The Old Shuls in Eastern Europe Are They Worth Saving?
MYERS, PHYLLIS
The old Shuls in Eastern Europe Are They Worth Saving? phyllis myers The revolutions in Eastern Europe raise a new question for the growing number of Jewish preservationists: Should buildings and...
...And, in the name of accessibility, could excessive transportation of Jewish artifacts from their authentic context—the heritage of an estimated two-thirds of American Jews—diminish their value to present and future generations...
...We preserve to provide settings for dialogue...
...Jewish communal buildings in Eastern Europe not used by Jews for religious purposes belong to the government...
...Yet Budapest has the largest remaining Jewish community in Eastern Europe, and the Dohany, the center of Jewish religious life in Budapest, is the largest surviving synagogue in Europe...
...In Szeged, Hungary, the city's splendid, eclectic turn-of-the-century synagogue was recently faithfully restored with money provided by an anonymous American Jew born in Szeged, bringing back to life the lavishly gilded, multicolored interior...
...Leaders of the Jewish community in Budapest sold the Rumbach Street Synagogue, a distinguished landmark, to a Hungarian developer...
...Vaclav Havel, president of Czechoslovakia, vowed to reopen Prague's Pinkas Synagogue—closed for the last 20 years—as a Shoah memorial...
...Torahs, stars of David and synagogue furnishings are gone—either destroyed by vandalism or removed during reconstruction in accordance with Jewish law, which requires community removal of Torahs and religious symbols when a Jewish building is converted to secular use...
...In Cracow, ajewish museum, an art restoration workshop arid a children's painting school are housed by the government in former synagogue buildings...
...The fate of these buildings was left to local governments for the most part...
...As I visited the looted, deteriorated synagogues in eastern and southern Poland with Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka, the Polish authors of Wooden Synagogues (Arkady, 1959), we discussed our common history in ways that would not be possible at a lecture hall...
...Clues to self-perceptions of Jews over the centuries, the evolution of faith and culture and relations with Gentile neighbors abound in the shapes, materials, designs and settings of synagogues...
...Public opinion can influence the governments that make these decisions...
...The costs are admittedly high...
...In Poland, identification is sporadic...
...After listening to Jewish community leaders relate the story of Warsaw's Jews, the German group, after asking permission, took out their missals and fervendy sang a hymn...
...Estimates for renovating Budapest's enormous 19th-century Dohany Street Synagogue range from $10 to $20 million...
...Celebration 1992—the quincentenary of Columbus's discovery of America—is sparking contributions to the revitalization of Sephardic sites in other parts of the world...
...But there are unfortunate examples of inappropriate uses—such as warehouses, factories and cinemas—as well as of insensitive development and obliteration of associations with ajewish past...
...We need to remember that as time passes and travel increases, visitors will want to know more about how Jews lived as well as how Jews died...
...I was told that non-Jewish children painting in a 16th-century synagogue in Szydlow, a Polish town that was once half Jewish, do not know what the building was, much less what happened to their grandparents' neighbors...
...Is this a good use of Jewish money...
...For preservation to play this role—or any successful role—in Eastern Europe, sites need to be accessible, marked and interpreted in compelling ways...
...In Budapest, as in Cracow, efforts are underway to create living communities using Jewish landmarks as part of broader Jewish study and urban revitalization initiatives...
...We preserve to fulfill our commitment to life...
...For decades, Jewish preservation in Eastern Europe has focused primarily on places of death...
...But preservation means Jewish life as well as death...
...This is, in fact, happening: Representatives of major museums andjudaica collections in Israel and in the United States are now on shopping trips to identify potential exhibits...
...Governments, too, are demonstrating greater readiness to preserve Jewish sites than their predecessors...
...Yet a dialogue that goes beyond the "chamber of horrors" of the Shoah is clearly underway, fostered in special ways by sites embedded with memories...
...Why did poor Jewish artists in old Poland decorate their synagogue walls with colorful, representational frescoes and pious prayers...
...Apparently only three are in use as synagogues, one in Warsaw and two in Cracow...
...These buildings can fan revival...
...For many buildings we must find new uses...
...Why not search out the best physical remnants and transport them to places where Jews do live...
...Significant deterioration has occurred from vandalism, looting, wanton attacks, neglect and government-sponsored development...
...The information needed to set priorities, consider alternatives and organize fund-raising campaigns does not exist or is scattered in institutional and personal memories...
...Some are skeptical, not without reason...
...Increased travel to Jewish sites can help by making these sites more valuable as tourist attractions...
...Ilona Seifert, secretary general of the Central Board of Hungarian Jews, focuses her efforts on trying to raise money from the Hungarian government—which pledged matching funds—to restore the Dohany...
...We preserve to learn...
...Chaired by Ambassador Ronald S. Lauder, WMF's program to preserve Jewish sites was initially triggered by restoration activities in Venice that included ghetto landmarks along with church buildings...
...being identified as a Jew could have threatened a person's job status...
...It is true that in many places in Eastern Europe few, if any, Jews are left, and to talk about understanding, much less reconciliation, would be glib...
...In the past, leaders of the decimated Jewish communities did not have the money for maintenance of what remained after Nazi destruction, and buildings were transferred or sold to the state...
...Or more exhibit cases of Jewish ceremonial objects...
...As more restoration takes place, the need for integrity and creativity in communicating the many dimensions of the Jewish experience will grow...
...The cost: a relatively modest $350,000 for a community of some 300 Jews...
...Polish officials have rebuilt some for secular use in recent years...
...Hungarian archaeologist David Ferenc, who discovered and restored a medieval synagogue as a Jewish museum in Sopron, near the Austrian border, says about 100 synagogues remain in Hungary, with 15 still in use as synagogues...
...phyllis myers The revolutions in Eastern Europe raise a new question for the growing number of Jewish preservationists: Should buildings and sites associated with Jewish life in Eastern Europe be restored...
...The Isaac Synagogue is being renovated as a city-owned concert hall...
...Rumors of commercial development have led young activists to propose buying back the building...
...We preserve—buildings and places, the simple and the awesome—for many reasons...
...Did it hire a Jewish, Gentile or Viennese architect...
...Prospects for increased contributions are promising, assuming that political changes continue on a democratic course and worrisome outbreaks of antisemitism are successfully countered...
...A German Jewish industrialist has provided money to repair Cracow's old cemetery...
...For an American visitor, the surprise is that so much is left...
...The buildings were often handsome and well located...
...In 1988 there weren't enough people for a minyan (quorum for communal prayer...
...We preserve to transcend...
...A New York Jewish foundation has underwritten the restoration of a small synagogue next to the Dohany...
...A group of German Christians, wearing kipot, recendy visited the Nozyk Synagogue, the only remaining house of Jewish prayer in Warsaw, restored by the Polish government in the early 1980s...
...On Simchat Torah, 1989, Cracow's revered Remuh Synagogue, rebuilt but used continuously since the mid-1550s, reverberated as 40 Israeli teenagers took over the service from a forlorn group of elderly survivors and vibrantly danced and sang "Am Yisrael Chai"—the people of Israel live...
...Why preserve things in place, when they are no longer needed for their original purpose...
...The World Monuments Fund (WMF), a private, international preservation organization, will hold a conference in New York this November to bring together people from all parts of the world who are working to restore Jewish sites...
...Plaques simply state brief facts about the synagogue—name, date of construction and sometimes the architect...
...Szeged's restored synagogue held more than 200 worshippers on Kol Nidre night, 1989...
...Anyone who was in the Dohany Yom Kippur 1989—the very week the Party was toppled—and saw the outpouring of more than 3,000 of the city's Jews, the largest since World War II, could not doubt that the money to restore it must be found...
...The answer is not just a series of plaques on the buildings...
...But is this enough...
...Outside Budapest's Dohany Synagogue this fall, two young couples, one German and one Israeli, frustrated by closed doors at Budapest's Jewish museum, struck up an acquaintance and walked away together...
...Chasidim have tended cemeteries, especially the graves of Tzadikim (charismatic leaders), while other Jews have ensured that death camps remain as witnesses to a story that could otherwise become myth...
...We've recently seen some embarrassing errors in restoring prayers written on the walls of old synagogues in Poland because no one on the government's restoration team knew Hebrew...
...But after all, more than 4 million Jews lived in Eastern Europe in thousands of communities...
...Poland today has about 250 synagogue buildings, the remnants of some 2,000 to 3,000...
...It is important to move quickly...
...Study may lead to costly restoration, adaptive re-use, stabilization as a haunting ruin or some other solution...
...American architectural historian Carole Herselle Krinsky writes, "Synagogues...reveal especially clearly the connections between architecture and society...
...Given the cold demographic statistics, there is little need for restoring many more active synagogues...
...Sometimes the new use has a Jewish connection...
...More expertise is essential...
...Or lists of famous Jews...
...I believe it can, although never in the amounts needed, given competing demands in the Jewish community and in Eastern Europe...
...Distinctive buildings should be—and have been—reincarnated as Jewish museums, Shoah memorials, concert halls and libraries...
...Jews are more openly seeking help abroad and government officials desperately need the hard currency...
...At the very least, the local populace will understand these sites are important...
...Some younger Jews now are more activist and even critical of older leaders for their collaboration with the government...
...At the same time, some nonjews have made important scholarly contributions to knowledge about Jewish sites, and their continued active involvement is essential— and welcome—in view of Jews' thin ranks...
...Little is done to inform users of buildings and visitors that the buildings were once Jewish...
...Now the opportunity exists for outside groups and foundations to work in cooperation with officials, Jews and others to make better choices about restoration...
...When we walk in the footsteps of our forebears, contemplate their lives, stand in the places where they lived—and were betrayed—powerful linkages occur between their lives and ours...
...We preserve to remember...
...often it does not...
...8' The views in this article do not necessarily represent those of the Jewish Heritage Council of the World Monuments Fund...
...An agenda is emerging, ironically, at the same time that economic problems become more severe...
...A Canadian Jewish foundation is steering money to Budapest's Orthodox Koczinski Street Synagogue...
...Further destruction must be halted...
...Sometimes loss is inevitable...
...The benefactor who paid for the Szeged synagogue's restoration put it this way: "I just want to know that the synagogue I remember from my childhood is still there...
...The communites needed funds and other help to provide welfare services for needy Jews, understandably considered a higher priority than retention of unused, damaged buildings...
...In Hungary important Jewish buildings are marked as landmarks...
...Not everything can or should be saved, of course...
...More documentation is needed about sites and costs of renovation...
...Where there are no Jewish communities, the issues are more difficult...
...Did a community choose Gothic or Moorish architecture, site its synagogue on the street or set it back off a courtyard, retain a separate entrance for women or build a gallery in the main hall...
...The Communist government used to train cameras on the Dohany Street Synagogue on high holy days to see who was Jewish...
...Did it raise a dome high or low in the community's skyline, place the bimah (pulpit) in the center of the main hall or on the east wall...
...With important exceptions, too little of this is now evident...
...Coundess other sites of Jewish interest—small prayer halls, rabbinic study centers, hospitals, houses of distinguished Jewish citizens and Jewish neighborhoods and marketplaces—most undocumented—abound...
...Such examples dishonor our people's thousand-year history in this part of the world...
...We must strive to evoke a unique encounter between visitor and place...
...The mikveh (ritual bathhouse) is the site of city planning offices...
...Can the money be found...
...In quiet, often fragmented ways, Jewish and non-Jewish individuals, organizations and foundations are beginning to provide funds and technical assistance...
Vol. 15 • October 1990 • No. 5
