Moldova -- Survey of Jewish Heritage Sites is Now Online

Ruined synagogue, Vadul Rashkov. Photo: U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The first and most complete survey of Jewish heritage sites in Moldova has been published online on the website of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad. It includes synagogue buildings, Jewish cemeteries, Holocaust memorials and sites of mass burials, Jewish communal buildings and other sites.

The survey was carried out by Igor Teper, and Sam Gruber, who oversaw the survey, carries a long report on the process -- with lots of pictures -- on his blog.

Few countries in Central and Eastern Europe have as rich a Jewish history and collection of Jewish history sites as small Moldova, nestled in between Romania and Ukraine. Long a crossroads of cultures, modern Moldova today, however, is little known and rarely mentioned. Jewish communities and Jewish heritage sites in neighboring countries garner more attention and more tourists, though most of the Jewish sites in the region are starved for funds for basic maintenance, let alone restoration. Seven years ago the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage, of which I was Research Director, teamed with the Joint Distribution Committee to identify, document and survey as many Jewish historical and Holocaust-related sites as possible within a year.

 Sam also posts his introduction to the Survey -- a summary of the history of Jewish sites in Moldova, as well as the typology of sites and their condition.

Prior to the Holocaust, the area that is present-day Moldova was home to a thriving Jewish culture that built and maintained a large number of community buildings for religious, educational, and charitable purposes. In addition, there were many Jewish cemeteries throughout the country serving Jewish communities. The second half of the 19th and the early 20th centuries witnessed the greatest growth of organized Jewish institutions and that is the period from which most surviving buildings date. These include synagogues and community buildings such as schools, hospitals, and old age homes. Some of these institutional buildings are the Jewish sites that have survived best because the facilities have been most easily adapted and reused by successor institutions, often providing services similar to the original.

The destruction wrought during the Holocaust, when German and Romanian occupiers destroyed many synagogues and other Jewish sites, was severe. Further destruction continued during the nearly half century of Soviet rule when scores of buildings were either demolished outright, or were destroyed over time by neglect; and when hundreds of buildings were confiscated by the state and adapted to new uses. It is only in the past several years that efforts have begun to identify all these sites. One important reason is to negotiate the return of many community properties to the Jewish community, or to arrange for proper financial compensation for many others which are not easily returned.

 My friend, the Swiss diplomat Simon Geissbuhler, has written about some of these places in his book "Like Shells on a Shore: Synagogues and Jewish Cemeteries of Northern Moldavia."

Bob Cohen posted a wonderful description on his Dumneazu blog about going home to his ancestral shtetls, Telenesti and Orhei.

Jewish cemetery, Telenesti. Photo; U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad

More on the YIVO online Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe

I posted a brief note about the online publication of the YIVO  Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe a few days ago.  I was too lazy (or, rather, pressed for time.....) to post most than a publication notice. But Bob Cohen has posted a very informative review, noting some of the highlights, on his Dumneazu blog -- worth reading.

The new YIVO site brings together contemporary leaders in Yiddish culture like Prof. Dovid Katz on the history of Yiddish, Judit Frigyesi on liturgical music, and even a section of Hungarian Jewish literature by János Kőbányai, editor of the Hungarian Jewish magazine Múlt és Jövő. The YIVO is a unique institution: founded in Vilnius in 1925 as the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut. YIVO preserves manuscripts, rare books, and diaries, and other Yiddish sources YIVO was initially proposed by Yiddish linguist and writer Nochum Shtif (1879–1933). He characterized his advocacy of Yiddish as "realistic" Jewish nationalism, contrasted to the "visionary" Hebraists and the "self-hating" assimilationists who adopted Russian or Polish.

Budapest -- Bob Cohen leads an audio culinary tour

 Me in Froelich's pastry shop in December.

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I've pointed out a lot of Bob Cohen's wonderful blog posts about food, travel and music and link to his blog, Dumneazu.

But now you can hear him -- Tablet Magazine's audio "Vox Tablet" runs a wonderful 10-minute visit with Bob to two of Budapest's most famous Jewish (or Jewish-style) eateries -- the tiny little Kadar lunchroom on Klauzal ter, and Froelich's kosher pastry shop on Dob utca.

Both are favorites with locals (and a five-minute walk from my apartment).

I vividly remember my first visit to Kadar, back in about 1990 or 1991. I was taken there by the  Peter Wirth, an architect who has carried out restoration work on several synagogues in Hungary and also produced a photographic book on Jewish cemeteries in northeast Hungary. (He won the Europa Nostra award for his restorations of the synagogues in Apostag, in the 1980s, and in Mad, in 2004.)

With Peter that first time, I remember I ordered the solet -- cholent -- with goose leg, a specialty. Kadar is not kosher and even serves sholet with pork. But for many local Jews it is a ritual to go there to eat solet on Saturday. One Saturday lunchtime my brother Sam and I shared a table with a man and his son eating solet -- and we then ran into him later at the Rabbinical Seminary synagogue, where he was the gabbai...

Sarajevo -- Bob Cohen (and me) on Jewish Sarajevo

Ashkenazic synagogue interior, Sarajevo. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Bob Cohen is back in Budapest after a trip to Sarajevo, and he has posted a colorful account of Jewish life and history in the Bosnian capital on his Dumneazu blog.

Today, the Ashkenazic Synagogue is the center of Sarajevo Jewish life, although the majority of the congragation is of Sephardi origin. The Jews of Sarajevo - as in most of former Yugoslavia - lived in a culturally tolerant world almost devoid of the antisemitic atmosphere that prevailed in pre-WWII Europe, and it all the more tragic that they were almost entuirely destroyed during the Holocaust. Local Muslims and Christians, however, were active in saving the lives of many Jews, and Jews were prominent in the Yugoslav Partisan movement, such as Moshe Pijade, Tito's right hand man. There is a photo in the Jewish museum of a Jewish Woman - wearing a Jewish star armband - walking along the main street of Nazi-occupied Sarajevo arm in arm with her Muslim friend, a woman maintaining the tradition of a complete face veil.

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I haven't been to Sarajevo for several years. But my last visit there coincided with the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, when the 16th-century Old Synagogue, turned into a Jewish museum after World War II, was reconsecrated as a house of worship.

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

As I wrote in an article at the time:

A mezuzah was nailed to the door of the austere stone building, from whose windows the slim minarets of neighboring mosques in Sarajevo’s Old Town are clearly visible. Services were held and the traditional melodies of the Sephardic Jewish liturgy were sung there for the first time in more than 60 years. “To be honest, all my life I’ve lived in Sarajevo, and this was the first occasion to have a service in the Sephardic synagogue,” said Jakob Finci, the head of the Bosnian Jewish Community. “This was the first time to have it on the right place on the right way. That means really a lot. Let’s hope that it becomes a tradition and not only for the High Holy Days but also for some regular Shabbats.” Originally built in 1581, the Old Synagogue was one of 15 that functioned in the city before the Holocaust, when Sarajevo was a major Balkan center of Sephardi culture and the city’s 12,000 Jews made up nearly 20 percent of the local population. Eighty-five percent of Sarajevo’s Jews were killed in the Holocaust. In 1965, during ceremonies marking 400 years of Jewish presence in Bosnia, the Old Synagogue, though still owned by the remnant Jewish community, was converted into a city-run Jewish museum. Jewish communal activities were shifted to an Ashkenazi synagogue, a grand, Moorish style temple built a century ago, which was converted to include offices and function rooms as well as a sanctuary. When the Bosnian War broke out in 1992, the Jewish Museum was closed and became a storage place for collections from other museums in the city. It remained closed until this summer, when it was reopened as a museum, under new management that includes Jewish-community as well as city representatives.

I was told at the time of the plans to update and convert the synagogue into a facility that would serve as a cultural and educational center for the Jewish and non-Jewish public, as well as a museum. The ground floor was to remain a consecrated synagogue where services would be held on special occasions, with an exhibition of ritual objects and Jewish religious traditions. The two upper floors, consisting of arched stone balconies surrounding the sanctuary area, were to house historical exhibits. Part of the museum was to show the richness of pre-Holocaust Jewish life. But for the first time, there would be a “huge” section on the Holocaust — as well as a section detailing the operation of the Jewish community during the Bosnian War.

Bob visited the completed new museum and reports on some of the exhibitions.

It is interesting to note that when the post-war conversion of the Ashkenazic synagogue took place, the lofty sanctuary was cut in half horizontally -- offices and function rooms are on the ground floor, and the synagogue sanctuary is on the upper floor. But, as you can see by the photo at the top of this post, all that remains is the upper horseshoe part of the arch over the Ark. It looks a little weird, with strange proportions, but it's functional -- and still ornate.

When I was in Sarajevo, Jakob Finci reminisced about the experience of the Jewish community during the Bosnian War, when -- as Ed Serotta has written in his book, Survival in Sarajevo -- the Jewish community came to the aid of their city.

During the war, the tiny local Jewish community and its social welfare arm, La Benevolencija, won international renown as a key conduit of nonsectarian humanitarian aid to all ethnic groups involved in the conflict. They ran a soup kitchen, medical and communication services, and organized exit convoys for refugees from besieged Sarajevo. “We have just 700 members, among them 180 survivors of the Holocaust, so we are an aging community,” Finci said. “At the same time, during the war we succeeded in helping at least 10,000 people.” Finci and other Jewish leaders transformed themselves from middle-aged, white-collar professionals into daring coordinators who juggled identification papers and navigated checkpoints, often risking death in the process. “It was really like a James Bond movie,” Finci recalled. “But if you ask me now if I would be ready to repeat it, the answer would be no. Because it’s only now that I realize how dangerous it was. At the time, it was a strange feeling of responsibility."

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Last year, Finci was named Bosnia's Ambassador to Switzerland.

ADD ON -- P.S.

In his blog, Sam Gruber reminds me I forgot to mention Sarajevo's most famous Jewish relic -- the Sarajevo Hagaddah, long a symbol of Jewish presence and survival in the Balkans! Handwritten and illuminated in 14th-century Spain, the lavishly illustrated 109-page manuscript was brought to Sarajevo after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and remained intact through years of conflict and upheaval. It served countless family seders over the centuries, and wine stains mar some of the pages. Owned by the Bosnian National Museum since 1894, it escaped the Holocaust, hidden away in a remote mountain village. It also survived the brutal Bosnian War of the 1990s, either locked in a bank vault or stashed away in private custody. In December 2002, the book went on display at the museum in a special room (although the copy on display now is, I believe, a facsimile -- a fullscale facisimile of the book was produced a couple of years ago and is currently on sale).

Sarajevo Hagaddah. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Hagaddah and its story figured in the recent award-winning novel by Geraldine Brooks, People of the Book. Ed Serotta detailed the history of the Haggadah in a Nightline program.

To see a more complete account of Jewish heritage in Sarajevo and Bosnia, which I wrote (with Sam Gruber and the help of Ivan Ceresnjes) click HERE.

Budapest -- Bob Cohen, Lipot Baumhorn and the Main Jewish Cemetery

A tomb designed by Lipot Baumhorn in the Kozma utca cemetery. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Bob Cohen, whose blog (Dumneazu) I've linked to several times in the past, has a post about his first visit to the main Jewish cemetery in Budapest, the enormously huge cemetery on Kozma utca at the end of the 37 tram.

Bob himself finds it astonishing that in all his years in Bp, he has never visited there before -- in fact, I find it astonishing, too, given all the time in past years that I myself have spent there.

Tomb designed by Odon Lechner and Bela Lajta. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The cemetery figures prominently in two of my books, Jewish Heritage Travel, of course, but also in Upon the Doorposts of Thy House: Jewish Life in East-Central Europe, Yesterday and Today, which came out in 1994.

When I first visited, some 20 years ago, the cemetery was pretty much a wilderness -- most of it was overgrown with ivy, saplings, weeds, bushes. Only the very front part was cleared.

My most memorable experience came when I was researching "Doorposts" -- and Ed Serotta accompanied me there to try to find the grave of Lipot Baumhorn, the great synagogue architect, who died in 1932.

I recount the full story in "Doorposts" -- going to the office of the cemetery, having the man there riffle through endless index cards (nowadays the records are computerized) to find the plot. Then following him around the cemetery (first going in the wrong direction) until we found the proper plot -- but no stone, just a huge clump of trees. Then I looked closer and saw that the trees were actually a thick mass of ivy, covering one stone, and I made out a few letters -- it was, in fact Baumhorn's gravestone.

Ed and I ripped away the ivy, uncovering the stone: it was a very emotional experience. On the stone's face was a list of synagogues that Baumhorn had designed or remodeled... at the top was a bas relief of his masterpiece, the dome of the synagogue in Szeged. Then, there was an epitaph written in highly complex, poetic language by the great Rabbi of Szeged, Immanuel Löw, about how he sought synagogues in heaven.... I took the Hungarian original to a series of friends around the city who put together different translations of the difficult lines.

This is the way that the architect and architectural historian Janos Gerle rendered the poem:

Our inspired artist: His inspiration and heart gave birth
To the lines of synagogues that look toward heaven and awaken piety.
Above his peaceful home hovered devotion;
The soul of a father and husband gave birth of heaven-seeking consolation.

In Szolnok, outside the LB synagogue, 2006

Moldova -- Bob Cohen's Ode to the Knish (and other food)

The old Settlement Cookbook had on its cover the phrase "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach" (or so I remember). But, I think the way to ancestral memory, heimishness, home-thoughts, whatever you may call them is also through the stomach. Or at least the taste-buds. Or at least in descriptions of tastes and textures of what we eat. That's why some things are called comfort foods. And why Jewishness to some resides in lox, bagels, kreplach, kasha and knishes, rather than in anything religious.

On his latest blog post, Bob Cohen delves (almost literally) into contemporary culinary heaven in today's Moldova - with pictures. Wending through the Ashkenazi heartland, to the heart, through the stomach (by way, perhaps, of clogged arteries). Hidden gardens of knish, he calls it.

Great reading, and I envy the eating!

PS Bob, as I've noted earlier, was in Moldova on The Other Europeans project... he includes some great video of Adam Stinga, Kalman Balogh and others jamming between meals.

Moldavia -- Bob Cohen on East European Comfort Food

The Jewish Museum in Berlin is preparing an exhibition on Food and Religion, and I've been asked to write an essay on Jewish-style restaurants in East-Central Europe for the catalogue (mainly the kitschy ones, but I'll have to add a couple of the real thing, I think). Coincidentally, I just received an email announcement of conference on "Culinary Judaism" to be held in England this summer:

Call for Papers: BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR JEWISH STUDIES Conference
12-14 July 2009, Durham, UK:
`Culinary Judaism'

THEME AND VENUE

The 2009 annual conference will take place at St Aidan's College,
Windmill Hill, Durham, 12-14 July 2009. The theme of the conference
will be `Culinary Judaism'. Speakers are invited to present papers
concerning all issues related to food and the use of food in Jewish
texts and cultures, addressing such issues as commensality, cooking,
creation of boundaries, identity, symbolism, sacrifice and material
cultural objects related to or symbolic of eating, etc. The term
`culinary' is interpreted broadly and as suggested extends to
sacrifice and other symbolic uses of food or food related objects. It
is hoped that this broad interpretation of the theme will encourage
members of BAJS from a wide range of research fields to participate.

Bob Cohen takes a far far less academic approach in the blog entry from his Moldavia trip he has just posted, describing in lush (luscious) detail the market foods he found there, many if not most of which form the gustatory core of Ashkenazi eating. You know, pickles, prunes, smoked fish....

Fish was everywhere - interesting given that Moldova is landlocked, but Odessa is only an hour away and as former CCCP appetites know, if you want to drink you need some zakuska to eat with your vodka, and that means some smoked fish. In many ways, if you are used to New York jewish foods, you won't be dissappointed in fressing in Moldova. Jewish culinary traditions have been deeply absorbed into Moldovan cuisine - supermarkets are packed at the arrival of hot, fresh baked challah on friday afternoons.

Budapest -- Hanukkah party central

Hanukkah is in the air in Budapest, especially in the old Jewish quarter in and around the downtown Seventh District, where I have an apartment...

Chabad, of course, has huge menorahs where nightly lightings take place -- and Chabadniks also drive around town in little "Hanukkah-mobiles" -- small cars with electric menorahs standing up right on their roofs.

There are various parties, concerts and other events.

I got to town Tuesday night, after a few days in Vienna, where, among other things, I attended a first-night Hanukkah party in the main synagogue, the elegant, neo-classical Stadttempel on sloping Seitenstettengasse, in the heart of the city's core First District (the same synagogue where I attended Sukkoth services this fall) and adjoining Jewish community center.

Sponsored by Centropa, the Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation, it was structured around a meeting a club of elderly Jews who have been interviewed as part of Centropa's online database of family photos and stories. There were prayers and candle-lighting in the synagogue's graceful oval sanctuary; songs by a local Jewish school choir, and food, food, food (delicious vegetarian salads, humus, and the like). Here's a picture of the menorah lighting:



I left Vienna the next day, arriving in Budapest Tuesday night, just in time to high-tail it to the Siraly cafe, a five minute walk from my apartment, and get there in time to catch the last part of a Jewish "dance house" party, with music by Bob Cohen and Di Naye Kapelye and dance-teaching by Susan Foy. (Bob maintains the Dumneazu blog, a lively chronicle of food, travel, music and more in Eastern Europe, and Di Naye Kapelye's new CD, Traktorist, is receiving rave reviews.)

I forgot to bring my camera the other night -- but here's Bob playing a Hanukkah gig in Budapest a few years ago:


Siraly means Seagull but also, in local slang, “fantastic”. The cafe, in a three-storey building with tall arched windows on Kiraly street, is one of the most popular of the new "Jewish" cafes that have opened recently in and around the Seventh District. It is run partly by Marom, the youth organization of the Masorti, or conservative, Jewish stream (which has its office on an upper floor), and partly by a theater group.

In addition to serving up coffee, tea, schnapps and snacks, Siraly serves as something of a "alternative" Jewish culture center, with concerts, talks, book presentations, etc. A highlight each year is the Hanukkah festival Marom organizes, that lasts through the eight days of the holiday.


Each evening features the lighting of menorahs -- one set up on the bar, another an art installation positioned on the wall (the candle flames are symbolically uncovered.)


Then -- concerts, plays, "kosher cabaret" and other events, either in the upstairs gallery or in a (smokey) theater space in the basement. Last night (Christmas Eve, the centerpiece of the holiday for Hungarian Christians, when everyone is home around the groaning dinner table with their family) Marom and Siraly's chief, Adam Schoenberger, played with his own hip-hop band.

Walking over from yet another party, I got there late -- just in time to catch the very end of their set -- because I had dropped in to a neighboring church to get a taste of midnight mass....

Tonight, the concert is in a bigger venue downtown -- headliners are the French group Boogie Balagan (whose slogan is "from Paris to Palestisrael"), following the local bands Pipatorium and Chalaban, which plays Moroccan music.

Moldova -- Bob Cohen Goes "Home" (and Takes Us Along)

I know I have Bob Cohen's blog Dumneazu listed on my blog link list, to the right of these posts, but I must draw attention to his wonderful description of going back to his grandmother's ancestral turf in Moldova.

He begins:

My Grandmother, Bunye "Betty" Tsarevcan, was born in Teleneşti, in the Republic of Moldova in 1893. In my family's history, of course, we always knew the place as Bessarabia. My Grandfather was born in Criuleni, which he knew as Krivilyany in Yiddish. On Di Naye Kapelye's last CD "A Mazeldiker Yid" I included a track of her telling the story - in Yiddish - of how her grandfather, a rich textile merchant, had to send all the way to Iasi to hire the Lemesh family of Klezmer musicians for my great-Grandmother's wedding festivities. She began her tale with the words "We're from Telenesti... we're not from Orgeyev." And so, I had to see Teleneşti, not so much for myself, since I have seen more small muddy Moldavian towns over the last fifteen years than I care to count, but to, somehow, close a cirlce. My Father and my Uncle Eli are the last of their generation, those that were raised on their parents' stories of the Old Country, told in a rich Bessarabian Yiddish dialect with absolutely no nostalgia and no desire to ever return, stories of unfortunate arranged marriages and poverty and broken marriages and pogroms and World War One and Bolsheviks and finally the epic of escape. But as Bessarabians, my father's generation always maintained a natural curiosity - "What is it like in the place our parents came from?"

Read on

Moldova -- More Other Europeans On The Road

Bob Cohen is back in Budapest and posting his impressions on his recent trip to Moldova with the Other Europeans Yiddish and Roma music project. It's great and informative reading! Pictures and videos, too!

Moldova -- The "Other Europeans" project on the road

Several of the Jewish members of "The Other Europeans" project are in Moldova, traveling around the country to explore the lautari musical tradition.

I'm not on the trip -- but Bob Cohen is writing about it, with photos, on his blog -- he has posted some striking photographs of some of the Jewish traces in the town of Edinets, including its Jewish cemetery.

The Other Europeans project, directed by Alan Bern, is an intercultural dialogue exploring Yiddish and Roma music, culture and identity. It joins together Roma and Yiddish musicians -- they are exploring how music stemming from the same general place (mainly Moldova) is transformed by two parallel but related traditions.

I posted some material on the project this summer -- I took part in a symposium held at the start of the annual Yiddish Summer Weimar festival, and I heard the initial concerts by the two music groups, at Weimar and at the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow.