How to mark the Kristallnacht anniversary? With glorious synagogues

Entryway, Jubilee synagogue, Prague. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This weekend marks the 75th anniversary of what we call Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass, the night of violent coordinated Nazi attacks against Jews, Jewish property, and Jewish places of worship which saw some 7,000 Jewish businesses trashed and more than 1,000 synagogues put to the torch all over Germany and German-occupied lands. Some 30,000 Jews were imprisoned and more than 90 were killed.

The destruction wrought on the night of November 9-10, 1938 foreshadowed the mass destruction of the Holocaust that followed a few years later.

To mark this anniversary, rather than dwell on the destruction, I thought I would focus on rebirth and survival, in particular the survival of synagogues whose restoration over the past two decades has been a symbol of Jewish rebirth in Germany and elsewhere in central and eastern Europe.

Here, then, just a few photographs of synagogues, still used by Jewish communities, that stand now as enduring monuments to the glory of what was destroyed -- and offer hope that the still somewhat fragile renewal of Jewish life in Europe may continue to strengthen. This is only a very small sample of the synagogue buildings that have been restored in Europe (most of them now used for cultural or other purposes).

Tempel synagogue, Krakow. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Interior, Tempel Synagogue, Krakow. Photo © JCC Krakow

Facade, Pilsen synagogue, Czech Republic. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Dohany st. Synagogue, Budapest. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Dohany st. Synagogue, Budapest. Restored in the 1990s

Dohany st. Synagogue, Budapest. Restored in the 1990s

Kazinczy st synagogue, Budapest

Ceiling, Kazinczy st synagogue, Budapest

Ark, Kazinczy st. Synagogue, Budapest

Orthodox synagogue, Presov, Slovakia. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Orthodox synagogue, Presov, Slovakia. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

And here are a couple of synagogues built in recent years. The use of glass is a real answer to Kristallnacht, no?:

Ohel Jakob synagogue , Munich (l) built 2004-2006

Synagogue in Graz, Austria, dedicated in 2000 on the site of the magnificent synagogue destroyed on Kristallnacht. Notice how the upper part of this synagogue is a glass dome. A real answer to the Night of Broken Glass. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Glass dome of the new synagogue in Graz. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

My reflections on the Krakow Jewish Culture Festival

Steve Weintraub & heads of carved Jewish figurines. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

I’ve been writing about the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow for about 20 years, maybe even longer…so I have some historical perspective and memory in its regard.

Here’s my latest piece, a first-personer published in The Forward. People who also have long experience with the Festival and with the Jewish development of Krakow praised it for presenting a nuanced view….other people, predictably, didn’t get what I was getting at…

Onward and Upward with Matisyahu in Krakow

ARTS FEST SHOWS TRANSFORMATION IN POLAND’S REPUTATION

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

July 19, 2013

KRAKOW — In the sultry darkness of a summer night, a tall, skinny figure with close-cropped hair and a purple T-shirt threaded through a beer garden during Krakow’s Jewish Culture Festival, the annual nine-day extravaganza of performance, exhibition, debate and intensive interaction that for a quarter of a century now has been a catalyst of Krakow’s Jewish cultural revival.

Bridging the open space between the city’s lively Jewish community center, which hosted dozens of festival events, and the grandiose Tempel Synagogue, venue for many of the concerts, the garden served as an informal salon where public and performers, Jews and non-Jews alike, could shmooze.

Whispers trailed in the newcomer’s wake: “Matisyahu’s here!”

The American singer, much less recognizable since he shed his Hasidic garb, blended with the dozens of other folks sipping their drinks as he made his way through the slatted wooden tables and sat down with a group that included Jonathan Ornstein, director of Krakow’s Jewish community center, and Janusz Makuch, the bearded, non-Jewish Pole who co-founded the festival in 1988 and is still both its director and its main driving force.

Matisyahu wasn’t on the program, though he has performed here in the past.

This time, en route to a gig in northern Poland, he had simply dropped in to hang with the festival crowd in Kazimierz, Krakow’s historic Jewish district.

Over the past two decades, Kazimierz has famously been transformed from a rundown slum, the quintessential Jewish graveyard, into a major tourist attraction: a burgeoning hub of revitalized Jewish culture, life, consciousness and commercial kitsch — as well as the city’s liveliest center of clubs, pubs and other late-night venues.

“We must have been out till 5 in the morning,” Ornstein told me the next day.

I’ve been writing about Kazimierz since 1990 and about the festival itself for nearly that long, returning each summer, at least for a few festival days, to monitor changes in the place, the program and the issues that swirl around both of them.

To me, Matisyahu’s under-the-radar appearance brought home one of the most striking of these changes. Clearly for him — and for the hundreds, maybe thousands, of other Jewish tourists who now flock here — the long post-Holocaust taboo on visiting Poland for pleasure has been broken.

This is no mean feat and has taken years to come about. Auschwitz is just an hour’s drive from Krakow, and the new attitude is by no means universal. But I heard it echoed clearly by a Canadian woman staying in my hotel.

“There’s no downside to Krakow,” the woman told me over breakfast. “As for the festival, it’s great. I’m doing as many activities as I can, and I’m already planning to come back with friends in two years.”

One of the factors in this change has been the increasingly high profile of the JCC, which opened five years ago as a neutral Jewish space accessible to all streams and forms of Jewishness and Jewish expression, normative or not.

Now one of the hubs of the festival, the JCC is, importantly, recognized as a “Jewish” Jewish space, in contrast to most of the city’s other Jewish-oriented venues and institutions. Its involvement has changed radically the dynamics of an event that long was viewed as a Jewish festival produced by non-Jews for a non-Jewish audience. Non-Jewish Poles still make up the vast majority of the festival’s attendees.

Among the JCC’s annual festival offerings is a kosher Sabbath dinner. This year, hosted in the 17th-century Izaak Synagogue, the dinner drew nearly 400 people.

“Visitors to Krakow now understand that they are not coming to a museum, but rather to a place with a small but increasingly active Jewish community,” Ornstein told me. “Understanding that fact puts the festival in a different context from a Jewish point of view. It is not only connecting Poles to Jewish culture, but helping create an environment in which the local Jewish community feels welcome and can thrive. This festival can make a claim that few others can: It is helping to rebuild a Jewish community long thought by many to be without a future.”

This year, the concepts of “Jewish” and “Jewishness” — and the ways they are defined, perceived, described and enacted — formed one of the main themes confronted in the many festival lectures, workshops and discussions.

I took part in a public conversation at the JCC, called “Jewish. Jewish? ‘Jewish’ Jewish!” It addressed shifting definitions, particularly in Kazimierz, where the transformations have created a complex of new Jewish authenticities that are quite different from the Krakow Jewish world that was destroyed in the Holocaust but are still real components of today’s living city.

After all, few if any of the young Poles and visitors who now throng the district’s many new cafes or volunteer at the JCC have any direct memories of Kazimierz before the festival began drawing crowds, when no modern Jewish museums and culture centers offered their programs, and no Jewish (or Jewish-style) commercial venues plied their trade.

“The resonance of the festival has become larger than the festival itself. And maybe this is the important thing,” the noted Yiddish singer Michael Alpert commented backstage during the festival’s traditional marathon open-air final concert on Kazimierz’s main square, Szeroka Street. “There’s ‘normalization,’” Alpert said, “and if it’s normal, it’s not as exotic.”

Nonetheless, he said, the festival’s main museum exhibition demonstrated an unsettling deep-seated sense of the “weird” that still surrounds Jewish issues.

This provocative show confronted the perception of what is understood as Jewish or “Jewish.” Titled “Souvenir, Talisman, Toy” and curated by Concordia University anthropologist Erica Lehrer, it explored the history, meaning and symbolism of the ubiquitous carved wooden figurines of Jews, frequently seen at Polish souvenir stalls and which often perpetuate sometimes toxicstereotypes.

The exhibit placed these figures in the context of both folk art and folk fantasy. In doing so, particularly against the pervasive good vibes of the festival, it served to highlight — and confront — the contradictory ways that “Jews” and “Jewishness” are perceived and represented in contemporary Poland.

One particular focus was on the myriad “Jewish” figures that clutch money and are used as “good luck” charms said to bring purchasers prosperity. Some observers actually view such “penny Jews” as embodying “positive” stereotypes, without ill intention. In exhibition video interviews, vendors and purchasers alike spoke openly about the magical properties of such figures, some of which are so abstract that, though bought, sold and recognized as “Jews,” they look more like aliens than human beings.

“As a Jewish dancer, people look at my physicality as a Jew,” said Steve Weintraub, the festival’s Jewish dance teacher, with whom I visited the exhibit. “What does this mean about how people are seeing me?”

That, of course, was the question. Or one of the questions. Only days after the festival’s conclusion, the lower house of Poland’s parliament voted down a bill that would have allowed Jewish (and Muslim) ritual animal slaughter.

It’s not for nothing that the exhibition advertisement featured the grotesque head of a wooden Jew, all staring eyes, fur hat and flaring peyes, or sidelocks. From posters and banners it glared proudly — even defiantly — out at the manifold new realities of Jewish Kazimierz with an expression of amazement, inquiry and possibly apprehension.

Read full article at: http://forward.com/articles/180634/onward-and-upward-with-matisyahu-in-krakow/?p=all#ixzz2ZaSVeCa9

Belatedly.... links to the Jewish heritage conference in Krakow

Opening plenary. Photo: JCC Krakow

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I know, I've really let things slide on this blog. Partly it's because there has been so much going on that I have not found time to write a decent post. Partly it's because I've been putting a lot of energy into the news feed of the web site www.jewish-heritage-europe.eu, which I coordinate as a project of the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe.  I urge everyone to subscribe to the Jewish Heritage Europe news feed -- you can do it from the home page of the web site, or from any of the news pages. (And -- why not like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter, too...?)

One of my main projects over the past few months, linked to Jewish Heritage Europe, was being the main hands-on organizer of the working seminar on Managing Jewish Immovable Heritage, which took place in Krakow April 23-25. Our partner on the ground in Krakow was the Jewish Community Center, whose young staff and volunteers were fantastic to work with and did an extraordinary job and making everything work....and everyone agreed that the kosher food provided from the JCC kitchen was the best anyone had ever had at such a gathering.

We had about 100 participants from about 20 or 22 countries -- as broad a mix of people involved in Jewish heritage preservation, documentation and promotion as possible: culture ministry representatives; Jewish community representatives; academics; architects and architectural historians; grass-roots activists -- and more.

All the sessions (except for a session with funders) were recorded -- and I have posted all of them, in their entirety -- on the web site. Click here to see them. I have also posted the texts or power points of some of the presentations.

There were three plenary sessions -- an introductory session with keynote by Samuel D. Gruber; a session on managing Jewish heritage in Poland; and a summing up "looking toward the future" session. All were held in the ornate, 19th century Tempel Synagogue, in mark to mark the 20th anniversary of the start of the restoration of that building.

Managing Jewish Built Heritage Conference this week -- opening to be live-streamed

Restoration work in synagogue in Spisske Podhradie, Slovakia, 2011. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This post also appears on my En Route blog for the LA Jewish Journal

I've spent much of the past five or six months working on the organization of an international conference called Managing Jewish Immovable Heritage in Europe: A Working Seminar on Projects, Challenges and Strategic Thinking -- a three-day, invitation-only working seminar convened to discuss a wide range of issues, challenges, strategies and successes regarding the care, maintenance, preservation, use and promotion of Jewish material heritage. It is a direct follow-up to a seminar on Jewish heritage management that took place in Bratislava, Slovakia, in March 2009 and issued the Bratislava Statement, including best practices recommendations.

The conference takes place April 23-25.

The opening session April 23 will take place in the historic Tempel Synagogue, whose restoration, spearheaded by the World Monuments Fund and initiatied in the early 1990s, was one of the first major post-communist Jewish heritage restorations in Poland.

The session -- at 2 p.m. CET -- will be live streamed on internet. Keynote speaker will be Dr. Samuel D. Gruber, a pioneer in Jewish heritage preservation and documentation. You can watch it on the www.jewish-heritage-europe.eu web site, or right here:

The seminar is being convened by the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe; the David Berg Foundation; the Cahnman Foundation, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee; the World Monuments Fund; and the Taube Foundation, in cooperation with the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland; the Jewish Community Centre in Krakow; the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow; and the European Council of Jewish Communities. The U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad will also have a presence.

WHY: The restitution of Jewish property seized by the Nazis or nationalized by post-war communist regimes has been a hot-button international issue since the Iron Curtain fell. But the slow and often painful legal battles to gain restitution have often overshadowed the pressing practical concerns of what to do with such properties, whether they are owned by Jewish communities or by others. Many of them are huge. Many are dilapidated. Many are recognized as historic sites. And most stand in towns where few if any Jews now live. Even basic care and maintenance can stretch already strapped financial and professional resources. How to preserve, manage and promote these historic Jewish properties is a key issue faced by Jewish communities, civic bodies, NGOs., governments, municipalities, grassroots activists and others.

WHO: About 90 invited participants from about 20 countries, including experts in the field as well as a variety of direct stakeholders: Jewish community representatives, grassroots activists, NGOs, civic bodies, funders, researchers, government officials, etc.

ISSUES: Sessions will examine the issues that arose and the recommendations that emerged out of the Bratislava meeting, as expressed in the final Bratislava Statement of best practices. They will also consider new conditions that have arisen in the past four years – including new technology developments; the financial crunch and changed funding possibilities; changed local attitudes, etc. – and look toward the future.

The meeting will include general discussion as well as thematic workshops, and there will be a half-day trip to visit Jewish heritage solutions near Krakow.

Focal points of discussion will include:

– Sharing experience/strategic thinking: Though each situation is specific, there are many shared problems and needs that can be addressed collectively. Importantly, there are also solutions that can be shared.

– Making information available/using new digital technologies: Information on Jewish sites is most useful when it is most widely available. Efforts should continue and expand to make documentation available in publicly accessible research centers and through publications and on-line presentation, all the while considering safety, security and privacy concerns. New technology – ranging from smartphone apps to digital documentation to enhanced scanning – needs to be addressed as part of research, documentation and promotion of Jewish heritage.

– Networking and collaboration/strategic thinking: Jewish communities and institutions should work together as much as possible to share existing information, methodologies and technologies, and to develop new and compatible goals and strategies to optimize the care and management of historic Jewish properties. They should also seek partners among NGOs, local, civic and government bodies, and individuals outside the Jewish community. And vice versa.

– End-user development: Jewish communities and local heritage, cultural and tourist bodies (as well as NGOs, civic bodies, individuals and others) should work together to develop regional, national and trans-border heritage routes as well as local projects.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE CONFERENCE PROGRAM, INCLUDING SPEAKERS

In Budapest, a Different Kind of Jewish "Jewish" Cafe

Mazel Tov... Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This post also appears on my En Route blog for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal

Thanks to CEU professor Daniel Monterescu for introducing me to the Mazel Tov cafe in Budapest's 13th district. On first look, it seems similar to the "Jewish style" cafes in Krakow and elsewhere in eastern Europe, where sepia-colored shtetl nostalgia is the norm....But at Mazel Tov the decor is actually very different.

Inside Mazel Tov. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Outside, the cafe's name is written in Hebrew-style letters, and inside, its walls are covered by pictures -- as at the "Jewish-style" cafes elsewhere that I have visited and written so much about in the past.

But these are not the "usual" pictures of bearded sages, rabbis, antique-style Jewish genre scenes and the like.

In the Ariel Cafe, Krakow. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Instead, Mazel Tov's walls are covered by pictures of living Jews -- Jewish celebrities -- from Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook to Woody Allen to Barbra Streisland, Leonard Bernstein and even the Hungarian philosopher Agnes Heller.

On the surface, it looks similar. But the focus is totally different from the other places. (Though in Krakow my favorite Jewish-style cafe, Klezmer Hois, does also include a lot of pictures of real, live Jews on its walls -- most if not all of whom have been patrons of the establishment.)

Judaica for sale in Mazel Tov. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Mazel Tov is located in what was a modern Jewish neighborhood (pre-WW2) and on a street where there is a small synagogue that still operates. It is run by a Jewish woman, there are some Judaica items on sale, Israeli pop music was playing, and there is a mezuzah at the door.

But it's not kosher -- on the menu are ham and cheese sandwiches. (But this is also typically secular Budapest Jewishness.....)

Me in Mazel Tov cafe. Photo: Dan Monterescu

Staying in Krakow

This post also appears on my En Route blog for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal




By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I've just been to Krakow for the last few days of the annual Jewish Culture Festival - the best party around. This year I did a couple of lectures to groups who were attending (and observing) the festival. It led to some reminiscing with friends who -- like me -- have been going to the Festival since the early 1990s.

One of the things we talked about what where we had stayed in Krakow in those early years -- because, until the late 1990s, there were very few if any places to stay in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter where the Festival now takes place. Nowadays, there is a wide variety of choices all over the city -- from top flight hotels to inexpensive hostels and rental rooms and apartments.

In the early years, the artists at the Festival used to be put up at the Forum Hotel -- I should say, the late Forum Hotel, because the Forum as it was then does not exist anymore. It is a hulking empty relic on the Vistula that serves as a prop for huge advertising posters....

I used to stay at the Hotel Pollera, an old-fashioned place in the Old Town near the main market square, or Rynek, about a 20-minute walk (or more) from Kazimierz.

For the past dozen years, though, I've stayed in Kazimierz itself whenever I've been in Krakow -- usually at one of two hotels that, I have to say (full disclosure), are run by friends.

One is the Klezmer Hois, operated by Wojtek and Malgosia Ornat, the couple who founded the first Jewish-style cafe in Krakow. I still remember vividly sitting with Wojtek in 1992 or so, at an umbrella-shaded wicker table, eating strawberries and looking out at the devastation of Szeroka street, the main square of Jewish Kazimierz, which then was a ring of dilapidated buildings.

The Ornats opened Klezmer Hois -- their third locale -- in the mid-1990s, in a building that once housed a mikvah. It evolved into a hangout for Krakow Jews and visiting Jewish artists and others -- and it still fulfills that purpose, at least for us older crowd. Sitting in the garden during Festival time, is a delight, a constant round of people dropping by, conversing, eating, drinking. Klezmer Hois is, actually, the one "Jewish style" cafe in Krakow that I go to. The Ornats also run the Austeria Jewish publishing house (which has published my book "Letters from Europe (and Elsewhere)") and the associated Austeria bookstore.

The hotel rooms are old-fashioned and up creaking flights of stairs -- and the breakfast is spectacular, a delicious combination of table service and partial buffet.

Breakfast at Klezmer Hois Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The other hotel in Kazimierz that I stay in is the Hotel Eden, on Ciemna street, a wonderfully friendly place, founded in the mid-1990s by the American Allen Haberberg, that started out as a kosher hotel. Though no longer kosher, the Eden still caters to Jewish travelers and has a mikvah -- which has been used for conversions as well as ritual baths. Each room has a mezuzah on the door, and there is also wifi throughout the building. I asked Allen not long ago why the Eden was no longer kosher (although it will still provide kosher food for those who ask) -- he told me one reason was that there are now good kosher caterers as well as an upscale kosher restaurant (the Olive Tree) in Krakow.

Rabbi Edgar Gluck and Allen Haberberg in front of the Eden Hotel. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Also on this trip though, for the first time in a long time, I stayed for a couple of nights near the Rynek, at the Hotel Saski -- where I think I stayed with my mother in about 1992.

It doesn't seem to have changed much -- but the Old Town has.... Krakow is the city that doesn't sleep ... at 3 a.m. the streets were as lively as in the middle of the afternoon.

Lobby of the Saski. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Jewish Life -- Life! -- in Krakow

This post first ran in my En Route blog on the Los Angeles Jewish Journal

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

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.

Jewish and "Jewish" Festivals......Shelly Salamensky's Take

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

My friend Shelley Salamensky muses on three Jewish -- or "Jewish" -- festivals: Krakow, Birobidzhan and Hervas, Spain, in the New York Review of Books blog.

The commercial aspects of Hervás’s festival—funded by the village’s chamber of commerce as a boon to local business—are hardly unique. Birobidzhan’s cultural renaissance, has, similarly, garnered it development grants from Moscow; while on the fringes of the Kraków festival, stands sell hook-nosed “Jew” figurines. Yet much more is at stake in both places than profit. In Kraków, with its rich, traumatic history, the festival is an attempt to confront the still relatively fresh loss of what was once the world’s largest Jewish population, as well as the question of Polish complicity with Nazis in the war, communist suppression of Holocaust history, and continuing European intolerance; it’s also a chance for Poles to reflect on their country’s future as a conservative, culturally monolithic nation in a changing, diversifying Europe. Birobizhan’s Jewish cultural revival appears primarily to enliven an isolated, poor, rather bleak place unremarkable but for its unique history. Despite some silliness and confusion, the more sober efforts to teach Yiddish and Jewish history ensure that important legacies are preserved. And perhaps even theme-park-style memorialization is more salutary than the more common case in places from which vital cultures have more or less vanished: sheer oblivion.

In Hervas, the evocation of a Jewish past is so perfunctory and historically fanciful as to border on the offensive. Stars of David adorn street signs, window grates, and even, for no clear reason, the church. There is a Judería Tavern and a Hotel Sinagoga: the former, on inspection, specializing in ham, the latter indistinguishable from a Holiday Inn. On arrival, I was amused by the kitsch; but by my last day, I felt vaguely sick. The empty symbolism cruelly underscored all that Europe has lost.

Poland -- I rate the "Jewish" cafes in Krakow

Steve ponders the Ariel. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

In the Forward's "Jew and the Carrot" blog, I rate six of the most prominent Jewish/"Jewish" cafes in Krakow's Kazimierz district, with help from Steve Weintraub.

Nowadays, visitors are still sometimes shocked by the extent of the kitsch (Szeroka St, the main square in Jewish Kazimierz and the hub of Jewish tourism, souvenir stalls and Jewish-themed venues, is sometimes referred to as “Jewrassic Park”.) But the Jewish themed cafes are actually now in the minority — Kazimierz has become a major district of youth-oriented night life and music, with scores of pubs, clubs, cafes and eateries of all sorts.

This year, during the Festival, I enlisted two festival participants — Chicago-based dancer Steve Weintraub and Berlin-based trumpeter Paul Brody — to join me on a couple of “café crawls” to rate half a dozen of the most prominent Jewish themed establishments in the district, from ones that are over the top, to the ones that are a nice place to hang out.

Klezmer Hois

A meeting place for local and visiting Jewish intellectuals and artists, K-H is run by Wojtek and Malgosia Ornat, who also operate a Jewish publishing house and bookstore. Both have Jewish roots. The Ornats’ first Jewish themed café, opened in 1992, was the first in Kazimierz, and their take on style, décor and menu have influenced many other cafes in the district and in other cities. Its front room is an intimate café/restaurant, but it also has larger dining rooms. Up flights of creaky stairs is a hotel with old-fashioned furnishings. In the shady garden, you can enjoy one of the best breakfasts in town — home-baked rolls, sour cherry jam, cheeses, fruit, eggs and hummus. Szeroka 6

Once Upon A Time In Kazimierz

The highly theatrical concept has always caused me to cringe a bit. The exterior of the café/restaurant is mocked up to look like a row of pre-war shops, with weathered-looking shop signs fronting the street like Benjamin Holcer’s Carpentry Shop and Chajim Cohen’s General Store. Big signs explain that the restaurant “takes us down memory lane to that bygone time.” The interior resembles an overstocked antique or curio shop crowded with items relating to the false-front shops, but it is surprisingly pleasant, achieving a sort of warm, fuzzy coziness. The menu is small but the duck with cherries comes recommended. Szeroka 1

Noah’s Ark (Arka Noego)

Noah’s Ark, one of the best known Jewish cafés, opened in 1995 and was long located in a historic building with vaulted ceilings on Szeroka. It recently moved and it may be unfair to judge it yet on its new incarnation — the lace tablecloths and candlesticks are in place, live klezmer bands play at night and the restaurant is full — but everything is still so new that it’s rather soulless. Its menu still offers dishes with names like “Cheese Soup of Jealous Sarah” and “Veal in Garlic Sauce for the Klezmers.” Corner of Izaaka and Kupa streets

Cheder

This pleasant little café is an offshoot of the Festival of Jewish Culture. It has a low-key atmosphere, a library of Jewish books, and it serves exotic teas and coffees, kosher wine, and Israeli snacks such as pita, cheeses, olives and sun-dried tomatoes. Cheder aims to serve as an informal Jewish cultural center and hosts book presentations, readings, concerts and other events often keyed to contemporary Jewish culture. Jozefa 36

Sara

Sara used to be a forbiddingly stark, modern café in the Jewish Culture Center located in a renovated prayer house at the edge of Plac Nowy. It has undergone redecoration to make it much more cozy, but it still eschews nostalgic kitsch. Its roof garden has a terrific view of Plac Nowy and Kazimierz rooftops, in what may be the most secluded and secret spot in the district. At the center for Jewish culture, Meisels 17

Ariel

Ariel was the first Jewish-style venue to open — back in 1992 when it was run by Wojtek and Malgosia Ornat (now the owners of Klezmer Hois). Today, it is the most blatantly commercial of them all. It is a rambling establishment, catering to groups. Its facade sports a huge menorah flanked by lions and dominates Szeroka. While the outdoor seating is pleasant enough, the dozens of paintings of rabbis and other Jewish imagery that decorate its interior strike me as prime examples off-the-shelf “Jewish.” Its little shop selling carved figurines of Jews and even refrigerator magnets of Jewish heads with stereotype profiles makes me particularly uncomfortable. There’s a large menu, but the rugelach we ordered were too stale to eat. Szeroka 18

Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/the-jew-and-the-carrot/139814/#ixzz1S6xXB4Ug

Poland again

Krakow. One of my favorite images. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I realize I haven't posted for more than a week - a week so full of experiences that should go on this blog that I feel I'll never catch up!

I'm in Poland, where I have been at the annual Festival of Jewisg Culture, the great mix of performance and party where I try to come every year, and which I have written about so much.

As I type this, I am sitting in the cafe of the Galicia Jewish Museum, waiting for the start of the gala outdoor concert that mark the final Saturday night of the festival. They used to call it the Final Concert, but you can't say that really now, as further events go on on Sunday, Including some concerts. The official name is Shalom on Szeroka (Szeroka is the name of the main Jewish square in Krakow's Jewish district, Kazimierz). But it looks like this year they have gone back to calling it Jewish Woodstock -- which was a term used to describe the festival already in 1992....

I love the signage you see on the square - have not yest downloaded pictures but will post some examples. One sign advertises that the cafe in question takes "reservations for Shalom."

Reservations accepted for shalom...Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The weather is not great, chilly and rain is forecast. I plan to stay for a couple of hours, to meet up with some people, and then I am heading back to Oswiecim, an hour away, the town outside of which Auschwitz is located, where I have been staying - I'm writing about attempts by the town to redefine itself, something I first wrote about 18 years ago in the chapter "Snowbound in Auschwitz" in my 1994 book Upon the Doorposts of Thy House. A lot has changed, but also not....

Poland -- More on the night of the synagogues and Krakow

Sign for the Krakow JCC and a tourist map of Jewish sights in Kazimierz. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

I wrote my latest Ruthless Cosmopolitan column on the revival of Jewish spirit in Krakow, following my participation in the Night of the Synagogues -- and a conversation I had with Jonathan Ornstein, the director of the Krakow JCC, the morning after.....We both needed caffeine..... I  posted about the Night of the Synagogues last week on my this blog -- with lots of pictures.

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

June 15, 2011

KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) -- Jews in Krakow have a new slogan -- "Never Better."

The catchphrase is deliberately provocative, a blatant rejoinder to "Never Again," the slogan long associated with Holocaust memory and the fight against anti-Semitic prejudice.

It may be counterintuitive, acknowledges Jonathan Ornstein, the American-born director of Krakow's Jewish community center who helped come up with the slogan.

But it's aimed at rebranding Jewish Poland, or at least Jewish Krakow, shaking up conventional perceptions and radically shifting the focus of how the Jewish experience here is viewed.

"Because the Holocaust isn't subtle, then the rebranding, as a way to get people to understand the situation here now, also can't be subtle," Ornstein explained.

Only a few hundred Jews live in Krakow, but the community has been rebuilding in the past two decades, particularly since the JCC opened three years ago.

"When we say 'Never Better,' it's not in terms of numbers, or the amount of things in Jewish life, or the synagogues that are functioning and all that," Ornstein said.

However, he went on, "in terms of the way the Jewish community interacts with the non-Jewish community and the direction that things are going, I think that there's never been a more optimistic time to be Jewish in Krakow than there is now."

I spoke with Ornstein on a Sunday in June, the morning after an unprecedented event that in a way had been a public affirmation of the new Jewish spirit he described.

Organized by the JCC, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Krakow Jewish communal organization, it was called 7@Night -- Seven at Night or the Night of the Synagogues.

Night of the Living synagogues may have been a better description.

From 10:30 p.m. until 2 a.m., all seven of the historic synagogues in Krakow's old Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, were open to the public.

It was part festival, part celebration and part didactic exercise. The aim was to foster Jewish pride, but also to educate non-Jewish Poles about contemporary Jewish life and culture.

An astonishing 5,000 or more people turned out, a constant flow of people that trooped from one synagogue to the next and patiently braved long, slow lines and bottlenecks at doorways. Almost all were young Cracovians.

Each synagogue hosted an exhibit, concert, talk or other activity that was produced by Jews and highlighted Jewish life and culture as lived today in Poland, Israel and elsewhere.

Events ranged from talks by Krakow Rabbi Boaz Pash on "the ABCs of Judaism" to a live concert by an Israeli rock band to a DJ sampling new Jewish music from a console set up on the bimah of the gothic Old Synagogue, now a Jewish museum, to a panel discussion about the role of women in Judaism.

All the events were free -- and all were full.

"It far, far exceeded our expectations," said Ornstein.

I've never seen anything quite like it, even though I've followed the development of Kazimierz for more than 20 years -- from the time when it was an empty, rundown slum to its position now as one of the liveliest spots in the city.

I've witnessed -- and chronicled -- the development of Jewish-themed tourism, retail, entertainment and educational infrastructure in Krakow, including the Jewish Culture Festival that draws thousands of people each summer. And I've written extensively about the interest of non-Jews in Jewish culture.

But Seven at Night was something different. For one thing, nostalgia seemed to play no role. And also, unlike many of the Jewish events and attractions in Kazimierz, this one was organized and promoted by Jews themselves.

It was their show, kicking off with a public Havdalah ceremony celebrated by Rabbi Pash that saw hundreds of people singing and dancing in the JCC courtyard.

"Never Better" was a prominent theme.

Most explicitly, it was the title of a multimedia presentation that ran throughout the night, projected on the vaulted ceiling of the 16th century High Synagogue, which today is used as an exhibition hall. The presentation featured interviews with local Jews young and old, religious and secular, all expressing a confidence in their identity and future.

It's still anybody's guess whether or not demographic realities will enable the long-term survival of a Jewish community in Krakow. But Ornstein said that may not be the point.

A key message of the current activism, he said, was to help frame the context of Polish Jewish history and hammer home that however small their numbers, Jews in Poland are not a separate, exotic entity but part and parcel of 21st century Polish society.

"The powerful message is that Judaism isn't just an idea, it's not just something that belongs to the Polish past, but there are Jews living here," Ornstein said. "We're trying to say that you can be a Jewish Pole, not just a Jew in Poland, to turn 'Jew' into an adjective instead of a noun."

I hope he's right.

Krakow -- Upscale Kosher Restaurant

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Krakow now has an upscale kosher restaurant. Called the Olive Tree, it is located on Kupa street in the heart of the Jewish district, Kazimierz, and has kosher certification from the Manchester-based Badatz Igud Rabbonim.

I didn't try it on the one night I was in Krakow this month, but I peeked in, and the ambience is certainly nice; sleek and smooth, with low lights and casual-elegant decor.  No kitsch or nostalgia in view!

The  menus for breakfast, lunch and dinner are on the web site.

Poland -- Krakow's Night of the Living Synagogues

Long line waiting to get in to the Old Synagogue, around 1 a.m. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The "Night of the Synagogues" in Krakow last weekend -- June 4 -- was the last stop in my Hungary-Poland trip; I had spent the week in and around Sanok, in the far southeastern tip of the country, and I was torn between going on to Krakow for the synagogue night or returning to Budapest.

Krakow won out -- how could I resist? I have been watching the development of the city's Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, for more than 20 years -- from an empty slum to one of the liveliest spots in the city. I have watched (and written extensively about) the restoration of its synagogue buildings, and the Jewish and "virtually Jewish" tourism, retail, entertainment and educational infrastructure: cafes, restaurants, museums, culture centers, etc etc etc....

On the Night of the Synagogues, all seven of the historic synagogues in Kazimierz were open to the public from 10:30 p.m. until 2 a.m. And each one hosted cultural or educational programming. The event was sponsored by the Krakow Jewish Community Center, the Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish communal organization.

The night was a resounding success, and I feel privileged to have been there. More than 5000 people (maybe many more, as organizers had a hard time counting) made the rounds and visited the synagogues -- there were huge bottlenecks at doorways and a constant flow of people.

Crowds inside the Izaak synagogue, where there was an exhibition on Israel and an Israeli dance workshop. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The evening kicked off with an open-air Havadalah ceremony in the JCC courtyard, led by Krakow Rabbi Boas Pash, JCC director Jonathan Ornstein and the JDC's Karina Sokolowska from the JCC annex roof.

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Then, the crowds dispersed into the district -- a district that has many crowded bars, restaurants and cafes that remain open into the wee hours. I managed to get to all seven of the synagogues -- but I forgot that the Galicia Jewish Museum was also open, so I didn't make it there.

There are only a few hundred Jews living in Krakow, and the vast majority of synagogue-visitors were non-Jewish local Poles.

There was a long line to get into the gothic Old Synagogue, which has been a Jewish museum for the past half century. Here, a DJ playing an eclectic mix of Jewishy rock and other music was ensconced under the wrought iron grill of the Bimah while visitors looked at an exhibit on Krakow synagogues and other Jewish buildings that no longer serve their original function.

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

There were panel discussions in the Kupa synagogue on the role of women in Judaism and young people in today's Jewish experience in Poland -- every seat in the audience was full. The Popper Synagogue, now a culture center, hosted an arts workshop. And an Israeli rock band gave a (loud) concert in the Tempel -- the ornate 19th century synagogue that was restored in the 1990s thanks in part to the World Monuments Fund.

 The 16th century Remuh synagogue -- still the main Jewish place of worship in Krakow -- was also more or less standing room only. Here, Rabbi Pash gave a series of talks on the ABC's of Judaism. People had to sign up, as the space was limitied -- and I was told that ten times the number expected tried to attend. The overflow stood in the women's section, which originally was to have been closed.

Rabbi Boas Pash speaks to crowd in Remuh synagogue. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

There was also an exhibit in the High Synagogue -- and a multi-media presentation projected on the ceiling. It focused on contemporary Jewish life in Poland, highlighting the reborn and reemerging community, and particularly the young people who in Krakow have gravitated to the JCC and its activities.

Multi-media presentation in High Synagogue. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

All in all it was a terrific event -- and very gratifying to someone like me who remembers the bad old days! Mazel tov to those who planned it and took part!