THE DIASPORA
Putting A Stop To il,.ivages
Of Time And History
The Jewish Heritage Council is trying to restore Jewish monuments
before age takes its toll.
MARGARET EISEN
Special to The Jewish News
I
n Amsterdam, a 200-
member Sephardic con-
gregation is trying to
raise $2 million, which will
be matched by the Dutch
government, to restore its
spectacular Portuguese syna-
gogue.
At the same time, a
Moroccan-born New York
building contractor, Arai
Sibony, who happened to
visit an old synagogue in his
hometown of Tangier and
despaired of its condition, is
trying to raise $100,000 to
replace its deteriorating
roof.
And in Khania, on the
Greek isle of Crete, action is
being taken to preserve an
abandoned synagogue.
All over the world, in-
dividuals and organizations
are coming to the realization
that Holocaust-damaged
Jewish monuments — syna-
gogues, cemeteries and
ghettos — must be restored
or at least preserved soon, or
be forever lost to history.
The catalyst for much of
the proposed preservation
activity is the Jewish
Heritage Council of the
World Monuments Fund,
based in New York. The
council, a clearinghouse for
information on Jewish mon-
uments, will spearhead ef-
forts to save those monu-
ments that can be saved.
For those that are beyond
repair, it will try to identify
and record as many as pos-
sible with transcriptions and
drawings, so that knowledge
of their existence can be
passed on to future genera-
tions.
The director of the council,
Samuel Gruber, a Philadel-
phia-born architectural
historian and architect, con-
siders the work to be urgent.
"For every effort being
made to save a site, there are
hundreds, and possibly
thousands, of sites that are
neglected and possibly dis-
appearing," he said. "Many
will be lost forever unless
some action is taken now."
The council recently held
the first world-wide confer-
ence on "the Future of Jew-
ish Monuments," at Hebrew
Union College-Jewish Insti-
tute of Religion, attended by
some 200 persons from 15
countries, including former
Communist nations.
"There were people from
Poland and Russia learning
for the first time about the
nature of the sites in Tur-
key, Greece and Morocco,
and vice versa," according
to Mr. Gruber. "Some of the
people — for example, those
from Czechoslovakia — had
never been out of their own
countries. The level of ex-
citement was so high I
couldn't get people out of
the building at the end of the
day."
Attendees included cura-
tors of Jewish museums,
preservation officials, archi-
tects, art historians, rabbis,
representatives of Jewish
foundations and archae-
ologists, not all of whom
were Jewish.
"This is not just a Jewish
question," Mr. Gruber said.
"Jews are interested in non-
Jewish art and architecture,
but we somehow think only
Jewish people would be in-
terested in Jewish sites.
That's not true."
The council has just made
plans to oversee a $100,000
restoration of the Dohany
Synagogue in Budapest. The
largest synagogue in the
world, it still attracts thous-
ands on the High Holy
Margaret Eisen writes from
Huntingdon Valley, Pa. This
article was first published in
The Philadelphia Exponent.
This 90-year-old former
synagogue in Subotica,
Yugoslavia, is undergoing
a meticulous
restoration.
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
97