Happy Hanukkah and holiday season from Jewish Heritage Europe!
Our “gift” this year is a dedicated YouTube channel that posts the videos of all the presentations given at the conference Jewish Heritage Tourism in the Digital Age, which took place in Venice October 23-25.
The conference was organized by the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe, Jewish Heritage Europe, and Beit Venezia. It gathered around 90 participants from all over Europe, as well as Israel and the United States. The more than 30 speakers ranged from academics and analysts, to tour guides and other tourism professionals, to museum personnel, Jewish community representatives, and other experts and stakeholders.
The Youtube Channel organizes the presentations into PLAYLISTS that reflect the conference’s seven panel sessions, each with four speakers.
Click here to access the YouTube Channel and see all the videos
There are also videos of the closing roundtable discussion on the Challenges of Being a Tourist Attraction, and the evening stand-alone session — a conversation between Shaul Bassi, of Ca’ Foscari University and Beit Venezia, and Jewish Heritage Europe Coordinator Ruth Ellen Gruber.
In this conversation, Ruth reflects (at the beginning of the discussion) how Hanukkah had a signal influence on her involvement in Jewish heritage work — she describes her first adult experience with Jewish built heritage in east-central Europe, when she traveled around Romania with the then-Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen at Hanukkah in 1978, visiting nearly a score of synagogues and Jewish communities around the country:
Not long ago, while going through old papers, Ruth came across a letter she wrote (and apparently didn’t mail) to a colleague, shortly after that first Romania trip. In it she describes some of the synagogues she visited, and the impression they made — her first adult encounter with Jewish built heritage in east-central Europe.
Hanukkah is something of a birthday for JHE… it was on the first night of Hanukkah in 2011 that our web site had its first public presentation, at a holiday reception hosted in Prague by the then- U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic, Norman Eisen.
For us, it was truly a moment to recite the Shehecheyanu blessing — even though we didn’t go live online until nearly two months later.
Since then, we have continued to grow. And we are still growing and expanding — with news items, resources, links, photos, articles, calendar events and other content being added each week.
And in the new year, further big changes are coming — a new web site design, new logo, and new features.
Please keep in touch! And please subscribe to our Newsfeed and monthly Newsletter, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram!