UK: Synagogues and Historic Sites Nationwide Open Doors For European Day of Jewish Culture

UK: Synagogues and Historic Sites Nationwide Open Doors For European Day of Jewish Culture

London, England, UK. Two of the synagogues open to the public on September 6th. Above, the magnificent Victorian-era New West End Synagogue designed by George Audsley and built form 1877-79 and below the Fieldgate Street Great Synagogue, actually a simple East End Synagogue, built in 1899 and still in use. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber.

Manchester, England, UK. Visitors will be welcome at the Higher Crumpsall & Higher Broughton Hebrew Congregation, built 1928-29 (above) and at the Manchester Jewish Museum in the former Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, designed by Edward Salomons and built 1873-4 (window dtl from 1913, below). Photos: Samuel D. Gruber

Across the United Kingdom Jewish organizations, institutions and congregations are joining forces for the tenth straight year to open their doors to the broad public as part of European Days of Jewish Culture and Heritage. The annual event was first organized in 1996 by the B'nai B'rith Lodge in Strasbourg, France. It has now spread to 27 countries, and approximately 200,000 people participate each year. In the UK, B'nai B'rith UK is the primary organizer, with support from Jewish Heritage UK and dozens of local organizations. This year, over 90 events are offered, including open synagogues and tours, historic and architectural walking tours, concerts, exhibitions and lectures. It is impossible for one individual to take advantage of more than a handful of activities, but the organizers have wisely spread events over the period of more than an entire week, beginning September 6th with some events offered as late September 16th.

London, England, UK. The former Spitalfields Great Synagogue on Brick Lane was built as a Huguenot Chapel and is now a Bengali Mosque. A visit is scheduled on a walking tour of the Jewish East End.

If you live in are are visiting the UK have always wanted to visit a particular synagogues - this is your chance. If you can't decide, then take a look at the popular guidebook Jewish Heritage in the England: An Architectural Guide. Or better still, try on of nine different walking tours offered in London on September 6th, or tours in Richmond or York. In addition to 12 synagogues open in London on Sunday, September 6th, you can also visit synagogues in Bangor, Bradford, Brighton, Bristol, Chatham, Cornwall, Lincoln, Liverpool, Manchester, Ramsgate, and Reading.

Click here for full UK program

For links to events in other countries click here.

Germany: University of Potsdam and Jewish Museum Berlin Collaborate on Memmelsdorf Genizah

Germany: University of Potsdam and Jewish Museum Berlin Collaborate on Memmelsdorf Genizah
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) On July 22, 2009 Jan Kixmüller reported in the Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten that the University of Potsdam is partnering with the Jewish Museum Berlin to further identify, investigate, transcribe and translate various items discovered in a geniza in Memmelsdorf (a Franconian town in Southern Germany) in February 2002. The Genizah was discovered during the renovation of an old half-timbered building, when a ceiling fan was removed, and a linen bag containing a variety of Judaica fell from the ceiling. In the bag were fragments of Jewish prayer book, a community order, letters, a calendar, lottery tickets and business cards. Investigation of the space in the ceiling revealed other items – not all typical of a Genizah - including childrens' shoes, tobacco and prayer belt pouch. Though many genizot from synagogues have been found, including one in the (conserved and open to the public in 2004) former synagogue of Memmelsdorf discovered in 1979, such finds from private houses are rare (I can’t recall any). Researchers have determined that the house in Memmelsdorf had been owned by Jews from 1775 until 1939. The fate of final Jewish owners is unknown. The Geniza materials date from 1770 to 1830.

Now, Jewish Studies students at Potsdam University’s Wintersemester are selecting items from the Genizah for research and exhibition. This the first cooperative project between the University and the Museum. The full significance of the collection, which was purchased by the Jewish Museum Berlin in 2003, remains to be researched.

Material from the Memmelsdorf synagogue genizah comprised about 20 percent of the items shown in an exhibition created the Hidden Legacy Foundation of London, in the mid-1990s, that traveled to many German and European cities, Jerusalem and the United States. Much of the material form that genizah has been conserved and is stored in the Jewish Documentation Center in Wuerzburg. The catalog of the Hidden Legacy edited by Falk Wiesemann remains an excellent introduction to the subject and materials of south German genizot. See: Genizah - Hidden Legacies of the German Village Jews / Genisa - Verborgenes Erbe der Deutschen Landjuden (Vienna: Hidden Legacy Foundation, 1992. ISBN 3-570-10501-6)

The 1990s was a period of renewed interest in rural German Jewish culture. Hundreds of forgotten former synagogues - many reused as homes, garages, workshops, and firehouses - were identified. Researchers were on the lookout for genizah materials. Some of these were literally rescued from dumpsters where they had been tossed during local construction work, as this was also a period of renovation of older buildings by a new and more prosperous generation. In addition to materials from Memmelsdorf, much material was found in the former synagogue of Veitschocheim near Wurzburg and has been studied and conserved and is on view in a permanent exhibition next to the restored synagogue in that small town.

Genizot materials as especially valuable to historians for several reasons. They usually contain otherwise unknown printed works - often ephemeral but once popular items including religious and secular texts. Genizot also often contain original unique documentary material often of a personal nature, including receipts and contracts. In Germany they shed light on many aspects of everyday life for Jews in small towns and villages, and they also include material valuable in the interpretation of local Hebrew and Yiddish language usage.

The Potsdamer Institute of Jewish Studies Potsdamer is one of the largest (perhaps the largest) such program in Germany, with more 300 enrolled students. The Berlin Jewish Museum is the most visited Jewish Museum in Europe. The collaboration between Potsdam and Berlin in intended to benefit both institutions, and to help shape the next generation of German Jewish museum scholars and professionals.

Lecture: Gruber to lecture in Portsmouth, Virginia on "The Architecture of Immigration: American Synagogues from 1760 to 1920"

I don't like to refer to myself in the 3rd person, but here is a notice for an upcoming lecture where I do so, in case you want to post it or pass it along. - SDG

Lecture: Gruber to lecture in Portsmouth, Virginia


"The Architecture of Immigration: American Synagogues from 1760 to 1920"

An illustrated lecture

by Dr. Samuel D. Gruber

The Jewish Museum & Cultural Center

(former Chevra T’helim Synagogue)

607 Effingham Street - P.O. Box 7962

Portsmouth, VA 23707

Tel. 757-391-9266

For information: info@jewishmuseumportsmouth.org

Admission: $15

Jews came to America in three main waves. In the 17th and 18th centuries, descendants of Spanish Jews – mostly living under Dutch or English rule – settled in the New World, and many participated in the War of Independence. By 1800, these Sephardi Jews built synagogues in five cities – Philadelphia, New York, Newport, Charleston and Savannah. By the mid-19th century, thousands of Central European Jews joined the mass emigration to the United States caused by political unrest and economic instability in Europe. Many started as peddlers but then settled in hundreds of towns throughout the American south and west, playing a pivotal role in the expansion of the American frontier and the cohesion of the new nation. A third wave of immigration from Europe was by far the biggest. Millions of Jews fled Eastern Europe, particularly those territories controlled by Russia and repressed under Tsarist rule. From the 1880s to the 1920s hundreds of thousands “Russians” settled in North, numerically overwhelming older Sephardic and “German” populations, though it took a generation and more before they established political and economic parity, and developed a synagogue architecture of their own.

This lecture traces this history through the religious buildings erected by each Jewish immigrant group. Through a rich architectural legacy, Dr. Gruber examines the history, experiences, tastes, influences and aspirations of American Jewish immigrants.

The Jewish Museum & Cultural Center

The Jewish Museum & Cultural Center opened in March 2008 in the former Chevra T'helim Synagogue, built in 1918 and closed in1985.

In 2002, the Friends of Chevra T'helim, Inc., formed a 501(c)(3) organization and stepped in to preserve this historic landmark. They acquired the building, and launched a Capital Campaign to raise $500,000. Architect John Paul Hanbury of the firm of Hanbury Evans Wright Vlattas & Company, noted for their excellence in historic preservation, oversaw the restoration.

The former synagogue, now completely restored, has been recognized by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and is listed on the Virginia Historic Register.

SAMUEL D. GRUBER is Director of the Jewish Heritage Research Center (Syracuse, NY); and president of the International Survey of Jewish Monuments. From 1989 until 1995 he served as founding director of the Jewish Heritage Council of WMF and from 1998 through 2008 as Research Director of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad. Since 2001 he has been the Rothman Family and Holstein Family Lecturer in Judaic Studies at Syracuse University. He is author of American Synagogues: A Century of Architecture and Jewish Community (Rizzoli, 2003) and Synagogues (Metrobooks, NY, 1999); and author or editor of numerous articles and survey reports about Jewish monuments.

Dr. Gruber received his B.A. degree in Medieval Studies from Princeton University, and his Ph.D. degree from Columbia University in the History of Art and Archaeology. He is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. He has recently received research grants from the James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation, the AIA New York Chapter the Cahnmann Foundation and the Delmas Foundation. Dr. Gruber serves on many charitable boards and advisory committees. He is President of the Preservation Association of Central New York and Co-Chair of the Building Centennial Committee of Temple Concord in Syracuse.

Latvia: Riga Synagogue Reopens After 2-Year Restoration

Riga, Latvia. Synagogue before restoration. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber (2003)

Latvia: Riga Synagogue Reopens After 2-Year Restoration

(ISJM) Today was the reopening of the restored Art Nouveau synagogue in Riga, Latvia, first opened in 1905. Much of the credit for this project goes to Gita Umanovska,. Executive Director of the Riga Community. Gita was instrumental in preparing the application the resulted in EU funds for the project as part of a larger tourism/economic development grant to Riga. As in many of the Jewish heritage projects in Latvia undertaken and completed in the past half decade, much of the success is also due to the organizational, inspirational and financial support of Community president Arkady Suharenko.

At the end of this blog entry I attach a passage from my travel notes written in September, 2003, after attending Saturday morning services at the synagogue. I have visited the synagogue several times, but believe the architecture of a synagogue is usually best seen when the building is in use.

This synagogue, needs to be seen close up and in detail, too. It is one of the last - perhaps the very last - major synagogue to widely employ Egyptian decorative motifs. Perhaps this is an influence from Copenhagen, where the Egyptian Revival was very strong, as the synagogue there bears witness.

- SDG

Riga, Latvia. Synagogue before restoration. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber (2003)

Riga’s Only Synagogue Reopens

Wednesday, August 26 2009

RIGA, Latvia – This week in Riga, after two years of restoration work, the doors of the Peitav Shul – the only synagogue in the Latvian capital – will finally open once again.

Reconstruction work on the building began in 2007 at a cost of more than $2.8 million. While most of the funds were contributed by foreign sponsors, financial support was also pledged by the Latvian government and about 100 other donors. The outstanding balance needed to complete the necessary work was raised from amongst members of the local Jewish community. About 1,000 local Jews donated sums ranging from $10 to $100,000. The names of all donors – regardless of the size of their contribution – are forever engraved on a plaque located at the synagogue’s entrance.

When work began on the synagogue it became apparent that the building was in much worse condition than originally thought. As a result, nearly 60 percent of the roof had to be replaced. When the funds dried out once again, two members of the Jewish community’s Board of Trustees – Leonid Esterkin and Arkady Sukharenko – each made a sizeable contribution.

“We are proud that our generation has that honor of restoring the synagogue to its former grandeur and of leaving it to future generations in this condition,” stated Mr. Sukharenko. “We are grateful to everyone who participated in this noble and important endeavor, and have invested their hearts and funds.”

Click here to read full story

Riga, Latvia. Synagogue before restoration. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber (2003)

A Visit to the Riga Synagogue (September 2003)
notes by Samuel D. Gruber

I recount my experience at the synagogue, since it is one the few Jewish experiences in Latvia available to visitors from America or elsewhere. The activity at the synagogue constitutes one relatively small part of the Latvian Jewish life – the religious – but it is the religious community that is fully recognized by the government in issues of property restitution and other areas, so the synagogue and its supporters have special influence in the definition of Jewish life and community, and on financial resources, in Latvia today.

I counted about sixty men in the synagogue during the service. They weren’t all praying, or even pretending to follow along. A large number kept up an incessant chatter throughout the service, and especially throughout the Torah service. About a dozen women looked down from the balcony, where they not only were separated by the height and space, but by a high blue curtain as well. The women would lean on the parapet wall with the curtain pushed behind them. They tended to bunch in pairs, one on each side of a column. There were old women. There really was no danger of sexual distraction form them.

Barkhan led the “warm-up” prayers. He could hardly be heard, but he read at the shtender (reader’s stand) set on the platform before the Ark. Then the cantor, a fairly young man with a wonderful voice took over. He apparently teaches music at the university. Few there can read any Hebrew or know the prayers. is in Hebrew with Russian translation on the facing page. There are transliterations in the back of the siddur. (Kadosh Kadosh Kadosh was the prayer that get the most response, it was prayed as Kadoish, Kadoish, Kadoish). Most of the Torah reading was done by another Lubavicher, but the first section was read by a visitor, a man from Israel. As a visitor, I was offered an aliyah (opportunity to “go up” to the Torah and recite the blessing before and after the Torah reading), which I accepted, and recited the blessing in Hebrew. Most others read Russian transliteration printed on a sheet on the bimah.

After services I attended the kiddush in the social hall in the synagogue basement. This was set up with long tables and all the participants sat down for a traditional Jewish meal. It may be that like in L’viv many attend the service just to receive the free meal. There was herring and bread, chopped beets, and a cholent. I left after this, but more courses were being served. Rabbi Glasman gave the Barucha, and he also had everyone recite, word by word, the Barucha over the bread, though many had already started eating. Then one older man sang with a fine voice a long song in Yiddish about studying Torah (or Toyrah).