April 28, 2012 | 4:05 pm

Jewish Visitor Center in Brno

Posted by Ruth Ellen Gruber

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Once again I have to hand it to the Czechs for the exemplary way that they preserve and promote Jewish heritage, heritage sites and memory.

I spent a day this past week in Brno, the Czech Republic’s second largest city and the capital of Moravia. I was there for a totally different —- non-Jewish—reason (a country music concert and a meeting related to the Czech country music and bluegrass scene) but I took the time to visit the Jewish Tourism and Information Center that was opened last year at the city’s Jewish cemetery, a sprawling and beautifully maintained expanse that includes about 9,000 grave markers, from simple matzevot to grand family tombs.

The Center operates as part of the Jewish Brno Project, a collaborative initiative of the Jewish community in Brno and the city’s Tourist Information Center.

I was already a big fan of the project’s web site www.jewishbrno.eu—an informative and easy to use portal to Jewish heritage in Brno and at least 16 towns in southern Moravia where there are historic synagogues, cemeteries and old Jewish quarters – Mikulov, Boskovice, Trebic, Ivancice, et al.

The Brno Jewish Visitor’s Center opened in January 2011, and it sports the green “i” logo of general Czech tourist info centers. It occupies one of the three early 20th century buildings that form the mortuary complex.

The Cemetery is located at Nezamyslova 27, in the Zidenice district of town, an easy tram ride from the city center. Trams 8 and 10 from the main railway station stop right in front.

The Visitors Center provides a range of services, including guided tours of Brno Jewish sites, tourist packages and itineraries outside the city. There are stacks of free informational material, including well-produced brochures in various languages on local and regional Jewish heritage. The Center has free WiFi internet access, and there is an English-speaking staffer.

For the cemetery itself, it provides individual free tours as well as free audio guides. A brochure guide to the cemetery includes a map locating the graves of prominent people interred there – the brochure provides brief biographies and photos of their gravestones. And there is also a computer screen with a link to the cemetery database, so that you can search for individual tombs.

I didn’t have much time the day I visited, but I spent a very pleasant half hour strolling around the cemetery and following the map up and down the rows of tombs – most of them stately obelisks, and many (in the style of the late 19th century) bearing laminated photographs of the deceased.

Jewish Tourism and Information Center

Nezamyslova 27
615 00 Brno, Czech Republic
Email: tic@jewishbrno.eu
Tel: +420 544 526 737

Brno Tourist Information Center

Radnicka 8
658 78 Brno, Czech Republic
Email: info@ticbrno.cz
Tel: +420 542 427 150
www.ticbrno.cz

 

 

 

April 22, 2012 | 3:18 am

Jewish Cemetery Rescued in Slovakia

Posted by Ruth Ellen Gruber

Bravo to the local Leustach civic association for organizing a clean up operation for the long-abandoned and overgrown 18th century Jewish cemetery in the village of Janikovce,  near Nitra in central Slovakia!

Here’s a link to my Jewish Heritage Europe report (with links to galleries of before and after pictures):

Dozens of volunteers, aged from 9 years old to over 70, took part, clearing brush, cutting down trees and removing waste from the cemetery, which for many years has been used as a dump site. They found discarded refrigerators, construction waste,  car parts, tires, construction material, plastic and asbestos tiles on the site. Many of the volunteers were pupils at a local middle school. [...]

The idea is to clear and clean up the cemetery and maintain it as a sort of park, but also to restore the memory of the Jewish community that had lived there for centuries until the Holocaust.

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April 20, 2012 | 3:08 am

Web Site Aimed at Jewish Visitors to the Summer Olympics in London

Posted by Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Summer Olympic Games in London, July 27-August 12, are just around the corner (more or less) and to help Jewish visitors and sports fans, the Jewish Committee for the London Games has launched VISIT JEWISH LONDON —a web site with a wide variety of information, from sightseeing to synagogue-going.

It looks like a very useful and easy to use resource. This is what the web site says it aims to do:

Our goal is to ensure that all visitors have access to relevant Jewish cultural and religious information. To this end we have created this website for you, which aims to provide a one stop shop presenting comprehensive information on Jewish London and the U.K. as a whole in order to help you access everything that you may need during your visit.

The site is also intended to provide appropriate and updated information about the 2012 London Olympic Games, which includes links to partner groups and networks concerned with the wider values and the future legacy of the Games, as well as the Official site of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Metropolitan Police, public bodies and other faith based and religious organisations specifically involved with the Olympic Truce. The Olympic Truce is an original Olympic ideal which aims to ensure that competitors and visitors travel to the Games in peace and security.

You may want to attend a synagogue while you are here in order to participate in a shabbat service, make up a minyan or perhaps you have a yahrzeit and want to say kadesh. We can point you in the direction of a designated commemoration associated with the Games or where shabbat hospitality is available. We have also provided details of the Jewish Museum, Judaic books and gift shops, guided walking tours as well as particulars of other interesting iconic, cultural and famous historical Jewish sites in London.

We aim to provide you with a variety of opportunities to ensure you enjoy a warm, welcoming and interesting visit whilst taking advantage of all that the great city of London has to offer its guests. If you keep strictly kosher, you will need to know where to go to eat, so we have provided information about where you can find kosher or deli style provisions and dine in a wide range of supervised and unsupervised restaurants. So whether you’re into chopped liver, chicken soup, shwarma, falafel, humus, pitta or pizza, we’ve got the nosh for you!

Find more links, photos, stories and blog archive from 2008 at http://jewish-heritage-travel.blogspot.com

 

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April 19, 2012 | 1:20 am

List of Jewish Culture, Arts, Film Etc Festivals in Europe

Posted by Ruth Ellen Gruber

Every year, I try to put together the most comprehensive list I can of Jewish culture, arts, film, music and other festivals in Europe. The list is never complete, and it grows each time I am alerted to an upcoming event. The dates range from the famous Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, which lasts a week and a half and draws thousands of people, to one-off events that few people except locals may know of.

Trying to attend some of these festivals is a great way to structure a trip.

You can see the list by clicking here—JEWISH CULTURE, ETC FESTIVALS, 2012

Have fun!

Find more links, photos, stories and blog archive from 2008 at http://jewish-heritage-travel.blogspot.com

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April 18, 2012 | 3:16 am

Jewish Life—Life!—in Krakow.

Posted by Ruth Ellen Gruber

I’ve written a lot about the Jewish scene in Krakow over the years— the “virtually Jewish” side of both homage to and nostalgic exploitation of the past—but also the new Jewish life. (See, for example, my long piece in Moment Magazine where I view the city, the scene, and the changes I’ve seen over the past 20-some years).

New York Jewish Week now runs a long piece by Steve Lipman that provides a good look at some of what’s been going on, focusing on the activities of the JCC, founded in 2008. Steve writes:

Poland’s former capital, Krakow is a natural magnet, he says — Poles come because of the city’s open, cosmopolitan nature; visitors, because of nearby Auschwitz.

At the first-night seder I conducted last week — using supplies donated by J. Levine Books & Judaica, in Manhattan, and by local friends Lisa Levy, Michael Wittert and Debby Caplan — the chairs were filled with singles and young families, children and Holocaust survivors, American college students and tourists from several foreign countries.

Unlike the participants at the seders in many other Polish cities, most of the Polish natives at the JCC seder seemed familiar with the Haggadah’s reading and rituals, thanks to the seders the institution has hosted in recent years. As a sign of the growth of Jewish resources here, other seders took place this year under the auspices of Chabad, the Reform movement, and Rabbi Boaz Pash, an emissary of the Shavei Israel outreach organization.

The JCC was initiated by Prince Charles, who during a visit to Krakow a decade ago, was moved by a meeting with aging Holocaust survivors and asked what the Jewish community needed. A senior center, he was told. Officials of World Jewish Relief, headquartered in London, suggested that a facility serving the entire Jewish community would be more worthwhile. In April 2008, with the Prince in attendance, the JCC, largely funded by WJR and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, opened its doors.

Lipman highlights the wonderful 7@Night event that debuted last June —when all seven of the synagogues and former synagogues in the old Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, were open to the public and hosted programs that illustrated contemporary—not nostalgic—Jewish culture.

More links, photos, stories and blog archive from 2008 at http://jewish-heritage-travel.blogspot.com

 

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April 17, 2012 | 1:47 am

My JTA Story on the new threats to the historic Jewish cemetery in Nis, Serbia

Posted by Ruth Ellen Gruber

I spent most of last week in Serbia, on a fact-finding trip to assess the condition of Jewish heritage sites in the towns of Nis and Pirot. I will (I think) be posting on the trip itself, but meanwhile, I am posting some links to pieces I have already published elsewhere.

JTA today ran my article on the new threats to the Jewish cemetery in Nis, nearly 8 years after a well-publicized clean-up operation appeared to guarantee its preservation of this important site.

A historic Jewish cemetery that long has been threatened by the encroachment of a growing Roma, or Gypsy, settlement that occupies one-third of the site is now being threatened by the encroachment of commercial enterprises into the domain of the old Hebrew gravestones.

In the labyrinthine Roma village, or mahala, 800 to 1,500 people live in brick and concrete houses separated by narrow passageways and irregular courtyards. Laundry hangs from the windows, water drips from open taps and some roofs sport satellite TV dishes. At one end is a stable for horses, and at the fence that separates the village from the open part of the cemetery, sheep and goats peer out at the graves.

Eight years ago, a well-publicized cleanup campaign cleared the cemetery of garbage and waste that had covered the tombstones and eliminated the open sewers that had run amid the graves.

But the campaign’s success proved to be fleeting and now new warehouses, a restaurant and other illegal construction, including a cut-rate department store, intrude on another third of the cemetery, according to Jasna Ciric, the president of the Nis Jewish community, which numbers just 28 people.

I already posted a more detailed report on www.jewish-heritage-europe.eu.

 

 

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April 16, 2012 | 6:45 am

Matzo Apple Cake in Budapest—Rachel Raj’s Recipe

Posted by Ruth Ellen Gruber

I’ve been meaning to link to this piece I did for The Forward’s The Jew & the Carrot blog, about the Budapest Jewish chef and pastry cook Rachel Raj. (I had written about her in the past, in an article about the Budapest Jewish food scene in general.)

It was a delight to research—eating pastries in Budapest and talking about food! I like the Cafe Noe I write about here…. it’s a nice, intimate place with a hidden little terrace garden.

Enjoy!  Oh—and here is Rachel’s recipe for matzo apple cake, which is nice and light and good all year round.

Rachel’s Matzo Apple Cake:

Ingredients:
- 3.3 lbs apples
- sugar
- Cinnamon
- 6 eggs
- 6 Tbsp. sugar
- About 5 oz ground walnuts
- Matzos
- Approx. 1-1/2 cups of white wine, sweet or dry

Grate the apples and mix with sugar and cinnamon to taste

Separate the eggs and beat the whites until stiff.

Beat the yolks separately with the 6 Tbsp of sugar, then mix the yolk mixture with the ground walnuts and the beaten eggwhites.

In an oiled baking pan, place a layer of matzo that has been well moistened with wine. On top of this place a later of the apple mixture. Cover this with another layer of wine-moistened matzo, then cover that layer with the nut and egg mixture. Add more layers, making sure that the top layer is the nut and egg mixture.

Bake in a moderate oven (325-350 F) for about 35 minutes, cool and cut into squares. It’s good lukewarm, room-temperature, or even cold.

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April 16, 2012 | 3:42 am

Jono David’s Jewish Geography App Free for 24 Hours

Posted by Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Japan-based photographer Jono David has used some of his thousands of images of Jewish heritage sites around the world to create a “Jewish Geography” game played via an ITunes app…. He has just let me know that the app can be downloaded for free—but just for 24 hours, from 7:00 p.m. Monday, April 16 to 7:00 p.m. Tuesday, April 17, 2012, Japan Standard Time.

Here’s what Jono says:

Jewish Geography. You know the game. Or do you? Uniquely different than the familiar “Do you know so-and-so?” degrees of separation kibitzing, this fun and challenging app quiz game measures by how many degrees you’re separated from your own Jewish geographical knowledge. Challenge yourself or compete against friends and family. The more you play, the more you’ll know, and the fewer degrees you’ll be separated from Jewish Geography!

Game description, features, and device requirements @ http://www.JewishGeography.co/

Preview on YouTube (time: 00:00:38) http://youtu.be/d5N9Fl5T-hc

PURCHASE on iTUNES:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jewish-geography/id498428257?mt=8

A fun product by JonoDavid LLC featuring the photography of Jono David from his HaChayim HaYehudim Jewish Photo Library (HHJPL).

Thank you, and happy Jewish Geography playing!
Jono

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