The Buildings that Remain: Finding Purpose in Place through Collective Preservation
The Leon Levy Foundation Lectures in Jewish Material Culture by Gabrielle A. Berlinger (University of North Carolina)

This series explores how three ordinary buildings have been transformed into extraordinary spaces for religious, social, and historic Jewish purpose: a medical clinic in Brooklyn, New York, a second-hand store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and a schoolhouse in southern Germany. Although geographically, temporally, and culturally distinct from one another, all three sites engage with Jewish memory, values, and practice through creative approaches to the preservation of these buildings and their material contents. Using strategies of reconstruction, restoration, and even deconstruction of these buildings and the objects within, the people who steward these sites nurture deep and dynamic relationships between people, objects, and a sense of belonging in each environment.

770: A Constellation of Sacred Sites
770 Eastern Parkway is the worldwide headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic community based in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Since Rebbe Menachem Schneerson, the seventh and last leader of the Lubavitch community, passed away in 1994, reconstructions of the gothic-style brick building where he was based have proliferated around the world. In addition, rooms within the original building, and their material contents, have been preserved in distinctive ways for use by members of the community’s growing global movement. In this first lecture, Gabrielle Berlinger examines this network of sacred spaces that enable Lubavitcher Jews around the world to remain connected to the Rebbe and his teachings in his absence.

Thursday, October 16 at 6 pm
38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall

$15 General | $12 Seniors | Free for people with a college or university affiliation or museum ID, people with disabilities and caregivers, and BGC members

Elsewhere: Archive, Museum, and Catalyst of Change

Since 2005, the building at 606 South Elm Street in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina, has been known as Elsewhere—a living museum and artist residency. However, from 1955–97, this three-story building was a second-hand store owned and run by Sylvia Gray, a Southern Jewish woman who filled the building with American material goods, from buttons and dishes to toys, ribbon, clothes, books, and more. Six years after she passed away in 1997, her grandson, George Scheer, opened the building’s locked doors, found all of its contents untouched, and decided to transform Sylvia’s material “collection” into an experimental museum and art space. By examining Elsewhere’s annual “Radical Seder” that weaves the building’s story and preservation philosophy into the ancient Passover ritual, as well as other instances of Jewish expression that intersect with Elsewhere’s material collection, Gabrielle Berlinger—in conversation with Scheer—considers how Elsewhere’s material world and creative preservation are informed by and reanimate Jewish values.

Thursday, November 13 at 6 pm
38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall

$15 General | $12 Seniors | Free for people with a college or university affiliation or museum ID, people with disabilities and caregivers, and BGC members

Buttenhausen: The Material Afterlife of a German Jewish Community

This talk explores the Jewish material afterlife of Buttenhausen, a small rural village in southwest Germany. This village was home to Jews from 1787 until 1942, when Gabrielle Berlinger’s great-grandfather was the last Jewish resident deported. Today, no Jews live in Buttenhausen, but the work of several Christian residents has led to the establishment of a small Jewish museum, as well as the memorialization of Buttenhausen’s former Jewish residents through plaques on the outer walls of houses and imbedded in sidewalks, all stops on a self-guided historical walking tour. This presentation explores the buildings and material objects, both in the village and beyond, that continue to evoke the memory of Jewish life in this village.

Thursday, December 11 at 6 pm
38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall

$15 General | $12 Seniors | Free for people with a college or university affiliation or museum ID, people with disabilities and caregivers, and BGC members