Category Archives: Publications

I have chapters in two recently published books

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I have chapter essays in these two recently published books.

Jewish Revival Inside Out: Remaking Jewishness in a Transnational Age (ed. Daniel Monterescu and Rachel Werczberger) Wayne State University Press, 2022

This volume explores the global transformations of contemporary Jewishness, which give renewed meaning to identity, tradition, and politics in our post secular world.

My chapter essay is titled: “Jewish. Jewish? “Jewish” Jewish! New Authenticities amid Post-Holocaust, Postcommunist Europe’s Jewish Revival”

Jews and Slavs. Volume 27: Essays on Jewish History and Art in Slavic Lands

(Ed. Sergey R. Kravtsov and Polona Vidmar, 2022)

This 27th volume of the international series Jews and Slavs, entitled Jewish-Slavic Cultural Horizons: Essays on Jewish History and Art in Slavic Lands, dwells on the political, cultural, literary, and artistic interaction between Jews and Slavic peoples from the Middle Ages to the World War II aftermath. The publication contains 21 articles dedicated to the history, ethnicity, culture, literature, theatre, fine arts, architecture, heritage and memory thematically grouped in nine sections.

My essay is titled: “Preservers/Rescuers/Keepers/Guardians of Memory: Recognizing non-Jewish Poles who Preserve, Protect, Conserve, and Promote Jewish History, Heritage, and Memory.”

“Unfinished Business” — I’m quoted in an article on Jewish cemetery preservation

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Me documenting in the Jewish cemetery in Szydlowiec, Poland, in 1994

B’nai B’rith magazine quotes me in a lengthy and unusually comprehensive article that summarizes initiatives to preserve, protect, and restore Jewish cemeteries in Europe.

Written by Linda Topping Streitfeld, the article is called Unfinished Business: Restoring Eastern Europe’s Desecrated Jewish Cemeteries.

She quotes me (and many friends and colleagues):

Author and scholar Ruth Ellen Gruber runs the website Jewish Heritage Europe, with deep resources on Jewish monuments and heritage sites. She has documented the resurgence of interest in Jewish culture and history over three decades. After the fall of the Soviet Union and communism in Eastern Europe, she said, “People wanted to fill in the blank spaces, and Jewish heritage was one of them.”

Video — my presentation at Slovenia Jewish heritage conference, September 2019

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I took part in a conference on Jewish Heritage in Slovenia, held at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in September 2019.

My presentation was “Notes” from the survey of Jewish heritage in Slovenia that I carried out in 1996 — the first full survey of Jewish heritage in the country, and an endeavor that in many ways underlay the scholarship presented by the other participants in the conference.

That survey was carried out for the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, and was published in downloadable form. Click here to access it.

The conference was filmed — here is a video of my presentation.

My chapters in two new books

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I have chapters in two recently published books — one in my Jewish heritage field and one rooted in the Imaginary Wild West.

I wrote the Foreword to this book, Reiten Wir! — edited by Alex Jahnke and a tribute to Karl May (the German author of the Winnetou sagas) published as part of events marking the 175th anniversary of May’s birth. It’s a collection of short stories by fantasy writers, using characters and situations from the Karl May universe.

It’s in German and can be purchased via amazon.

All proceeds from the book will go to the Karl May Museum in Radebeul, Germany.

The other chapter is in the book Space and Spatiality in Modern German-Jewish History, edited by Simone Lässig and Miriam Rürup. Berghahn Books, 2017.

My chapter essay is titled: 
”Real Imaginary Spaces and Places: Virtual, Actual, and Otherwise.”

My farewell to the other Ruth Gruber

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RG and REG - at the launch of my first book, in New York in 1992

RG and REG – at the launch of my first book, in New York in 1992

 

My namesake, the noted author and photojournalist Ruth Gruber, has died at the age of 105 after a remarkable life and career.

In a JTA article, I reminisced about how for decades people had confused us and conflated our biographies.

One Ruth Gruber Says Goodbye to Another

November 21, 2016

(JTA) — When you share a name with someone you respect and admire, you always try to live up to the connection, because sometimes outsiders aren

Symposium: New Jewish Museums in 21st Century Europe

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NYC symposium

I took part in a symposium Jan. 10 at the Center for Jewish History in New York that celebrated the publication of a special double issue of the journal East European Jewish Affairs that was devoted to new Jewish museums in the 21st century.

Post-Communist Eastern Europe is experiencing a museum boom as it explores new definitions of national identities not possible under communism. This has generated a wholesale revival of interest in Jewish culture and institutions on the part of non-Jews, paradoxically, in the near absence of Jewish populations. The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow and Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw are prime examples of this trend, but there are many others.

 

I have an article in the journal called “Reportage: Beyond Prague

Dark Tourism: A Comparative Perspective

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Drayton Hall "big house"

Drayton Hall “big house”

 

I wrote this piece for the web site of the Drayton Hall plantation outside of Charleston. It grew out of a session with descendants of both the enslaved people and slave-owners who lived there. I touch on parallels between presenting and interpreting Jewish history and heritage in post-Holocaust Europe and presenting and interpreting African American history and heritage in the Lowcountry.

 

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Distinguished Visiting Chair in Jewish Studies, College of Charleston

April 28, 2015

More than 20 years ago I wrote a book called Upon the Doorposts of Thy House: Jewish Life in East-Central Europe, Yesterday and Today. The title referred to the mezuzah