IHT Article -- Zhovkva, Ukraine

Here's at link to my article for the International Herald Tribune on Zhovkva, Ukraine.

FOR A FORTRESS TOWN, A SECOND RENAISSANCE

BY RUTH ELLEN GRUBER

Jan. 12, 2009


In Renaissance Italy, artists and master architects theorized that the ideal proportions for a city could be derived from those of the human form. Some even made drawings superimposing town plans onto the bodies of men.

Half a millennium later, Lubomyr Kravets, the director of the tourist office in the little town of Zhovkva, just north of L'viv, unfolded a local map to show me how that theory had been put into practice here in western Ukraine.

"See" he said, pointing. "Zhovkva looks like a human body. The castle here is the head, and the big church over this way is the heart. The four entrance gates in the town walls were the arms and legs."

Zhovkva was founded in 1594 as a private fortress town by the Polish military commander Stanislaw Zolkiewski. It was one of several fortified towns in what was then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that were conceived as "ideal cities" and built by architects and master masons from Italy.

The most famous, and best preserved, is Zamosc, across the border in Poland, which was founded in 1580 by the powerful Polish noble Jan Zamoyski and designed by the Padua-born architect Bernardo Morando. It is included on Unesco's roster of world cultural heritage as "a perfect example of a late-16th-century Renaissance town."

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RUTHLESS COSMOPOLITAN -- Just Being (Jewish)

Here's my latest R-C column, about Facebook (of all things....)

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Dec. 22, 2008

ROME (JTA) -- Not long ago, a Facebook friend of mine wrote that she had had a great time at a Shabbat dinner even if there had been "a wee bit much talk" of religion.

"Why all this American obsession with Jewish identity?" she wrote on her profile page on the social networking site. "Just BE!"

Her comment got me thinking.

Defining Jewish identity, refining Jewish identity, reclaiming Jewish identity, reinforcing Jewish identity -- these seem indeed to be constant concerns among many Jews, and not just in the United States.

"Jewish identity" has been the subject of endless conferences, surveys, books, articles, analyses and movies -- not to mention comedy routines. A Google search for "Jewish identity" gave me 573,000 matches!

What impact, I wondered, does this all have on who we are -- or at least on who we say we are?

I decided to carry out an unscientific study to find out -- a very unscientific study.

My methodology was simple: I used Facebook to see how Jews, or at least Jews I know, define themselves in terms of religious identity.

For those unfamiliar with Facebook, a site that has 120 million users around the world, its software permits you to connect with lists of "friends" who are in turn linked with friends' lists of their own.

Upon joining you create a profile, including information you want to make public about your age, sex, location, profession, personal views and even your sexual preference. You pick and choose what you want to post. Some people post only their name; others provide the whole megillah.

One of the choices is to state your "religious views." You can choose whether or not to post anything at all about your religious beliefs and, if you opt to post, you choose how you want to define yourself; there is a blank space you can fill in with whatever you want to say.

For my study, I simply checked how my Facebook friends I know to be Jewish chose to respond.

I have more than 200 Facebook friends, and as it turns out, the overwhelming majority are Jewish. They include several rabbis, a cantor, klezmer musicians, Jewish scholars and leaders or staff members of Jewish organizations, as well as friends and family who have nothing to do with the Jewish institutional world.

About half of them chose not to fill in the "religious views" blank. Some clearly wanted to keep their religious beliefs personal; for others it was unimportant to define them. For others still, filling in the blank would have been redundant.

"It would be stating the very obvious," Herschel Gluck, an Orthodox rabbi who for more than 20 years has done Jewish outreach work in East-Central Europe, told me in an e-mail.

All of his other postings on Facebook, he noted, including pictures that show him in a long beard and black hat, made his religious identity clear.

"EVERYTHING is naturally and unashamedly proudly Jewish!" he said.

Of my more than 80 Jewish Facebook friends who did choose to state their religious views, only a minority went the standard route. Barely a dozen wrote simply "Jewish," and only another dozen or so identified themselves as some traditional formulation of Reform, Conservative or Orthodox.

The others produced a cornucopia of qualifiers, inventions, political statements and imaginative shadings that demonstrated a vast and colorful spectrum encompassing the widest range of belief, observance and nuanced sense of self.

They include: Jewish atheist; Absolute atheist; I love being Jewish; The Golden Rule; Incoherent; That's between me and my imaginary friend; It's all good; Eclectic; Panoramic; Anything I Can Cling To; Ignostic; Resolutely Secularly Jewish; Neo-tribalist, neo-pagan of Zion; "Still haven't found it" Jewish; Spiritual Jewgayism; Whirling Dervish; Rationalist; Jewishjewishjewish; I can see a church from my window; Jewish but not obsessive; All; Post Pigeon-Holistic; Waiting for UFOs to Take Me to Hawaii.

Some of these are frivolous or funny; others tweak stereotypes. Most, though, even if outlandish, are at heart thoughtful expressions of complex contemporary IDs that go far beyond the usual definitions of who (or what) is a Jew.

One friend summed it all up by stating his religious views as follows: "A simple Jew (who am I kidding? Is there such a thing????).

I asked a few of my friends why they chose to define their views as they did. The klezmer musician and filmmaker Yale Strom, for example, called himself a "Yiddish pagan."

"Yiddish is the tongue I relate to most as in my second tongue," he said in an e-mail. "My pagan beliefs come from me not believing in a typical omnipotent god figure sitting on a throne but a more amorphous one as in 'Mother nature.' "

Strom said he felt connected to Mother Nature, "as did the Baal Shem Tov who lived in the forests, studied the plants and was a known herbalist among the Jews and non-Jews."

"I am not an atheist," he added, "because I know there is something greater than myself -- or there better be or we are all doomed -- in fact there has to be, why else be born, put into this life?"

Bruno Bitter, in his early 30s, coordinates a popular Jewish blog and online community in Budapest. He described his religious views as "opiate of the few."

Why that?

"Marx wrote that 'Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes,' " he told me. "This is often referred to as 'religion is the opiate of the masses' in English. But the Jewish religion is for no 'masses,' as we are a small minority."

In Philadelphia, meanwhile, Michael Seifert, a retired technical writer, described himself as "Secular Humanist Jewish."

"I call myself a secular humanist because I put my faith in civic, political, charitable, and educational institutions not affiliated with any religions and follow the teachings of the Western humanist tradition, which emphasizes the rights of man and the dignity of the individual," Seifert told me.

"Oh yes," he added. "I was born Jewish, so I have certain traditions and beliefs that come from my Jewish upbringing and education, as well as a birthright and familial alliances with Jewish people."

Two of Seifert's siblings are also Facebook friends of mine -- one, a musician, calls himself a "spiritualist," and the other, a professor, is "indifferent."

Members of my own extended family described themselves as "Jewish of the Reform and secular sort," or "Jewish-ish," or simply wrote "yes" after the words "religious views."

Myself? I chose not to say anything.

If anyone wants to know, they can ask.

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RUTHLESS COSMOPOLITAN -- Living Like Anne Frank?

At the Golden Rose cafe, L'viv, Ukraine, October 2008. Photo (c) R. E. Gruber

RUTHLESS COSMOPOLITAN -- Living Like Anne Frank?

Nov. 19, 2008

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

ROME (JTA)—An online accommodation agency I came across recently used one of the most tasteless slogans I’ve ever seen to advertise a holiday rental in Amsterdam.

"Amsterdam Stay Apartments present the Anne Frank apartment," read a banner across the top of the apartment’s Web page. "Live like Anne Frank during your Amsterdam stay," it promised, "with the keys to your own roof attic apartment.

"Live like Anne Frank?"

What on earth could these people have been thinking? The apartment, said the Web page, occupies the top floor of a building "just opposite the Anne Frank house" in a "lively and picturesque area known for its restaurants, night life, specialty shops and cultural attractions."

A converted garret with a steeply sloping ceiling, it comes complete with high speed Internet, a private terrace and a full supply of bed linen. Though "ideal for two," it can sleep up to four.

"Live like Anne Frank?"

The Web page made her sound like some bohemian celebrity, not a teenage diarist who for two long years hid with her family and friends in a cramped "secret annex" until they were betrayed to the Germans and shipped off to Nazi death camps.

Anne died in Bergen Belsen at the age of 15. The Anne Frank House is now a museum that draws as many as a million visitors a year. The "secret annex" has been preserved, and exhibits tell the tragic story that unfolded in that hidden space.

"Live like Anne Frank?"

What does it mean, this transformation of World War II terror into a market-driven synonym for trendy charm? Is it just another form of "Shoah business?" Or has Anne’s name become a talisman so abstract and disembodied that it can be cut and pasted and used without reference to the totality of its meaning? You know—Anne Frank, a pretty young girl living tucked away in a cozy attic apartment, sweetly dreaming of movie stars and confiding in her diary.

"Live like Anne Frank?"

"Commercializing Holocaust suffering (or stoicism or heroism)—through ignorance or malice—cannot be condoned," my brother, Sam Gruber, the president of the International Survey of Jewish Monuments, wrote in an angry response to the apartment ad.

"Even when done in a way that is meant to celebrate the victim, such exploitation actually belittles her," he wrote. "Maybe the apartment owner figured if Broadway, Hollywood and publishers around the world could make money selling their version of Anne Frank, ‘Why not me, too?’ After all, the Anne Frank House is a big Amsterdam tourist destination. Why shouldn’t the neighbors cash in?"

Actually, Anne Frank does enjoy protection, and by the time you read this column, the "Anne Frank Apartment" Web page already may have changed its wording or even be off-line.

I informed a friend at the Anne Frank House about the ad and he assured me that the Anne Frank Foundation, which oversees the museum, would be taking action. The foundation has legal control over the Anne Frank name, he explained. No one can name anything Anne Frank without its permission.

"This is to prevent Anne Frank from being used for commercial or touristic purposes," he told me. "Otherwise we would have the whole neighborhood filled with Anne Frank cafes and the like."

For many years I’ve written about how abstract ideas of Jews and Jewish culture can become commercialized commodities in European countries where few if any Jews live today. Clearly there is a correlation between the attempt to use Anne Frank to rent an apartment and the ways that Jews, Jewish symbols and Jewish stereotypes are used in other types of Jewish-themed tourist promotion.

This is particularly evident in Eastern and Central Europe, where a growing number of "Jewish-style" cafes project an increasingly standardized ambience of kugel, candlesticks, klezmer and kitsch.

I’m not as squeamish about the phenomenon as some people I know, but I do wince at the excesses. Lately I have found myself wincing more and more. Maybe it’s because there are more excesses to wince at—or maybe because the excesses are becoming, well, so excessive.

It’s complicated, though. There are still charming Jewish-style cafes, where the atmosphere is understated and attitudes are sincere. In Krakow, the proprietors of one cafe, the Klezmer Hois, even use their profits to finance a Jewish publishing house and well-stocked Jewish bookstore.

More and more, however, I see "Jewish" becoming a brand, where codified accessories and sometimes toxic cliche provide the parameters. There’s a little chain of "Anatewka" restaurants in Lodz. The Ariel cafe in Krakow sells refrigerator magnets of caricature Jewish heads. A big image of a Jew counting money stands outside the Tsimmes restaurant in Kiev.

The most recent example is a new Jewish cafe in the derelict old Jewish quarter of Lviv, Ukraine. The cafe overlooks the ruins of the Golden Rose synagogue at the edge of a vacant space where one of the city’s other main synagogues once stood.

As a cafe it is not unpleasant; its decor includes dark wood and pre-war photos that bear witness to the world destroyed. As part of its gimmickry, however, patrons are encouraged to don black hats equipped with long, fake peyes (earlocks). And no prices are written on the menu—customers are supposed to "bargain," like Jews, over what they should pay.

It’s creepy, but as I said, it’s complicated. Jews themselves often use these very same caricatures in playful reference or self-ironic self-identification. (Think Heebster, JDub, HeBrew the Chosen Beer.)

I visited the cafe with a group of Jews from Israel, North America and several European countries. Nearly all of us professed discomfort but, in a slightly schizophrenic moment, we also almost all tried on the hats.

(Ruth Ellen Gruber’s books include "National Geographic Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to Eastern Europe," "Letters from Europe (and Elsewhere)," and "Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe." She blogs on Jewish heritage issues at http://jewish-heritage-travel.blogspot.com/.)




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New Ruthless Cosmopolitan column: Jewish Spaces and Places

My new Ruthless Cosmopolitan column is online -- a bit late because of the Jewish holidays...


RUTHLESS COSMOPOLITAN
Places and spaces: Exploring
what makes up the Jewish tapestry

Ruth Ellen Gruber

Avner Gruber, the first cousin once removed of Ruth Ellen Gruber, visits a Jewish cemetery in Hamburg, Germany.

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

ROME (JTA) – We’ve all played the “Jewish geography” game – you know, questioning someone we’ve only just met in order to discover common Jewish connections, friends or even family.

In doing so, we are mapping out our experiences, delineating a sort of Jewish topography of interlinking backgrounds, histories and far-flung mishpocha.

Somehow I feel a sense of profound satisfaction when I discover an unexpected link with a stranger. It’s like a gift, an almost magical sense of communion with the densely woven tapestry of Jewish life – or at least with an individual or a place that helps make up that tapestry.

The idea of Jewish topography and the spaces and places – physical and metaphysical – in which Jews live, dream and interact forms the basis of a fascinating new book.

“Jewish Topographies: Visions of Space, Traditions of Place” (Ashgate Publishing House, 2008) is a collection of essays by a score of international scholars who participated in a six-year research project at the University of Potsdam in Germany.

Called Makom, or “place” in Hebrew, the project aimed to explore the relevance of space and place in Jewish life and culture.

In my own writing, I have dealt frequently with “Jewish space” in the way that the Paris-based historian Diana Pinto framed it. She coined the term in the 1990s to describe the place occupied by Jews, Jewish culture and Jewish memory within mainstream European society, regardless of the size or activity of the local Jewish population.

“There is a Jewish space in Europe that will exist even in the absence of Jews,” she said. “The ‘Jewish thing’ is becoming universal.”

Pinto’s thesis was a spark for my own explorations of the often intense relationship between non-Jews and Jewish culture in Europe. I coined the term “virtually Jewish” to describe how non-Jews often “fill” Europe’s Jewish space with their own ideas and operations.

“Jewish Topographies” takes a much different approach.

It regards Jewish space from within the Jewish world rather than from the virtually Jewish perspective of outside interaction. It sees Jewish spaces as actual environments that are shaped by Jews, where Jewish life may be rooted and where Jewish activities go on.

“Jewish things” happen there and often, in turn, define the identity of the physical places where they are happening.

One of the goals of the project, the book’s editors write, was to counteract stereotypes that long have conveyed “the pervasive impression that the Jewish experience – except the Israeli one – is one of profound displacement, lacking not only a proper territory but also a substantial spatiality or attachment to place.”

They mean stereotypes such as the description of Jews as the “People of the Book” and of the book itself as the Jews’ “portable homeland,” not to mention the widespread cliche of the “wandering Jew.”

I must admit that I myself actually fulfill some of these stereotypes. I have lived in seven or eight countries, and even now I spend a good deal of time on the road. Yet I generally feel comfortable wherever I am, usually wishing I could stay longer in almost every place I visit.

Rarely do I feel “homesick,” yet I have deep attachments to place and certain places. Despite living overseas most of my life, the United States, in all its grandeur, remains my homeland.

And perhaps it’s a variant of the Jewish geography game that I do feel a special affinity for the landscapes, climate, food and even architecture in East-Central Europe, from where my ancestors came.

“Jewish Topographies” goes far beyond geography. Its chapters examine very different, and sometimes unusual, places where Jewish experience is strongly linked, physically or emotionally, to specific environments.

Most deal with concrete settings: Jews defiantly (and astonishingly) cultivating gardens in the midst of World War II ghettos. Jews hiking and kayaking through the pre-war Polish countryside to gain connection with the land in which they live. The architectural and spatial symbolism of the eruv in contemporary Germany. The impact of what Jews eat, and the creation of definable Jewish “foodscapes.” A “map” of the new alternative Jewish subcultures that have emerged recently in Budapest.

The book also includes an epilogue that expands the concept of Jewish space into areas that only recently opened up for exploration. Called “Virtual Jewish Topography,” it chronicles the creation and growth of Judaism in the online cyberworld known as Second Life, starting with the creation of Beth Israel, the first Second Life synagogue, in August 2006.

Its author, Julian Voloj, tells a fascinating story of avatars, screen names and self-selected identities as he charts the development of synagogues, Jewish institutions, Jewish cultural activities and Jewish neighborhoods – even anti-Semitic incidents – in a world that in a sense is real but also quite imaginary.

“How does one describe a place that does not ‘really’ exist and that can be changed by a simple mouse click?” he writes. “And how does one describe a culture in transition?”

I’ve known the German-born Voloj for several years. He is a writer, photographer and former Jewish student leader who now works for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. We’re Facebook friends and generally stay in touch online. But in addition to his expertise in novel Jewish topographies, he’s also adept at playing classic “Jewish geography.”

Indeed, I was pleased to learn not long ago that Voloj’s grandmother turns out to be a close friend in Hamburg of my own first cousin once removed.

(Ruth Ellen Gruber’s books include “National Geographic Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to Eastern Europe,” “Letters from Europe (and Elsewhere),” and “Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe.")

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My IHT Article on Chopin in Warsaw

Here's a link to my latest piece in the International Herald Tribune, on preparations for Fryderyk Chopin's bicentennial.


(Bus stop ad for a Warsaw Chopin Festival, Sept. 2008. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber)



Poland prepares for Chopin's bicentennial

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Published: October 13, 2008


WARSAW: Plans are well under way for a year of celebrations to mark the upcoming bicentennial of one of Poland's favorite native sons - Frédéric, known here as Fryderyk, Chopin.

The Polish Sejm, or Parliament, has declared 2010 the Year of Fryderyk Chopin, and special concerts, recitals, conferences and other events will honor the great Romantic composer, who was born near Warsaw in 1810.

The prestigious International Chopin Competition for pianists will mark its 16th edition in October 2010. Held every five years, the competition draws scores of young musicians from all over the world. In addition, Warsaw's Chopin Museum, with the world's largest collection of Chopin documents and other artifacts, will undergo a total redesign, modernization and expansion.

A lavishly illustrated new guidebook called "Chopin's Poland" was already published this year. It leads visitors to dozens of sites in Warsaw and elsewhere around the country where the composer lived, ate, studied, performed, visited or even partied.


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Ray Benson Wins 2008 Les Paul Award

Just a coda to my profile of Ray Benson I posted the other day.... Ray has just been awarded the TEC Awards-2008 Les Paul Award presented by the Mix Foundation for Excellence in Audio.

Named for one of the industry's most revered personalities, the Les Paul Award was created in 1991 to honor individuals or institutions that have set the highest standards of excellence in the creative application of recording technology.

Previous winners include Paul McCartney, Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Al Kooper, Steve Miller and other leading names in (mainly) rock and pop music.

The Awards announcement says Ray "is the ultimate modern multi-hyphenate—bandleader-singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist-producer-studio owner-engineer-businessman-raconteur-father-real tall guy. The last one came naturally; the rest he’s had to work at, and he’s good at all of them!"

Mazel Tov, Ray!

A Jewish singer towers over country western scene

This isn't a Ruthless Cosmopolitan column, but I'm posting it anyway....





(Ray Benson onstage in Craponne. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber.)


By Ruth Ellen Gruber Published: 09/26/2008

CRAPONNE SUR ARZON, France (JTA) -- Think Jews and country music and you'll probably come up with Kinky Friedman, the cigar-chomping frontman of the iconoclastic Texas Jewboys, who is also a humorist, mystery novelist and failed but flamboyant candidate for Texas governor.

The real Jewish king of country music, however, is Ray Benson, the nine-time Grammy-winning leader of the country western swing band Asleep at the Wheel.

At 6-foot-7, Ray Benson has been described as a "Jewish giant" and "the biggest Jew in country."

He literally and figuratively towers over the stage in a Stetson and fancy tooled boots, with a grizzled beard and long, thinning hair pulled back in a pony tail.

"I saw miles and miles of Texas, all the stars up in the sky," he sings in his deep, mellow baritone. "I saw miles and miles of Texas, gonna live here 'til I die."

Now 57, Benson was born in Philadelphia but has lived in Austin for 35 years. He talks with a twang, plays golf with Willie Nelson, has recorded more than 30 albums and was named Texas Musician of the Year in 2004.

By his own estimate, he is the only Jewish singing star in the country western scene.

"Kinky's not a country western singer -- he's Kinky!" Benson laughed during a conversation with JTA this summer at the annual Country Rendez-vous festival in south-central France, where Asleep at the Wheel wound up a five-nation European tour.

Unlike Friedman, however, who makes playing with stereotypes part of his in-your-face persona, Benson has -- until now -- kept his religious identity out of the limelight.

"I didn't want to be known as a Jewish country western singer; I wanted to be known as a country western singer who happens to be Jewish," he said.

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For more pictures of Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel at Craponne, click HERE