Starting in 1987, American-born Israeli educators Rivka and Ben-Zion Dorfman roamed central and eastern Europe, documenting synagogue buildings that were abandoned, transformed, ruined, and occasionally still used for Jewish worship — in Austria, Hungary, Croatia, northern Italy, Greece, and the Czech and Slovak Republics. In six research trips, they photographed 360 synagogues. Their book Synagogues Without Jews was published by the Jewish Publication Society in 2000 and won a National Jewish Book Award.
In October (2013), the Dorfmans donated their archive of about 30,000 photographs to Yad Vashem.
“There are pictures, videos, audio and many documents about every city and town we studied. We have rooms filled with stuff. It’s good to be free of all of this,” an article this past week in Ynet quoted them as saying. The article, by Tal Roitman-Meir, notes that, as they traveled, they carried with them a letter from the Hebrew University stating that they were operating for research purposes, and this helped with arrangements.
“It began in 1987,” says Rivka Dorfman. “We went on a three-week vacation in Italy and saw a synagogue which really caught our imagination. It was the first, and after that we searched for other synagogues.”
Dr. Ben-Zion Dorfman says that everywhere they arrived, they looked for people with gray hair and asked, “Where is the synagogue?”
“I think we collected information about most if not all synagogues left from the World War II era,” he says. “What was left – we researched. In every synagogue we were resourceful. We looked for all kinds of shapes of buildings. They usually knew and agreed to show us the local synagogue, or direct us to it.
“Sometimes the synagogue was locked and we had to look for someone to give us the keys. We visited offices of mayors who helped in many places. We informed them in advance that we were on our way, and when we arrived we were welcomed respectfully quite a few times.”
The Dorfmans’ material will be particularly valuable as it mainly documents the period just before and after the fall of communism, before many of these disused synagogues were restored and often transformed into museums or culture centers or revitalized as functioning synagogues.