Congratulations to JTA’s own Ruth Ellen Gruber, who was awarded the Michael Hammer Tribute Research Grant by the Hadassah Brandeis Institute.
Each year, the institute awards 20 to 30 grants to support academic and artistic projects about Jews and gender. Gruber’s project, “(Candle)sticks on Stone: Representing the Woman in Jewish Tombstone Art,” centers around the richly decorated tombstones of women in the Jewish cemetery in Radauti, Romania, where her own great-grandmother is buried. It entails photographing the tombstones, which are decorated with carvings of candlesticks, and combining the images with historical research, personal reflection and memoir to create an interdisciplinary online gallery and exhibition that will be supplemented by anecdotes, literary references and personal stories.
Gruber, JTA’s correspondent in Rome, writes the "Ruthless Cosmopolitan" column for JTA and the author of several books on Jewish hertitage and culture. She also blogs at http://jewish-heritage-travel.blogspot.com.
