and Jewish Life
Please note that my Sydney talk now starts at 8pm on Thursday 5 November 2015:
The Melbourne talk is as before on Sunday 1 November at 8pm
Please look at the new Sydney and Melbourne KehilaLinks / Jewish websites.
Sydney:
http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/sydney
Melbourne:
http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/melbourne
Please email your family photos and stories to eli@elirab.com
It is pleasing to see how many of you have responded to my previous post about your shtetl names.
Please keep sending your emails to eli@elirab.com
*******************
The Jewish Historical and Genealogical Society of Western Australia is launching its new website this weekend. Please visit:
*********************
I always enjoy my visits to Beyachad in Johannesburg
With Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, Elona Steinfeld, Rose Norwich and Adrienne Kollenberg
More on Beyachad to follow.
Best regards
Eli
[huge_it_slider id=”30″]
[huge_it_slider id=”27″]
Taksim
[huge_it_slider id=”24″]
Shuls
[huge_it_slider id=”25″]
The Spice Market and the Grand Bazaar
[huge_it_slider id=”29″]
Mosques
[huge_it_slider id=”26″]
Galata and the Golden Horn
The Birzh ShtetLink has been upgraded to a KehilaLink
Visit: http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/birzai
Read:
I have four talks coming up:
Perth, Australia
Beth Protea, Herzlia, Israel
IAJGS International Jewish Genealogical Conference, Jerusalem, Israel
Gitlin Library, Cape Town, South Africa
Limmud Oz Sydney has finished.
A most successful Festival of Jewish Ideas with 200 presenters over 2 ½ days.
[huge_it_slider id=”20″]
The students take me on a multicultural tour of Kedainai, the last stop being the two former synagogue complex, one of only a handful in Lithuania. The centre is run by Rimantas Zirgulis, director of the Museum and includes a permanent Jewish display, one of the first towns in Lithuania to do so.
The video report on a Lithuanian TV channel with a synopsis in English by two of the students: Juste & Julija
Kedainiu Zinios 7:21 – 9:55 – meeting at our school
The English teacher Laima Ardavičienė surprises her students every single lesson. She is diversifying her lessons with various tasks and even guests.
Laima says, „ Last year I was working on a project and the main idea was to introduce different cultures to students. I found a video of Jewish weddings which reflected Jewish traditions. After watching this video, I asked the author if I was able to use it and I got shocked when he replied „ Laima, you can use it. By the way, you can be really surprised, but I‘m rooted in Kėdainiai“. The author of the video was our guest Eli Rabinowitz. It‘s the second time Eli Rabinowitz is visiting our school. Last year he was a participant in our project too, while students were learning about different communities in Kėdainiai. Meetings like this never end. We keep in touch via skype and have skype meetings with students.
An article in the Lithuanian press:
Anglų kalbos pamokos kitaip
Iš arčiau 2015/05/29 by Vilija Mockuvienė
Vieni „Atžalyno“ gimnazijos mokiniai mokytojos Laimos Ardavičienės anglų kalbos pamokų laukia su baime, kiti – su džiaugsmu. Gimnazistai žino, kad šios patyrusios pedagogės pamokose nebus nei nuobodulio, nei tuščio laiko leidimo.
Paįvairindama pamokas „Atžalyno“ gimnazijos mokytoja Laima Ardavičienė į Kėdainius pakvietė Australijoje gyvenantį žydą E. Rabinovičių, kuris turi sąsajų su šiuo miestu ir mielai bendrauja su jaunimu.
For further see:
http://muge.eu/anglu-kalbos-pamokos-kitaip/
My images are supplemented with some provided by Vilius, a delightfully engaging student, who would like one day, to have sports photography business, possibly in South Africa!
From Wikipedia
Vilnius Sholom Aleichem ORT gymnasium – full-time secondary school in Vilnius, IT Kraševskio g. 5 engaged in primary, secondary and non-formal education programs in Hebrew, Lithuanian, Russian. Named after writer Sholom Aleichem.
Vilniaus Šolomo Aleichemo ORT gimnazija – dieninė bendrojo lavinimo mokykla Vilniuje, J. I. Kraševskio g. 5, vykdanti pradinio, pagrindinio, vidurinio ir neformaliojo ugdymo programas hebrajų kalba, lietuvių, rusų kalbomis. Pavadinta rašytojo Šolomo Aleichemo vardu.
I met with the Director Misha Jakobas, who kindly showed me around the new campus and its impressive facilities. The students appeared to be very well behaved and there was a lovely atmosphere in the building, which they moved into only 3 months ago.
Parents attended the year end concerts, including my friend, Daniel Gurevich. We were quite surprised to bump into each other!
From Wikipedia
Roman Vishniac (/ˈvɪʃni.æk/; Russian: Рома́н Соломо́нович Вишня́к; August 19, 1897 – January 22, 1990) was a Russian-American photographer, best known for capturing on film the culture of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe before the Holocaust
Vishniac was a versatile photographer, an accomplished biologist, an art collector and teacher of art history. He also made significant scientific contributions to photomicroscopy and time-lapse photography. Vishniac was very interested in history, especially that of his ancestors, and strongly attached to his Jewish roots; he was a Zionist later in life.[3]
Roman Vishniac won international acclaim for his photos of shtetlach and Jewish ghettos, celebrity portraits, and microscopic biology. His book A Vanished World, published in 1983, made him famous and is one of the most detailed pictorial documentations of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe in the 1930s.[2] Vishniac was also remembered for his humanism and respect for life, sentiments that can be seen in all aspects of his work.
In August 2014, the International Center for Photography in New York City announced that 9,000 of Vishniac’s photos, many never printed or published before, would be posted in an online database.[4]
This post on Kelme’s two mass graves sites illustrates the importance of the website, Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania. Using the coordinates provided together with GPS, data roaming, and online maps such as Google Maps, it is an essential tool for finding well hidden Holocaust memorials.
In addition, on the initiative of the British Jewry & Lord Janner, granite markers were placed at many of the 220 Holocaust mass murder sites in Lithuania. On the side looking towards the site, is information indicating the direction and distance to the site.
http://www.holocaustatlas.lt/EN/…
| Kelmė | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| City | |||
Church of Kelmė
|
|||
|
|||
|
Location of Kelmė |
|||
| Coordinates: 55°38′0″N 22°56′0″ECoordinates: 55°38′0″N 22°56′0″E | |||
| Country |  Lithuania |
||
| Ethnographic region | Samogitia | ||
| County | Šiauliai County | ||
| Municipality | Kelmė district municipality | ||
| Eldership | Kelmė eldership | ||
| Capital of | Kelmė district municipality Kelmė eldership |
||
| First mentioned | 1484 | ||
| Granted city rights | 1947 | ||
| Government | |||
| • Mayor | Vaclovas Andrulis | ||
| Area | |||
| • Total | 7.85 km2 (3.03 sq mi) | ||
| Elevation | 128 m (420 ft) | ||
| Population (2011) | |||
| • Total | 9,150 | ||
| • Density | 1,200/km2(3,000/sq mi) | ||
| Time zone | EET (UTC+2) | ||
| • Summer (DST) | EEST (UTC+3) | ||
| Website | Official website | ||
Kelmė (
pronunciation (help·info)) is a city in central Lithuania. It has a population of 9,150 and is the administrative center of the Kelmė district municipality.
Kelmė’s name may come from the Lithuanian “Kelmynės“, literally “the stubby place” because of the forests that were there at the time of its founding.[1]
Kelmė was first mentioned in 1416, the year that Kelmė’s first church was built.[1]
Prior to World War II, Kelmė (Yiddish: Kelm) was home to a famous Rabbinical College, the Kelm Talmud Torah.
According to an 1897 census, 2,710 of Kelme’s 3,914 inhabitants were members of the town’s Jewish population, the vast majority of whom were merchants and traders and lived in the town.
The Kelm Talmud Torah was a famous yeshiva in pre-holocaust Kelmė, Lithuania. Unlike other yeshivas, the Talmud Torah focused primarily on the study of Musar (“Jewish ethics”) and self-improvement.
The Talmud Torah was founded in the 1860s by Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv, known as the Alter of Kelm (the Elder of Kelm), to strengthen the study of Musar in Lithuania.
In 1872, Rabbi Ziv purchased a plot of land and erected a building for the Talmud Torah, which began as a primary school and soon became a secondary school.
In 1876, the Talmud Torah was denounced to the authorities, who began to watch it closely and to hound it. Many traditional Jews in Kelm saw Rabbi Ziv as a “reformer,” as his school supported unconventional prayer practices and an unconventional, musar-focused curriculum.[1]
The curriculum of the original Talmud Torah under Rabbi Ziv’s leadership was fairly unique for a nineteenth-century Lithuanian yeshiva in two respects:
1. Significant time was devoted to Musar, work on the improvement of character traits. In most Lithuanian yeshivas, nearly the entire day was spent studying Talmud. By contrast, at the Talmud Torah, according to Menahem Glenn, “Musar was the chief study, while the study of Talmud was only of minor importance and little time was devoted to it.”[1]
2. In addition to Jewish subjects, students studied general subjects such as geography, mathematics, and Russian language and literature for three hours a day. The Kelm Talmud Torah was the first traditional yeshiva in the Russian empire to give such a focus to general studies.[2]
Under pressure from the Jews of Kelm, Rabbi Ziv decided to open his school elsewhere: he re-established it in Grobin, in the Courland province.
In 1881, Rabbi Ziv returned to Kelm, where the Talmud Torah became an advanced academy for the study of Torah and Musar. Most of the students who came to study at the Talmud Torah were married. Entry to the Talmud Torah was difficult and restricted to select students from other yeshivas, who had to bring letters of recommendation from their Rosh Yeshiva. Students were chosen after they passed rigorous examinations on Musar. At its peak, the Talmud Torah had a student body of between 30 and 35 members.[citation needed]
Rabbi Ziv established a group that was known as “Devek Tov,” comprising his foremost students. He shared a special relationship with the group’s members and he worked on writing out his discourses for them.
Simcha Zissel Ziv died in 1898. Upon his death, his brother Rabbi Aryeh Leib Broida became the new director of the Talmud Torah. Aryeh Leib moved to the land of Israel in 1903, and his son Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Broida (also Simcha Zissel Ziv’s son-in-law) became the new director of the Talmud Torah.
After Tzvi Hirsch Broida’s death in 1913, Simcha Zissel’s son Rabbi Nahum Ze’ev Ziv became the new director of the Talmud Torah.
After Nahum Ze’ev Ziv’s death in 1916, Simcha Zissel’s student Rabbi Reuven Dov Dessler became the new director. He was succeeded by Simcha Zissel’s sons-in-law, Rabbi Daniel Movshovitz and Rabbi Gershon Miadnik.
On June 23rd, 1941, Nazi forces entered Kelm. Shortly after, the faculty and students of the Talmud Torah were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators and are buried in a mass grave in the fields of the Grozhebiski farm.
The Mashgichim in many of the yeshivas in Poland and Lithuania were students of the Talmud Torah of Kelm. Some were:
A song from Arcadius and Batya at the Vilnius Jewish Public Library
Professor Dovid Katz at home
Day Two in Warsaw was highlighted by a visit to JHI Warsaw
I watched a 45 minute movie on Jewish life in Warsaw during the Holocaust.
Followed by two exhibitions:
“AFTER THE HOLOCAUST. THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF POLISH JEWS 1944–1950 – a unique collection of documents, photographs and films illustrating the way the CCPJ operated.
SALVAGED: The collections of paintings, drawings and sculpture held by the JHI Museum. According to the JHI, this exhibition is an attempt to break the silence surrounding these little known yet excellent artists.
I also caught up with Aleksandra Dybkowska of the JHI Genealogy department
Also with Wojciech Konończuk
and Marla Raucher Osborn at FODZ
Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw
An exhibition on the first floor
The Jewish Historical Institute (Polish: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny or ŻIH) is a research institute in Warsaw, Poland, primarily dealing with the history of Jews in Poland
The Jewish Historical Institute was created in 1947 as a continuation of the Central Jewish Historical Commission, founded in 1944. The Jewish Historical Institute Association is the corporate body responsible for the building and the Institute’s holdings. The Institute falls under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. In 2009 it was named after Emanuel Ringelblum. The institute is a repository of documentary materials relating to the Jewish historical presence in Poland. It is also a centre for academic research, study and the dissemination of knowledge about the history and culture of Polish Jewry.
The most valuable part of the collection is the Warsaw Ghetto Archive, known as the Ringelblum Archive (collected by the Oyneg Shabbos). It contains about 6000 documents (about 30 000 individual pieces of paper).
Other important collections concerning World War II include testimonies (mainly of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust), memoirs and diaries, documentation of the Joint and Jewish Self-Help (welfare organizations active in Poland under the occupation), and documents from the Jewish Councils (Judenräte)
The section on the documentation of Jewish historical sites holds about 40 thousand photographs concerning Jewish life and culture in Poland.
The Institute has published a series of documents from the Ringelblum Archive, as well as numerous wartime memoirs and diaries.[1]
In 2011, Paweł Śpiewak, a Professor of Sociology at Warsaw University and former politician, was nominated as the Director of the Jewish Historical Institute by Bogdan Zdrojewski, Minister of Culture and National Heritage.[2]
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Żydowski Instytut Historyczny. |
Sunday 17 May 2015
I arrived from London this morning and headed straight for the Polin Museum. I have visited the museum twice before in 2013 and 2014, but this is the first time since it officially opened in October 2014.
The selection of my images here indicates how remarkable and magnificent this museum is. I have visited many museums around the world over many years, and Polin is one of the best!
I took over 700 photos this afternoon, spent 5½ hours at the Core Exhibition and could have been there a few more hours! It is a “must visit” for anyone coming to Warsaw, Jewish or not!
The Resource Centre
Magdalena
Marzena
Closing time
Mila 18
| POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews | |
|---|---|
| Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich | |
The museum building
|
|
| Established | 2005 (opened April 2013) |
| Location | Warsaw, Poland |
| Coordinates | 52°14′58″N 20°59′34″E |
| Type | Historical, cultural |
| Collection size | History and culture of Polish Jews |
| Visitors | expected 450,000 |
| Director | Dariusz Stola |
| Curator | Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett |
| Website | Museum official website |
POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews (Polish: Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich) is a museum on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto. The Hebrew word Polin in the museum’s name means, in English, either “Poland” or “rest here” and is related to a legend on the arrival of the first Jews in Poland.[1] The cornerstone was laid in 2007, and the museum was first opened on April 19, 2013.[2][3] The museum’s Core Exhibition opened in October 2014.[4] The museum features a multimedia narrative exhibition about the vibrant Jewish community that flourished in Poland for a thousand years up to the Holocaust.[5] The building, a postmodern structure in glass, copper, and concrete, was designed by Finnish architects Rainer Mahlamäki and Ilmari Lahdelma.[6]
President of the Republic of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, at the groundbreaking ceremony for the POLIN Museum, 26 June 2007
The idea for creating a major new museum in Warsaw dedicated to the history of Polish Jews was initiated in 1995 by the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland.[7] In the same year, the Warsaw City Council allocated the land for this purpose in Muranów, Warsaw’s prewar Jewish neighborhood and site of the former Warsaw Ghetto, facing the Monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes. In 2005, the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland established a unique private-public partnership with the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the City of Warsaw. The Museum’s first director was Jerzy Halbersztadt. In September 2006, a specially designed tent called Ohel (the Hebrew word for tent in English) was erected for exhibitions and events on the museum’s future location.[7]
An international architectural competition for designs for the building was launched in 2005, supported by a grant from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. On June 30, 2005 the jury announced the winner; a team of two Finnish architects, Rainer Mahlamäki and Ilmari Lahdelma.[8] On June 30, 2009 construction of the building was officially inaugurated. The project was to be finished in 33 months at a cost of PLN 150 million zlotyallocated by the Ministry and the City.[9] and a total cost of PLN 320 million zloty.[10][11]
The Museum opened the building and began its educational and cultural programs on April 19, 2013 on the 70th Anniversary of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. During the 18 months that followed, more than 180,000 visitors toured the building, visited the first temporary exhibitions, and took part in cultural and educational programs and events, including films, debates, workshops, performances, concerts and lectures. The Grand Opening, with the completed Core Exhibition, was on October 28, 2014.[12] The Core Exhibition documents and celebrates the thousand-year history of the Jewish community in Poland that was decimated by the Holocaust.[4][5]
.jpg)
The Museum faces the memorial commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. The winner of the architectural competition was Rainer Mahlamäki, of the architectural studio ‘Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Oy in Helsinki, whose design was chosen from 100 submissions to the international architectural competition. The Polish firm Kuryłowicz & Associates was responsible for construction. The building’s minimalist exterior is clad with glass fins and copper mesh. Silk screened on the glass is the word Polin, in Latin and Hebrew letters.
The central feature of the building is its cavernous entrance hall. The main hall forms a high, undulating wall. The empty space is a symbol of cracks in the history of Polish Jews. Similar in shape to gorge, which could be a reference to the crossing of the Red Sea known from the Exodus. The museum is nearly 13,000 square meters of usable space. At the lowest level, in the basement of the building will be placed a main exhibition about history of Jews from the Middle Ages to modern times. The museum building also has a multipurpose auditorium with 480 seats, temporary exhibition rooms, education center, information center, play room for children, café, shop, and in the future kosher restaurant.
Hebrew and Latin letters of the word Polin
Since the museum presents the whole history of Jews in Poland, not only the period under German occupation, the designer wanted to avoid similarities to existing Holocaust museums (such as the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the museum at Yad Vashem) which had austere concrete structures. The architects kept the museum in the colors of sand, giving it a more approachable feeling.[13]
In 2008, the design of the museum was awarded the Chicago Athenaeum International Architecture Award.[14] In 2014, the designer Rainer Mahlamäki was awarded the Finlandia Prize for Architecture for his design of the museum.[15]
The Core Exhibition’s academic team consists of Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (Program Director) of New York University, Hanna Zaremska of the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Adam Teller of Brown University, Igor Kąkolewski of the University of Warmia and Mazury, Marcin Wodziński of the University of Wrocław, Samuel Kassow of Trinity College, Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Helena Datner of the Jewish Historical Institute, and Stanisław Krajewski of Warsaw University. Antony Polonsky of Brandeis University is the Core Exhibition’s chief historian.[16]
Main hall
The North American Council of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews is a U.S. based non-profit organization supporting the foundation of the Museum.[17]
On June 17, 2009 the museum launched the Virtual Shtetl portal, which collects and provides access to essential information about Jewish life in Poland before and after the Holocaust in Poland. The portal now features more than 1,240 towns with maps, statistics, and image galleries based in large measure on material provided by local history enthusiasts and former residents of those places.[18]
The Core Exhibition occupies more than 4,000 m2 of space. It consists of eight galleries that document and celebrate the thousand-year history of the Jewish community in Poland – once the largest Jewish community in the world – that was almost entirely destroyed during the Holocaust. The exhibition includes a multimedia narrative with interactive installations, paintings and oral histories, among other features created by more than 120 scholars and curators. One item is a replica of the roof and ceiling of a 17th-century Gwoździec synagogue.[5][19] The galleries are:
Gwoździec synagogue roof reconstruction
Reconstructed vault and bimah in the Museum of the History of Polish Jews
“On the Jewish Street” gallery with entrances to exhibition halls
The exhibition was developed by an international team of scholars and museum professionals from Poland, the United States and Israel as well as the Museum’s curatorial team under the direction of Prof. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett.[19]
