Presented by the Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies at UCSB Thursday, January 16 / 7:30 P.M. / Free Bronfman Family Jewish Community Center 524 Chapala Street Santa Barbara Reservations Required: 893-3907 or click here to register online The Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara is hosting an author event to mark the publication of Ruth Ellen Gruber's, Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe, at 7:30 P.M. on Thursday, January 16 at the Bronfman Family Jewish Community Center, 524 Chapala Street, Santa Barbara. Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, copies of Virtually Jewish will be available for purchase and signing at this event. Reviews: "Gruber, who combines solid knowledge of Jewish religion, culture and history with the sharp eye of an anthropologist/philosopher, has much to say about the origins of this renaissance."--Jerusalem Post Book Description: More than half a century after the Holocaust, in countries where Jews make up just a tiny fraction of the population, products of Jewish culture (or what is perceived as Jewish culture) have become very viable components of the popular public domain. But how can there be a visible and growing Jewish presence in Europe, without the significant presence of Jews? Ruth Ellen Gruber explores this phenomenon, traveling through Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, and elsewhere to observe firsthand the many facets of a remarkable trend. Across the continent, Jewish festivals, performances, publications, and study programs abound. Jewish museums have opened by the dozen, and synagogues and Jewish quarters are being restored, often as tourist attractions. In Europe, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, klezmer music concerts, exhibitions, and cafes with Jewish themes are drawing enthusiastic--and often overwhelmingly non-Jewish--crowds. In what ways, Gruber asks, do non-Jews embrace and enact Jewish culture, and for what reasons? For some, the process is a way of filling in communist-era blanks. For others, it is a means of coming to terms with the Nazi legacy or a key to building (or rebuilding) a democratic and tolerant state. Clearly, the phenomenon has as many motivations as manifestations. Gruber investigates the issues surrounding this "virtual Jewish world" in three specific areas: the reclaiming of the built heritage, including synagogues, cemeteries, and former ghettos and Jewish quarters; the representation of Jewish culture through tourism and museums; and the role of klezmer and Yiddish music as typical "Jewish cultural products." Although she features the relationship of non-Jews to the Jewish phenomenon, Gruber also considers its effect on local Jews and Jewish communities and the revival of Jewish life in Europe. Her view of how the trend has developed and where it may be going is thoughtful, colorful, and very well informed. About the Author Ruth Ellen Gruber is an American writer, photographer and journalist based in Europe for many years. An authority on contemporary Jewish issues in Europe, she has published and lectured widely on the subject and has also traveled thousands of miles throughout east-central Europe documenting Jewish heritage sites. Her most recent book, Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe (University of California Press, 2002), explores non-Jewish interest in Jewish culture in Europe. Business Week said she employed "a sociologist's eye and a novelist's style" in her approach, and the Jerusalem Post said the book was written with "the sharp eye of an anthropologist/philosopher." Gruber was a foreign correspondent with United Press International for more than a decade, based in Rome, Brussels, London, Belgrade, Warsaw and Vienna. She covered events in communist Eastern Europe for six years for UPI. In January 1983, when based in Warsaw as UPI Chief Correspondent, she was arrested by Poland's Martial Law authorities on a trumped up espionage charge, thrown into jail, and expelled from the country. Gruber's earlier books include Upon the Doorposts of Thy House: Jewish Life in East-Central Europe, Yesterday and Today (1994) and Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to East-Central Europe (1992/94/99). She also co-edited the 2002 Italian volume 1900-2000: Ebrei europei dieci anni dopo la fine del socialismo reale and collaborated with the photographer Amalie R. Rothschild on Live at the Fillmore East, a Photographic Memoir (1999). Today, Gruber writes for a number of publications on a freelance basis. Her articles and reports have appeared in the New York Times, Business Week, The International Herald Tribune, Ha'aretz, the San Francisco Examiner, Reform Judaism Magazine, Media Studies Review, CBC Radio and many other publications. She writes a regular "Letter from Europe" for The New Leader, has a regular column on the website www.centropa.org, serves as senior Europe correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and has received two Simon Rockower awards for excellence in Jewish journalism. Her photographs and articles appear in the Yearbooks of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, and she is the author of monographs on Rightwing Extremism in Western Europe, The Rehabilitation of Fascist Heroes in Europe, and Filling the Jewish Space in Europe. She is co-author of a Survey of Jewish Monuments in Slovenia. Her photographs have been exhibited in Italy and Hungary and have been published in a variety of media outlets. She has lectured at U.S. campuses including Harvard University, Brandeis University, Brown University, Trinity College, University of Massachusetts, SUNY Cortland and Hunter College, CUNY, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Historian Association Annual Meeting, Central European University (Budapest), the Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum (Potsdam), the Jewish Museum in Trieste, and many other venues. She has been interviewed on CBC Radio, BBC Radio, WNYC, Italian RAI, and elsewhere. Gruber divides her time between a century-old farmhouse in Umbria, 80 miles north of Rome, and an apartment in the old Jewish quarter of Budapest. The Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara are cosponsored by UCSB Arts & Lectures, Department of Religious Studies, Hillel, and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center. This event is put on in partnership with the Santa Barbara Jewish Federation. Top of Page <<Back