BRONFMANCENTER
The Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at NYU

 

Forgotten Heritage: Uncovering New York's Hidden Jewish Past



The Bronfman Center is please to present, Forgotten Heritage: Uncovering New York’s Hidden Jewish Past photographic works by Julian Voloj.

Voloj’s photographs are images of Jewish traces, remnants of a once thriving Jewish culture. But these images were not taken in Poland, the Ukraine, or other countries that today are places of pilgrimage for American Jewish heritage tourists. These pictures were taken in New York City, the home of the largest Jewish Diaspora in the world. Voloj documents abandoned synagogue buildings, forgotten Jewish cemeteries and other Jewish heritage in neighborhoods such as Harlem, the South Bronx or Brownsville — neighborhoods that very few people would consider Jewish places, but were once home to vibrant Jewish communities.
Voloj’s photographs are a re-discovery of (nearly) forgotten Jewish history, but they also examine the way Americans approach their own heritage, as well as the way culture is reborn and reinvented in a city in permanent transition. This exhibition at the Bronfman Center is the first time this work-in-progress is presented to a New York audience.

Voloj was born in Muenster, Germany, and grew up in a Jewish community of just 80 members. His grandparents, Holocaust survivors, had immigrated to Colombia but returned to Germany. His personal background inspired him to explore issues of identity and heritage in his work as a photographer and writer. To learn more about his projects, visit the website at www.julianvoloj.com.

If you are interested in retracing Jewish heritage in New York City, visit www.JWalks.org.

Please join us at the Bronfman Center on Wednesday, November 29th at 7pm for "Four Photographers - Four Searches into Jewish Identity"

A German, a Guatemalan and two Americans from the North and South of the US, all photographers, use this medium to explore an identification with Judaism in unique ways. Some look for it in their own backgrounds while others search for its traces in specific locations and populations within the United States and other countries. The resulting images bear witness to US areas once saturated with Jewish populations but are now almost devoid, at least visually, of such history. Other works disclose the difficulties of growing up Jewish in locations virtually unsympathetic to it. The experience of revelation late in life of having Jewish roots is also explored. These visual revelations provided by the four artists serve as fodder for a symposium on diverse ways to observe Jewish Identity.
“Forgotten Heritage.”

Gallery hours: Monday-Thursday, 9am-10pm; Friday, 9am-3pm; Saturday, Closed; Sunday 9am-9pm