Award-winning American writer, editor and photographer Ruth Ellen Gruber has chronicled European Jewish issues for more than three decades and works on cultural topics including an ongoing project called "Sauerkraut Cowboys" documenting how Europeans embrace the mythology of the American Wild West. She is the coordinator of the web site www.jewish-heritage-europe.eu and in 2011 was awarded Poland's Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit, one of Poland's highest honors for foreign citizens. She was the Distinguished Visiting Chair in Jewish Studies at the College of Charleston, SC.
Ruth coined the term "Virtually Jewish" to describe the way the so-called "Jewish space" in Europe is often filled by non-Jews: klezmer music, culture festivals, museums, tourism, and kitsch as well as serious and sensitive study and involvement.
Her books include National Geographic Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to Eastern Europe, (2007), Letters from Europe (and Elsewhere) (2008), Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe (2002), and Upon the Doorposts of Thy House: Jewish Life in East-Central Europe, Yesterday and Today (1994). She was the co-author with Amalie R. Rothschild of Live at the Fillmore East: A Photographic Memoir (1999) and has contributed chapters to other books.
A former foreign correspondent for United Press International, she has written for scholarly journals as well as media publications including the New York Times, Tablet Magazine, The Forward, Hadassah Magazine, the New Leader, the London Independent and many more. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Hadassah Brandeis Institute, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Autry National Center/Institute for the Study of the American West, and others.
