Calendar

A Program in Memory of Vivian B. Mann Featuring talks by Laura Arnold Leibman (Reed College) and Maya Balakirsky Katz (Bar-Ilan University), in conversation with Magda Teter (Fordham University)

Jewish ceremonial objects have been studied and collected for nearly 150 years. In the past few decades, however, their importance in understanding social, historic, and aesthetic issues in a variety of cultural contexts has begun to increase.

This program is dedicated to the memory of Vivian B. Mann, a long-time Judaica curator at The Jewish Museum in New York and head of the graduate program in Jewish Art and Visual Culture at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Among her many accomplishments, Dr. Mann started initiatives to ensure that the rigorous study of Judaica would become part of the discourse of wider disciplines such as art history, history and Jewish studies. Building on her legacy, Laura Arnold Leibman and Maya Balakirsky Katz will each speak about a ceremonial object from the vantage point of their different disciplines, and then engage in a conversation with Magda Teter about the state of the field today and the possibilities for the future.

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Online-Lecture and talk with Dr. Diana Pinto, Paris (in English)

The conversation with Diana Pinto is conducted by Hanno Loewy, Director of the Jewish Museum Hohenems.

It was in the mid-1990’s Diana Pinto coined the term “Jewish Space” to define one of the specificities of the Jewish presence/absence, ongoing creativity and memory inside what was at the time a rapidly expanding European setting. After the fall of the Berlin Wall a new whiff of democratic pluralism allowed Jews across the continent to define themselves well beyond their official Jewish representative institutions. “Jewish Spaces” emerged where Jewish themes, ideas, creativity, life, traditions, and history intersected with the wider society – in a diasporic setting in which, unlike Israel or the United States, non-Jews were also integral actors of these Spaces.

At the same time, in the past thirty years, doubts about an ongoing Jewish future in the former lands of the Holocaust have never gone away. They have even increased with the return of antisemitism and the much publicized departure of many Jews (especially in France) to settle in Israel. For many, Europe was once a continent of Jewish life, but no longer.

Diana Pinto counters this interpretation by explaining why Jewish Spaces across Europe are continuing to expand. The symbolic importance of these Jewish Spaces has even taken on a new relevance in light of the growing populism and right wing revisionism which has infected the entire Western world (including Israel and the US). In the battle between liberal democracy and illiberal populism, such Spaces are destined to play an ever more important role in anchoring pluralist reflexes and universal values across the Continent.

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Lecture by Michael Miller, of CEU

Budapest is sometimes called the “Paris of the East,” but in the 1890s, it acquired a new, less flattering nickname: “Judapest.” Karl Lueger, the antisemitic mayor of Vienna – who hated Hungarians more than he hated Jews – is often credited with coining this derogatory nickname for a city that he thought had become more “Jewish” than “Hungarian.”  Budapest was Europe’s fastest-growing city at the time, with a flurry of cultural and commercial activity that fascinated — and sometimes appalled — contemporary residents and visitors. This talk will examine the image of Budapest in the decades before and after the First World War, exploring the ways in which Hungary’s capital city was imagined by Jews and non-Jews alike as a quintessentially Jewish metropolis.

The evening will be chaired by Professor Mark E. Smith, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton. It will be hosted by Professor Mark Cornwall (University of Southampton, Parkes Institute)

The event will be held on Zoom. Please register by Monday 19th April 16:00 here:

https://www.southampton.ac.uk/parkes/news/events/2021/04/20-parkes-lecture-2021.page

Speaker biography: Michael L. Miller is Associate Professor in the Nationalism Studies Program at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, and co-founder of the university’s Jewish Studies program. He received his PhD in History from Columbia University, where he specialized in Jewish and Central European History. Michael’s research focuses on the impact of nationality conflicts on the religious, cultural, and political development of Central European Jewry in the long nineteenth century. His articles have appeared in Slavic Review, Austrian History Yearbook, Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, Múlt és Jövő , The Jewish Quarterly Review and AJS Review. Miller’s book, Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation, was published by Stanford University Press in 2011. It appeared in Czech translation as Moravští Židé v době emancipace (Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2015). He is currently working on a history of Hungarian Jewry, titled Manovill: A Tale of Two Hungarys.

Volunteer cleanup action of the Okopowa st Jewish cemetery

A series of three online talks by Dr. Samuel D. Gruber, president of the International Survey of Jewish Monuments. Part of the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program.

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Another of the regular volunteer Jewish cemetery clean-ups at the Okopowa st. Jewish cemetery in Warsaw.

Turn up ready to work — the weather forecast is good!

The latest in the regular volunteer clean up initiatives at the Okopowa st. Jewish cemetery.

Volunteers are welcome for a clean-up session at the Jewish cemetery. People who physically cannot work are also invited, and will be able to learn about the place and local Jewish history.

Bring rakes and other equipment if you like.

The latest of the regular volunteer clean up sessions at the vast Okopowa st Jewish cemetery. Come one, come all!