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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Crossposted From Samuel Guber’s Jewish Art & Monuments Beyond the Facade: A Synagogue, A Restoration, A Legacy: The Museum at Eldridge Street By Roberta Brandes Gratz, Larry Bortniker and Bonnie Dimun Museum at Eldridge Street and Scala Publishers, 176 pages, $45.00 In “Beyond the Facade,” a history of the almost 30-year effort to restore New…
Crossposted from Samuel Gruber’s Jewish Art & Monuments My sister Ruth Ellen Gruber recently reported on her Jewish Heritage Travel blog that our ancestral synagogue in Radauti, Romania is under restoration. The process appears to be proceeding quickly — a rare occurrence in Romania, where the Jewish community is overwhelmed with care for so many…
100% of profits support our journalism
