Back in 2017, Oxford scholar Abigail Green wrote a Have Your Say op-ed for us, titled How recognizing the “Jewish country house” expands our understanding of Jewish heritage.
She argued that, in addition to synagogues, Jewish cemeteries, tahara houses, and Jewish communal buildings, there is another set of buildings that should be included as part of Jewish architectural heritage – what she called the Jewish country house: rural villas and mansions that were owned, renewed and sometimes built by Jews.
Over the years, she has developed the theme, carrying out research and engaging colleagues in the field. There is even now a Jewish Country Houses thematic route as part of the European Routes of Jewish Heritage.
A new book, Jewish Country Houses, has now been published. Edited by Green and Juliet Carey, Senior Curator at the Rothschild family’s Waddesdon Manor, it is a collection of essays by international scholars published by the National Trust and Profile Books in the United Kingdom and Brandeis University Press in the U.S.
It is lavishly illustrated with historical pictures and new photographs by Hélène Binet.
“All over continental Europe, wealthy, cosmopolitan, aristocratic Jews were busy buying, building and redeveloping ‘Jewish country houses’ – although the nature of these properties varied from place to place,” Green wrote in her Have Your Say essay. “[…] These are all properties with individual stories, and the Jews who owned them related to their Jewishness in very different ways.”
See the Table of Contents:
See the book, with sample photos and text, on the Brandeis University Press web site
See the Jewish country houses route
Read an article about the book in The Forward
Read Green’s JHE Have Your Say essay from 2017
Read our 2019 post about an earlier publication on Jewish country houses