Secularization and immigration are changing the religious makeup of European societies. While more people identify as non-religious, new arrivals and conversion mean that the religious landscape is becoming increasingly more complex. This presents challenges and opportunities to organizations, government agencies and scholars engaged with maintaining and promoting cultural heritage. How should Europe’s plural religious pasts be represented? How can heritage be translated for audiences that do not identify with local religious traditions? What challenges and chances lie in the process of secularization? Can or should heritage organizations foster dialogue between groups in multi-religious societies? These pressing questions are at the heart of the conference “Religious Heritage in a Diverse Europe.”
In order to explore answers to these questions, the conference will bring into conversation scholars, museum curators, heritage professionals, visual artists, as well as leaders of religious and secular organizations.
The Centre for Religion and Heritage at the University of Groningen has long provided expertise and training in heritage studies. They have teamed up with two of the most important national heritage organizations: the Museum Catharijneconvent, which is the national Dutch museum for Christian heritage and history, and the Jewish Cultural Quarter, which runs the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam. Our partner on the European level is Future of Religious Heritage, the Brussels-based network for historic places of worship.
The opening of a photo exhibition by Rudolf Klein that presents a brief survey of synagogues converted into museums and galleries in Hungary, Austria, Bosnia‐Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia. The exhibit runs until January 16, 2020.
The opening includes talks (in English) by Klein, Polish researcher Natalia Romik, and Professor Thomas Gergely.
Prior registration is required. Click here
The event is organized in collaboration with the Great Synagogue of Europe, the Balassi Institute, the Polish Institute and the Austrian Cultural Forum.
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
The Symposium on Swedish Synagogue Architecture (1795–1870) and the Cultural Milieu of the Early Jewish Immigrants to Sweden will take place on Zoom, on April 19, 2021.
It is organized by the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University, the University of Potsdam, and the Institute of Jewish Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, with the support of the Stockholm Jewish Museum.
To attend, click this link to register:
The opening presentation will be of particular interest, an overview by Daniel Leviathan of his PhD dissertation project, “Jewish Sacred Architecture in the Nordic Countries 1684-1939.”
Besides Leviathan, speakers will include Vladimir Levin and Sergey Kravtsov, of the Center for Jewish Art in Jerusalem; Ilia Rodov of Bar Ilan University; Maja Hultman, of the Centre for European Research and Department of Historical Studies at University of Gothenburg Centre for Business History in Stockholm; Mirko Przystawik, of Bet Tfila – Research Unit for Jewish Architecture in Europe, Technische Universität Braunschweig; Yael Fried, of The Jewish Museum of Stockholm; and Carl Henrik Carlsson, of The Hugo Valentin Centre, Department of History, Uppsala University.
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
The annual “Open Jewish Homes” Holocaust commemoration event in more than a dozen towns and cities in the Netherlands.
Small-scale, locally organized commemorative events takes place in homes where Jews (or members of the resistance) lived before, during, or just after World War II.
The web site states:
The focus is on Jewish life in these houses before, during and immediately after the war. History comes to life during Open Jewish Homes. Direct witnesses, descendants and connoisseurs tell stories about persecution, resistance and liberation on the basis of photographs, films, diary fragments, poems, literature and music. […]
The Jewish Cultural Quarter organised in 2012 the first edition of Open Jewish Homes in Amsterdam. Since then local work groups have been organising Open Jewish Homes in various other cities in the country as well. Everyone is free to initiate Open Jewish Homes in his or her place of residence.
Open Jewish Homes was conceived as a way to engage “in real life” with the interactive Digital Monument to the Jewish Community in the Netherlands, which personalizes the more than 104,000 victims of Holocaust in the Netherlands. Every victim has a personal page — with their home address as well as photos and other material.
Click here to see the program in the various locations
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:
The annual “Open Jewish Houses/Houses of Resistance” commemorative program takes place in a score of towns and cities around the Netherlands.
Storytellers, visitors and residents share stories in houses where Jews or members of the resistance lived and worked before, during and just after the Second World War.
This international conference aims to explore the Jewish experience in Sommerfrische (Summer holiday) destinations, summer resorts, and spas, focusing on the particular urban processes that led to their emergence and the factors that transformed them into spaces of possibility in a rural or small-town context.
JHE’s Ruth Ellen Gruber will speak about “Those Who Stayed (and One Who Came Back” about Jewish cemeteries in health resort towns, focusing on Merano/Merano, Italy.
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