Samuel D. Gruber
By Samuel D. Gruber
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News Century-Old Jewish Mural’s Hidden History in Vermont
An old apartment building in Burlington, Vt. seems like an odd place to find a rare survivor of Lithuanian synagogue art and a relic of American immigrant Yiddishkeit. But the nature of treasures is that they turn up in unexpected places, and Burlington is home to a century-old synagogue mural that is an extraordinary artistic…
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The Schmooze Buffalo’s Oldest Synagogue May Be Destroyed
Crossposted from Samuel Gruber’s Jewish Art and Monuments The former Ahavath Sholom Synagogue at 407 Jefferson Avenue in Buffalo, N.Y., built in 1903, is threatened with demolition. The building is one of the last standing synagogue of the “facade-dome” type that was popular at the end of the 19th century. Jewish use of the building…
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The Schmooze Synagogue Restoration Points to Future of Lviv
Crossposted from Samuel Gruber’s Jewish Art & Monuments Ukraine-born, Lviv-trained and Israeli-based architectural historian Sergey R. Kravtsov has been studying the history and architecture of the Golden Rose-Turei Zahav Synagogue, destroyed in the Second Wold War and surviving as a ruin, for at least a decade. He has now produced a handy history of the…
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The Schmooze New Treaty Could Protect Jewish Sites in Kosovo
Crossposted from Samuel Gruber’s Jewish Art & Monuments The fate of long-neglected Jewish sites in the small, poor and newly independent country of Kosovo has recently received some attention from the United States. On December 14, 2011, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Kosovo’s President Atifete Jahjaga signed the Agreement on the Protection and…
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The Schmooze Vilnius Grave Stones in Middle School Walls
Crossposted from Samuel Guber’s Jewish Art & Monuments Eleven years ago I visited the Uzupis Jewish Cemetery in Vilnius, Lithuania, or rather, what remained of it. In the dark light of winter I climbed the hill of the cemetery to look for traces of gravestones and walls. Where there were approximately 70,000 burials from 1830…
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The Schmooze Newark Synagogue Building Turns 100
Crossposted from Samuel Gruber’s Jewish Art & Monuments I’ve previously written about the centennial of the classical-style Temple Concord in Syracuse, dedicated in September 1911. Another impressive (Greco-Roman) Temple-like synagogue building celebrating its centennial this year is the former Oheb Shalom synagogue in Newark, New Jersey, designed by Jewish architect William Lehman (1874-1951) and dedicated…
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The Schmooze Two Words: ‘Plastic Judaica’
Crossposted from Samuel Gruber’s Jewish Art & Monuments For the past year I’ve been curator of the Plastics Collection at Syracuse University, and while I have not given up my research and activism vis-a-vis Jewish art and architecture, I have launched into to a new work area. Usually, I just split my interests — plastics…
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Books Turning a Synagogue’s Tale Into Kid Lit
Crossposted from Samuel Gruber’s Jewish Art & Monuments “If these walls could talk” is a cliché in the historic preservation world, but when standing inside an old synagogue it is still an irresistibly phrase and idea. Anita Kassof, associate director of the Jewish Museum of Maryland and illustrator Jonathon Scott Fuqua have now taken the…
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