Romania -- My Travel Piece in NYTimes online explore painted monasteries and Jewish cemeteries

The International Herald Tribune and NYTimes online runs my travel piece on the Bucovina region of northern Romania -- in which I write about both the painted monasteries and the Jewish cemeteries. The headline writer and photo caption writer unaccounably attributed everything to Gura Humorului, but that is just one of the places I mention in the story -- chosen as the dateline as it is the hub for two monasteries (Voronet and Humor) as well as the historic Jewish cemetery -- I posted a video of the cemetery in September.

November 7, 2009
Where Art and Faith Embrace in Gura Humorului, Romania
 
By RUTH ELLEN GRUBER

GURA HUMORULUI, ROMANIA — The Bucovina region in the far north of the country, wrote the Romanian scholar Silviu Sanie, is “one of those blessed realms where sacred and secular monuments have enriched the enchanting natural landscape. [...]”

Here are Romania’s famous painted monasteries, built in the 15th and 16th centuries when the region, a stronghold of Orthodox Christianity, was threatened by Ottoman invaders.
The vividly colored frescoes on their exterior walls, masterpieces of Byzantine painting, tell the tales of saints and heroes, and portray in epic imagery the cataclysmic struggle between good and evil at the end of days. [...]



Here, too, however, are religious sites far less known and rarely visited that also form important components of the region’s deeply rooted spiritual patrimony. These are the centuries-old Jewish cemeteries, whose weathered tombstones bear extraordinary carvings that meld folk motifs and religious iconography into evocative examples of faith expressed through art.

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Romania/Ukraine -- The Bucovina Cemeteries Guidebook is Launched

Jewish cemeter, Gura Humorului, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Swiss Diplomat Simon Geissbuehler's guidebook to Jewish cemeteries in the Bucovina region straddling the Romania-Ukraine border was launched last week in Bucharest and has been getting appreciative reviews in the local media. The book is available in various languages.

'This work is a combination of a tourist guide and an art album and I'm speaking of the fact that the text written by Simon Geissbuhler is in the form of a traveller's journal, but the images in the album make one think the work is an art album', said Adrian Manafu, the editor of Noi Media Print publishing house that published the volume.

Manafu, moreover, believes the Jewish cemeteries in Bucovina can be deemed genuine works of art. He explained the work refers the cemeteries in historical Bucovina, an old Romanian territory that has been shared by Ukraine and Romania after World War Two.

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I was glad to see that an article in one of the local media highlighted the sorry fact that the wonderful Jewish cemeteries in Bucovina are woefully ignored. The journalist Annett Muller picks up my own contention that these cemeteries could form the basis of a fascinating artistic a spiritual tourism route -- and she points out how the famous "Merry Cemetery" in Sapanta, with its brightly painted grave markers, is a popular attraction, even if it is in a fairly remote location. Few people realize that there is also a Jewish cemetery in Sapanta, well maintained and well marked.

Jewish cemetery in Sapanta, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

I wrote the Foreword to the book, and Simon kindly pointed out an article in the local media where this was highlighted.

I am hoping to get to Radauti at the end of the summer, when a launch of the book is scheduled to take place there -- at the same time, I'll be working on my photo documentation of the beautifully decorated tombs of women in the Jewish cemetery there, a project for which I received a grant from the Hadassah Brandeis Institute.

Romania -- New Guidebook News

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

A Romanian web site (using my pictures....) is highlighting Simon Geissbuehler's new guide to Jewish cemeteries in the Bucovina, for which I wrote the Foreword. The launch of the book in Bucharest is this Friday.

Volumul intitulat „Cimitirele evreieşti din Bucovina” al diplomatului elveţian, dr. Simon Geissbühler, va fi lansat joi, 25 iunie a.c., ora 18.30, la IF Gallery din Str. Tokio nr. 1, Bucureşti. Publicată de editura „Noi Media Print”, cartea este disponibilă în română, germană, engleză, franceză şi ucraineană.

Vernisajul va cuprinde scurte alocuţiuni ale directorului editorial al editurii „Noi Media Print”, Adrian Manafu, ale preşedintelui Federaţiei Comunităţilor Evreieşti din România, dr. Aurel Vainer, şi ale autorului, deschiderea unei expoziţii de fotografie cu cimitirele evreieşti din Bucovina, cât şi un cocktail unde vor fi servite cele mai bune vinuri româneşti.

Celebra scriitoare, fotografă şi jurnalistă americană, Ruth Ellen Gruber, deţinătoare a două premii Simon Rockover pentru jurnalism iudaic, o autoritate în domeniul chestiunii evreieşti din Europa, a apreciat că “prin publicarea acestui ghid turistic Simon Geissbühler face un pas important, prezentând publicului larg o serie de localităţi minunate. Domnia sa deschide astfel, noi dimensiuni pelerinajului spiritual, adresându-se aparţinătorilor tuturor credinţelor şi orientărilor religioase, care doresc să intuiască nemijlocit frumuseţea, semnificaţia istorică şi vitalitatea cimitirelor evreieşti din Bucovina”.

La rândul său, preşedintele FCER, dr. Aurel Vainer, consideră că „această carte este şi trebuie să fie primul pas al autorului, la care ne alăturăm fără nici o rezervă, către un proces de cunoaştere şi recunoaştere a bogatei tradiţii culturale şi religioase evreieşti în sine şi ca parte din Patrimoniul Cultural Naţional”.

Romania/Ukraine -- New Guidebook Launch

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

"Jewish Cemeteries of the Bucovina," a new guidebook-brochure to Jewish cemeteries in the Bucovina region of Romania (and Ukraine) is being published this month. It was written (and photographed) by Simon Geissbühler, a Swiss diplomat based in Bucharest and will be available in English, German, French, Romanian, and Ukrainian.

The official launch is June 25 in Bucharest -- see the inviation above -- but there will be another launch in Radauti, on June 29.

I contributed the Foreword to this guide -- the cemeteries in this region, with their sculptural, wonderfully carved, tombstones have long been among my favorite Jewish heritage sites (and not just because the region is where my paternal grandparents came from.) My project (Candle)sticks on Stone focuses on these carved stones, particularly house women are represented on them by depictions of candlesticks.

Needless to say, I'm delighted to see this book come out, and I hope it attracts attention to these wonderful but overlooked places, which are located in the same region as Romania's splendid, and much more famous (and visited) painted monasteries.

Here's my Foreword:

A hand reaches out, grasps the branch of a tree and breaks it sharply off. The image is extraordinary, even surreal; so vivid that you can almost hear the crack of the wood.

The tree is the Tree of Life and the hand is the hand of God -- or maybe that of the Angel of Death. The portrayal, found repeated over and over in the Jewish cemetery in Radauti, in the Bucovina region of northern Romania, is one of the remarkable sculpted images found on Jewish tombstones in scores of Jewish cemeteries scattered over this part of East-Central Europe.

I first visited Radauti more than 30 years ago, in the bitterly cold December of 1978. It is the town from which my grandparents emigrated to the United States, and it is here, in the Jewish cemetery, that my great-grandmother Ettel Gruber lies buried.

Tilted now to one side, her tombstone is marked with the depiction of candlesticks that traditionally denote the tombs of Jewish women. Ettel, who died in 1947, was "a positive and dedicated woman, fair and kind in all her doing," her epitaph reads. She "offered hospitality and charity to the poor and set a full table for the Tzaddikim."

Jewish cemeteries are often described as "Houses of the Living," and, even when overgrown and abandoned, lives and life stories endure here in sculpted form.

Jewish tombstone decoration combines religious and folk motifs that in many cases refer to the name, lineage, profession or personal attributes of the deceased. Numerous gravestones bear symbols referring to death, such as broken candles and broken flowers as well as the hand of God breaking the branch from a tree. But many more refer to life.

Among the more common carved symbols are two hands in the spread-fingered gesture of priestly blessing on the gravestones of a Cohen (priest), that is, a descendant of the biblical High Priest Aaron. Another common symbol is a pitcher, or ewer, marking tombs of Levites, or descendants of the ancient tribe of Levi, priestly assistants who traditionally washed the hands of the priests.

Books mark the graves of particularly learned people; hands placing coins into charity boxes denote those who were particularly generous. Candlesticks -- as on my great-grandmother's gravestone -- often mark the tombstones of women, since in Jewish ritual women bless the candles on the Sabbath. The candlesticks are sometimes simple representations; others show ornate, almost braided candelabras, and some carvings include hands blessing the flames.

The images of a variety of animals also frequently decorate the stones. Lions may symbolize the tribe of Judah or personal names, such as Lev or Leib. Carved stags indicate names such as Zvi or Hirsch. Birds often appear, and mythical beasts, such as the winged griffin, are also common. There is often, too, a wealth of other decorative carving such as flowers, vines, grapes, and geometric forms.

All this imagery, and more, is found in the Jewish cemeteries of the Bucovina region. The decorated tombstones here, in fact, represent especially striking and sometimes startling examples of artistry, design and virtuoso stone-carving.

Baroque tombstones from the 18th and 19th centuries in particular employ a richness of texture and imagery that approaches that found in the rococo decoration in some churches. In some places carving styles are so distinctive that you can discern the work of individual, now anonymous, artists.

Few Jews live in the Bucovina today; the cemeteries thus form powerful memorials to a civilization that was wiped out in the Holocaust. Moreover, the liveliness and fantasy employed by the stone-masons adds a new dimension to how we may regard the spiritual, intellectual and artistic lives of Jews who lived in traditional East European shtetls.

To me, these elaborate sculpted gravestones are just as important manifestations of faith through art as are the marvelous painted monasteries that are also found in this region. Yet few people know of their existence, and even fewer ever visit.

With this important new guidebook, Simon Geissbühler introduces these wonderful places to a broader public and opens the way for spiritual pilgrims of all faiths and beliefs to experience their power, beauty and historical significance.

Ruth Ellen Gruber
Morruzze, Italy