Award-winning American writer, editor and photographer Ruth Ellen Gruber has chronicled European Jewish issues for more than two 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.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).A former correspondent in Eastern Europe for United Press International, she is Senior European correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency JTA. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, Tablet Magazine, The Forward, Hadassah Magazine, the New Leader, the London Independent and many other publications. 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.