Ruth Gruber

As the author of National Geographic Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to Eastern Europe, and the coordinator of the web site www.jewish-heritage-europe.eu, I conduct an illustrated virtual tour of far-flung synagogues, shtetls, Jewish cemeteries, and other Jewish heritage sites in a variety of countries in East-Central Europe. I describe personal experiences and discuss the many changes I have witnessed in a quarter century of exploration of Jewish heritage. These include efforts at reconstructing Jewish life, with new forms of Jewishness, Jewish practice, and religious and cultural expression. I describe how I coined the term ?Virtually Jewish? to describe non-Jewish involvement, embrace, appropriation and engagement with Jews and Jewish culture ? and what that means in today?s changing conditions. There are new realities and new authenticities; new definitions of ?Jewish.? In places like Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter of Krakow, for example, community and commercialism can both combine and collide.