Two books on Jewish heritage in Romania that were originally published in hardback have now come out as E-books on the i-Books platform, available via iTunes, making them finally available to a wider public. Click the blue links to get to the iTunes pages.
One is Simon Geissbühler and Ovidiu Morar’s lavishly illustrated Jewish Cemeteries of Bukovina, which came out Sept. 17. Originally published in 2009, it provides information about the Jewish cemeteries in Bukovina (both on the Romanian side and the Ukrainian side) highlighting the history of the Jewish communities and the elaborately carved gravestones found there.
JHE Coordinator Ruth Ellen Gruber wrote the introduction:
Few Jews live in the Bucovina today; the cemeteries thus form powerful memorials to a civilization that was wiped out in the Holocaust. Moreover, the liveliness and fantasy employed by the stone-masons adds a new dimension to how we may regard the spiritual, intellectual and artistic lives of Jews who lived in traditional East European shtetls. To me, these elaborate sculpted gravestones are just as important manifestations of faith through art as are the marvelous painted monasteries that are also found in this region. Yet few people know of their existence, and even fewer ever visit.
The other new i-book is Romania: Jewish Bucharest, by Felicia Waldman and Anca Ciuciu, a richly illustrated guide to the Jewish history and heritage of the city, which originally was published in 2011 and came out as an i-Book in July.
In addition to serving as a guide to heritage sites such as synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, it includes the personal histories and stories of prominent Jewish personalities and descriptions of the old Jewish quarters of Bucharest, with their specificity (houses composed of stores at the front and dwellings at the back or on the upper floors) and typical lifestyle (family life, relations between neighbors, holiday celebrations, etc).
1 comment on “Two new e-books on Jewish heritage in Romania”
Have the stones been translated?