We’re happy to share the link about the live online conference next week that will officially launch the massive website and digital database of Jewish cemeteries in Turkey, A World Beyond: Jewish Cemeteries in Turkey 1583-1990.
The database and web site are a project of the The Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center of Tel Aviv University. We wrote about it when it first went online last year as a beta version — though the site still says it’s in beta, the kinks that some users experienced appear to have been worked out, and we find it easy to search and use.
Dedicated to the memory of the oriental studies scholar Bernard Lewis, who died in 2018, the database is the culmination of decades of research by Prof. Minna Rozen (and others) and comprises digital images and detailed textual content of more than 61,000 Jewish gravestones from a variety of communities in Turkey from 1583 until 1990. Rozen’s onsite documentation of the cemeteries was carried out in 1988-1990. The material was digitized in the 1990s but until the web site was uploaded, it had not been publicly accessible.
The online conference October 18-19 features Rozan and other international scholars who will discuss aspects of cemeteries, inscriptions, and history, as well as issues related more broadly to digitization and the field of digital humanities.
Click here to find full information and registration link
Click here to access the website/database
Click here to read our June 2020 story describing the project
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PROGRAM
Monday, 18 October, 2021
16:00 Greetings
Eyal Zisser
Vice Rector, Tel Aviv University
Rachel Gali Cinamon
Dean of Humanities, Tel Aviv University
Roni Stauber
Director of the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center, Tel Aviv University
16:30 Opening Remarks
Amnon Cohen
Bernard Lewis and his Jewish Studies
Minna Rozen
A World Beyond: The Database – Its Scope and Use
17:30 First Session: Istanbul Jewry and the Computerized Database
Chair: Ehud Toledano
Ruth Lamdan
The Ideal of Beauty in Istanbul Jewish Cemeteries
Dotan Arad
Between Istanbul and Jerusalem: Connections and Bonds between two Karaite Centers
Dror Zeevi
Ottoman Sultanas and their Jewish Kiras
Carsten Wilke
Hebrew Epitaphs from Byzantine and Early Ottoman Constantinople in Biagio Ugolinos’s Anthology of 1767
Tuesday, 19 October, 2021
16:00 Second Session:
Digital Jewish Studies I
Chair: Simha Goldin
Johannes Heil & Imen Ben Temelliste
The New Gallia-Germania Judaica Project
Elli Fischer
The Prenumeranten Project: Digitizing Pre-subscriber Lists
17:30 Third Session:
Digital Jewish Studies II
Chair: Zohar Segev
Tammy Hepps
Homestead Hebrews: A Case Study in Digital Community Reconstitution and Analysis
Louis Kaplan
The Imaginary Jewish Homelands of I.N. Steinberg: From Archive to Virtual World
Liat Kozma
What can a Prosopographic Database Teach us about Jewish Doctors in the Modern Middle East?