Jewish Heritage Europe is delighted to be one of the partners in the Connecting Small Histories Festival, a 10-day — online — festival of local Jewish heritage that kicks off next week and highlights the history, culture, and legacy of small Jewish communities across the UK, some of which are no longer active.
The program March 15-25 “brings together story tellers, academics […] volunteer researchers and the research team, to paint a picture of Jewish life and heritage spread wide across the country, in towns and countryside.”
The Festival is part of a 12-month-long Connecting Small Histories: Enduring Sustainability in Jewish History project, carried out in cooperation with Swansea University and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, that seeks to “record the footprint and heritage of the UK Jewish communities where they are now small or non-extant, and to connect these to existing Jewish history and heritage.”
It primarily deals with six locations around the country: Eastbourne, St Annes, Bradford, Sunderland, Cumbria and Somerset.
But the festival program also includes sessions on small Jewish communities and their heritage in Wales, Ireland and Scotland.
The program features lectures, panel discussions, and workshops on topics ranging from history to biography to genealogy to geography and Jewish heritage sites.
One session, called “We Were There Too,” deals with British Jews in the First World War and is linked to a broader ongoing project that documents & commemorates the contribution British Jews made during the First World War.
All the events are free and online.
Click here to see the program and register for the online events
Connecting Small Histories Heritage Hub
Read about the “Connecting Small Histories: Ensuring Sustainability in Jewish History” Projects