Jewish Heritage Europe

Calendar

Aug
24
Tue
The Great Synagogue of Vilnius – Finds from the Past and a Vision for the Future @ Both at Lithuanian Jewish Community Center and on Facebook
Aug 24 @ 18:00 – 19:00
The Great Synagogue of Vilnius – Finds from the Past and a Vision for the Future @ Both at Lithuanian Jewish Community Center and on Facebook | Vilnius | Vilniaus apskritis | Lithuania
Lecture by Dr. Jon Seligman – Archaeologist and the Director of the Excavations, Surveys and Research Department of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Since August 9 team of archaeologists with led by Dr. Seligman continues the works of previous excavation seasons of Vilnius Great Synagogue and this August plan to fully expose the remainder of the Bimah, the Torah Ark/Aron Kodesh, the floor and the southeastern and northwestern walls of the synagogue.

The lecture will be in English.

Place: Lithuanian Jewish community, Pylimo str. 4., III floor.

The project is partially financed by the Good Will Foundation.

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/s/i-the-great-synagogue-of-vilni/267447701552421/

Sep
26
Sun
I-Tal-Ya Jewish books presentation @ Meis museum (and online streaming)
Sep 26 @ 11:30 – 12:30
I-Tal-Ya Jewish books presentation @ Meis museum (and online streaming) | Ferrara | Emilia-Romagna | Italy

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.

 

Oct
10
Sun
Zoymen 2021 @ Online
Oct 10 all-day
Zoymen 2021 @ Online

An online conference on two Sundays about Jewish identity and cultural heritage in Belarus, organized by TheTogether Plan within the context of the European Days of Jewish Culture. The Together Plan is engaged in various Jewish communal, heritage, and identity projects in Belarus, including organising a Jewish heritage route.

It calls Belarus “the unexplored and unknown root of modern day Ashkenazi Jewry.”

The conference “will be exploring hidden history, overcoming severe challenges and taking a look at modern day solutions.”

Click here to register, buy ticket, and see program

 

Oct
17
Sun
Zoymen 2021 @ Online
Oct 17 all-day
Zoymen 2021 @ Online

An online conference on two Sundays about Jewish identity and cultural heritage in Belarus, organized by TheTogether Plan within the context of the European Days of Jewish Culture. The Together Plan is engaged in various Jewish communal, heritage, and identity projects in Belarus, including organising a Jewish heritage route.

It calls Belarus “the unexplored and unknown root of modern day Ashkenazi Jewry.”

The conference “will be exploring hidden history, overcoming severe challenges and taking a look at modern day solutions.”

Click here to register, buy ticket, and see program

 

Oct
18
Mon
A World Beyond: Jewish Cemeteries in Turkey 1583-1990 @ online
Oct 18 @ 16:00 – 19:30
A World Beyond: Jewish Cemeteries in Turkey 1583-1990 @ online

An international conference to 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.

Oct
28
Thu
La sinagoga di Ostia: 60 anni dalla scoperta, 20 anni di Arte in Memoria @ Ostia, Italy
Oct 28 all-day
La sinagoga di Ostia: 60 anni dalla scoperta, 20 anni di Arte in Memoria @ Ostia, Italy | Lazio | Italy

JHE’s Ruth Ellen Gruber will be one of the speakers at this day-long international conference held to mark the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the ruins of the synagogue in the ancient Roman port of Ostia Antica — a discovery made during construction of a highway to Rome’s Fiumicino airport — and the 20th anniversary of the Art in Memory Cultural Association, which every two years organizes a biennale of contemporary art in the synagogue ruins.

Some conference talks will be in English; most will be in Italian. A Green Pass (proof of COVID vaccination) is required to attend the conference.

Click here to see the conference program

Info in italiano (dal sito del Goethe Institut):

Nel 1961, nel corso dei lavori per la costruzione dell’autostrada di Fiumicino, sono stati rinvenuti i resti della antichissima Sinagoga di Ostia antica, parte dell’insediamento archeologico romano, la cui datazione è ancora controversa ma che costituisce certamente, con l’eccezione di quella di Delo, la più antica sinagoga dell’occidente mediterraneo e forse della Diaspora. L’intervento tempestivo dell’allora Soprintendente Anton Luigi Pietrogrande e di Maria Floriani Squarciapino ha determinato la deviazione della strada per Fiumicino, dunque la salvaguardia della Sinagoga, che è stata prontamente restaurata. La stessa Soprintendenza ha avuto il merito di dare immediatamente alla scoperta un rilievo internazionale.

Dalla fine degli anni Novanta, in concomitanza con una violenta ondata di antisemitismo che ha accompagnato la caduta del Muro di Berlino, alcune tra le poche Sinagoghe europee sopravvissute hanno riaperto i battenti come centri per l’arte contemporanea. La prima è stata quella Stommeln in provincia di Colonia. Su quel modello, dal 2002 la Sinagoga di Ostia antica ospita la biennale di arte contemporanea “Arte in Memoria”, curata da Adachiara Zevi, organizzata dall’Associazione Arte in Memoria, che ogni due anni invita artisti da tutto il mondo a creare un lavoro originale per il luogo.

La direzione del Parco Archeologico di Ostia Antica e l’Associazione “Arte in Memoria”, intendono ricordare i 60 anni dal ritrovamento della Sinagoga con un convegno internazionale, al quale parteciperà anche l’artista tedesco Mischa Kuball, da tenersi all’interno del Parco Archeologico.
 

Nov
27
Sat
Extermination – Great Synagogue Grodno @ online - zoom, and on-site
Nov 27 @ 18:00 – 20:30
Extermination - Great Synagogue Grodno @ online - zoom, and on-site | Vilnius | Vilniaus apskritis | Lithuania

European Humanities University (EHU) and the Center for Belarusian Community and Culture in Vilnius will host a premiere presentation of “Extermination” — an audiovisual installation about the Great Synagogue of Grodno, which was constructed in the 16th century and was rebuilt many times after devastating fires. 

Kseniya Shtalenkova (lecturer in the Academic Department of Humanities and Arts at EHU, Philosophy PhD candidate) is the project curator and Viktoryia Bahdanovich (fourth-year student of the BA program in Visual Design) is the project production designer and executive producer.

 The “Extermination” audiovisual installation is a monologue on the history of the place as well as an individual experience of a person in time and space.

The installation has been created as a part of the project on “Preservation and Actualization of Former Synagogues in Belarus for the Benefit of Local Communities” by Stsiapan Stureika, Professor of Humanities and Arts at EHU. Project research conducted for the work on the installation was conducted with the participation of EHU students.

The presentation will be delivered in Russian with subtitles in English. 

Register by November 26.

Click here to register on Zoom (or for in-person attendance)

The event will be also streamed online via EHU’s Facebook page.

NOTE: you can attend the event physically at the Belarusian House (Vilniaus g. 20) by pre-registration at the same link to register on Zoom

Apr
1
Fri
Sharing the Catacombs @ Online and in person at the Swiss Institute
Apr 1 @ 17:00 – 19:30

Sharing the catacombs. Religious interactions in funeral spaces of Rome, 3rd-4th centuries CE

A round-table of interational scholars, in Italian and English, about Jewish and Christian catacombs in Rome.

To register for Zoom attendance, go to https://www.istitutosvizzero.it/it/tavola-rotonda/19933/

Program:

H17:00-17:15 – Caroline Bridel, Introduzione

H17:15-17:45 – Giandomenico Spinola (Musei Vaticani), La necropoli vaticana della via Triumphalis: tra religione e superstizione

H17:45-18:15 – Giancarlo Lacerenza (Università di Napoli L’Orientale), Ebraico e aramaico negli epitaffi delle catacombe ebraiche di Roma: segni di plurilinguismo o marcatori identitari?  

H18:15-18:30 – Pausa

H18:30-19:00 – Norbert Zimmermann (Deutsche Archäologisches Institut), Space, tombs, images: Experiencing Christian Catacombs of Rome

H19:00-19:30 – Discussione moderata da Caroline Bridel

Apr
4
Mon
Synagogue-Church-Mosque @ Online and In Person
Apr 4 @ 15:30 – Apr 5 @ 19:00
Synagogue-Church-Mosque @ Online and In Person
Monday 4 aprile 2022 at 15.00
Location — Rome Jewish Museum, Via Catalana – Synagogue, Rome
 
Tuesday 5 aprile 2022 at 9.00
Location — Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea – Via Michelangelo Caetani 32, Rome
 
RSVP at com@museoebraico.roma.it
 
The project is developed around the study of the architectural typologies of the three main monotheistic religions
and, instead of considering them as isolated phenomena as it has been generally done until now, proposes to
analyze the exchanges, contaminations, adoption of ancient prototypes and the painful and sacrilegious processes of
adaptation to the new cult. Particular attention is paid to the methods of restoration, or renovation of religious
buildings no longer in use or looted, a widespread practice that generally coincides with low-cost interventions
consisting of removing and replacing the images, as well as changing the ornaments and possibly the furniture. In
order to investigate this aspect it is necessary to highlight its trauma and subsequently to remember the desecration
of religious buildings carried out over the centuries to adapt them to the religious needs of the dominant power, and
therefore the distortion of some of their peculiar characteristics, and what was destroyed and what was maintained.
 
Monday, April 4th, 2022
Jewish Museum of Rome
3:00 PM Registration
3:45 PM Institutional greetings: Rav Riccardo Shmuel Di Segni
(Chief Rabbi of the Jewish Community of Rome), Ruth Dureghello
(President of the Jewish Community of Rome)
4:00 PM Sabine Frommel (EPHE-PSL, Paris), Olga Melasecchi (Jewish
Museum of Rome): Introduction
4:15 PM Alessandro Saggioro (Università di Roma La Sapienza): Dalla
“memoria” al “trauma”: il potere politico e la profanazione degli edifici
religiosi (From “memory” to “trauma”: the political power and the
desecration of religious buildings)
5:00 PM Coffee break
5:15 PM Sible de Blaauw (Radboud University di Nijmegen): Early Christian
Basilicas and Ancient Synagogues: Interreligious Dynamics in Architecture
for Worship
6:00 PM Bianca Kühnel (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem):
The orientation of Galilean synagogues, fourth to sixth centuries
6:45 PM Sergio Amedeo Terracina (Jewish Community of Rome): Il
Tempio Maggiore di Roma e le sue tipologie architettoniche di riferimento
(The Great Synagogue of Rome and its architectural typologies of
reference)
7:30 PM End of session
Tuesday, April 5th, 2022
Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea
9:00 AM Registration
9:15 AM Institutional greetings: Patrizia Rusciani (Director
of the Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemoporanea, Rome)
9:30 AM Andrea Morpurgo (Fondazione per i Beni Culturali Ebraici in
Italia): La sinagoga in Italia dal medioevo all’emancipazione: una lunga
storia di continuità tipologica, cambi di destinazione d’uso e strategie di
rinnovamento stilistico-architettonico (The synagogue in Italy from the
Middle Ages to emancipation: a long history of typological continuity,
changes of intended use and strategies of stylistic-architectural renewal)
10:15 AM Elie Abi Nassif (Académie Libanaise des Beaux Arts, Beyrouth,
UOB, Université de Balamand):Tripoli-Liban-Nord, Patrimoine religieux
complexe (Tripoli -Lebanon-North, complexreligious heritage)
11:00 AM Coffeee Break
11:15 AM Mattia Guidetti (Università di Bologna) / Yuri Alessandro
Marano (Ca’ Foscari University, Venice): Lo stato giuridico delle
sinagoghe sotto Bisanzio e delle chiese sotto l’Islam: Prospettive
comparate durante la lunga Tarda Antichità (The legal status of
synagogues under Byzantium and churches under Islam: compared
perspectives during the long Late Antiquity)
12:00 AM Ionna Rapti (EPHE-PSL, Paris):Memory, property and shrines
between Christians and Muslimsin 13th century Armenia: evidence from
ornament and inscriptions
12:45 AM Lunch break
2:00 PM Pedro Galera Andreu (University of Jaén): Contaminaciones
formales en la arquitectura de lassinagogas,catedralesy mezquitas en la
España bajomedieval (Formal contamination in the architecture of
synagogues, cathedrals and mosques in late medieval Spain)
2:45 PM Luis Rueda Galan (University of Jaén): Maria del Mihrāb:
Riflessioni su arte e devozioni interreligiose nel Mediterraneo medievale
(Mary of the Miḥrāb: reflections on interreligious art and devotions in
the medieval Mediterranean Sea)
3:30 PMFelipe Serano Estrella (University ofJaén): Cattedrali e reliquie
in Spagna nell ́età moderna (Cathedrals and relics in Spain in the
Modern Age)
4:15 PM Coffee break
4:30 PM Gianmario Guidarelli (Università di Padova): Cinque
sinagoghe e una moschea:spazicultuali non cristiani nella Venezia di Età
Moderna (Five synagogues and a mosque: non-Christian cultual spaces
in the Modern Age Venice)
5:15 PM Mathieu Lours (EPHE-PSL-Paris): Jean-Baptiste Séroux
d’Agincourt et la naissance de l’architecture gothique: un nouveau regard
vers l’architecture religieuse islamique au siècle des Lumières
(Jean-Baptiste Séroux d’Agincourt and the emergence of gothic
architecture: a new perspective on religious Islamic architecture during
the Enlightenment)
6:00 PM Alexander von Kienlin (Technische Universität München):
Synagogues of the Jewish “Reform movements” from the late 18th
century
6:45 PM General discussion and perspectives

May
23
Mon
5th World Litvak Congress @ various
May 23 – May 26 all-day
5th World Litvak Congress @ various | Lithuania

A gathering of Lithuanian Jews and descendants, which includes an academic conference, a cultural fest, guided tours to Jewish heritage in several towns and cities around the country — Vilnius, Kaunas, Panevėžys, Šeduva, Pakruojis — and more.

Click here to see the full program

Pre-registration is required by filling out the following form:

https://forms.gle/VJa9nMHaHjH4t5Lf6

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