Article -- Calabrian village honors Philadelphia artist

 I have an article in the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent about the opening of the permanent exhibition of my mother's art work in Nocara, Calabria.

Italian Village Honors Work of Philly Artist

September 23, 2010

Ruth Ellen Gruber
Jewish Exponent Feature
NOCARA, Italy
 

Shirley Moskowitz

During the 1970s and '80s, my parents spent considerable chunks of time in southern Italy, documenting local life in Nocara, a wind-swept Calabrian village that clings to the crest of a half-mile-high hill overlooking the Gulf of Taranto.

My father, Jacob W. Gruber, was an anthropologist at Temple University, and was there to carry out an ethnographic study. He visited peasant homes and observed local events, interviewed and photographed people, and took reams of notes about local customs, traditions and beliefs.

My mother, the artist Shirley Moskowitz, recorded village life her own way.

Setting up her easel in odd corners of the town, she painted dozens of landscapes, townscapes and portraits that keenly captured both the harshness of the sunbaked uplands and the living face of a village that was just emerging from an age-old traditional lifestyle into modernity.

My mother died in 2007.

This past August, on what would have been her 90th birthday, Nocara honored her memory and her creativity by opening a permanent exhibit of some 40 of her artworks in the main chamber of the local town hall.
My father, who is now 89, and my brother, Sam, flew to Italy, and together we drove eight hours south from my home in Umbria to be guests of honor at the opening ceremony.

As we walked through Nocara's narrow streets, Dad was accosted by villagers who remembered "il professore" and my mother from the old days. Some of them now are middle-aged adults whose likenesses my mother had drawn when they were children.

Many angles of town leaped out at us as if from one of Mom's paintings: a rough stone archway, the flat face of a chapel in its little piazza, steep stone lanes and tiled roofs.

Much has changed, of course. Pigs no longer graze in Nocara's streets, as I recall seeing them do when I visited my parents there decades ago. And donkeys are no longer a major means of transport. Moreover, Nocara now has gas, running water and other modern utilities, including Internet access.

A Posthumous Thanks 

"Shirley Moskowitz's paintings represent a piece of Nocara, at a special time in its history," Mayor Franco Trebisacce told the several dozen people who attended the ceremony. "We have an obligation to display them here, and to offer our posthumous thanks to an artist who loved this town, and to her family."

Synagogue collage by artist Shirley Moskowitz

The exhibit, in fact, was a long time coming.
My parents had donated Mom's art works to Nocara a decade ago.

The gift had made headlines in local newspapers at the time, but the works were never permanently displayed, and for the past eight years or so they had languished in storage, almost forgotten.
Mayor Trebisacce, who came to office last year, remembered them, however, and became curious about their fate. Earlier this summer, he and his aides found them in a closet, packed away in their original shipping case.

A Google search took them to the Web site that my family had created about my mother's art after her death -- shirleymoskowitz.wordpress.com -- and they contacted us by leaving a comment on the site.

Many of the works that Mom donated to Nocara had already been exhibited at several major shows in Philadelphia, including a landmark retrospective at the University of the Arts in 1996 that had showcased more than half-a-century of my mother's life in art.

Her work encompassed a variety of media -- from simple line drawings and sketches to sculpture, oils and the joyously complex, multilayered collages that, since the 1960s, had become her signature style.

Some of her paintings and drawings now on display in Nocara, in fact, formed the basis of several of her major collages, such as "Wedding Procession," dating from 1988.

Looking back, Mom was an intensely Jewish artist, but not a "Jewish artist," per se.

She never created Jewish ritual art, though she frequently turned to Jewish themes and subject matter.
One of her first sculptures, dating from 1942, is a study of a huddled man and woman called "Refugees," and other sculptures, prints and paintings depict a cantor, a rabbi, Jewish holidays and life-cycle events, even a solemn moment from the Aleinu prayer.

A collage she created as a sort of multi-textured self-portrait prominently included Shabbat candlesticks, even though she herself was not observant.

And following a trip she took with me in Eastern Europe in 1992, she produced a particularly powerful series of monotype prints of some of the ruined synagogues and Jewish cemeteries that we visited.
But these -- like her Judaism itself -- were all part of the much broader kaleidoscope of her life. Her work, in fact, embraced and reflected the wide variety of landscapes, friends, family and experiences that made up her world.

Her collages in particular mixed dreams and reality to project a richly textured vision of life as she lived and perceived it, among her family, friends, neighbors and the local environment.

As she once put it, they were based "on personal experience and are composed to affect the viewer from a distance while at the same time inviting him to participate in the action -- to experience through color, dynamic contrasts of light and dark, and various techniques, a reality that may seem fantastic but is still real."

Ruthless Cosmopolitan -- Savoring "goulash Judaism" in Budapest

Sharansky nails a mezuzah to the doorpost of the new Israeli Cultural Institute in Budapest. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

 My latest "Ruthless Cosmopolitan" column for JTA recounts some of my experiences at Rosh Hashanah this year in Budapest.  A lot more was going on of course, but I would have needed a clone....

Savoring "goulash Judaism" in the Hungarian capital


By Ruth Ellen Gruber


JTA -- Sept. 16, 2010




BUDAPEST (JTA) -- I always try to spend at least part of the High Holidays in Budapest, so I can sample some of the spicy mixture that characterizes the Jewish experience in the Hungarian capital.

As many as 90,000 Jews live in Budapest, the largest Jewish population in any central European city. The vast majority are unaffiliated -- and probably always will be.

Those who do identify as Jews, however tenuously, have an evolving choice of public and private, religious, cultural and secular ways to express or explore their identity.

Gastronomic, too: This year, one friend made challah for the first time to serve at the holiday dinner, and a downtown restaurant even offered a special Rosh Hashanah menu.

Call it "goulash Judaism," if you will -- a simmering mix whose disparate, and often fractious, components combine to form a highly seasoned whole.

Events and observances this year bore witness to the growing array of Jewish options, both inside and outside traditional settings.

The week leading up to Rosh Hashanah, for example, saw the conclusion of the city's 13th annual Jewish Summer Festival, a 10-day series of performances and other events, including a book and crafts fair, that drew thousands of visitors. Also that week, an ambitious Israeli Cultural Institute opened in a refurbished building at the edge of the main old downtown Jewish quarter.

And further afield, in the Obuda district in the northern part of the city, a 190-year-old synagogue that had been used for decades as a state TV studio was rededicated as a Jewish house of worship.
Rented from the state and restored by Chabad, the synagogue will form part of Chabad's growing local network.

Foreign VIPs were in town for all three occasions.

The Jewish Summer Festival culminated with a well-publicized concert by the Chasidic reggae rapper Matisyahu in a major city event arena.

Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky affixed the mezuzah to the doorpost of the Israeli Cultural Institute, which was largely funded by the agency. Institute director Gabor Balazs said the institute's aim was to introduce and popularize Israel's "mosaic-like" culture to the Jewish and non-Jewish public at large.

And Israel's Ashkenazi chief rabbi, Yonah Metzger, joined Chabad rabbis in cutting the ribbon at the Obuda synagogue.

"This is the best possible answer to what the Nazis did," Metzger told the crowd of 1,000 or more, including Hungarian government and religious leaders, attending the ceremony. "Fifty years after the last time Rosh Hashanah was celebrated here, it will be celebrated here once again."

My own holiday observances also reflected new choices.

I usually attend High Holidays services at one of the 15 or so mainstream synagogues active in Budapest, or sometimes I "synagogue hop" to two or three shuls. Most of them belong to the Neolog movement -- the Hungarian variant of Reform Judaism that is the country's dominant religious stream. But there are also several traditional Orthodox synagogues, as well three or four now affiliated with Chabad.

This year I chose to avoid the mainstream. I sampled Rosh Hashanah services at two small alternative groups -- Bet Orim, one of Budapest's two American-style Reform congregations, and Dor Chadash, a young people's minyan associated with the Masorti, or Conservative, movement.

As neither Reform nor Masorti is recognized by the Hungarian Jewish Federation, both operate outside the umbrella of establishment Jewry.

Bet Orim celebrated a formal service in the auditorium of the Budapest JCC, while Dor Chadash held a more informal gathering in the living room of the local Moishe House, a downtown apartment that serves as a combination residence and center for Jewish educational encounters.

Each group numbered about 30 or 35 people, and both offered an American-style egalitarian Jewish prayer experience that is alien to mainstream Hungarian Jewry.

At Bet Orim, in fact, a young woman named Flora Polnauer served as the cantor for High Holidays services.
"It's the first time that a Hungarian Jewish woman has fulfilled this role," Bet Orim's rabbi, Ferenc Raj, told me proudly.

Raj, a native of Hungary, moved to the United States decades ago and is rabbi emeritus of Congregation Beth El in Berkeley, Calif.

"We are making history tonight," he said.

I had met Polnauer before under quite different circumstances. The daughter of a rabbi, she sings with several local music groups, including hard-driving Jewish hip hop bands.

During the service, dressed in white, she chanted the familiar melodies in a lilting voice. But she looked a little nervous and was clearly moved by the experience.

"I really feel we deserve the Shehecheyanu!" she exclaimed at the end, referring to the blessing recited to mark special occasions and moments of joy.

We all joined in and chanted it with her: "Blessed are you, O Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe who has kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season."

European Day of Jewish Culture

My latest JTA article deals with the annual European Day of Jewish Culture -- a topic I have written about on a fairly regular basis in the 11 eleven years since it was established. Indeed, I took part in the meeting in Paris in 1999 when it was decided to expand the regional "open doors" to Jewish heritage events in  Alsace into an international initiative.

Despite being in its 11th year, the "Day" is still fairly unknown -- except in a few places, such as Italy, where it has become a high-profile event on the end-of-summer calendar, with lots of media coverage and support from state and local authorities.

 

Tourists shop in a store in the former Jewish district of Pitigliano that sells kosher wine, matzah, Jewish pastries and souvenirs. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Introducing non-Jewish Europeans to Jewish life

By Ruth Ellen Gruber · August 31, 2010

PITIGLIANO, Italy (JTA) -- In Italy, where there are only about 25,000 affiliated Jews in a population of 60 million, most Italians have never knowingly met a Jew. "It's unfortunate," said the Italian Jewish activist Sira Fatucci, "but in Italy Jews and the Jewish experience are often mostly known through the Holocaust."

Fatucci is the national coordinator in Italy for the annual European Day of Jewish Culture, an annual transborder celebration of Jewish traditions and creativity that takes place in more than 20 countries on the continent on the first Sunday of September -- this year, Sept. 5.

Synagogues, Jewish museums and even ritual baths and cemeteries are open to the public, and hundreds of seminars, exhibits, lectures, book fairs, art installations, concerts, performances and guided tours are offered.
The main goal is to educate the non-Jewish public about Jews and Judaism in order to demystify the Jewish world and combat anti-Jewish prejudice.

“What we are trying to do is to show the living part of Judaism -- to show life," Fatucci said. "What we want to do is to use culture as an antidote to ignorance and anti-Semitism.”

Some 700 people flock to Culture Day events each year in Pitigliano, a rust-colored hilltown in southern Tuscany that once had such a flourishing Jewish community that it was known as Little Jerusalem. Most local Jews moved away before World War II, and today only four Jews live here in a total population of 4,000. But in recent years the medieval ghetto area has become an important local attraction. The town produces kosher wine, and a new shop sells souvenir packets of matzah and Jewish pastries.

Culture Day events here include kosher food and wine tastings, guided tours, art exhibits and an open-air klezmer concert.

"There's a lot of ignorance, but a lot of curiosity about Jews," said Claudia Elmi, who works at Pitigliano's Jewish museum, which opened in the 1990s and now attracts 22,000 to 24,000 visitors a year -- the vast majority non-Jews. "But the Jews were seen as closed, or even physically closed off," she said. "The open doors of the Day of Culture are very important."

Tourists line up to tour the Jewish museum and the synagogue, a 16th-century gem that fell into ruin following World War II and was rebuilt and reopened in 1995.  They make their way down steep stairs into the former mikvah and matzah bakery, which are located in rough-hewn subterranean chambers carved into the solid rock.

"We didn't know anything about Judaism before coming here," said Rosanna and Paolo, tourists from Padova who visited Pitiligano's Jewish sites a week before Culture Day. "We learned a lot here, particularly about the religious rituals and kosher food."

Now in its 11th year, Culture Day is loosely coordinated by the European Council of Jewish Communities, B'nai B'rith Europe and the Red de Juderias, a Jewish tourism route linking 21 Spanish cities. Countries participating this year include Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Holland, Norway, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. This year’s theme is "Art and Judaism."

Each country makes its own programs, and depends on local resources and volunteers to host, plan and carry out activities. Thus in some countries, only a few events take place: Norway will have a klezmer concert and lecture in Oslo; Bosnia has only an art exhibit in Sarajevo. Elsewhere, a varied feast may stretch for several days. In Britain, this year's activities last until Sept. 15 and include dozens of events in London and more than 20 other cities.

Jewish art "is both distinctive and universal" said Lena Stanley-Clamp, the director of the London-based European Association for Jewish Culture. "It certainly speaks to and is enjoyed by people of all backgrounds."
Italy is by far the European Day of Jewish Culture's most enthusiastic participant. Thanks to Fatucci and her army of volunteers and communal organizers, it has grown to become a high-profile fixture on the late-summer calendar, with events and activities up and down the Italian boot.

Last year's events attracted 62,000 people -- about one-third the total number who attended Jewish Culture Day events around the continent and about twice the number of Jews in Italy. This year, activities are being staged in 62 towns, cities and villages, including many places -- like Pitigliano -- where few or no Jews live.

"There is a great curiosity about Jews and Jewish culture here, so the opportunity to engage in a Jewish cultural activity is very attractive," Fatucci said. "The Day of Jewish Culture became a reference point for this."
Part of the success, she said, was due to the fact that Culture Day in Italy is so well organized and publicized. Jewish communities work closely with public and private institutions, and the event receives government support and recognition.

But, Fatucci added, Jewish heritage in Italy encompasses a remarkably rich and varied array of treasures -- Roman-era Jewish catacombs in Rome, medieval mikvahs, Baroque synagogues, and the historic ghetto and centuries-old Jewish cemetery in Venice.

"Italy is the country of art, par excellence," Fatucci said. "But in many places, people have lived side by side with fragments of Jewish culture without knowing anything about them -- or even knowing they were there."

(For a program of European Day of Jewish Culture events, visit Jewisheritage.org.)

 Read full article at jta.org