Matzo! Matzo! Matzo! …as Pesach continues
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Heritage, travel and history in Europe's Jewish Heartland
Street dancing led by Zev Feldman at Yiddish Summer Weimar. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber |
Center for Traditional Music and Dance’s An-sky Institute for Jewish Culture, the Center for Jewish History and the American Society for Jewish Music present a multi-media lecture by composer/musician Alan Bern about klezmer and Yiddish music in Germany and his work in creating Yiddish Summer Weimar - now 10 years old and one of the most celebrated institutes for Yiddish culture in the world. In addition to founding and directing Yiddish Summer Weimar, Bern is Musical Director of the internationally renowned Brave Old World ensemble, and leads the Other Europeans, an amazing new international ensemble of 14 leading musicians who explore the deep connections between Jewish and Roma (Gypsy) musical traditions. A reception will follow the program. We are grateful for the support of the Keller-Shatanoff Foundation in making this program possible.
Caretakers in Alba Iulia, Romania, cut hay in the Jewish cemetery. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber |
It’s what happens afterward, when he’s no longer around to look after Rock Hill Cemetery. For nearly half of its existence, the 122-year-old cemetery — where generations of local African American families are interred — has been carefully tended by Peterson, a fastidious Korean War veteran who grew up nearby in a country village that’s long since disappeared.
But Peterson is 80, and he can’t stop wondering: Who will care for this little-known repository of community and family history when he’s gone?
There are thousands of graveyards scattered across Virginia, many of them small family burial plots on private properties, according to preservationists and historians. Some date to the founding of Jamestown more than 400 years ago.
But they’re increasingly endangered as a generation of caretakers dies off and people with kin buried out back sell off their family land. The burial sites can become overgrown and, eventually, consigned to oblivion.
Synagogue in Sofia |
At the Budapest Jewish Summer Festival. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber |
Jonathan Ornstein and Staszek Krajewski at a discussion on Jewish identity in Poland at the Krakow JCC in 2010. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber). |
For many people, Jewish life cannot conceivably flourish in Krakow – a city so close in proximity to the Auschwitz and Plaszow concentration camps where more than a million people were murdered. To them, Krakow has simply become a stopover on the way to the camps, to see where Schindler’s List was filmed or to visit the graves of ancestors.Read full article HERE
But 66 years after the war, and 22 years since the fall of communism, the question remains: Can Krakow’s Jewish community flourish once again? My recent visit to its Beit Chayil Jewish Community Center proved that today there exists more than just death and a Jewish past.
Philosemitism in History
Too often philosemitism, the idealization of Jews and Judaism, has been simplistically misunderstood as merely antisemitism "in sheep's clothing." This book takes a different approach, surveying the phenomenon from antiquity to the present and highlighting its rich complexity and broad impact on Western culture. Philosemitism in History includes fourteen essays by specialist historians, anthropologists, literary scholars, and scholars of religion, ranging from medieval philosemitism to such modern and contemporary topics as the African American depictions of Jews as ethnic role models, the Zionism of Christian evangelicals, pro-Jewish educational television in West Germany, and the current fashion for Jewish "kitsch" memorabilia in contemporary East-Central Europe. An extensive introductory chapter offers a thorough and original overview of the topic. The book underscores both the endurance and the malleability of philosemitism, drawing attention to this important but widely neglected facet of Jewish-non-Jewish relations. This book offers a broad and ambitious overview of the nature and significance of philosemitism in European and world history, from antiquity to the present. It underscores both the endurance and the malleability of philosemitism, drawing attention to this important but widely neglected and generally misunderstood facet of Jewish-non-Jewish relations.
Table of Contents
Introduction: a brief history of philosemitism Adam Sutcliffe and Jonathan Karp
Part I. Medieval and Early Modern Frameworks:
1. Philosemitic tendencies in medieval western Christendom Robert Chazan
2. The revival of Christian Hebraism in early modern Europe Abraham Melamed
3. The philosemitic moment? Judaism and republicanism in seventeenth-century European thought Adam Sutcliffe
Part II. Three European Philosemites:
4. William Whiston's Judeo-Christianity: millenarianism and Christian Zionism in early enlightenment England Adam Shear
5. A friend of the Jews? The Abbé Grégoire and philosemitism in revolutionary France Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall
6. Ordinary people, ordinary Jews: Mór Jókai as Magyar philosemite Howard Lupovitch
Part III. The Cultural Politics of Philosemitism in Victorian Britain and Imperial Germany:
7. Bad Jew / good Jewess: gender and semitic discourse in nineteenth-century England Nadia Valman
8. Anti'philosemitism' and anti-antisemitism in imperial Germany Lars Fischer
9. From recognition to consensus: the nature of philosemitism in Germany, 1871–1932 Alan T. Levenson
Part IV. American Philosemitism:
10. Ethnic role models and chosen peoples: philosemitism in African-American culture Jonathan Karp
11. Connoisseurs of angst: the Jewish mystique and postwar American literary culture Julian Levinson
12. 'It's all in the Bible': evangelical Christians, biblical literalism and philosemitism in our times Yaakov Ariel
Part V. Philosemitism in Post-Holocaust Europe:
13. What is the opposite of genocide? Philosemitic television in Germany, 1963-1995 Wulf Kansteiner
14. 'Non-Jewish, non kosher, yet also recommended': beyond 'virtually Jewish' in post-millenium Central Europe Ruth Ellen Gruber.
Photo from FODZ web site: fodz.pl |
The near-absence of Jews today "brings to light what war and genocide and the Holocaust really mean," said Monika Krawczyk, CEO of the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland, the Warsaw-based group that oversaw the preservation work. "Although the Jews in Poland today are small in number, the heritage is absolutely huge."
The renovation took about a year and cost euro1.7 million ($2.4 million), funded mostly by grants from Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
The restored synagogue will be presented to the public Tuesday in a ceremony attended by Jewish leaders, U.S. and Israeli diplomats and city officials. After that, it will serve occasionally as a house of worship for Jewish tourists who visit death camps in the area, including Auschwitz, Belzec and Majdanek. Ultra-Orthodox Jews are also drawn to the region because many founders of the Hassidic movement were from Polish and Ukrainian towns.
Mainly it will serve as a local community center, offering art students a place to show their work, schools a place for seminars, musicians a site for small concerts.