Еврейский музей. Сборник статей по В. А. Дымшиц, В. Е. Кельнер (review)

509 Ab Imperio, 3/2008 liticized processes of rehabilitation of the Romanov Empire in Russian science, and as such can not, in our opinion, be ignored.14 14 This trend of contemporary Russian historiography , albeit prevalent, is of course not the only one. There are a number of opposite examples that show evidence of serious academic study concerning the issues of Imperial Russia. One should mention first and foremost the journal “Ab Imperio” (see: http://abimperio.net ). Irena VLADIMIRSKY Еврейский музей. Сборник статей / Состав. В. А. Дымшиц, В. Е. Кельнер. Санкт-Петербург: “Симпозиум”, 2004. 268 с., 32 ил. ISBN: 5-89091-280-1. This book is the result of an initiative of the center for studying Jewish culture and the Jewish museum called Peterburgskaia iudaika. It focuses on previously unexplored topics of Jewish history and culture, and includes descriptions of items from different museum collections, ethnographical expeditions, Jewish folklore, and modern art. This edition consists of three basic sections: the first section, “Collections” (kollektsii), is largely informative (it specifies some rare items stored in Russian museums); the second section, “Studies” (issledovaniia), describes academic research in different fields of Jewish studies; and the third section , “Archive” (arkhiv), deals with recently disclosed Jewish files from Russian local archives. In the first section, Tatiana Emel’ianenko describes the collection of the Bukharian Jewish community exhibited in the Russian Museum of Ethnography in St. Petersburg . The historical introduction to the article is marred by superficial knowledge of the history of the Bukharian Jewish community – as 510 Рецензии/Reviews reorganization of various ethnographical museums on the territory of the Russian Federation. Now in a single collection, it brings together items from different Jewish communities in the Caucasus (Mountain Jews, Caucasian Jews, and Georgian Jews). Special attention is focused on the Kuba Jewish collection arranged by Alexander Miller, who was the curator of the Ethnographical Department of the Russian Museum. The subject of his main research interest was hand-made rugs. This interest led him to Kuba, the center of the rug industry in the Eastern Caucasus and home to one of the most populous Jewish communities. Miller collected traditional men’s and women’s attire and religious articles, including a shofar (ram’s horn), mezuzah boxes, bowls for ritual hand-washing before meals, and silver pomegranates that decorated the Torah scroll. The Georgian part of the Caucasian collection includes traditional costumes of Georgian Jewish women with traditional silver jewelry (depicting fish) and rabbis’ garments. Also included are some photos, albeit of very poor quality, taken by Miller during his Kuba expedition in 1907. The article written by Aiste Niunkaite-Raciuniene is devoted to the story of Solomon’s Throne, a unique example of Jewish handicraft from the collection of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum. Vilnius one can conclude from the statement that the “religious and social culture of Jews did not differ from place to place and its special study seems to be irrelevant” (P. 11). The Jewish collection of the Russian Museum of Ethnography, the result of the merging and reorganization of different ethnographical museums of the former USSR, now consists of 150 different items, mostly of religious and everyday character. The oldest item in the collection, is the “Traditional Garments ofTurkestani Jews,” which dates back to 1872. The story of its acquisition is unknown. In fact, historically the status and privileges of the Jewish communities in Central Asia did differ from place to place and were dependent on the good will of local khans and emirs. After the conquest of Central Asia by the Russian Empire, the Central Asian Jews were granted the same rights as other local natives (inorodtsy). Originally, the entire collection donated by S. P. Preobrazhenskii consisted mainly of different religious items such as phylacteries, a small prayer shawl, torah scroll covers , blessings, mezuzahs, and some original photos that date back as far as the 1870s – 1880s. Vladimir Dmitriev’s article is dedicated to the collection originating from Caucasus Jewish communities and exhibited in the Russian Museum of Ethnography. This collection was arranged after the 511 Ab Imperio, 3/2008 cultural heritage of Russian Jewry. An-sky proposed to collect not only material objects of Jewish art similar to the rich Jewish collections in West European countries but also items of Jewish folklore that reflected the...