Sofiya Grachova, Sergey Kravtsov, Rudolf Klein, Thomas Hubka, and Bob Martens.

For details and updates check at: http://www.lvivcenter.org/en/conferences/callforpapers/

Last Week in NYC of Warhol’s Jews

Last Week in NYC of Warhol’s Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered at Jewish Museum (New York), with catalogue by Richard Mayer with contributions by Gabriel de Guzman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).

The retrospective exhibition “Warhol’s Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered” will close at the Jewish Museum in New York on August 3, 2008. At this exhibition of these 1980 prints and paintings, Jewish history meets Pop history, providing a good lens through which to view secular Jews’ views of themselves in late 20^th century America. Though these portraits of famous 20^th Warhol was attracted to faces (he preferred Golda Meir and Martin Buber to Louis Brandeis), and he treated the Jewish luminaries to the same technique he used for society arrivistes and rock stars. But this project was conceived, researched, organized and presented by Jews who embraced it and appreciated Warhol’s no-nonsense non-discriminatory portraiture. Looking back, it represents a moment when American Jews – now part of the post-1960s ethnic-pride movement, were willing to publicly celebrate famous Jews for their Jewishness, not just their achievements. For the previous 150 years American Jews have been hearing the mantra “we must be judged as contributing Americans – not just as Jews.” Suddenly Jews were felt secure enough to publicly play the game of “Who’s a Jew?” with a positive spin. Not since the early days of Zionism, when European artists such as Alfred Nossig created popular works of Jewish heroes (but those figures were biblical, not contemporary) had art and public relations merged so effectively on behalf of Jews. Warhol’s famous Jews express a moment of Jewish pride. Whether critics declare them more kitsch than art or vice versa, no one can see them either ironic or “Too Jewish.” century Jews were, like all of Warhol’s AD-ventures of this period, a commercial enterprise, Warhol was no Philip Johnson, - accommodating Jews as a career move. Warhol and the (Jewish) art dealer Ronald Feldman seemed to have entered into this venture in the mutual spirit of naiveté, discovery and fun.

The show will on view at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco from October 12^, 2008 through January 25, 2009. The well-illustrated catalogue provides a straight-forward background essay on the history of the original project and on how these images have been subsequently perceived. Embracing the project as an opportunity for Jewish education, perhaps on the assumption that more people are familiar with Warhol than with Martin Buber or Sarah Bernhardt (who was baptized a Catholic), the catalogue also provides biographies of all the Jews depicted.

For more information see: www.thejewishmuseum.org

Tajikistan: More on Synagogue Demolition in Dushanbe

Tajikistan: More on Synagogue Demolition in Dushanbe

Sergey Kravtsov of the Center for Jewish Art sends the following update about the destruction of Tajikistan’s only synagogue:

“Our architectural historian Zoya Arshavsky managed to organize the last-moment documentation of the compound. The work was done by a group of local Tajik architects. They drafted sketches and took measurements and photos on parallel with the bulldozer's work and lamentations of the community. In fact, the razed compound included three prayer halls: two of Bukharan Jews, and one of the Ashkenazim. It included also three courtyards: one separating the prayer halls, the second with the communal kitchen and mikveh, and the third one with the premises of the burial society. Women's area was not initially a part of this compound, but was added at certain stage of its existence. The whole compound was one storey, with some lofty rooms. It was built about one hundred years ago. Our documentation, when properly accomplished, will include ground plan, major sections, and about 100 photographs. The compound had no exterior elevations. Zoya is interviewing Israeli informants, who still remember these synagogues. This is initial information, to be deepened as soon as more data arrives, and more analysis is done.”

To Sergey’s remarks I would like to add that the emergency documentation of the Dushanbe.If you would like to contribution to assist with this work, please contact me. To send contributions directly to CJA contact Sergey at: kravtsov@mscc.huji.ac.il.