In the Synagogue is a short film by young Ukrainian director Ivan Orlenko based on an unfinished story by Franz Kafka. One of few works by Kafka to deal with Jewish culture overtly, the story describes a strange vision of a beast that a Jewish boy experiences while praying in a synagogue, a metaphor which could be interpreted in several ways. Young Ukrainian director Ivan Orlenko has adapted Kafka’s fragment into a 30-minute film, shot entirely in Yiddish, and transposed its action to a synagogue in western Ukraine.
The screening will be preceded by a talk by Dr Uilleam Blacker of UCL SSEES on the ways in which the rich Jewish cultural heritage of Ukraine is remembered and reimagined in the country today, and the challenges which this process of recovery faces.
The screening will be followed by a discussion with the director.
The event is co-organised by Ukrainian Institute, London and UCL SSEES, with the support of the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter.
The 2nd International Workshop on Jewish Heritage organized by the Parkes Institute is following on from the 2016 workshop themed around ‘Jewish Heritage and Its Communities’. That workshop brought together academics, museum staff and grassroots activists from all over Europe. Excellent presentations covered a wide range of topics, from Judaica collecting in St Petersburg to audience expectations at the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow and the innovative use of churches in the UK and stimulated animated discussions. Yet many aspects of community-relations could only be briefly addressed and that is why another conference has been organized. This event will focus more specifically on museums and communities and take place at the Jewish Museum London.
Museums entertain multiple relationships with communities, be they volunteers, sponsors, visitors and other users, but also with the people in their immediate neighbourhoods and the wider society. They all have their own agendas and interests, which can come into conflict with each other. Many of these issues pertain to all museums, but Jewish museums are also confronted with specific challenges. An important particularity is that many Jewish museums in Europe have been established over the last three decades in places with hardly any Jewish communities left. Yet, most of them reach beyond the Jewish communities and try to speak both to Jewish and non-Jewish audiences.
The aim of the workshop is to foster dialogue across nations and between practitioners, researchers, and those who work for museums, in a professional or voluntary capacity. There is scope for forging closer links between these agents who work in the same sector but lack joint forums for debate. The last workshop has led to a couple of working partnerships and we hope that the same will happen again next time. The event will also be an opportunity for participants to showcase their most recent research and museum projects and to network internationally.
Your place on the conference can be booked via the online store here.
A never before seen showcase of the heritage of Willesden Jewish Cemetery, London’s preeminent Victorian Jewish Cemetery, established in 1873.
The House of Life Exhibition previews new displays of the cemetery’s rich history, ahead of its opening to the wider public in 2020.
The exhibition introduces visitors to the lives of selected individuals buried there, describes the Jewish approach to death and mourning, and gives a glimpse of the the cemetery buildings and landscape.
The displays further invite us all to reflect on the people we have lost and how we like to remember them.
The exhibition is presented by the United Synagogue in partnership with Brent Museum and Archives.
Researched by volunteers and designed by Philip Simpson Design, the exhibition is part of the House of Life heritage project of the United Synagogue, which is supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
A one-day Conference to Launch POLIN: Studies in Polish-Jewry
Vol. 32: ‘Jewish Musicians and Jewish Music-Making in Polish Lands’
Organized by the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies, and the Institute of Jewish Studies, UCL.
Co-organized and supported by the Embassy of the Republic of Poland, and the Polish Cultural Institute, London, with the support of Ślipaczek Chartered Financial Planners
The astounding variety of music of all genres and styles produced by musicians of Jewish heritage in Europe since 1750 has been examined almost entirely in the context of German-speaking Europe or in studies of a group of composers who strongly self-identified as Jews.
In five thematic sections, this multi-disciplinary volume presents rich coverage of the main genres produced by musicians of Jewish origin in the Polish lands: Cantorial and Religious Music, Jews in Polish Popular Culture, Jews in the Polish classical music scene, The Holocaust reflected in Jewish music, and Klezmer in Poland today. This volume explores the activities and great creativity of musicians of the ‘Mosaic persuasion’, covering the area of the Polish-Lithunanian Commonwealth and its successor states from 1750 to the present.
The conference will look at Cantorial Music, Jews and Polish popular culture, and Klezmer in Poland today. And there will be music!
‘POLIN Vol. 32’ is published by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilisation/Liverpool University Press.
Volume Editors: François Guesnet, Benjamin Matis, and Antony Polonsky.
Dr Sofiya Dyak, Nikita Kadan and Professor Philippe Sands discuss the evolution of the practices of Holocaust remembrance and its public discourse in Ukraine: How are these tragic events remembered across different communities and why? How to deal with histories of lands subjected to multiple occupations and mass murder across communities? How to write a historic narrative for the country, which is still in a state of war?
This event is part of Holocaust Memorial Day.
Dr Sofiya Dyak is the Director of the Lviv Centre of Urban History, a private institution which initiated a number of important initiatives commemorating Jewish community presence in Lviv in partnership with Lviv’s municipality, including the Space of Synagogues memorial. In 2017, the centre hosted the “Un-named” project, reflecting on mass violence in Ukraine between 1931 and 1945. The project included visual work by Nikita Kadan, Ukraine’s contemporary artist. Similarly, Professor Philippe Sands traced his family history back to Lviv, with the city becoming the focus of much of his literary work and intellectual reflection.
Experts from Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Great Britain will meet for a Herrenhausen Symposium at Herrenhausen Palace in Hanover to discuss the issue of reusing church buildings from a European comparative view. The intention is to develop new perspectives.
See details and program at web site
Willesden Jewish Cemetery reopens as multifaceted place of public heritage — the House of Life: an example of how Jewish cemeteries can be integrated into tourism while respecting the sanctity of the place
If offers guided tours, lectures, an exhibit in a new visitors’ center, and other public programming.
It respects its sanctity as a burial site but enables visitors to explore Jewish history and heritage, as well as learn about the lives of the many Jewish personalities buried there and engage with issues related to death, funeral traditions, and funerary art.
See cemetery web site for more details — http://www.willesdenjewishcemetery.org.uk
Click to read our article about it
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
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 conference of the International Association of Jewish Genealogy Societies takes place this year in London.
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