Difficult Heritage

• In Event: Jewish Traces and Memory Work: A Transnational Perspective

Abstract

Not every aspect of the past is valued nor considered worthwhile preserving. A couple of centuries ago Italians were notorious for dismantling ruins to build their villas. Egyptians did more or less the same with the interiors of temples. And while Jews were too mobile to repeatedly recycle physical patrimony their sometimes ambivalent sentiment towards the past or even its disavowal is evident by how they ignore or gloss over certain overly colorful components of their past. Buenos Aires’ earliest Jewish cemetery held the graves and tombstones of numerous pimps and prostitutes which included elaborate tombstones. It even had a small prayer hall. By the time it was visited by the renowned Jewish travel writer Hayyim Shoskes both cemetery and prayer house were slated for demolition. The area had become attractive to real estate developers while no one in the community was willing to pay to maintain such a disreputable property. In Istanbul, a derelict 19th century synagogue, Or Hadash, stood until recently in the historic Jewish neighborhood of Galata just behind the imposing Ashkenazi synagogue. It was known as the prostitute’s synagogue. Although an historic edifice of some architectural value, the Istanbul community seemed uninterested in mounting any effort to preserve the site. Interestingly, only a Habad rabbi who settled in Istanbul some twenty years ago has taken it upon himself to collect and preserve the community’s unusual customs hoping to reclaim the synagogue and repurpose it for community needs. His efforts went nowhere. Probably Jewish communities everywhere have buildings or sites of some significance albeit reflecting a difficult past—prostitution, criminality, etc, what should their future be? The answer to that question is easier when the difficult past is of mistreatment of Jews than of Jewish misbehavior. Shoshkes wanted the cemetery in Buenos Aires to be photographed believing that it had value for posterity and should be preserved in some way. Unfortunately, nothing like that happened and the same for Or Hasdash in Istanbul.
This paper is based partly on the Yiddish travel writings of Hayyim Shoshkes, my own ethnographic fieldwork in Turkey including interviews and library research.

Author

• Jack Kugelmass, University of Florida