Dr. Maroš Borský, director of the Jewish Community Museum in Bratislava, Slovakia will give an overview of the remarkable life of Jewish heritage pioneer Eurgen Bárkány, the collection he built, and its future. He will also discuss current synagogue restoration projects in Slovakia and major achievements of the past decade.
Eugen Bárkány (1885–1967) was a civil engineer and successful entrepreneur during the interwar period – and passionate collector in Eastern Slovakia. In 1928, he became a director of the Slovakia´s first Jewish museum in Prešov, which was a private initiative of the Jewish museum association, which Bárkány chaired. The museum assembled a remarkable collection, which survived the war and from 1952–1993 was stored at the State Jewish Museum in Prague, before it was returned to the Jewish Community of Prešov.
Bárkány hid in Budapest in 1942–1945 and returned to Prešov in 1945, where he was subsequently persecuted by the Communist regime, which expelled him from his city. In 1955, Bárkány settled down in Bratislava, where he lived in humble conditions. He continued his survey of Jewish heritage and travelled extensively around Slovakia. In Bratislava, Bárkány assembled another Judaica collection in the Neolog synagogue, and in 1966 a new Jewish museum was planned. This project was not fulfilled, the synagogue was demolished in 1969 and the collection deposited at the Slovak National Museum, from where it returned only in 2002. In 2012, the Jewish Community Museum was established in Bratislava´s only synagogue, which remains in use as an Orthodox house of worship. Since 2016, the Eugen Bárkány Prize has been awarded annually for achievements in Jewish heritage preservation by the Federation of Jewish Communities in Slovakia.
The Jewish Community Museum in Bratislava dedicated in 2018 and 2019 two exhibition projects to Eugen Bárkány and Slovakia´s first Jewish museum in Prešov. The precious collection has remained in the research and exhibition focus of the Museum.
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A native of Bratislava, Dr. Maroš Borský studied art history and Jewish studies in Bratislava, Regensburg, London, Jerusalem, and Heidelberg. From 2001 to 2006, Dr. Borský was the curator at the Slovak National Museum-Museum of Jewish Culture, where he founded and oversaw Synagoga Slovaca, the documentation project of synagogue architecture in Slovakia. Dr. Borský is the director of the Jewish Community Museum and Jewish Cultural Institute in Bratislava.
The sixth Jewish cultural heritage conference in Slovakia was supposed to take place in the former Neolog synagogue in Trnava, now used as an art gallery. Instead, it will be an online webinar, with presentations and the announcement of the annual Eugen Bárkány prize for 2020.
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.
Organised by the Bratislava Regional administration, the conference will mark recent developments and future plans regarding Jewish heritage in the Bratislava region, including the restoration of the synagogue in Senec and plans to restore the synagogue in Svaty Jur.
Topics will include:
- The importance of Slovak monuments in Europe
- Plans for the abandoned synagogues and cemeteries
- The story of the synagogue in Senec
- The monumental value of the synagogue in Svätý Jur
- Symbolism of tombstones in Jewish cemeteries
Click here to see the full program
The conference is organized by the Bratislava self-governing region on the occasion of 2021 European Cultural Heritage Days, with input from the SNM – Museum of Jewish Culture, the Academia Istropolitana Nova, the Monuments Office of the Slovak Republic and the Municipal Office for the Protection of Monuments in Bratislava.
A special exhibit marking the 20th anniversary of the underground complex designed by the architect Martin Kvasnica containing remnants of Bratislava’s Old Jewish Cemetery, which was destroyed in 1944, — 23 graves surrounding the Chatam Sofer’s tomb.
Rabbi Moshe Schreiber, known as the Chatam Sofer (or Chasam Sofer), was a renowned rabbi and scholar who was born in Frankfurt am Main on 26 September 1762 (7 Tishrei 5523).
Open
Friday 10:00 – 16:00
Sunday 10:00 – 16:00
The eighth annual conference dedicated to Jewish cultural heritage in Slovakia, including major projects and activities — and the people behind them.
This year, a focus will be the restoration of the synagogue in Trenčín, which is implemented with the support of the EHP Grant (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway) with co-financing from the state budget of the Slovak community and resources of the Jewish community.
The conference will be available online at https://www.facebook.com/zidianaslovensku and https://tachles.tv/
Program
This festival features concerts in the synagogues of five towns in western Romania:
The repertoire includes new compositions by the violinist and virtuoso Alexander Bălănescu, who also will perform.
PROGRAM:
Tuesday, September 5th, at 7 PM | Cetate Synagogue in Timișoara
Thursday, September 7th, at 5 PM | “Beit El” Synagogue in Caransebeș
Thursday, September 7th, at 8:30 PM | Neolog Synagogue in Lugoj
The Conference will focus on Sephardic Jews, between Messianism and Modernity
The conference gathers some 70 international researchers of Sephardic social, cultural, and art history, languages, and literature from before and after the Expulsion of 1492.
There will be papers on Jewish, Christian, and Muslim attitudes toward Jewish messianism as reflected in the scholars’ particular areas of interest. In addition, the Conference will focus on the overlooked Sephardic embracement of modernity and Virtual Sepharad’s gradual yet unwavering secularization, whether in the expanse’s south—the ex-Ottoman realms—or its northern extremities – Holland, England, and the Americas.
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