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Samuel D. Gruber (born 1956) is an American art and architectural historian and historic preservationist. He has written extensively on the architecture of the synagogue and is an expert and activist in the documentation, protection and preservation of historic Jewish sites and monuments.
Gruber was born in Norristown, Pennsylvania and lives in Syracuse, New York. He attended the American Overseas School of Rome from which he graduated in 1973. His father, anthropologist Jacob W. Gruber was director of Temple University's Rome campus, and it was there that he developed his love or architecture. [1] While there he studied art history with urban historian Allan Ceen. Gruber received his B.A. degree in medieval studies from Princeton University where he studied with Joseph Strayer, William Chester Jordan, Robert Bergman, David Coffin, Robert Hollander and other distinguished scholars. He received his M.A, M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University in the history of art and archeology, where he studied with Richard Brilliant, Alfred Frazer, Jerrilynn Dodds, Howard Hibbard, David Rosand, Joseph Connors, George Collins and other professors. His master's paper was a study of early medieval and Longobard masonry in Italy. His doctoral dissertation was study of the architecture and urbanism of medieval Todi (Italy).
He is Director of Gruber Heritage Global which includes the Jewish Heritage Research Center (Syracuse, NY), a private consulting firm; and president of the not-for-profit organization International Survey of Jewish Monuments. [2] From 1989 until 1995 he served as founding director of the Jewish Heritage Council of the World Monuments Fund and from 1998 through 2008 as Research Director of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad. In these roles Gruber has been, in the words of journalist Bill Gladstone, "in the vanguard of an international movement to restore endangered Jewish heritage sites around the world." [3] Since 2014 Gruber has been consultant to the Lost Shul Mural Project [4] in Burlington, Vermont. [5]
In the decade and a half following the fall of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe (1990-2005), Gruber organized and supervised for the World Monuments Fund and the U.S. Commission more than a dozen countrywide surveys of cultural heritage sites of significance to religious and ethnic minorities. These identified, mostly for the first time, thousands of previously unrecognized and undocumented synagogues, churches, mosques, cemeteries and Holocaust-related sites, almost all of which were visited by survey teams that described their condition. These projects included full or partial surveys of Jewish sites in Bosnia and Herzegovina, [6] Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, [7] Poland, Romania, [8] Slovakia, Slovenia, [9] and Ukraine; Roma sites in Poland; Old Believers sites in Lithuania; and Protestant Christian and Muslim sites in Bulgaria.
He is author or editor of numerous articles and survey reports about Jewish monuments, [10] and is a frequent public lecturer in the United States and Europe. He has curated several exhibitions about Jewish architecture including the online "Life of the Synagogue" for the College of Charleston in 2015. [11]
In 1990, for the World Monuments Fund, Gruber organized and chaired the first international conference on the preservation of Jewish historic sites. He curated the accompanying exhibition "The Future of Jewish Monuments" at the Joseph Gallery of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Since then he has participated and helped organize many related conferences and seminars including ones in Paris (1999), Prague (2004), and Bratislava (2009). [12] In 2013 he was keynote speaker at the conference "Managing Immovable Jewish Heritage in Europe" held in Kraków, Poland. [13] and in 2014 keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the Southern Jewish Historical Society held in Austin, Texas [14]
Since 2001 he has been lecturer in Jewish Studies at Syracuse University. [15] where he teaches courses on Jewish art and architecture. He has also taught at Temple, Binghamton, Cornell and Colgate Universities and Cazenovia and LeMoyne Colleges.
Gruber is a dellow of the American Academy in Rome. He is recipient of many grants individually, or for projects with which he is involved. Since 2006 he has received research grants from the James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation, the AIA New York Chapter, and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.
In addition to his work for the International Survey of Jewish Monuments, which he took over from Raina Fehl, Gruber serves on many charitable boards and advisory committees. He was executive director of the Preservation Association of Central New York in 1999–2000, and served as board president of the organization from 2004 through 2009. He has also served on the Facilities Community of Temple Society of Concord (Temple Concord) in Syracuse since 1998 for which he researched and wrote the National Register of Historic Places nomination in 2008 [16] and co-chaired the Building Centennial Committee in 2010–11. [17] Gruber has been active for many years in efforts to document, protect and preserve historic houses of worship in Central New York. He has provided historical and art commentary on South Presbyterian Church and Holy Trinity Church [18] and serves on committees to preserve the former AME Zion church at 711 E. Fayette Committee and the Gustav Stickley House.
A synagogue, sometimes referred to by the Yiddish term shul and referred to by Reform communities as a temple, is a Jewish house of worship. Synagogues have a place for prayer, where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies, have rooms for study, social hall(s), administrative and charitable offices, classrooms for religious school and Hebrew school, sometimes Jewish preschools, and often have many places to sit and congregate; display commemorative, historic, or modern artwork throughout; and sometimes have items of some Jewish historical significance or history about the synagogue itself on display.
World Monuments Fund (WMF) is a private, international, non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of historic architecture and cultural heritage sites around the world through fieldwork, advocacy, grantmaking, education, and training.
The Mattancherry Palace is a palace popularly known as the Dutch Palace, in Mattancherry, Kochi, in the Indian state of Kerala which features Kerala murals depicting portraits and exhibits of the Rajas of Kochi. The palace was included in the "tentative list" of UNESCO World Heritage Site and hence it's yet to be in UNESCO. Despite the name Dutch Palace, the palace was built by the Portuguese Empire as a gift to the Kingdom of Cochin.
Zamość Synagogue is a UNESCO-protected Renaissance synagogue built between 1610 and 1618 in Zamość, southeastern Poland. Erected during the times of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, it functioned as a place of worship for Polish Jews until World War II, when the Nazis turned the interior into a carpenters' workshop. The structure was spared from destruction and in 1992 it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site alongside the Old City of Zamość.
Szydłów Synagogue was an Orthodox Judaism synagogue in Szydłów, Poland. It was built in 1534–1564 as a fortress synagogue with heavy buttresses on all sides. The synagogue was devastated by Nazis during World War II. During the war it served as a weapons and food magazine. After the war, it briefly served as a village cinema, but was eventually abandoned.
Ivan Ceresnjes, also known as Ivica Ceresnjes, is a Bosnian architect-researcher at the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem specializing in the documentation of the Jewish architectural-cultural heritage in the former Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe. During the Bosnian War of 1992–1995 he served as the president of the Jewish community of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and played a central role in the rescue and evacuation of thousands of Sarajevo residents.
Sharman Kadish is a contemporary scholar, author, historian and preservationist.
The Vilna Shul is now a historic landmark building housing a cultural center, community center, and living museum. It was a synagogue and was built for an Orthodox congregation in 1919 by immigrants primarily from Vilna, Lithuania. The building stands on what is known as the back side or north slope of Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts.
Wilshire Boulevard Temple, known from 1862 to 1933 as Congregation B'nai B'rith, is the oldest Jewish congregation in Los Angeles, California. Wilshire Boulevard Temple's main building, with a sanctuary topped by a large Byzantine revival dome and decorated with interior murals, is a City of Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Moorish-style building, located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Wilshire Center district, was completed in 1929 and was designed by architect Abram M. Edelman.
The Angel Orensanz Center is an art and performance space at 172 Norfolk Street, between Stanton Street and East Houston Street, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was originally built as a synagogue, running through a succession of congregations and continues to be used as one occasionally. It was erected in 1849, making it the oldest surviving synagogue building in New York City, and the fourth-oldest surviving synagogue building in the United States. It was the largest synagogue in the United States at the time of its construction and is one of the few built in Gothic Revival style.
Sidney Eisenshtat was an American architect who was best known for his synagogues and Jewish academic buildings.
The Włodawa Synagogue in Włodawa, Poland is an architectural complex consisting of two historic synagogues and a Jewish administrative building, now preserved as a museum. The complex includes the Włodawa Great Synagogue of 1764–74, the late 18th century Small Synagogue, and the 1928 community building. It is "one of the best-preserved" synagogues in Poland.
Wooden synagogues are an original style of vernacular synagogue architecture that emerged in the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The style developed between the mid-16th and mid-17th centuries, a period of peace and prosperity for the Polish-Lithuanian Jewish community. While many were destroyed during the First and Second World Wars, there are some that survive today in Lithuania.
Historic synagogues include synagogues that date back to ancient times and synagogues that represent the earliest Jewish presence in cities around the world. Some synagogues were destroyed and rebuilt several times on the same site. Others were converted into churches and mosques or used for other purposes.
The Tykocin Synagogue is a historic synagogue building in Tykocin, Poland. The synagogue, in mannerist-early Baroque style, was built in 1642.
The Sejny synagogue is a former synagogue in Sejny, Poland, also called the White Synagogue in Sejny.
The Temple Society of Concord, commonly referred to as Temple Concord, is a Reform Jewish congregation located at 910 Madison Street, Syracuse, in the U.S. state of New York. Established in 1839, it is the ninth-oldest still-active Jewish congregation in the United States. Temple Concord, a member of the Union for Reform Judaism, is the leading Reform synagogue in Central New York, and maintains the largest Jewish religious school in the region. Religious services are held every Friday night and Saturday morning, and on Jewish holidays. Religious school and adult education programs take place twice a week. Temple Concord is also the setting for a wide array of educational, cultural and social events the serve then entire Syracuse-area community.
The Center for Jewish Art (CJA) is a research institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, devoted to the documentation and research of Jewish visual culture. Established in 1979, it documented and researched objects of Jewish art in ca. 800 museums, libraries, private collections and synagogues in about 50 countries. Today, the Center's archives and collections constitute the largest and most comprehensive body of information on Jewish art and material culture in existence. The CJA's research and documentation is included in the Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art.
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