Eruv and Art: Some New Exhibitons

Eruv and Art: Some New Exhibitions

by Samuel D. Gruber

 

In recent years there has been as revival - I would even say an assertive revival - of the institution of the eruv in American and European cities, inclusion neighborhoods not traditionally associated with Orthodox Jewish practice.  Both the idea and the material fact of the eruv - a single line that can seemingly create "Jewish Space" out of thin air - have attracted the attention of a wide range of Jewish writers an artists, including (especially?) many non-Orthodox or non-Traditional and secular Jews.  This despite the fact the the eruv primarily exists (or at least has so existed in the past) - as a convenient doge or hedge against halacha (Jewish law) to "enhance" or facilitate the carrying of objects on the Sabbath.  for an traditionally observant community this can be important as it allows men to carry their tallit, and women to push baby strollers and carry diaper bags. 

 

The theme of the eruv was central to Michael Chabon's fanciful novel the Yiddish Policeman's Union (2007) and last year (2011) the art historical journal Images: A Journal of Jewish Art and Visual Culture devoted an entire issue to the theme "Visualizing the Eruv."

 

The push for expanded and new eruvs (Heb: eruvim) in American and European cities is evidence of physically expanding Orthodox populations, their settlement in new urban areas, but also an expanded social and political confidence that allows communities to be more forthright in their requests (even demands) for more eruvim.  In America, Hasidic Orthodox communities have considerable political clout, especially locally, when they can turn out large numbers of bloc voters.  In the past, this power has been used to gain increased social services for large and largely poorer Hasidic families, and also for all sorts of zoning permissions and variances for new house additions, new construction and other permit-requiring neighborhood changes, including the installation of eruvim. 

 

What is surprising about the new eruv movement is how many non-Orthodox Jews have embraced this effort, clearly indicative of a new Jewish particularism, including among more-secular intellectuals and artists.   This more broadly reclaiming and rebranding of the eruv by many non-traditional Jews is similar is many ways to the re-acceptance, and even championing of the mikveh, among Jewish feminists of the previous generation.  It is also probably due to the increase number (in America) of  secular Jews, including artists, who have Jewish Day School of University Jewish Studies experience, allowing them to comfortably combine contemporary creativity (and skepticism) with traditional values and ritual (The Jewish Museum's recent Reinventing Ritual exhibition is another example).

 

There are other factors at play, too.  Cityscapes are already awash with a tangle of electrical, cable and other wires and ropes strung along street and yards, and even public places, with plenty of poles every few yards to support them.  This is a ready-made infrastructure for stringing an eruv, and can make it much easier to promote an almost invisible eruv over local (non-Jewish) objections.  For artists, however, such invisibility can runs counter to their desire to assert more boldly the presence of "Jewish Space," and so in recent years there have been projects to embellish and celebrate the eruv.  The eruv is not an imposed "ghetto" wall restricting Jews; but a self-created line that helps define and support traditional Jews, and Jewish communal life.

To me, as a Reform Jew, the notion of an eruv is unnecessary, as I see the designation of carrying a diaper bag as Sabbath work quite absurd, but then I think that using a electric timer to turn lights on and off during the Sabbath is equally silly.  Both are convenient ways to live the letter of the law, but avoid the consequences.  But then again, I believe Judaism is a religion of acceptance and accommodation of contemporary realities, and it may be that devices such as the eruv and timer are ways the Orthodox community can acknowledge this.  I also like the idea of marking space, whether with signage about historic sites or more off-beat messages.  I can accept the eruv, since it marks space - but in such a delicate, literally transparent way, that one sees and understands only what one needs.

 

In any case, all this is a prelude to announcing exhibitions about the eruv  at Yale University (!), that centuries-old bastion of American Protestantism.  What is world coming to?

Shaping Community: Poetics and Politics of the Eruv

 

Three exhibitions exploring a Jewish spatial practice

curated by Margaret Olin in three parts at the ISM Gallery of Sacred Arts, the Allan and Leah Rabinowitz Gallery (Slifka Center), and the 32 Edgewood Gallery.

You can read introductory text, see a slide show, and access the exhibition catalog online.

 

Ellen Rothenberg. Measure 1, (c) 2012.

RECEPTION

with tour of all three exhibitions
Thursday, October 18 | 4:30-6:30 pm
simultaneously at all three galleries -- begin anywhere and hop on a gallery shuttle bus to see the others!

EXHIBITIONS

guided tours available. Call 203.436.5955

Israel: Gated Community

October 8 - November 16
Allan and Leah Rabinowitz Gallery*

Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale
80 Wall Street

Hours: M-F: 10am-5pm; Weekends: noon-4pm

203.432.1134

This Token Partnership

October 10 – December 14
ISM Gallery of Sacred Arts
409 Prospect Street

Hours: W-F: noon-6pm; Weekends: noon-4pm

203.436.5955

Internal Borders

October 17 - November 30
32 Edgewood Gallery

Yale University School of Art
Hours: M, W-Sun:1-6pm; closed Tuesdays
203.432.2600

 presented by Yale Institute of Sacred Music with support from the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale and Yale School of Art.

Lack of Funding Closes Museum Housing Sarajevo Haggadah

Lack of Funding Closes Museum Housing Sarajevo Haggadah

Cross-posted from Jewish Heritage Travel  by Ruth Ellen Gruber  (Wednesday, October 3, 2012)

Sarajevo Haggadah in bank vault, 2001. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This post also appears on my En Route blog for the LA Jewish Journal

The Bosnia-Herzegonia National Museum in Sarajevo, where the priceless Sarajevo Haggadah is kept, is being forced to close for lack of funds -- the latest in a number of major cultural institutions in Sarajevo forced to shut their doors due to political wrangling and the central government's halting of funds for culture.

In my brief JTA story I write that Jakob Finci, the longtime leader of the Jewish community in Sarajevo, said the museum, founded in 1888, would close on Thursday due to “lack of money, financing and support from the State.”

He called the decision “tragic,” but said he did not fear for the Sarajevo Haggadah, which, he said would be kept in a safe place.

The haggadah, handwritten in Spain in the 14th century and brought to Sarajevo after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, has been owned by the museum since 1894. 

During the Bosnian war in the 1990s, the lavishly illustrated, 109-page book became a symbol of the shattered dream of multi-ethnic harmony in Bosnia. After the war ended in 1995, the U.N. Mission, along with the Bosnian Jewish Community, the Joint Distribution Committee, and the Yad Hanadiv and Wolfenson Foundations, facilitated a $150,000 project to restore the Haggadah and prepare a secure, new, climate-controlled room in which to put it on display. 

This was opened with a gala ceremony in December 2002. But Finci told JTA that, in recent years, the actual Haggadah was only displayed on four days a year – all the rest of the time a facsimile was shown.

In 2001, before it went on public display, I had the rare opportunity of viewing the Haggadah in the underground bank vault in Sarajevo where it was kept, when I accompanied a JDC delegation to Bosnia.

A bank functionary led us through corridors and down narrow stairways into a basement vault lined with safety deposit boxes.

Wrapped in white tissue paper, the Haggadah was removed from a sealed, blue metal lock box and placed on a table.

Wearing clean, white gloves, a staff member from the Sarajevo national museum then opened the book, turning over page after page to reveal the elegant Hebrew calligraphy and brilliantly colored and gilded illustrations.

An article in April in The Art Newspaper provided some background to the museum crisis.

The National Gallery closed to the public last September. It had been without a director and chief financial officer since May. The Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, also in Sarajevo, was forced to shut its doors on 4 January after running out of money for maintenance and heating. Staff at both institutions have worked without pay since the respective closures.

The National and University Library, which has had no heating since early January, is next on the list of anticipated closures. [...] 

The current crisis is a result of national elections held in 2010, which failed to create a coalition with a parliamentary majority. Without a functioning government, there was no funding for cultural institutions last year.

Museum administrators in Sarajevo say that grants from the new government, formed this February, will not solve the structural problem affecting the institutions. They believe that the institutions need to be funded at a national level if they are to operate effectively in the future. They also want a national cultural ministry to be created.

For further information on the culture crisis in Bosnia see the web site www.cultureshutdown.net 

Synagogue Discovered at Ancient Site of Limyra in Southern Turkey

Synagogue ruins  discovered in Finike (ancient Limyra), Turkey. AA photo

Synagogue Discovered at Ancient Site of Limyra in Southern Turkey

(ISJM) The Anatolian News Agency reports that an ancient synagogue has been excavated at the city of Limyra in southern Turkey.  The news reports is not very clear, but its seem the synagogue dates from before the fourth century, and was subsequently repaired.  We will have to await a fully report and also photos of the finds. Is the menorah mentinoed an image of an menorah as was common in ancient synagogues, or a three-dimensional functional menorah, or a sculpted representation (also known from elsewhere.  Was the bath that is mentions a mikvah, or some other water element for either ritual or functional use - also as known elsewhere?  Here is what has been released:

Researchers initially thought the house of worship was a glass furnace, according to the head of the excavations, Dr. Martin Seyer of the Austrian Archaeology Institute. “We first found a bath and a menorah. After some [further] investigation, we found out that it was a synagogue,” he said.

Second synagogue in the Lycian city

The synagogue in Limyra, which is located in Turunçova in Antalya’s Finike district, is the second to be found in the historical Lycian region after one discovered in 2009 in the ancient city of Myra in Antalya’s Demre district. Limyra was the former capital of the Lycian Federation, which some have called the first democratic union.

“We have excavated a small part of the synagogue field, but we think that the synagogue was on a very large field,” he said, citing the relevant law under Emperor Theodosius that only permitted the restoration of existing synagogues rather than the construction of new Jewish houses of worship. “There was a wide and rich Jewish group of people living there. The synagogue is a very important discovery for Jews and the ancient city of Limyra. Thanks to this synagogue, we have chance to see the Limyra excavations and its history.”

Excavations will continue in the area around the synagogue next year, Seyer said, adding that the ancient city would attract many more tourists once the archaeological work is complete. 

Limyra was part of the Lycian League, a confederation of coastal cities later annexed as a province of the Roman Empire. The region of the excavation is rich in archaeological remains of ancient towns of cities of many eras (I remember well the thrill of discovery when I hitch-hiked through the region in the summer of 1978.  Ancient ruins seemed to be everywhere.)

Of course, other synagogues have been discovered in western and southern Turkey, notably at the coastal city of Priene and the inland Lydian (later Roman) capital of Sardis where the most impressive of all ancient western Diaspora synagogues was found as part of a major public building complex in the center of the city.  The existence of a large and prosperous Jewish community in ancient Anatolia is well-known from archaeological finds and documentation, not to mention the person of Saint Paul, originally a Jew from the southern city of Tarsus, a city further east along the Anatolia's southern coast.

It is with sadness that I report the death of Cesare Colafemmina, the Italian scholar who pioneered the documentary study of Jews of Southern Italy. In over two hundred publications Colafemmina persuasively made the case for the broad settlement of Jews in Southern Italy, and their extreme significance in the history of the region. Colafemmina brought to light and international attention physical monuments of the Jewish past at Venosa, Trani and elsewhere, and published hundreds of documentary references to Jews in Bari, Taranto, Otrano and other southern Italian locales. Together with scholars Ariel Toaff, Shlomo Simonsohn and others, he strove to reinsert the Jewish presence in Italian medieval history.  I re-post here the report of Colafemmina's death from Jewish Heritage Europe, with links to an Italian obituary and a list of his publications. 

A conference “Gli Ebrei nell'Italia meridionale e nel Mediterraneo dall'Età romana all'Altomedioevo” (The Jews in southern Italy and the Mediterranean from the Roman era to the Early Middle Ages)  will be held on October in Prof. Colafemmina's memory.  See  www.cerdem.com - SDG

Death of Italian scholar Cesare Colafemmina

Posted on September 13, 2012 by admin

General view of the Jewish section of the Trani Diocesan museum. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Prof. Cesare Colafemmina, an Italian scholar who was a pioneering researcher on the historic Jewish presence in southern Italy, has died at the age of 79. Colafemmina died Sept. 12 after a long illness.
Colafemmina taught at the University of Bari and the University of Calabria and wrote and researched extensively on the Jewish presence in Calabria, Apulia and elsewhere in southern Italy, from ancient times until the present. His fields included ancient Jewish history and epigraphy, as well as archeology. He made important discoveries, including burial chambers and inscriptions, at the Jewish (and Christian) catacombs in Venosa, in Potenza province. Much of his work centered on the medieval period and also the aftermath of the expulsion of Jews from the south in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Colafemmina oversaw the installation of a  Jewish museum, a section of the local Diocesan Museum, that opened recently in the “Scola Grande,” one of the two thirteenth century synagogues that remain standing in the town of Trani, in Apulia. He was on the executive committee of the Italian Association for Jewish Studies and was the editor of «Sefer Yuḥasin», a bulletin on Jewish studies in southern Italy, which he founded in 1985.

The Cesare Colafemmina Center for the Research and Documentation of Judaism in the Mediterranean Region was recently founded in his honor. He donated his extensive library and papers to the Center, which is organizing a memorial symposium in October.

A full obituary (in Italian) can be read here, on the Center’s web site.
A Bibliography of Colafemmina’s publications can be found HERE.