In the current issue of Hadassah Magazine, JHE Coordinator Ruth Ellen Gruber describes the Slovak Jewish Heritage Route and briefly profiles most of the two dozen or so sites on the network.
In a lengthy article, illustrated with her photos, she notes that
more than 100 synagogue buildings and nearly 700 Jewish cemeteries remain scattered in a country only twice the size of New Hampshire. The total Jewish population, however, is just 3,000—and dwindling.
A far-reaching project now aims to safeguard key sites of Slovak Jewish heritage while using them as tools to integrate Jewish history and memory into local tourism, culture and education.
This is the Slovak Jewish Heritage Route (www.slovak-jewish-heritage.org), a tourist and educational trail that links two dozen key sites in all eight regions of the country—synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, but also Jewish museums and Holocaust memorials.
Formally launched in 2007, the route is the brainchild of Maros Borsky, Slovakia’s foremost Jewish scholar, who convinced communal leaders to focus scarce resources on a few significant places to ensure their long-term survival.
“The only way to preserve these buildings is to find a different use for them, predominantly and preferably for cultural purposes,” Borsky says. “And what is very important is to generate an audience for them. There is no point in putting money into restoring these buildings if no one will use them.” […]
The sites on the route range from synagogues, Jewish museums and permanent exhibits to Holocaust memorials and Jewish cemeteries, including the unique, subterranean burial complex in Bratislava where the Orthodox sage Rabbi Moshe Schreiber, known as the Chatam Sofer, is interred.
Borsky chose sites in all parts of the country, so following the route, or sections of it, makes a good way to structure a general trip that also takes in the dramatic Slovak landscape and its wealth of castles, fortresses, historic towns and other attractions. “You don’t have to be a nobleman to visit a castle, and you don’t have to be Jewish to visit a synagogue,” he says.