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.
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.
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
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.
Jewish Museum of Rome
(Chief Rabbi of the Jewish Community of Rome), Ruth Dureghello
(President of the Jewish Community of Rome)
Museum of Rome): Introduction
“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)
Basilicas and Ancient Synagogues: Interreligious Dynamics in Architecture
for Worship
The orientation of Galilean synagogues, fourth to sixth centuries
Tempio Maggiore di Roma e le sue tipologie architettoniche di riferimento
(The Great Synagogue of Rome and its architectural typologies of
reference)
Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea
of the Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemoporanea, Rome)
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)
UOB, Université de Balamand):Tripoli-Liban-Nord, Patrimoine religieux
complexe (Tripoli -Lebanon-North, complexreligious heritage)
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)
between Christians and Muslimsin 13th century Armenia: evidence from
ornament and inscriptions
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)
Riflessioni su arte e devozioni interreligiose nel Mediterraneo medievale
(Mary of the Miḥrāb: reflections on interreligious art and devotions in
the medieval Mediterranean Sea)
in Spagna nell ́età moderna (Cathedrals and relics in Spain in the
Modern Age)
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)
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)
Synagogues of the Jewish “Reform movements” from the late 18th
century
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 one-day conference will also include the inauguration of the Austria Jewish book store (run by Wojtek and Malgosia Ornat who run the Austeria Jewish publishing house and book store in Krakow) and also the unveiling of a plaque on the mikveh recognising the AEPJ’s Route of Jewish heritage.
See program:
A celebratory event marks the 20th anniversary of the little Jewish Museum, located in the synagogue complex in the hill town of Pitigliano in southern Tuscany.
This year also marks the 400th anniversary of the imposition of a ghetto in Pitigliano.
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.
The Centre for Religion and Heritage of the University of Groningen will host a half-day public symposium to launch the Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Heritage in Contemporary Europe. This event will also inaugurate a new European project on minority religious heritage.
The event takes place in person and also online. Click HERE to register
The organizers state:
The Handbook provides a state-of-the-art guide by leading international scholars, policy makers and heritage practitioners. With 46 chapters, we cannot address all the contributions, thus we have chosen to concentrate on those which examine how religious communities are using their rich heritage to make new meanings for themselves in Europe. Our focus will be on Jewish, Muslim and Christian heritage. We want to think together about the challenges facing these communities, as they grapple with being Jewish or Muslim minorities in a historically Christian landscape, or with being a minority of practicing Christians in the highly secularized society, such as that of Northern Netherlands. Reflecting on these questions together with our Handbook authors will aid the start of a new project in the Erasmus Plus program called European Pathways to Minority Religious Heritage (Miretage). Over three years we are exploring how minority religious heritage can be taught as a co-creative activity between heritage institutions, creative organizations and minority communities. On hand to participate in the symposium are partners from Storytelling Center Amsterdam, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Moslim Archief Rotterdam, KU Leuven, Future for Religious
Click here to see the program for the January 23 event
For Italian speakers — a meeting with architect and historian Andrea Morpurgo who last year curated a major exhibition on synagogues and Jewish cemeteries at the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah in Ferrara.
You can attend in person or via streaming:
In presenza:
Biblioteca Nazionale dell’Ebraismo Italiano “Tullia Zevi” – Lungotevere Sanzio 5, Roma
In streaming:
Facebook e YouTube della Fondazione per i Beni Culturali Ebraici in Italia
Webtv dell’Unione delle Comunità Ebraiche Italiane
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