Slovakia -- Rabbi Andrew Goldstein on Synagogues, Memory and Future

The Goldsteins and Maros Borsky in Samorin synagogue. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Rabbi Andrew Goldstein, who was on the recent trip in Slovakia to tour the Slovak Jewish Heritage Route, gave an eloquent sermon this week in his synagogue in London that evoked what we saw -- and raised  important questions regarding surviving sites of Jewish heritage and their place, role and future. These issues have been a continuing focus of this blog, and (of course) of anyone involved in the field. In 2009, a conference in Bratislava was devoted to these issues and formulated a series of "best practices" recommendations to consider when dealing with disused or abandoned Jewish sites.

Rabbi Goldstein is the chairman of the European Union for Progressive Judaism and has spent decades traveling and teaching in east-central Europe.

SLOVAK SYNAGOGUE SERMON

What do you do with a synagogue building that becomes redundant? What do you do if the community shrinks and can no longer support a congregation or the upkeep of the building?

I wonder if our friends at Harrow and Wembley Progressive spent long searching the Talmud to see what were their options: as you know they recently sold their building to a fundamentalist Christian church and moved in with Middlesex New...Reform synagogue. A brief look at the rabbinic sources says you can sell a synagogue if you use the proceeds to build another: which lets Harrow & Wembley off the hook, or for community benefit: which was certainly the case when North London sold their building. The Talmud says you may sell a synagogue on condition that its not going to be turned into a wash-house, a tannery, a bath-house or a toilet. What about a church?

It seems as if once a month you read in the Jewish Chronicle of an English synagogue being closed as its congregation dwindles and a number have become evangelical churches and increasingly mosques. Just think of the famous Brick Lane building that started out as a church, then an ultra-Orthodox synagogue and now a mosque. And I suppose we should recall that NPLS started out by using a former Primitive Methodist church as it first synagogue. The continued use of a redundant building for religious purposes seems appropriate, but often British shuls seem to be turned into blocks of flats or office buildings: at least I have not heard of a tannery or public convenience.

Sharon and I have just returned from a fabulous tour round Slovakia as guests of the Slovak Tourist Board, arranged by our friend Maros Borsky. The idea was to take journalists along the Slovak Jewish Heritage route that Maros has developed. Photographs of which we saw displayed in our Art Gallery a few weeks ago: we visited the actual sites, along with journalists from Israel, Hungary & Italy. The Israelis were all secular, yet seemed genuinely moved by Sharon singing Psalms in the empty shuls we were taken to.

Of course Slovakia is quite different from the UK....because the vast majority of its Jewish population was wiped out in the Holocaust. And of those of who survived, most left the country after the war with its take-over by the Communists or during the brief window of opportunity during the Prague Spring. Since the end of communism the community has dwindled further and those that have stayed have tended to move to the capitol Bratislava that nowadays has the only viable Jewish community in the country.

Unlike neighbouring Poland and Austria and Ukraine, unlike Germany, very few Slovak (or Czech) synagogues were actually destroyed during the Holocaust (sadly one of the few was in Spisske Nova Ves where our Slovak Torah comes from). The Communists, however, destroyed many buildings or used them for, often quite unfitting purposes: Bingo halls, markets, store-rooms: though so far I've not discovered a tannery. The Communists also destroyed the surviving Jewish community; and for all of these reasons there are hundreds of Jewish buildings and cemeteries in places, quite often in large towns, where there is not one living Jew residing.

What is the present day Jewish community to do with this vast number of Jewish sites? It cannot preserve and look after everything. Maros Borsky has persuaded the community leaders to concentrate on just a few buildings and cemeteries of special historic or architectural merit. Places that might have a long-term future, that might give evidence of the former glory of the country's Jewish community. Then Maros came up with the idea of a Slovak Jewish Heritage Route that tourists could follow to experience this treasure trove of Jewish beauty.

This was the route Sharon and I along with the 8 professional journalists followed a week ago.

To justify our trip, we too must attempt to get published articles encouraging others to visit Slovakia and, at least, seek out a few of the buildings on the route, and soon I must get down to write a few articles, so this sermon is a first attempt. Tonight, as a theme, I will answer the question I posed at the beginning: what is a fitting use for a redundant synagogue? For a fitting use is one of Maros' criteria as well as a local body able to guarantee a long term future for the building.

The Route starts in Bratislava where Maros is concentrating in converting the woman's gallery in the only remaining synagogue into an exhibition of Judaica from the collection of the community. Downstairs the sanctuary will remain for High Holyday services, the weekly minyan more comfortable in the small "Winter" synagogue. Presov, in the far east of the country, also has a historic Judaica collection in the gallery, though there is rarely a minyan to davven in, perhaps, the most fabulously decorated of all the shuls in the country. It stands in a compound that contains 3 other former synagogues, now used as office buildings. Further east is Bardeov where a tiny shul, a stieble indeed, is preserved exactly as it was when the last Jews were deported 70 years ago. The Orthodox synagogue in Zilina is also intact, though I was saddened to hear that services don't actually take place there: on Rosh Hashanah the tiny community meet in a nearby hall and reminisce - seemingly nobody to lead even a short service. A small exhibition in the women's section is visited by local school groups, but I was interested in a showcase with a selection of Table Tennis memorabilia: once Zilina the centre of the Jewish game. Trnava has two synagogues: one once Orthodox and Neologue and both have been turned into are galleries. The former expensively repaired with the vividly painted walls & ceiling restored to their former glory. The Neologue made safe, but left to remind visitors of its neglected state, a result of the destruction of its community, a reminder of the Shoah. I'm not sure which is the better state for a redundant synagogue found a new use.


The synagogue in Nitra is used as a concert hall and Sharon and I, on a previous visit, heard a children's concert there. Upstairs is Slovakia's official Holocaust memorial exhibition, and on the stairs a collection of prints of Nitra born Shraga Weil. Perhaps a perfect combination for a beautiful building, restored and looked after by the municipality: a reminder of the fate of its past worshippers and yet regularly used for inspiring music. Please God this will be the eventual fate of the magnificent building in Liptovsky Mikulas where we had one of the most moving experiences of our tour. One of our party, David Sivor had there had his Bar mitzvah, and in the now empty sanctuary recalled the event, and Sharon sang Psalms: the acoustics perfect; for a brief moment a reminder the large community that once worshipped in that place.

The future of the Jewish community in Slovakia is uncertain but, at least, through the inspiration of Maros Borsky, they now have a splendid Heritage Route that will long tell of the glory of the former community. Many other stories I could add, especially about our visit to the cemetery in Spisske nova Ves, our Torah town, where Dr Ruzena Kormasova and her High School students continue to research the history of the town's former Jewish community and look after the cemetery. But how appropriate that I tell my story on an evening where we include in our service the blessing of a baby whose mother, if not Slovak - is Czech. Thank God our congregation is thriving: perhaps it has always been like this in Jewish history: Jewish life in one country declines, but the Jewish people and Judaism lives on in places new.

Rabbi Dr Andrew Goldstein

19th August 2011....19th Av 5771

Ukraine -- On Its Crumbling Jewish Heritage

The ruined synagogue in Brody, Ukraine, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The distinguished Brown University historian Omer Bartov will be giving a talk based on his book Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia on November 23 near Boston, as the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston's 2nd Annual Genealogy Lecture co-sponsored by Hebrew College. (For details see here.)

Bartov gave a similar talk at the major conference on Jewish history and heritage in East-Central Europe that was held in L'viv, Ukraine at the end of October, and for which I gave the key note speech.

For his talk in L'viv, he basically just showed a series of pictures of ruined synagogues that he had taken on his travels in western Ukraine, stressing the important message that unless they are restored, they will crumble -- and with them will vanish the memory of the Jews who once formed such an important parts of the towns in which these ruins now are found. (I have posted pictures of a number of these sites, either on this blog, or in the photos section of my web site: www.ruthellengruber.com, and have written about many of them in Jewish Heritage Travel.)

Omer's photos are compelling, but I hope that he includes in his upcoming talk some of the issues that were discussed at length during the L'viv conference.

These include many of the issues that I have been dealing with in the blog -- and which Sam Gruber has dealt with extensively, in his blog, on the International Survey of Jewish Monuments site, and in nearly 20 years of trying to raise awareness of the plight (and importance) of Jewish heritage sites (in Ukraine and elsewhere) and also -- importantly -- to raise money to help restore them and to instill the idea that they are important for local communities as well as for Jews.

Omer's book, Erased, which came out last year, touched me in particular ways.

As I emailed him at the time, some of his discussion about attitudes to Jewish heritage and memory reminded me of what we had heard and found elsewhere in east-central Europe back in 1990 -- as I was beginning research on the first edition of Jewish Heritage Travel.

A conference organized by Sam in 1990 on the future of Jewish heritage sites was really the first such conference of its type. Back then, the prevailing attitude, among Jews as well as non-Jews, toward preserving Jewish heritage was "why?" By now, in many places, much has changed, and in many minds, "why?" is being or has been largely replaced by "how?" Many of these issues were further elaborated in conferences on the future of Jewish heritage held in Paris in 1999 and in Prague in 2004.

I summarized some of them in my key note speech in L'viv:

Twenty, and even 15 years ago -- even much more recently in some countries, even simple information on Jewish heritage sites was hard to come by, little systematic documentation existed, and few publications addressed the subject.

Jewish heritage sites, like Jewish history and culture and even the Holocaust itself, were often considered "Jewish things" -- things apart that were not deemed important for mainstream society, and not embedded in the main sweep of national or local history. They could be ignored, destroyed, forgotten, concealed, left to crumble, and it didn't matter -- because, except for a few examples, in the absence of Jews they were deemed to have no value for society at large. Jews themselves also often felt ambiguous about Jewish heritage sites and their fate, particularly after the Holocaust made Europe a closed chapter in many Jewish minds.

Since then, times have changed, and changed radically in some places, and they continue to do so -- as this conference itself attests.

By the end of the 1990s, Jewish heritage issues were, to one extent or another, on the agendas of national monuments authorities and local organizations, including tourist bureaus, in many European countries; extensive inventories of Jewish heritage sites had taken place or were under way in some countries; and questions about the place and role of Jewish heritage and heritage sites in a changing Europe had emerged as part of a broader debate on European culture, "multi-culture" and identity. For Jews, too, the question evolved -- from simply "why" care for Jewish heritage sites in these countries -- to "how" to do so, "what use" to make of them, and "by whom" and "for whom" should it be done.. . .

These last questions -- what use to make of sites, who should carry out the restoration and for whom should it be done -- are key to their preservation. (We had extensive talks in L'viv on how to "reimagine" Jewish L'viv, for example.)

Also:

In considering the future of Jewish quarters, and Jewish heritage sites in general, several more specific questions have emerged -- and I know that some of them will be addressed here in the coming days in much more detail.

Does the absorption of Jewish heritage into mainstream culture accurately portray the past? To what degree is commercial exploitation of Jewish history and heritage legitimate? Does the history of the Holocaust impose particular obligations on non-Jews to consider, learn and even care for Jewish culture?

Also: What role can cultural heritage sites and activities play in shaping modern Jewish communities? And -- what role do they play in shaping modern perceptions of what it is to be Jewish?

In my travels in Ukraine in 2006, researching the new edition of JHT, I really felt as if I had stepped back into those days nearly 20 years ago, in other countries.....who knows if and what may change in coming years; in 2006 I detected a few sprigs of movement, such as the efforts to locate and preserve Jewish cemeteries coordinated by Meylakh Shyekhat -- and the work of a young local historian in Luboml, who is obsessed with local (ie Jewish) history and worked on the big Luboml exhibition and book project in the 1990s. But these still need to be nurtured (and funded) -- and good will and local interest are essential ingredients.

Former synagogue in Sharhorod, Ukraine, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Plaque on synagogue in Sharhorod, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Placing plaques and signage -- as Sam Gruber noted in his recent blog post -- are important steps. For me, for example, the ruined synagogue in Stryj, with its recently installed gate with stars of David and its plaque, makes a powerful statement -- though the plaque could and should contain more information. (In contrast, see the former synagogue in Dolina, which was transformed out of recognition into a church and bears no indication of its former function.)

The recent conference in L'viv and the conversations that some of us held afterward with local officials also give rise to some hope. As does the operation of the new Center for Urban History that organized and hosted the conference. But who knows....