Tourism -- An interesting essay on tourism to Jewish sites by Alex Joffe

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

There is an interesting essay in Jewish Ideas Daily about ebbs, flows and other "dilemmas" in Jewish-themed tourism, written by Alex Joffe, who is described as a research scholar with the Institute for Jewish and Community Research. He starts from considering the archeological remains of an ancient synagogue in Albania, excavated as a potential tourist site seven or eight years ago, but now languishing and all but abandoned.

Tourism, he writes, "is not just a recreational and aesthetic experience for the tourist. It is a business, and as such it poses moral questions as to the specific experiences that are bought and sold." 

Some of the issues he raises are among those I discussed both in the introduction of Jewish Heritage Travel and in the chapter on Travel in Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe. Such as the role of actual living Jewish communities in far-flung places, and whether or not visiting Jewish heritage sites entails any particular responsibilities or sensitivities.

Even among the dead, the ethical questions are real, and the ironies are evident. While Albanians had hoped to use their commendable historical story to draw tourists, their synagogue now languishes and decays. Meanwhile, Nazi concentration and death camps, above all Auschwitz, are sites of pilgrimage and remembrance—and a source of significant tourism revenues to Germany and Poland.

Why go one place rather than another? Albanians saved "their" Jews—are they owed something in return by Jewish tourists? Or should Jews instead visit Germany and Poland, to keep the Jewish histories of those countries from falling victim to the Nazis, to rebuild Jewish life, or even to offer prayers at cemeteries?

The scale of the problem is overwhelming, as there is no end to Jewish heritage sites. Everywhere Jews lived, they left behind schools and synagogues, dwellings, markets and factories, and cemeteries. Few of these sites are beautiful. Proportionally, sand-floor synagogues in Curaçao are vastly outnumbered by destroyed or usurped synagogues in Ukraine or Belarus. And everywhere there are the cemeteries, mass graves, and other assorted killing fields—overgrown and forgotten, ploughed up, or routinely desecrated. Another responsibility thus looms, to preserve the dignity of the Jewish dead.

But the synagogue of Onchesmos deserves to be seen—and not only by Jews. After all, remembering that Jews were a vital part of the Mediterranean world is, if nothing else, important to understanding that they remain a living part of that world today. Archeologists have responsibilities as well, not only to preserve the remains but to present them in such a way that they become at least a small part of the living present. Otherwise they should be left in peace.

I'm not sure that I find the questions and challenges (if they are really questions and challenges) he brings up mutually exclusive. There is no "should" entailed in where anyone -- Jewish or not -- chooses to visit.  Jewish heritage places are interesting and important in themselves -- in different ways. Each one tells a different story, though, of course, some of the stories are related. But it seems besides the point to make it seem an ethical choice -- or to pose it in terms of making it an ethical choice -- as to whether you will visit Auschwitz or the excavated ruins of an ancient synagogue in Albania.

(Oh, and I disagree with him when he says few of the sites Jewish "left behind" are beautiful.)

Hungary to Poland trip -- Lutowiska!

View of Lutowiska from Jewish cemetery. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

One of my aims in the southeastern corner of Poland was to explore  some  Jewish heritage sites for the first time -- as well as revisit some that I had been to previously to update my information on their status and condition.

One of the first-time places was the hamlet of Lutowiska -- way down in the triangular southeastern tip of the country that pokes between Ukraine and Slovakia, very close to the Ukrainian border.  Pretty far, far away.....   When borders were different, though, tt was once a major trading center,  with a large Jewish population. According to a Yizkor book entry on Lutowiska, Jews  were the majority population from the late 19th century.

Here's information from the town web site:

The name Lutowiska comes from the Russian word „letowyshche” designating a place where cattle and sheep were grazed in summer. The village was set up in the 16th century according  o the Wallachian law in estates that then belonged to the Stadnicki family. The village was first referred to in 1580. The village was located on the intersection of busy trade routes from Sanok to the Tucholska Pass and further to Transylvania and from Przemyśl through the Beskid Mountains or Użock Pass to Użhorod. There was also a local route to the East through Turka to Drohobycz. Such a place encouraged the location of a town. Thanks to the efforts of Ludwik Urbański Lutowiska was granted a charter at the beginningof the 18th century. In 1742 King August III granted the town a privilege to hold ten big fairs a year (by comparison  Sanok and Lesko only held two big fairs a year). In the 19th century the big fairs in Lutowiska were famous throughout Europe. People chiefly traded in oxen that were grazed on high-elevation meadows (poloninas). They were grey, long-horned cattle called Hungarian, willingly bought even by merchants from Western Europe. During thebig fair the whole Lutowiska was packed with cattle, a few thousand animals were here at a time. Lutowiska’s centra consisted then of two adjoining market places surrounded by wooden houses, which mainly belonged to Jews, a majority of the town’s population. Lutowiska lost the status of town in 1919, though it remained the region’s significant trade and administrative centre until the Second World War. The census of 1921 discovered 261 houses inhabited by 2125 people. In 1939 the settlement already had about 3500 inhabitants. In June 1942 Gestapo officers from Ustrzyki Dolne shot ca. 650 local Jews. They also burnt the synagogue and Jewish houses, practically all the wooden buildings in Lutowiska. Between 1945 and 1951 Lutowiska was within the Soviet borders, the name was changed to Shevchenko. At the end of 1951 a mere 28 families lived there. Resettlers from the Sokal and Hrubieszów regions mainly moved to the deserted houses. The village only reverted to its original name after a few years. In 1951 Lutowiska became home to communal authorities.

I had been told that there was a Jewish cemetery here, but that it was outside the village; I would have to ask, I was told, but people would know.

In fact, there is a beautiful, and beautifully maintained, Jewish cemetery here, as well as the ruins of the synagogue -- and I was delighted to find that  local authorities have included both in a well organized touristic/educational route in and around the town that focuses on the three cultures that before WW2 coexisted here -- Jews,  Poles and Ukrainians. The itinerary is aimed at bringing back awareness of destroyed local history (Holocaust as well as post-war expulsions and population and border shifts) and also highlight the landscape and environment.

Sign of Three Cultures route outside entry to Jewish cemetery. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The cemetery is on a hill behind the town's big school, immersed in lovely rolling landscape -- I found it by asking at the local tourism office, where an English-speaking young man gave me explicit directions as well as a brochure and map for the Three Cultures route. I walked there, following three back-packing girls who also headed that way to visit the site.

The cemetery is enclosed by a rustic fence, and the weeds and grass are cut. There are some dozens of gravestones, some with fairly elaborate carving; many tilted, some eroded -- I was able to document a lot of women's tombstones, for my (Candle)sticks on Stones project, showing a variety of carved versions of candlesticks.

Some of the carvings were very reminiscent of the carving style in Busk and other places across the border in what is today Ukraine.

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The carving on this stone reminds me of that across today's border in Ukraine. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

 

Other sites on the Three Cultures itinerary include the Greek-Catholic cemetery, with a replica of the wooden church that no longer stands here:

Replica of the Greek-Catholic church Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Ukraine -- Jewish Travel Web Site and Tours, etc

Fortresslike 16th century synagogue building in Sharhorod, Ukraine. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

People are always asking me for advice on "traveling Jewish" in Ukraine -- arranging trips and tours, finding places, accommodation, information, etc.

A new (or newish) web site and organization, "JUkraine" may now be the answer.

I just came across the web site -- jukraine.com -- and it looks at if it will be very helpful.

I hope so! Ukraine is a huge country, rich with fascinating Jewish heritage sites and also home (in some places) to active Jewish communities. To date, my chapter on Ukraine in Jewish Heritage Travel is one of the only Jewish guides to the country -- but it only minimally scratches the surface.

New York/Poland -- Early Jewish Heritage Travel (1930s) exhibit in New York

 

 Intro video for the exhibit, posted on YouTube

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

What looks like a wonderful and fascinating exhibit on Jewish heritage travel in the early 20th century has opened at the Yeshiva University Museum in New York. The title of the exhibit says it all:  16mm Postcards: Home Movies of American Jewish Visitors to 1930s Poland.

The exhibit

brings to life the landscape and people in Poland through the amateur movies of immigrant American Jews who traveled “back home” to visit their families, friends, and former communities in the 1920s and 1930s.  Intended to be viewed by family and fellow landsmen (friends from the Old Country), these films offer a rare, intimate and—quite literally—moving picture of Jewish families, towns and society in pre-World War II Poland. This exhibition was developed in collaboration with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and in cooperation with the Center for Jewish History.

The films can be seen at the Center for Jewish History web site.

Adam Kirsch writes in Tablet Magazine that the exhibit

demonstrates how different things were in the early 20th century, when the ancestors of most American Jews came here from Eastern Europe. This extraordinary show consists of home movies—all silent, mostly fragmentary—taken by American Jews who visited their relatives in Poland in the 1930s. (Many of the films can be seen at the exhibition’s website.) What makes these films so powerful is their extreme rarity: It was only a small handful of Jews who had the wherewithal, and the desire, to go back to the villages they had left behind decades earlier. And the encounters they document show how drastically the fates of American and Polish Jewry had diverged by the 1930s. In many films, we see the American cousin, prosperous and dressed in a Western suit, standing next to his poor, bearded, caftanned relatives; and it is impossible not to wonder what must have been going on in their minds and hearts.

Did the American cousin, clutching his camera like a badge of modernity, give thanks that he had been rescued from ancestral poverty and anti-Semitism—or did he feel nostalgia for the Jewish world from which he was cut off? Did the Polish cousin envy his American relative, or resent his intrusion, or long for his help? The pathos is infinitely greater, of course, because the viewer knows that all these Polish Jews—old and young, men and women and children—are just a few years away from the Holocaust. Virtually none of the people we see in these home movies was alive 10 years later. Because of the Holocaust, the natural growing-apart of the Old Country and the New World became an irreparable break, and a source of permanent guilt. Jews who came to America lived and flourished, while those who remained behind suffered and died: How can such a gulf ever be crossed?

The questions that “16 mm Postcards” raises, silently and by implication, are addressed head-on in a new book that might serve as a companion to the exhibition: The Glatstein Chronicles (Yale University Press). This is the title given by the volume’s editor, Ruth Wisse, to two novellas published by the great Yiddish writer Jacob Glatstein in the late 1930s, based on his own pilgrimage to the Alte Heym. Glatstein was born in Lublin in 1896 and came to New York in 1914. After working for a time in sweatshops, he established himself as a Yiddish journalist, while writing poetry that brought the influence of Joyce, Eliot, and Pound to bear on Yiddish literature. “The term experimentation,” Wisse writes in her introduction, “hardly suffices to describe the many subjects that Glatstein addresses, the poses he adopts, and the poetic variations he attempts.”

My latest Centropa.org column -- another take on Bielsko Biala

The Jewish architect Karol Korn, who designed some of the most important buildings in Bielsko-Biala.

In my latest column on centropa.org, I visit Bielsko-Biala, Poland and describe the Jewish sites there -- focusing, among other things, on the buildings designed by the architect Karol Korn.

Much of the town is still somewhat rundown, with sooty grime obscuring the facades of elegant buildings. But restoration work has begun on some of the architectural gems that in the latter part of the 19th century won the town the nickname "little Vienna."

A Jewish architect, Karl (or Karol) Korn, in fact, was instrumental in shaping the urban landscape we see today -- so much so that a street in town was even named in his honor.

Korn, who lived from 1852-1906, designed many of the sumptuous mansions and apartment buildings that still line the city's main boulevard, ul. 3 Maja, and near by streets. Some of them show art nouveau, or secessionist, features. His used Italian and neo-renaissance touched for his own mansion, built on ul. 3 Maja in 1883 -- it incorporates a sculptural representation of Korn's emblem above the entrance: an arrangement of the measuring tools and other instruments used by architects and builders.

Korn also designed other important buildings, such as the elegant President Hotel and the central Post Office, that are landmarks on the avenues that spread out from Bielsko's medieval core of 14th century castle and arcaded market square.

His most elaborate building, however, no longer exists. This was the opulent, Moorish-style synagogue that dominated ul. 3 Maja until the Nazis destroyed it in 1939.

It was an imposing structure with two big towers, lotus domes, decorated cupolas, arched windows and a red and orange striped façade -- old postcards, on sale at the local tourist office, demonstrate that it was one of the city's most prominent attractions.
Today, a contemporary art gallery stands on the spot -- ironically this is where the performance art festival I was attending took place. It is marked by a small memorial plaque on an outer wall.

Next door, a puppet theatre stands on the site of the one-time Jewish school, and across the street is the former Jewish Community building. I was told that the carved decoration represents the various fruits mentioned in the Torah.

Read full Article

Musings on Mallorca: part 3

Of course experiencing local culture is not high on every traveller's list of priorities - as we were often reminded in Mallorca. Some people simply want to lie in the sun and read a book, others just want to have fun with friends, and they don't care where they do it. But when I write, I write with a different audience in mind - one for whom experiencing local culture, language, history, art, and cuisine and so on are just as important than lying by a pool. Unfortunately, Mallorca has for too long focused its sights on promoting sun and sand - or bucket and spade - tourism. And through its efforts to make the holiday experience for sunworshippers cheap and easy, the island has lost much of its culture and destroyed some of its coastline in the process. I'm talking about the wall-to-wall high-rise hotels, the once-pretty coves now backed by ugly concrete apartment blocks, the menus in four languages and featuring beef stroganof and fish and chips, and an abundance of tacky souvenir shops, Irish bars, British pubs, betting shops, and lap-dancing clubs. This is what I don't like about Mallorca. Mass tourism in its ugliest form. And sadly, it can be a challenge to escape it. It's not a handful of towns that have given over to package tourists, as is the case in Cyprus, but a whole stretch of coastline west of Palma, another in the north, and dozens of other spots in the east and south. And don't think Mallorcans are happy about this. Most we met are not - especially the younger generation - but they seem powerless to do anything about it and admit they've lost control. Why? Because much of the development is foreign-owned. Mallorca makes a great case study for how not to develop tourism. But on a positive note, it's also a brilliant candidate for an experiment in sustainable tourism and how to turn a destination around.

Musings on Mallorca: part 2

So what did we not enjoy about Mallorca? Well, Mallorca is not for everyone. Sure, that could be said about a lot of places, but there are some destinations that few people dislike: Paris, Italy, Thailand for instance. And perhaps it's just that - despite the stunning landscapes, fascinating people, beautiful hotels and fabulous restaurants - Mallorca is not for me. Would I go there again? To work, absolutely. I'd happily go back and talk to the island's talented chefs or write about its burgeoning wine industry. Off-season though. Would I go there on holidays? No, most probably not. And for us, that's one of the criteria we use to judge a destination. If it's the kind of place where I think "I'd prefer to be lying on that beach than writing about it" or a place I make a mental note to return to one day, then I place it fairly high on my list of great destinations. But it's more complex than that. There are other things I disliked about Mallorca. Mainly, that Mallorca did not feel like Spain. Nor did it feel Catalan. Juxtaposed with Barcelona, where we spent five days after Mallorca, that was even more apparent. Barcelona is a cosmopolitan, multicultural city, immensely popular with tourists, with a reasonable-sized expat population - yet it's still retained its unique Catalan identity and essential Spanish-ness. Mallorca, sadly, has lost a lot of the characteristics that make it Mallorcan. They are still there, of course - the language, cuisine, arts and crafts, traditional customs, etc - they're just very hard to find. We located them of course - because that's what travel writers do - but I continually wondered how tourists there for a week fared. Mallorca is a place where you most definitely need to use a quality guidebook, follow some good local blogs, have a local guide, or quickly make local friends, if you want to experience the 'real' Mallorca - or as the Mallorquins like to say, 'the other Mallorca'. Unfortunately, for most tourists visiting the island, the closest they'll get to Mallorcan culture are artificial experiences (as fun as they can be) like La Granja, pictured.

Croatia -- Jewish Tours in Zagreb

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I've just been contacted about a new program that provides Jewish heritage tours of Zagreb, Croatia. They are being conducted by the recently formed Rimon Center for Jewish Education in the city.

Take a walk through ages, starting at 11th century foundation of Zagreb, over to the 14th century and the first arrival of Jews to Zagreb, through the golden years of late 19th and early 20th century, when Zagreb developed rapidly, with Jewish community reaching it's peak - just before almost completely perishing in the Shoah.

Our tour includes visits to all the landmarks and sites of Zagreb, with detailed insight into history of Jews in Croatia and surrounding areas, and the revival of Jewish life today.

I expect to be in Zagreb in a few days, and will check them out!

The city's Jewish community has been split by some very bitter personal (and ideological) conflicts in recent years. But there is quite a lot to see Jewishly that -- I hope -- would not mean having to get involved in local spats....

Poland -- My Ruthless Cosmopolitan column from Bielsko Biala

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

My latest Ruthless Cosmopolitan column, published June 1, was from Bielsko Biala, Poland and deals with the impact of perception, desire and demand on memory, particularly vis a vis the Jewish experience and Jewish heritage in Poland....

I'm posting the piece here, but will have more to say about B-B in a later post, with pictures from my trip.

Poland’s Jewish heritage is about more than just death

By Ruth Ellen Gruber · June 1, 2009

BIELSKO-BIALA, Poland (JTA) -- Outside the elegant theater in the city of Bielsko Biala in southern Poland, a billboard advertises an upcoming play. Stark letters spell out the title: "Zyd" -- Jew.

The lettering looks almost menacing, like scrawled graffiti, and I am a little taken aback.

But then I remember where I am.

This is Poland.

And the play, in fact, is an award-winning exploration of anti-Semitism and the power of stereotypes -- part of the endless continuing discussion here about the Jewish past, the Jewish present, and the long, complex and troubled relationship between Jews and Catholic Poles.

"There is no theme that Poles are more likely to discuss than Jews," the play's author, Artur Palyga told the Polish media. "It can be said that Judaism is our national passion."

"Zyd" deals with teachers in a provincial Polish town preparing for the visit of a former student, a Holocaust survivor who had attended their school before the Shoah, when Jews made up more than half the town's population.

Its portrayal of grassroots prejudice is graphic and sometimes grotesque. Indeed, the play came under fire in the right-wing press, and its premiere last year sparked protests.

Still, it won the main prize at a national festival of contemporary Polish drama for being "an honest, brave and theatrically precise attempt to settle accounts with the difficult Polish past."

The play is essentially about memory. In particular, it’s about the various uses to which memory is put, and how memory differs in the minds of different people considering the same past.

These issues have suffused much of my own work over the past two decades, as I have researched Jewish heritage sites in East and Central Europe and chronicled the Jewish experience in places were few or no Jews live today.

How are Jews and Jewish heritage remembered? Which Jewish places and personalities are incorporated into the local consciousness? How do local people choose to portray an important part of the population that was savagely removed, almost overnight?

I found Bielko Biala permeated with examples of how perspective influences memory.

They ranged from indifferent disregard to the kitschy commercialization of a "Jewish-style" restaurant called Rabbi, to an earnest attempt to acknowledge the contribution of Jews to the city.

Bielsko Biala was officially established in 1951 with the amalgamation of two towns on opposite sides of the Biala River, which for centuries formed the border between the Austrian Empire and Poland, and then the regions of Silesia and Galicia.

Before 1939, the population was divided among ethnic Germans, Jews and Poles, and the city remains a stronghold of Protestantism. The Nazis absorbed it into the Reich, and almost all the Jews were killed. After World War II, Poland took it over and expelled the ethnic Germans.

Only a small Jewish community lives here today, but Jews played a major role in local history. In the 19th century, Jewish industrialists helped build the city into a major textile center, and a local Jewish architect, Karol Korn, designed key buildings that still define Bielsko Biala.

Korn's grandest building -- the Moorish-style great synagogue -- no longer exists. Erected in 1881, it dominated the city's main avenue until it was blown up by the Nazis in 1939.

Today, a contemporary art gallery occupies the spot; a small plaque on an outer wall commemorates the destroyed building but says nothing about the community it once served.

There's a puppet theatre now next door, where the Jewish culture center once stood, and a courthouse occupies the former Jewish community building across the street. Its elaborate decoration, I was told, represents the seven fruits mentioned in the Torah.

The Jewish cemetery, whose red-and-orange striped ceremonial hall is another Korn design, is well maintained and designated a cultural monument. Among the tombs is a poignant memorial to Jewish soldiers who fell fighting for the Austrians in World War I.

All these sites, and more, are noted on Jewish heritage itineraries included in local guidebooks available at the tourist information office and the city museum. On sale in both places I found reproductions of old postcards portraying the synagogue in all its glory as a major pre-war landmark.

I have no way of knowing who follows these itineraries or purchases the postcards. But, at least for tourists, they clearly acknowledge the Jewish contribution to the town and set Jewish history and heritage here within the general matrix.

This marks a welcome contrast to the "Jewish heritage package" offered by one of the city's leading hotels.

Far from exploring the rich historic contribution of Jews here, its itinerary is simply a round trip to Auschwitz, with "sightseeing" at the memorial museum there, then dinner back at the hotel's restaurant.

Bielsko Biala is only 25 miles from Auschwitz. I would certainly urge anyone visiting the town to take a day and go there. But promoting a tour of the Nazis' most notorious death camp as a Jewish heritage package banalizes Jewish heritage and the Holocaust, and both ignores and insults the memory of the generations of Jews who lived here (and often prospered).

In Bielsko Biala, Poles have begun to offer up a more nuanced take on history -- Jewish and Polish. Unfortunately, however, hotel tourist packages tend to offer only what their clients demand. Jews should take the lead in demanding more.

Even in places where few or no Jews live anymore, Jewish heritage must not be equated with its destruction. Nor, indeed, should the centuries-old Jewish experience be defined solely in terms of death.

Prague -- Yet More Golemania....

Dinah Spritzer writes the latest in the NYTimes orgy of Golemania.....

The golem of Prague is part clay man, part robot (a Czech word of origin) of giant-sized proportions with Biblical roots imagined by 19th-century eastern European Jewish writers as a protector of Jews. It has also been commercially repurposed as souvenir, restaurant theme and museum exhibition.

A great read, as all Dinah's stories are, but again, it's not much different from 15 or more years ago.....The photo of a Golem souvenir stand in my 1994 book Upon the Doorposts of Thy House is almost identical....

I found the story Dinah wrote for JTA about the run-up to the 400th anniverary of the semi-legendary Rabbi Loew's death much more interesting than the pieces that have appeared in the NYTimes, with much more depth -- and real news.

Prague -- NYTimes Discovers the Golem

Menu, Prague. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

One of the plusses, but also one of the pitfalls, of following certain phenomena for a long period of time is that you trace the development and look at what goes on today with that in mind. Dan Bilefsky of the New York Times has an article about the popularity of the Golem in Prague. It's a cute and lively article, pegged to the economic crisis that has hurt tourism in Prague (the Jewish Museum attendance fell by as much as 40 percent over the winter) as well as to the upcoming celebrations for the 400th anniversary of the death of Rabbi Jehudah Ben Bezalel Löw (or Loew), the great scholar whom legends recount as the creator of the Golem. But, like several other NYTimes pieces in the past couple years, it plows old ground.

The Golem, according to Czech legend, was fashioned from clay and brought to life by a rabbi to protect Prague’s 16th-century ghetto from persecution, and is said to be called forth in times of crisis. True to form, he is once again experiencing a revival and, in this commercial age, has spawned a one-monster industry.

There are Golem hotels; Golem door-making companies; Golem clay figurines (made in China); a recent musical starring a dancing Golem; and a Czech strongman called the Golem who bends iron bars with his teeth. The Golem has also infiltrated Czech cuisine: the menu at the non-kosher restaurant called the Golem features a “rabbi’s pocket of beef tenderloin” and a $7 “crisis special” of roast pork and potatoes that would surely have rattled the venerable Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Golem’s supposed maker.

Read full article

The Golem frenzy in Prague may be taking some new forms, but it erupted in the early 1990s, after the fall of communism opened the country up for tourism, for "things Jewish" and for the commercial infrastructure and exploitation spawned by the tourist demand.

I have written about this in some depth in both Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe and Upon the Doorposts of Thy House: Jewish Life in East-Central Europe, Yesterday and Today. The first section of Doorposts, published in 1994, is a lengthy examination of Jewish Prague, the history, the legends, and the concentric circles of Jewish experience, focusing largely on tourism and on which Jewish aspects were promoted touristically and which were ignored and forgotten.

In both books I described the Golem kitsch, the Golem figures on sale, the contrast between Rabbi Loew as a real scholar and as a mythical Golem-maker, the power of the Golem legend as part of Prague folklore, the Golem restaurant with its non-kosher dishes. In Doorposts, I have a photograph of Golems on sale that is very similar to the one in the Times. For some reason, the Golems on sale in post-Communist Prague have always been modeled on one cinematic version -- the way the Golem appeared in a 1952 Czech movie called The Emperor and the Golem: a menacingly massive and clumsy, almost headless form held together by bolts and a big belt.

In a previous post, I wrote about my friend in Budapest, the late Levente Thury, a ceramic artist who used the Golem motif in all his work. He, like many other artists and writers, was inspired by the Golem because of the implications of the myth: technology spiraling out of control, the foiled attempt to compete with God, the failure to manipulate the universe. "I would like to make things that are a mixture of spiritual and material," he told me. "That is the most important meaning of the golem. The body of the golem is material: clay, stone and earth -- the oldest materials. The message, the amulet, the spell" that brings the golem to life is the spirit. Levent's golems, I wrote in an article about him were compositions of faces, heads and other body parts.

All the parts are distorted to some extent, as if their emergence from the clay was halted before it was finished.

A hand grasps an armless torso. A baby's features form a beautiful face on one side of a partially modeled head. In some pieces, tiny golem figures emerge from larger, partial forms.

The expressions on the faces are serene but soulless. The eyes are unseeing.

There is no explicit violence in the compositions, but the elements of Thury's work are arranged in ways that can be eerie and disturbing -- as well as highly sensual.

"I make the surfaces a little bit raw -- raw human bodies, details of bodies," he told me. "I don't want to make a complete human body. I prefer to make parts."

"They aren't human people, but remembrances of the body," he added. "They have no soul, no wish. The owner, the maker, has to give a soul to them, give direction, like a computer program."

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Jewish Heritage -- New Resources

Old Jewish Cemetery, Roudnice nad Labem, CZ. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Bratislava Seminar provided the opportunity for representatives of various countries to present new printed or web resources on Jewish heritage, and in particular new maps, brochures and other material related to Jewish tourism and itineraries.

I try to keep track of these, but I generally can't keep up with the amount of material being published.

I have listed some of the web resources that were highlighted at the conference in the links list and travel resources list on this blog.

Other material presented includes:

-- Jewish Sights in the Usti Region (Czech Republic)

A very elaborate package of high-quality illustrated brochure, CD and DVD detailing Jewish sights in northern Czech Republic, including Decin, Libochovice, Louny, Most, Roudnice nad Labem, Teplice, Terezin, Ustek, and Zatec. In all these places, Jewish heritage sites have been restored or are undergoing restoration as part of local heritage. The material was written by my old friend Jaroslav Klenovsky, one of the pioneers of Jewish heritage research in CZ, and produced with funding from the EU and Usti regional authorities.

Jaroslav was one of several Czech representatives at the Bratislava meeting. The Czech Jewish community, through its Matana property management organization, has been a leader in developing -- and implementing -- a viable longterm strategy in Jewish heritage site preservation and management. This has included forging partnerships with local civic and private bodies as well a foreign donors, and working out a strategy of restoration of Jewish sites for cultural use including Jewish museums. In addition, numerous publications have been issued. (By the way, I linked in a recent post to a downloadable new brochure guide on Czech Jewish heritage put out by the Czech Tourism Office. Since then, the link seems to have been removed, though the brochure still exists in print... the Czech Tourism web site now had a page with links to several Jewish sites around the county -- click HERE.)

-- "Permanent Yiddishkeit" -- Jewish Heritage Map of Belarus

-- Jewish Latvia -- Travel Guide

-- Slovak Jewish Heritage Route -- new brochures

A night at the opera in Verona, or, When is opera not opera? When it's pure spectacle

We should have known this wasn't going to be a normal night at the opera when the crowd at the Arena at Verona started doing the Mexican wave. I'd only seen the Mexican wave at the football, so it was quite a shock - at the opera no less, but at Verona's Arena? But maybe that should have been less of a surprise, given that the ancient Roman amphitheatre - Italy's most perfectly preserved and built in AD30 - was a venue for gladiator matches long before it showed Aida. Admittedly, the opera hadn't started yet. Well, it had eventually begun after a lengthy delay of a couple of hours, as the mightiest and most foreboding black clouds we'd ever seen started rolling in before deciding to settle upon us. But then the performance was stopped soon after so the stage hands could batten down the set after the wind began to howl, knocking over an ancient Egyptian pillar or two that had so far stood the test of time. But the dramas had begun much earlier that evening...

When I'd gone to collect the tickets I'd been told would be easy to get from the press office, naturally they weren't there. Although I was encouraged to come back later while they would "see what they could do", when I returned there were no tickets, the opera was about to begin, and (despite showing my business cards and referring to the letters of commision I'd previously emailed; we were there researching guidebooks, you see), the guy in the press office melodramatically accused me of simply trying to get seats for free. I reacted appropriately, turning on my heels and storming off to the box office, determined to buy the most expensive seats left in the house and return to throw them in his face, then head off to dinner. However, when I asked the woman at the box office what seats were left and explained our predicament, she sincerely apologised - unfortunately there weren't any decent seats left, they'd sold out weeks ago, but she'd give me a couple of tickets up top for free! Thinking this must be karma, I forgot about the press guy and we charged in and hurriedly hiked all the way up to the top section to our giddy-inducing seats, well, um... steps. A couple of hours and a couple of beers later, and somewhat lightheaded from the altitude, we were being rained upon as those around us rose and cheered with each Mexican wave.

We contemplated leaving several times, but we couldn't. We were working after all and needed to experience this. However, when Aida finally started, we were wishing we had. From those seats up in the clouds we could barely hear the opera. We could barely see it either, but we had expected that, however, we somehow expected the acoustics (or speakers) would carry the sound. No such luck. All we could hear were the giggles and nonsense-talk of the American teenage girls in the last row behind us as they sent text messages and took photos of each other on their cell phones. And just as the Mexican wave had begun so a tidal wave of bored chatter started. People began showing eachother their new iPhones and their holiday photos. Nobody could hear anything, but nor did they seem interested in watching either. It suddenly dawned upon me... the people up here weren't really there for the opera. It was all about the spectacle. If they had come for the opera they'd have bought the expensive seats down below weeks ago, the seats where you could actually see the stage and hear the sound. They just wanted to be able to say they'd been. Or to prove they had by showing their friends a photo.

Warsaw -- Useful (Downloadable) Jewish Travel Brochure

Panel on Jewish shtetl life from an open-air exhibition in Warsaw, 2008. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

A very useful illustrated Jewish travel guide to Warsaw is available from the Warsaw tourism office. You can get the illustrated brochure at tourist offices there or download a PDF of it by clicking HERE. (The link takes you to the English/Polish edition -- there is also an edition in Spanish and Italian.)

The brochure, which features a picture of the Nozyk synagogue on its cover, was edited by Jan Jagielski of the Jewish Historical Institute -- one of most knowledgeable experts on Warsaw's Jewish history and heritage sites. Jan's an old friend. He was a pioneer in the documentation of Jewish heritage in Poland, and back 1990 he co-wrote a more detailed guide to Jewish Warsaw that I used extensively in my own work and travels.

The new brochure, published last summer, includes photographs and descriptions of 28 sites around the city and also includes links for Jewish organizations and information on Jewish cultural events.

Brightly colored, it is one of a series of new brochures on various aspects of Warsaw, all using the same general format.

Jewish Hungary brochure -- online

A Jewish guide to Hungary called "Shalom Hungary" came out in the 1990s as a magazine-like brochure, published by the national tourism agency.

A updated edition of Shalom Hungary is available online. You can easily download the pdf. The brochure is illustrated and also has a list of addresses of Jewish community offices around the country.