Dr. Vladimir Levin, the director of the Center for Jewish Art, is holding a series of three online lectures that will be of interest to JHE readers.
He will be discussing the history and architecture of Synagogues and Jewish Cemeteries in the Russian Empire.
The lectures will be in English.
The series, on the first three Sundays in August, at 8 p.m. Israel time (7 p.m. CET), demonstrates how certain patterns of Jewish material culture were transferred from an area with a long Jewish history to new regions where Jews settled in the 19th century and how they were transformed to fit the new environment.
First Talk — August 1
The Land of Wooden Synagogues
The lecture deals with the synagogue architecture of Lithuania, compares masonry and wooden synagogues and explains why the majority of extant wooden synagogues in Europe could be found in Lithuania.
Second Talk — August 8
Dialogue between the Jewish Community and the Capital
The lecture shows how the Jewish community in the 19th and early 20th century in St. Petersburg negotiated its place in the cityscape and searched for specifically Jewish forms of self-representation.
Third Talk — August 15 (with Dr. Anna Berezin)
Jewish material culture in the Volga Region
The lecture presents the results of the research expedition of the Center for Jewish Art to the Volga River that took place in May and June 2021.
It will deal with synagogues in the region as well as with Jewish cemeteries, mostly from the Soviet period, which show that Jewish (religious) identity was not completely subdued by the Communist empire.