Editorial by Elias V. Messinas
Welcome to the anniversary
issue of Kol haKEHILA! Kol haKEHILA
is celebrating one year of publication, marked with growth, increasing
interest and warm support from its readers. This year was also marked
with an increasing interest in the preservation of sacred sites, documentation
of religious buildings, and growing support for the preservation of the
Jewish monuments of Greece. We thank all our dedicated readers, all our
dedicated supporters, and all of you who have contributed with articles,
research, and in-situ work towards the preservation of the precious, though,
endangered, Jewish heritage of Greece. We welcome all our new subscribers.
Kol haKEHILA makes every possible effort to follow
current developments in preservation, conservation and documentation of
sacred sites worldwide, especially, the work undertaken, or scheduled
for Greece. For example, on May 3-6, 1999, the symposium Preserving
the Architecture of Historic Cities and Sacred Places took place in
Washington, DC, sponsored by the World Bank. This important meeting
gathered experts from around the globe to address, for the first time
under the auspices of a prestigious international institution, the question
of economic development together with cultural preservation. Among the
conservation projects in Europe, North and South America, the East, and
the Far East, a special section was dedicated to the preservation of Jewish
heritage, organized by the Center for Jewish Art in Jerusalem,
where an update of the progress of the conservation efforts of the synagogue
in Veroia, northern Greece, was presented. More details on this symposium
later in this issue.
Increased interest in the Jewish heritage of Greece has also resulted
in increasing activity towards its preservation. Kol haKEHILA
is supporting all these efforts and wishes to become the common platform
for them to be heard, to become known, to be supported. In this issue,
we present two organizations in the United States, that have been created
in the past, for the purpose of preserving the Greek Sephardi and Romaniot
traditions, not only in Greece, but abroad as well: PASHAS and
the Association of Friends of Greek Jews.
In this issue Dr. Judith Mazza is offering the readers of Kol
haKEHILA her first-time traveler’s impressions of Jewish
sites in Greece. An overview of the International Conference on
Jewish Heritage of Europe that took place in Paris in January 1999,
is presented by Dr. Samuel Gruber, and an update on the conservation
of the synagogue of Hania, Crete by Nicholas Stavroulakis.
In this issue our readers will find a copy of the Page of Testimony
issued by Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, in support of the effort of that
institution to collect, by the end of this year, the remaining 3 million
names of annihilated parents, siblings, relatives, and friends, who perished
in the Holocaust. Kol haKEHILA is inviting all our
readers to disseminate this documents to anyone who has lost someone dear
in the Holocaust, fill it out, and return it either to Kol haKEHILA,
or directly to Yad Vashem (address enclosed on the page of testimony).
We remind our readers that Kol haKEHILA is available
online, at the site of the European Sephardic Institute, courtesy of Moise
Rahmani, editor of Los Muestros. Kol haKEHILA
extends its gratitude to the European Sephardic Institute
for its hospitality! Please visit Kol haKEHILA online
at www.sefarad.org
Finally, we thank Prof. Carol Krinsky for her dedicated input to
Kol haKEHILA, all our readers who contributed to
this issue, and all our friends who have made this effort possible with
their support. |