Lack of Funding Closes Museum Housing Sarajevo Haggadah

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 

Macedonia -- Good Review of New Holocaust Museum

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Economist magazine gives a good review of the new Holocaust/Jewish Museum in Skopje, Macedonia.

The first thing that greets visitors to the museum is a memorial with digital photo frames with changing pictures of the dead, including 3,500 identity photos which the Bulgarians demanded from the Bitola Jews. The museum is not yet finished but today its main exhibition charts the history, not just of Macedonia’s Sephardic Jews, but also those of other parts of the Balkans and especially the former Yugoslavia. What is striking, in comparison with the museums in Paris and Berlin, say, is the lack of objects. The community was wiped out so comprehensively that virtually nothing remained, says Mr Sadikarijo.

For decades the spot where the new museum stands was a rough patch of ground that served as a bus station. The whole area, which was more or less empty, was the old Jewish quarter of Skopje, many of whose remaining houses collapsed in a devastating earthquake in 1963. When the Macedonian government began its post-communist programme of returning property nearly a decade ago, it was found that there were no heirs to much of the former Jewish property. So a fund was established, which in turn created the museum.

The memory of this community has been saved from oblivion in a way that is neither flashy, political, nor full of raw emotion. Perhaps it will serve as an exemplary model of sober remembrance in the Balkans in years to come.

Hava Nagila in Czernowitz

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

On Sept. 6, during my trip to Romania to work on my (Candle)sticks on Stone project, I made a day trip to Chernivtsi, Ukraine -- A.K.A. Czernowitz or Cernauti -- just across the border. The city has changed, at least in outward appearance, since my last visit three years ago: 2008 marked the 600th anniversary of the town, and there was considerable investment expended in clean-up, paint-up and fix-up.

We strolled down the lovely main pedestrian street, admiring the fine buildings along it, newly painted in pastel candy colors. Suddenly, we heard the familiar strains of Jewish music -- first a Yiddish folk song, and then Hava Nagila.



The music was coming from up ahead, it wasn't exactly clear from where. I thought it might be something connected to the European Day of Jewish Culture, which was being celebrated that day. But no -- it was just a wedding (or, rather, an apparent series of weddings). Not Jewish, though. The couples and their friends exited the church and came to dance on the pedestrian way, near a little park. Here a band was set up under a red, white and blue tent. And, we were told, face-paced klezmer and Israeli songs were a big hit.

I had come to Czernowitz, in fact, to take part in a European Day of Jewish Culture event -- the presentation of Simon Geissbuehler's new book on Jewish cemeteries in the Bucovina.

Local Rabbi Kofmansky at the book presentation. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

There had been a presentation event in Radauti the day before, hosted at the new Gerald's Hotel, which had contributed some sponsorship to the book, but in Czernowitz it took place at the Jewish culture building (Jewish National House) and was organized by Jewish institutions. I was gratified that in his talk Simon quoted from the Introduction of my "Jewish Heritage Travel" to describe his own feelings:

When I first researched this book, I became absolutely mesmerized, even a little obsessed with what I was seeing. I wanted to visit, touch, see, feel as many places as I could. I almost felt it a duty. As I entered broken gates or climbed over broken walls into cemeteries where a Jew may not have set foot in years, I wanted to spread my arms and embrace them all, embrace all the tombstones, all the people buried there, all the memories.

Jewish National House. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The building is where the historic international Yiddish congress took place in 1908. The meeting drew 70 delegates representing many political and religious factions -- they included luminaries such as the authors I.L. Peretz and Sholem Asch. There were heated debates over when Hebrew, which was then being revived, or Yiddish, whch was spoken by millions of Jews, could be considered the Jewish national language. In the end, a resolution was adopted that declared Yiddish "a" national language of the Jewish people, along with Hebrew. Click RIGHT HERE for a web site that includes papers, photographs and other material from that congress.

The Jewish National House was built at a time when all major minorities in the city erected imposing cultural headquarters. On our walk through the city, we passed the German National House and the Romanian National House.

Today it houses a number of Jewish organizations as well as new new little Jewish museum, opened in 2008. It's just a two-room exhibit, and there are not a lot of artifacts on display (many of them, though are quite interesting every-day objects, including advertisements, houseold items and even a fur streiml), but the story of Czernowitz Jews is told in photographs and narrative panels that are -- amazingly -- translated into English.

Streiml under glass. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Budapest -- Night of the Museums Includes Jewish Sites

Wintertime view of the Dohany st. Synagogue. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Jewish Museum and the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest are participating in the annual "Night of the Museums" -- which this year takes place Saturday night, that is, tomorrow, June 20. Museums all around the country will stay open late -- sometimes very late, even all night -- and will feature a variety of special programs and events. I'm told that it is the first time that Jewish community operations are taking part.

The Jewish Museum is located next door to the splendid Dohany St. Synagogue (which this year celebrates its 150th anniversary), in an annex built in the 1930s on the spot where Theodore Herzl was born. There will be jazz, classical, Gypsy and Klezmer music and special exhibits, games, guided tours and other activities.

Hungarian Jewish Museum

1077 Budapest, Dohány utca 2.

Music of Happiness, gypsy-jewish music festival at the Night of the Hungarian Jewish Museum

The Federation of Jewish Communities of Hungary is participating first time on the Budapest event „Night of the Museums”. You will have the opportunity to hear concerts, literary conversations and to visit on free guided tours in the Jewish Museum and on Herzl square from 22:00 till the morning.

Full Jewish Museum program

The program at the Holocaust Memorial Center, on Pava street, just outside the city center, looks even more interesting. The center is a striking modern building -- it looks as if it should be in a German expressionist film -- built around the restored Pava Street synagogue, designed by my favorite architect, the prolific Lipot Baumhorn. (I have written extensively about L-B, who is one of my heroes.) Anyone in town should try to see the concert by the great Roma cimbalom player Kalman Balogh, which runs from 8 p.m. til midnight. Kalman takes part this summer in "the Other Europeans" project, and later this month and in July will be performing with that group -- mixed Yiddish and Gypsy musicians -- in Vienna, Krakow and Weimar, Germany.

Holocaust Memorial Center

1094 Budapest, Páva utca 39.

Phone: Telefon: +36 1 455-3333 | Web: www.hdke.hu

On the Night of Museums, there is a lively mood beginning from the afternoon. Family programs entertain the smallest ones, special guided tours begin every hour in Hungarian, English and German. From 6 o’clock we take visitors back to the world of old newsreels, we investigate – with the help of a discussion – the responsibility of the media then and today. The evening is devoted to music and dance. You can listen to klezmer, gipsy and jazz, and dance with a champion of swing. If you feel like doing so, you can change books and ideas in the History Corner, or glance into the Mirror of Tolerance. Hungry and thirsty wanderers can refresh themselves in the Bar of Acceptance.

Full program here

Holocaust Memorial Center. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Off (Geographical) Topic -- American Jewish Heritage Guide

Historical marker at the B'nai Abraham synagogue, Brenham, Texas. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

This, as I indicated in the title, is off topic -- geographically. In honor of May -- American Jewish Heritage Month -- Moment Magazine has published the first of what it says will be an annual Guide to Jewish Heritage in its current issue, which is also available online.

The average American knows more about the Jews who left Egypt 3,000 years ago than about the Jews who came to America over the past 355 years. When American history textbooks mention Jews, it’s often in connection with the Holocaust. But as the presidential proclamation makes clear, Jews have been part of the fabric of American life since their first steps on American soil in 1654. Jews have extended the boundaries of American pluralism, serving as a model for other religious minorities and expanding the definition of American religious liberty so that they and others would be included as equals. Jewish American history offers us the opportunity to explore how Jews have flourished in a free and pluralistic society where church and state are separated and religion is entirely voluntary. The institutions listed in this guide—archives, historical societies, museums and more—have taken the lead in preserving and recounting that story. Thanks to them, people here and abroad are becoming versed in the American Jewish experience. During Jewish American Heritage Month, in particular, we owe these institutions our gratitude.

The list includes Jewish Museums, Archives, Historical Sites and Historical Societies in North America and the Caribbean. Moment posts the following as a sample selection:

Washington, DC

Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington/Lillian & Albert Small Jewish Museum
701 4th St., NW, Suite 200
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 789-0900
www.jhsgw.org

New York City

Museum of Jewish Heritage
Edmond J. Safra Plaza
36 Battery Pl.
New York, NY 10280
(646) 437-4200
www.mjhnyc.org

Tenement Museum
108 Orchard St.
New York, NY 10002
(212) 431-0233
www.tenement.org/index.php

Philadelphia

National Museum of American Jewish History
Independence Mall East
55 North 5th St.
Philadelphia, PA 19106
(215) 923-3811
www.nmajh.org

Mississippi

Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life/Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience

213 South Commerce Street
Natchez, MS 39120

3863 Morrison Road
Utica, MS 39175

(601) 362-6357
www.msje.org

Miami Beach

Jewish Museum of Florida
301 Washington Ave.
Miami Beach, FL 33139
(305) 672-5044
www.jewishmuseum.com

Michigan

Janice Charach Gallery
D. Dan and Betty Kahn Building
6600 West Maple Rd.
West Bloomfield, MI 48322
(248) 432-5448
www.jccdet.org/culturalarts/gallery.shtml

Chicago

Spertus Museum
610 S. Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL 60605
(312) 322-1700
www.spertus.edu

Berkeley, CA

Judah L. Magnes Museum
2911 Russell St.
Berkeley, CA 94705
(510) 549-6950
www.magnes.org

Denver

Mizel Museum
400 S. Kearney St.
Denver, CO 80224
(303) 394-9993
www.mizelmuseum.org

Tulsa

Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art
2021 East 71st St.
Tulsa, OK 74136
(918) 492-1818
www.jewishmuseum.net

Los Angeles

Simon Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance
9786 West Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90035
(310) 553-8403
www.museumoftolerance.com

Skirball Cultural Center
2701 North Sepulveda Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90049
(310) 440-4500
www.skirball.org

Toronto

Beth Tzedec Reuben & Helene Dennis Museum
1700 Bathurst St.
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5P 3K3
(416) 781-3511
www.beth-tzedec.org/museum

Virgin Islands

Weibel Museum/St. Thomas Synagogue
Originally built in 1796 by Sephardic Jews who migrated as a result of the Spanish Inquisition, the synagogue is one of the New World’s oldest.
15 Crystal Gade Charlotte Amalie
St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands
(340) 774-4312
www.onepaper.com/synagogue

Online

Jewish Women’s Archive
The archive functions as an online “Museum of the Jewish Woman.”
www.jwa.org

Kudos to Moment and to the Taj Hotels, Resorts and Palaces, which sponsored the guide.

Germany -- Emigration Museum/Jewish Museum deal

In the Czech Emigration Museum, Lichnov, 2005. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The German Emigration Center in Bremerhaven -- a museum specializing on the topic of emigration -- got in touch with me a few days ago to bring to my attention a new ticket deal they have with the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

Visitors, in short, can buy pay the entrance fee to one of these museums and visit the other on the same ticket -- within three months of the original visit.

It sounds like a good deal to me!

I haven't visited the Emigration Center in Bremerhaven -- but I think that that is where my own grandparents (and probably great-grandparents) sailed from en route to the United States.

Indeed, as the museum points out, more than 7 million emigrants gathered in Bremerhaven between 1830 and 1974 to board a ship headed for the New World. Among them were 3 million Eastern Europeans (my own ancestors, from what today is Romania and Lithuania, would have been among them).

The German Emigration Center is Europe’s largest theme museum and in 2007 was named European Museum of the Year. It is located on the site where the ships departed from the European mainland. It features reconstructions and multimedia productions to illustrate the history of emigration. Visitors can also trace their family roots.

The Jewish Museum in Berlin presents objects form everyday life and art objects, photos, letters etc. that tell the story of German Jewish life from the Middle Ages up to the present day. It is famous for is spectacular architecture, by Daniel Libeskind.

There are, in fact, several museums in Europe that deal with emigration. In the little town of Buttenheim, Germany, for example, the Levi Strauss museum, in the birthplace of the inventor of blue jeans, uses Strauss's life story to tell the more general tale of (Jewish) economic emigration in the 1840s.

More general emigration museums include the big the Ulster American Folk Park, opened in Northern Ireland in 1976, which tells the story of emigration from Ireland. There is a small museum on Czech emigration to Texas in Lichnov, in the eastern part of the Czech Republic.

Italy -- New Museum of Memory and Welcome

Many (many) years ago, while driving near the beautiful baroque city of Lecce in the very heel of the Italian boot, I was startled to pass by a building with Hebrew lettering on its wall....I didn't stop to find out what that was all about, and I've never really remembered just where it was, but given the inauguration of a new museum near Lecce this week, the Hebrew must have had something to do with the seacoast village of Santa Maria al Bagno, near Nardo.

Here, on Jan. 14, museum commemorating tens of thousands of Jewish Holocaust refugees was opened -- the Museum of Memory and Welcome (Museo della Memoria e dell'Accoglienza).

Between 1943 and 1947 as many as 150,000 Jews fleeing Europe for Palestine, then still under British control, found shelter in and around Nardo. The museum, designed by the Rome architect Luca Zevi, was opened in Santa Maria al Bagno, which was one of the main refugee centers. Here, Jewish institutions including a synagogue, canteen, orphanage and hospital were set up.

Three newly restored murals painted by one of the refugees, Romanian-born Zivi Miller, form the centerpiece of the museum. The murals were painted on a building that was long abandoned -- maybe these are what I glimpsed from the car window. One shows a lighted menorah; one depicts the journey of Jews from southern Italy toward Palestine, and the third shows a Jewish mother a child asking a British soldier to allow them to enter.

For Italian-readers, here's a link to the local town web site, which has pictures of the ceremony.

It sounds like a fascinating place -- and I hope to be able to make the long trip down there later in the year.

Belarus -- Brest Jewish Museum?

The web site of the Federation of the Jewish Communities of the CIS reports thata campaign is under way to establish a Jewish section in the municipal museum in Brest, Belarus.

BREST, Belarus – In the Belarus city of Brest, the Jewish community association “Brisk” has begun undertaking a campaign for establishing a Jewish section in the municipal museum. The first initiatives to be taken are the collection of materials and items to display once this section has been created.

Towards this end, Boris Bruk, the Chairman of the Jewish community of Brest, is leading the establishment of a special council to close manage the collection and accumulation of materials on the life and development of the local Jewish community, including its foundation and distant past.

According to Boris Bruk, the collection for the future museum exhibition is already starting to come together. These materials include pieces from the traveling exhibition “The Jews of Brest”, which was previously organized by Arkady Blyaher, the local representative of the ‘Holocaust’ Center.

The Jewish community of Brest appeals to the public for assistance from anyone who may have access to or provide assistance with regards to collecting materials for the museum, and expresses its gratitude in advance to anyone able to aid in this matter. Boris Bruk is reachable via mobile telephone at +375 (29) 635-51-53 or via e-mail at hesed@brest.by

The Jewish community of Brest is a full and active member of the Association of Jewish Communities of Belarus and, as such, of the Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS and Baltic Countries.

Estonia -- New Jewish Museum

The Federation of the Jewish Communities of the Former Soviet Union reports that a new Jewish museum has recently opened in Tallinn, Estonia, apparently in the Jewish community center complex.

The report says:

The main exhibit includes photographs, historical documents and exhibit items received from private individuals, the state archives as well as other museums. The exhibits demonstrate the community life of Estonian Jews, the history of the community in the pre-World War Two period, during the German occupation, and during the Soviet era.

A separate exhibition covers the revitalization of Jewish communal life in the late 1980s in Estonia

The museum web site has a downloadable pdf catalogue.

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Morocco -- Casablanca Jewish Museum

An article in the United Arab Emirates English language newspaper , The National, highlights the privately run Jewish Museum in Casablanca, Morocco, founded in 1997 and the first and to date only Jewish museum in the Arab world.

Jewish Museum Showcases Unity

John Thorne, Foreign Correspondent

Dec. 2, 2008

Simon Levy, left, the director of the Jewish museum in Morocco, speaks to visitors. Eve Coulon for The National

CASABLANCA // Ten years ago, Jewish fathers in Morocco looked at demographics and decided it was time to build a museum.

Morocco’s once-thriving Jewish community has shrunk to a handful since the creation of Israel in 1948. Today, Simon Levy, a linguist and historian, fights doggedly to preserve its memory as director of the Arab world’s only Jewish museum.

Mr Levy recently played host to a group of high school students. For most, it was their first exposure to Jewish Morocco. While Mr Levy normally sees a trickle of foreign Jewish tourists, his target audience are Muslim youngsters.

“More than anything, I want them to learn that there’s a different way of being Moroccan,” Mr Levy said.

READ FULL STORY

The Casablanca Jewish Museum was the subject of a longer article in The Forward last year.

Interestingly, it was also the subject of one of the papers presented at the conference on Representations of Jews in European Popular Culture, which I attended last week at the European University Institute in Fiesole, near Florence.

Jewish Museums in general formed the theme of one of the conference sessions.

In her presentation, "The Jewish Museum in Casablanca: Formation and Reflection of Contemporary Jewish Identity," Sophie Wagenhofer of the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, who also has worked at the Casablanca Museum, gave a description of its history and focus and also dealt with the way in which the museum presents the view of Moroccan Jews as Moroccans, part and parcel of national history, culture and society -- as she put it, "inscribing a minority's identity in the national identity".

She wrote:

[A] vital message of the exhibit is to strengthen the sameness of Muslims and Jews, which was done by referring to culture rather than religion. Muslims and Jews alike share the fields of culture, politics and economy as Moroccans in general, whereas from the point of religion the groups differ. Thus jewelry and everyday life items play a considerable role.

Here is how the article in The National puts it:

[The museum's founder and director, Simon Levy, asks visiting highschool] students to identify the Jews and Muslims in an old photograph. They guess unsuccessfully for a moment, then Mr Levy asks what the picture represents.

“Mixing?” a girl said.“No!” Levy said. “Because they are the same.”

Jews and Muslims share many customs that mark them as Moroccans, Mr Levy tells the students. They speak Moroccan Arabic, eat couscous and tajines, drink green tea laced with mint and make pilgrimages to the shrines of local Jewish and Muslim saints.

For a web site devoted to Jewish history, tourism and travel in Morocco, click HERE.

Florence -- Haggling in the Synagogue

Florence Synagogue. Photo (c) R. E. Gruber

I had an experience last week that threw into even sharper relief the contradictions of caricature and irony found in the insider vs outsider use of Jewish stereotypes.

I was in Florence for a very interesting and wide-ranging conference on representations of Jews in European popular culture, organized by young scholars at the European University Institute in nearby Fiesole.

Before the official start of the conference, a group of us visited Florence's synagogue and the Jewish museum housed in its women's gallery. The synagogue is a stately Moorish-style structure with an ornate interior and towering green dome. A grandiose symbol of Jewish emancipation, it was designed by the architects Marco Treves, Mariano Falcini and Vincenzo Micheli and inaugurated in 1882.

The Jewish museum is on two levels -- the lower level is mainly a display of Judaica. The upper level was revamped and reopened last year as a multi-media history exhibit using objects, panels, sound and projected images to tell the story of the Jewish community in Florence.

Florence Jewish Museum. Photo (c) R. E. Gruber

After visiting the museum, I stopped in the gift shop (I love museum gift shops.) It's small, but has a lot on offer -- jewelry, ritual objects, stationery, etc. All seemed rather expensive, but, with Hanukkah gifts on my mind, I found a nice little pair of earrings for €15.

I wanted to get another piece, apparently made by the same designer. The saleswoman showed me a pendant -- for €20.

I didn't want to spend that much, I told her. Her response was immediate. "What would you like to pay? How much do you want to spend?"

Well, the earrings were only €15 -- I didn't want to spend more than that.

"OK -- €15 -- the pendant is yours!"

Damn, I thought. She gave me 1/4 off, just like that. I could have got it for less!

Then I thought about the last place I had come into contact with a reference to bargaining in a Jewish context -- the "At the Golden Rose" cafe in L'viv, where no prices were put on the menu so that patrons could haggle ("like Jews") as to what they would pay...

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As for the conference -- I will try to write something on it later. For now, you can see the program by clicking HERE.