The Festival brings together both the work of the National Lottery Heritage project “Connecting Small Histories” and 12 other major Jewish Heritage projects.
“Connecting Small Histories” draws the footprint of Jewish life in what are now small or former communities across the United Kingdom. Through stories and memories it identifies the Jewish legacy in the local economies and culture, beginning with six very different locations, Eastbourne, St Annes, Bradford, Sunderland, Cumbria and Somerset.
After almost twelve months of work, the History Festival begins the telling of these “Small Histories”, bringing both them and a wide selection of projects from the project’s Heritage Hub to a wider public.
The program brings together story tellers, academics, our volunteer researchers and the research team, to paint a picture of Jewish life and heritage spread wide across the country, in towns and countryside.
Jewish Heritage Europe is delighted to be one of the partners of this event!
Click here to see the program and register for the online events
Organized by the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt, an excellent line-up or scholars, activists, and professionals will discuss some of the changes Jews and Jewish life have undergone in Europe over the past 30 years (or so).
ICOMOS established 18 April as the International Day for Monuments and Sites in 1982 ,followed by UNESCO adoption during its 22nd General Conference.
This year, the theme is entitled “Complex Pasts: Diverse Futures.”
Each year, ICOMOS proposes a theme for activities to be organized by its members, National and International Scientific Committees, partners, and anyone who wants to join in marking the Day.
Acknowledging global calls for greater inclusion and recognition of diversity, the International Day for Monuments and Sites 2021 invites participants to reflect on, reinterpret, and re-examine existing narratives.
Click to see a calendar events in participating countries
A 1-1/2 day seminar of the Moreshet project, an EU-funded Jewish heritage project linking half a dozen towns and cities in Europe.
Theme of the seminar (which barring COVID would have taken place in Mantova, Italy) is “Adapt to Reuse”, dealing with aspects related to recovering and reusing of Jewish religious properties. The online event will give the opportunity, through case studies, to learn and identify the possibilities, outline problems and evaluate solutions in the area of Jewish heritage Architecture.
(Our picture shows a Jewish museum in a former synagogue in Trani, Italy.)
The opening session on Tuesday 11 May at 18:00 CET, will be introduced by a narrated concert, music by Salomone Rossi Mantovano, followed by official greetings and a keynote presentation.
The Seminar working session on Wednesday 12 May, is divided into morning and afternoon blocks. At the end of each block a workshop discussion will be held.
The morning session will concentrate on case studies from Italy, such as: cemeteries, disused synagogues, and an archeological site. The second session will be dedicated to case studies from outside Italy.
The theme of this year’s European Day of Jewish Culture will be Dialogue. In the run-up to the September EDJC, the AEPJ is hosting a series of online events about dialogue.
This first session will feature Zuzanna Radzik, Vice President of the Polish NGO Forum for Dialogue. Theologian, author of books. She graduated the Pontifical Faculty of Theology in Warsaw and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and specializes in Catholic-Jewish relations. In 2019, she received the Irena Sendler Memorial Award for her work on Polish/Jewish dialogue and the role of women in Catholicism.
Forum for Dialogue is the oldest and largest non-governmental organization in Poland engaging in Polish/Jewish dialogue. Its mission, realized chiefly in small towns and rural areas all across Poland, is to inspire connections between modern Poland and Jews living all over the world.
Its program”Leaders of Dialogue” links dozens of non-Jewish Poles who work in small towns around the country to preserve Jewish heritage — with actions such as cleaning up and maintaining Jewish cemeteries, etc.
Click here to register for the event
The 30th Krakow Jewish Culture Festival will take place on-site and also on-line.
Live-streamed events can be accessed on the new website: 30.jewishfestival.pl
They include the events held in the JCF Tent, concerts organized in the Museum of Urban Engineering, Collegium Maius and the Tempel synagogue.
After the end of the live stream, they will be able to be accessed in the event archives.
The annual European Day(s) of Jewish Culture officially kicks off on Sunday September 5th, 2021. However, in several countries events and activities are being planned before and after this date.
This year the European Days of Jewish Culture will take place under the umbrella of the NOA project (Networks Overcoming Antisemitism), promoting the creation of positive narratives around Jewish culture in Europe.
It is under this umbrella, and with the intention of disseminating and promoting positive narratives that highlight the contribution of European Jewry to a more pluralistic and inclusive Europe, that the theme for this year’s edition will be:
DIALOGUE
Click the EDJC web site for programs, schedules etc
I-Tal-Ya is a collaborative effort to identify and catalogue every Hebrew book in Italy. It is being carried out by the Union of Jewish Communities in Italy (UCEI), the Rome National Central Library (BNCR), and the National Library of Israel (NLI) in Jerusalem, with the support of the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe.
The project includes cataloguing an estimated 35,000 volumes from 14 Jewish communities and 25 state institutions and will take approximately three years to complete.
The event is held within the program of Ferrara’s annual Jewish Book Festival.
Italy marks the European Day of Jewish Culture — with events in scores of towns and cities around the country. There are also events scheduled later in the month.
The main centre this year is Padova.
The conference aims to explore the development, role, influence and shape of virtual spaces in different forms related to contemporary European Jewry. How are digital practices related to real-life practices and spaces performed and inhabited by Europe’s Jewry? What do virtual spaces reveal about Jewish engagement with the geographical location and the idea of Europe? And, ultimately, what do virtual spaces tell us about the existence and future of a “Jewish Europe”? What do they say about transcending the borders of “Jewish Europe” and fostering membership in a global Jewish presence?
Announced keynote speakers are JHE’s Ruth Ellen Gruber and independent scholar Diana Pinto.
The conference is organised by the University of Gothenburg and the Parkes Institute of Southampton University.
Program:
Tuesday 3 May
09.00 – Welcome and introductions, Joachim Schlör, Maja Hultman and Klas Grinell
09.30 – Keynote: Ruth Ellen Gruber (Jewish Heritage Europe) Life after Life: Shifting Virtualities (and Realities) 20 Years after Virtually Jewish
10.45 – Break and coffee
11.15 – Panel 1: Jewish contribution to Europe – Chair: TBC
- Itai Apter (University of Haifa) – Jewish Legal-Political WWII Era Scholars in the European International Law Space of the Past and Contemporary Virtual Spaces
- Marcela Menachem Zoufalá (Charles University Prague) – TBC
- Vladimir Levin (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) – European Values, Post-Soviet States, and Jewish Heritage
12.45 – Lunch
14.00 – Panel 2: Jewish/non-Jewish Spaces in Europe (J444) – Chair: TBC
- Susanne Korbel (University of Graz) – Jewish Spaces in Vienna Today: A Relational, Hybrid Approach
- Magdalena Abraham-Diefenbach (European University Viadrina) – The Legacy of German Jews in Western Poland: Jewish Cemeteries as Places Between “Jewish Space” and “Virtual Jewishness”
- Jurgita Šiaučiūnaitė-Verbickienė (Vilnius University) – The Process of Learning About the Jews and Their Heritage: Influence of Challenges in Post-Soviet Lithuania to the Contemporary Understanding of the Jewish Culture
15.30 – Break and coffee
16.00 – Panel 3: Jewish Europe from Near and Afar (J444) – Chair: TBC
- Jennifer Cowe (University of British Columbia) – Rootless Nostalgia, Yekke Identity and Intergenerational memory Curation/Creation in Mor Kaplansky’s Café Nagler
- Libby Langsner (independent researcher) – Nostalgia Networks: The Potential of Built Heritage Digitization in European American Jewish Identity Formation and Social Belonging
- Judith Vöcker (University of Leicester) – The Muranów District as a Memorial of the Former Jewish Community of Warsaw
18.00 – City walk of Jewish Gothenburg
19.00 – Tour and dinner @ Gothenburg’s Synagogue
Wednesday 4 May
09.00 – Panel 4: Virtual Heritage Spaces of Jewish Europe – Chair: TBC
- Susanne Urban (University Marburg) – Storytelling in Jewish Spaces: Creating a Bond Between Spaces, History and Present
- Kyra Schulman (University of Chicago) – Memory Space: Probing the Limits of Holocaust Memorialization Projects on Digital Versus Physical Topographies
- Kinga Frojimovics and Éva Kovács (Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies) – Tracing the Holocaust in the Kaiserstadt
10.30 – Break and coffee
11.00 – Panel 5: Digital Practices in Today’s Europe – Chair: Klas Grinell
- Tyson Herberger (University of Southeastern Norway) – Impacts of Norwegian Jewry’s Digital Turn Under Corona
- Dekel Peretz (Heidelberg University) – Searching for Belonging: Jewish-Muslim Dialogue in Virtual Spaces
- Alla Marchenko (The Polish Academy of Sciences) – Virtual Representation of Real Jews and Jewishness in Contemporary Poland
12.30 – Lunch
13.45 – Heritage Session: Jewish Spaces in Sweden – Chair: Maja Hultman
- Yael Fried (Jewish Museum in Stockholm)
- Anna Grinzweig Jacobsson and Karin Brygger (Judiska salongen)
- Lukasz Gorniok (Paideia – The European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden and Ivana Koutniková (Paideia – The European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden/Paideia folkhögskola)
- Tom Shulevitz (Jewish Congregation of Gothenburg)
15.15 – Break and coffee
15.45 – Bus trip Gothenburg-Marstrand
17.00 – Guided tour of Marstrand
19.00 – Dinner @ Grand Tenan
21.30 – Bus trip Marstrand-Gothenburg
Thursday 5 May
09.00 – Panel 6: Being Jewish in Today’s Europe – Chair: TBC
- Katalin Tóth (Institute of Ethnology, Research Centre for the Humanities, Eötvös Loránd Research Network) – “But We Are Also Here – the Descendants of the Survivors”: Everyday Life of a Synagogue in Budapest for the Past Thirty Years
- Stanislaw Krajewski (University of Warsaw) – The Concept of De-Assimilation as a Tool to Describe Present-Day European Jews: The Example of Poland
- Phil Alexander (University of Edinburgh) – “The Most Saving Slum in Glasgow, and the Most Abandoned”: Scotland’s 20th Century Jewish Neighbourhoods as 21st Century Virtual Spaces
10.30 – Break and coffee
11.00 – Virtual Keynote: Diana Pinto (independent researcher) Jewish Spaces in a Topsy Turvy Europe
12.15 – Closing remarks by Joachim Schlör and Maja Hultman
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