Willesden Jewish Cemetery volunteer researchers Corinne Van Colle and Jackie Asher spent 2½ years uncovering the stories of the many Jewish soldiers killed in action during World War 1 who are buried or commemorated in the cemetery. Encountering many challenges including worn headstones, inconsistent records, and changed names, they eventually discovered commemorations relating to over 350 servicemen (and one woman!). Research revealed, too, their many different family backgrounds: these were the sons of Edwardian Anglo-Jewish engineers, bootmakers and bankers. In this webinar, Corinne and Jackie will share some of the forgotten stories of the young Jewish men, memorialised in the cemetery in moving inscriptions and poems, who went to war in 1914.
The fourth edition of the Day of Jewish Monuments in the Czech Republic. There is a smartphone app as well as an interactive map on the Day’s web site to help visitors.
More than 50 selected Jewish heritage sites in more than 40 towns in Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia will be open to visitors. They include synagogues, Jewish cemeteries, museums, and other sites. Some of them are generally closed to the public; some have recently undergone extensive renovation or are in the process of restoration.
There are various associated events such as guided tours and concerts.
The event is organized by the Jewish community in Prague in cooperation with Matana, the administrative body for Jewish property, the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic and other regional partners.
Opening of an exhibition (running April 7-June 30, 2022) of objects found in the genizas in former synagogues in eastern Bohemia, with a particular focus on the synagogue in Luze.
The exhibition grows out of a geniza research project initiated by the Prague Jewish Museum in the 1990s.
The official reopening ceremony of the Great synagogue in Plzen, Czech Republic, following a three-year restoration of the synagogue interior and nearby Rabbi’s house. A permanent exhibition on Jewish monuments in the Pilsen region will be opened, in the women’s gallery. It is based on the photographs of Radovan Kodera.
A procession will bring a Torah scroll from the Old to the Great Synagogue and ceremoniously place it in the ark.
Following will be a ceremonial program with speeches by the Culture Minister, the head of the tiny local Jewish community, and others. A concert will feature compositions inspired by Jewish prayers, adapted for the occasion.
BIAJS Conference 2022: “Unfolding Time: Texts – Practices – Politics”
There’s quite a bit of material on Jewish (built) heritage at this year’s conference of the British and Irish Association of Jewish Studies.
12 July 2022, 15.15-16.45 The state of Jewish tangible heritage in Ukraine: Buildings, monuments, museums and libraries
organised by: Eva Frojmovic (Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Leeds, clsef@leeds.ac.uk)
EUGENY KOTLYAR (Associate Professor at Department of Art History of Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts, eugeny.kotlyar@gmail.com):
Jewish Heritage in Independent Ukraine: Discovery, Study, Preservation and Presentation. Thirty Years of Experience and Challenges
SOFIA DYAK (Director of the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv, website:www.lvivcenter.org, E-mail: s.dyak@lvivcenter.org):
Jewish Urban Heritage and Diversity in Lviv
TETYANA BATANOVA (Research Fellow, Acting Head of the Judaica Department of Institute of Manuscripts, V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, taniabatanova@gmail.com )
The Judaica Department at V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine: Revival, Study, and Preservation
VITALY CHERNOIVANENKO (Senior research fellow, Judaica Department; Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine; President, Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies; Chief editor, Judaica Ukrainica; E-mail: chernoivanenko@gmail.com and president@uajs.org.ua; Website: uajs.org.ua):
Ukraine’s Hebraica collections in international perspective
NADIA UFIMTSEVA (Department of History at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy,nadia.ufimtseva@gmail.com)
Title: the Jewish printed books collection in the Kamianets-Podilskyi state museum and Judaica objects in Ukrainian museums.
MIA SPIRO (Glasgow) and EVA FROJMOVIC (Leeds)
Click here to see full conference program
To register securely, please visit: https://estore.kcl.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/academic-faculties/faculty-of-arts-humanities/department-of-theology-and-religious-studies/biajs-conference-unfolding-time-texts-practices-politics
The annual Day of Jewish Monuments in the Czech Republic opens Jewish heritage sites all over the country to visitors.
(It does not seems to be coordinated within the umbrella of the European Day of Jewish Culture).
On the web site, you can find lists of events and an interactive map with a list of participating sites and opening hours.
A series of events starting September 1 and continuing until the end of the year will be coordinated as the B’nai B’rith Jewish Heritage in the UK Festival — organised under the international umbrella of the European Days of Jewish Culture (EDJC), whose theme this year is “Renewal.”
Click here to download a PDF calendar of events
(Click here for the “flipsnack” online catalogue of events).
The Štetl Fest in Brno, Czech Republic includes several guided tours of Jewish heritage sites around town, including the synagogue, as well as other events such as concerts, exhibits, theatrical performances, lectures, etc. It is the largest Jewish culture festival in the Czech Republic.
“The main theme of ŠTETL FEST 2022 is related to the project “The Library of Stolen Hopes”, which is currently being developed by the Jewish Community of Brno. It is about the rescue of a unique collection of twelve thousand liturgical books confiscated in Theresienstadt and other concentration camps. The aim of the project is to return the books, based on personal notes, to the descendants of the original owners who did not survive the Holocaust.”
The ŠTETL FEST festival is held under the auspices of the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, the Ambassador of the State of Israel, the Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic, the Mayor of the Statutory City of Brno, the President of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic, the Governor of the South Moravian Region and the Rector of Masaryk University.
The latest edition of the exhibit Neviditelné Synagogy — Invisible Synagogues, photographs by Štěpán Bartoš. The vernissage is November 23 at 17:00.
Bartoš photographs the blank spaces in the Czech Republic where destroyed synagogues once stood and adds a ghostly silhouette of the destroyed synagogue to the exhibition photos of the places where they once stood.
On the Invisible Synagogues project web site (which is in German and Czech) you can see galleries of his photos, without the added silhouette, arranged according to region. They include sites in big cities, small towns, and tiny villages; there are fields and rural spaces as well as modern buildings, crowded city streets, and even artificial lakes.
Read our November 2021 post about his Invisible Synagogues project.
Jewish Country Houses and the Holocaust In History and Memory
This conference will investigate the fate in the Holocaust of Jewish country houses and the people who inhabited them. It will explore memory cultures that emerged afterwards and the Cold War context that shaped them. The conference will address and support curatorial, artistic, and narrative practices telling the difficult stories of genocide linked to these properties. As it does so, it will bring together academic historians, heritage professionals, and artists over three days at the Methodological Centre of Modern Architecture at the Villa Stiassni in Brno, Czech Republic. The built heritage of the Villa Stiassni, visits to the nearby villas Tugendhat and Löw-Beer, and an exploration of the experiences and memories of the Czech Jewish industrialist families who inhabited and fled from them will be an integral part of the conference.
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