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 26th annual Sefer conference.
- section dedicated to the 50 anniversary of death Itsic Manger
- a section dedicated to the history and culture of Lithuanian Jews
- a section on the history and culture of the Mountain Jews
- a section dedicated to the evacuation and the first post-war years
- section “between the earthly and the divine: images, technology and Kabbalah in modern times”
- Section “Romania, Romania, Romania: between dream and reality of the first half of the XX century”
The conference will highlight issues related to the peculiarities of the organization of field research and work in modern Jewish communities of the post-Soviet space.
Organizers: Jewish Museum and tolerance center, Center of Slavic -Jewish Studies Of the Institute of Slavic studies RAS, Center “Sefer”
Venue: Jewish Museum and tolerance center; Institute of Slavic studies, 32 A Leninsky Prospekt, building B, auditorium 901
The specificity of the “Jewish” field will be discussed, and a review of new research in the field of Jewish archaeology, anthropology, folklore, linguistics, sociology and epigraphy will be held.
We will talk about the results of the summer season 2019, prospects and plans for new research.
At the end of the conference, participants will present new collections of articles and monographs based on field materials of recent years.
Entrance to the conference is strictly by registration.
If you have questions, contact sefer@sefer.ru
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
Center “Sefer” in cooperation with the Center for Slavic-Jewish studies the Institute of Slavic studies organizes the Twenty-seventh international conference on Jewish studies to be held in Moscow, 31 January – 2 February 2021
The conference program is expected to include sections reflecting traditional areas of Judaism (biblical and Talmudic studies, Jewish thought, Jewish history of different periods, Judeo-Christian relations, the Holocaust, Israeli studies, languages and literature, art, Ethnology, demography, genealogy, museums and archives, etc.). Topics that allow for an interdisciplinary approach to research are welcome. Reports of graduate students and young researchers, as shown by the positive experience of the past few years, are included in the youth panels of the conference with the participation of specially invited debaters.
If you wish to propose a panel, please send its description in English and Russian to sefer@sefer.ru.
Graduate students and young researchers are invited to take part in the youth panels of the conference, moderated by the leading specialists in their fields of study.
Presentation of last year publications on Jewish studies will also take place.
Please complete the online application form not later than October 1, 2020
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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