[log in to unmask] wrote:

> Trust me, Ralph*. I do. ..* I'm getting ALL the viewpoints. *OK, good.
> But you seemed to be espousing ONE.*
> **

Ralph,

My viewpoint, which is many sided and one of many -- and meant well --
is that the Jews in Poland should have a great deal to say about the
reconstruction of a structure that at one time was, and then when it did
exist for a time, it was a synagogue and it was in Poland, sort of -- it
being even an argument over centuries if the region of Bialystok is Poland.

I am aware, recently, that a Jew who is in Poland may have a completely
different perspective on the situation of Jews in Poland than for Jews
who are not in Poland. This is all perplexing to me and I do not pretend
to understand -- the concept of a nation-state amazes and confounds me
to begin with. I do not pretend to be prepared to deal with the
understandings. I know that I do not understand. If there is to be a
dialogue, a controversy within the Jewish culture as to the
reconstruction of a synagogue in Poland then I think, for now, that I
will tend to side with the Jews of Poland, or at least residing on that
region of earth, as expressing something rather profound, though albeit
disturbing, regarding tolerance.

I suppose one question at hand is the capacity of religious tolerance
within the current Polish nation. To presume the predominance of
intolerance is to ignore the speculation that we can attach to the idea
of building a wooden synagogue in rural Montana and if there would not
then be the opportunity of a study made of the incidence of burning of
wooden synagogues in Montana. We don't know, but we sure can pretend a
great deal and run wild with our most negative imaginations. To presume
the physical and political prevalence of religious intolerance in
Poland, without due diligence of finding out the substance and degree of
such intolerance, and making comparison to other parts of the world
(such as Palestine) may create a climate that reinforces and leads to
the very outcome of intolerance and violence that is not wanted. I also
get a sense that there may be a feeling on the part of the Jews of
Poland that their concerns are ignored or in some measure abandoned by
the Jews outside of Poland. I'm not sure about any of this, but I am
curious to find out.

Tim Russert last night on Larry King Live remarked something to the
effect of the difference between Jewish guilt and Catholic shame -- that
there is no difference. I am of neither persuasion but it does not mean,
as some may presume, that I would not share.

I was asked if I could help and I did what seemed right and proper at
the time and thought that I was finished with it quite some time ago.
All of these difficult and interesting questions come up and suddenly I
find that I have a sense of responsibility to the situation, and an
interconnection to people and community, that makes it difficult for me
to walk away. Trust me, I have had plenty of opportunity to examine and
consider that I should run away quickly.

My personal interest is narrow and specific in the cultural exchange of
traditional trades knowledge of the building process between Eastern
Europe and North America in an ongoing educational framework. Though we
are looking at this structure that was a synagogue, and though I am open
and adamant to have all views and perspectives shared, I am much more
interested, personally, in the lost cultural and sacral built
environment of Belarus due to Chernobyl. I would gladly go on about how
my personal goals, and my interest in the global closed-environment and
the relationship between the natural and the built environment with a
sustainable global community, connects into the current state of affairs
of the Zabludow Synagogue Project.

But even in its own history within the Jewish culture the wooden
synagogue had ceased at a point some time ago, it seems to me, to have
any particular sacral significance as much as it had to a degree become
a curiosity of the past to the Jewish community that continued to use it
possibly mainly motivated in that it provided space for activities, of a
vital and dynamic Jewish community, more so than for its sacral
significance. This shifting of the sacred implications of a structure
over time, and with changes in fundamentals of belief and religious
practice, causes me to consider comparisons with the restoration of the
Limelite on 6th Ave. from a church to a nightclub (or of the dismantling
of a no longer used timber frame church and reconstruction into a
residential dwelling) -- and as it was remarked to me over the weekend
that Martin Luther expressed that if a church was not supported by a
congregation that it should be torn down -- not in any manner preserved
-- which will make for an interesting discussion next time I am asked to
look at repair of a gutter on a Lutheran church. Or as I was also
informed, the Greek Orthodox sanctify the very ground of a sacred
structure -- once holy always holy. I am also reminded of Hopi clan
houses where the tradition is the cyclical dismantling of the structure
and rebuilding of it, and a problem in maintaining the generational
traditions of the craft of rebuilding the sacral structures,
particularly when such information of craft practice is considered
esoteric and not to be shared in any manner with the outside culture. I
am sure there are many other interesting examples to draw from. These
are all areas where comparative religion studies come to an interface
with historic preservation. I am fascinated at this congruence of wide
rivers.

It was expressed in the lecture of Professor Polinsky, to paraphrase,
that with the rise of the Hassidim cult within Judaism that the
congregation (and if it is not called a congregation, or a diversion of
belief a cult, then please excuse me and assist my learning) went from
looking up at the ceiling, where there was painted an ornate narrative
iconography, to looking at the floor and relatively speaking ignoring
various attributes of the earthly environment... including the amazingly
elegant wedding of material, design, engineering and craft that is
represented by the Jewish-Polish wooden synagogue.

This information I compare to my exposure to Hassidim architecture, if
there is such a thing and I believe that there is, in Rockland County,
NY, where we lived briefly, to Williamsburg in Brooklyn where I spent
many years -- as I understand the two largest community concentrations
of Hassidim in the US. Besides the odd business relationships of
Hassidim to us goyim, particularly those of us wanting to fix old
buildings, which I actually find rather delightful and always
enlightening, there has always appeared to me a very profound disregard
for the built environment. I am certain that in fact this is not true,
but that it is my perspective that does not allow me access to the root
of the Hassidim relationship to the environment and makes it impossible
for me to see as they see. All this considered when Professor Polinsky
condenses his years and volumes of scholarship of the Jewish cultural
history in Poland into one small sentence I immediately see a relevance
of the wooden synagogue in Poland as captured in time through the
process of preservation by neglect.

It was a lack of neglect, an admittedly twisted perspective and focused
amount of the paying of attention from the Nazis that ultimately
resulted in destruction of the structures. The Russians then came along
and did their best to mess it up further. Now it is our turn?

I have been informed, as one of several viewpoints that the Soviets
propagandized over a 60 year history that the Americans if given an
opportunity would return to Poland with an intention to reconstruct and
repatriate the Jews to their land. I'm curious how this phenomenon
compares to issues surrounding Native American land rights claims -- let
alone the relationship of Native American culture to genocide via germ
warfare etc. and the terror of casino proliferation. What is interesting
to me is that insofar as we do not question the propaganda that we
believe without investigation in the predominance of anti-Semitism in
Poland we may reinforce the very disinformation and position of
intolerance put forth by the Soviets. Whom I have also been told we
should continue to distrust. Or, likewise I find it curious to be told
that for 60 years the Soviets did not educate the local Polish as to
their Jewish culture, or to the holocaust that occurred in their midst,
the memory of the holocaust, as it was witnessed, or not actually
witnessed possibly very much at all but through traces and symptoms --
as we tend to have been educated as to the horrors of the holocaust it
is presumption to assume that others in the world have been educated or
had the advantages of free intellectual discourse as we have, or have
had the opportunity to form free opinions such as we have -- but the
memory for what it is being one maintained by the survivors in an
underground. Many of these underground survivors are now being honored
in Israel for their role in assisting individual Jews to survive in, and
or escape from Poland. I think that there are some very good
relationships that need to be remembered.

The wooden synagogue was the result of centuries of relative tolerance
and freedom for the Jewish culture and Professor Polinsky expressed that
an importance of the form was that it is a distinctive Jewish
architecture, and not one borrowed or adapted from the surrounding
culture. There is possibly nothing else like it as a fully developed
architectural expression within Jewish culture. It is also a height of
building technology and architectural expression of space that blows
away the contemporary 17^th century examples of Christian or Muslim
architecture -- at least in my opinion. It seems a pity, to me at least,
to not open up and explore these issues, and to do so I would hope in a
sensitive manner with deliberation and with consideration to the
variations of viewpoint. If positing the reconstruction of a synagogue
in the real world as a dynamic project does result in the reconstruction
of a structure that at one time was a synagogue, then fine. There may
very well be a need not to reconstruct a synagogue. In the end it may
not be the right thing to do, but in my involvement I do not have much
interest to make on my part a decision -- which I think quite frankly
needs to be resolved and expressed, and is being expressed, between the
Jews of Poland, and those of Poland who are of differing faith, and with
those Jews not of Poland -- as much as I am interested to assist in the
exploration of the cultural exchange. There may be a need to reconstruct
the structure and downplay the expression of a manifestation of a Jewish
culture that was highly sensitive and attuned to their architectural
environment and that essentially evaporated at some time considerably
prior to the 20^th century. In some respects it is if Muslims were
trying to recreate an Essene or Gnostic cave and the Southern Baptists
complaining about it.

][<en

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