Art Work on Jewish Heritage Sites

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

In 1993, I took my mother, the artist Shirley Moskowitz, with me on a trip to east-central Europe. I was working on my book Upon the Doorposts of Thy House: Jewish Life in East-Central Europe, Yesterday and Today (Wiley, 1994) and also doing the first updated edition of Jewish Heritage Travel (Wiley 1994).

We went mainly to Slovakia and Poland -- where we met up with my brother, Sam, who was leading a Jewish heritage tour for architecture preservationists.

Mom made many sketches and took many photographs of the Jewish heritage sites that we saw -- mainly ruined synagogues and abandoned cemeteries. She then produced a series of monotype prints from this material. The prints were exhibited several times in Poland -- at the Jewish Culture and Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow, and also in Tarnow.

 Old-New Synagogue, Prague I. Monotype by Shirley Moskowitz. (c) Estate of Shirley Moskowitz

I have now posted images of more than a dozen of these monotypes on the web site that we have set up as an expanding online exhibition to honor Mom and make her work known to a wider public.

Click HERE to access them.