As part of its “House of Life” project to open the cemetery to the public, nine families will be coming to the historic Willesden Jewish cemetery on May 26 to tell stories of people buried there.
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.
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.
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
A live online event to discuss and display photo collections and other “hidden treasures” from the archives of synagogues in the UK.
- Professor David Newman – Ben Gurion University
- Rachel Lichtenstein – Sandys Row synagogue and Manchester Metropolitan University
- Lizzy Baker – Tyne and Wear Archives
The event can be watched live on Hidden Treasures web site or on HT’s Facebook and Twitter pages. The discussion will be recorded and will be available to watch on the HT web site after the event.
The feature picture shows the opening of Hull Central Synagogue, Cogan Street • Hull History Centre.
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.
A round-table discussion, plus optional walking tours through the “invisible” medieval Jewish history of Winchester. The Roundtable is free, the walking tours — at 10:30-11:30am or 11:30-12:30pm, cost £5.
The event event focuses on Licoricia of Winchester and the heritage and memory of medieval Anglo-Jewry.
The bronze statue of the remarkable Anglo-Jewish woman, Licoricia, was unveiled in Winchester in 2021. This is the most prominent heritage work carried out relating to medieval Anglo- Jewry.
The event, through a walking tour (£5) and free round table discussion, will consider the achievements of the Licoricia project, and the challenges of creating heritage in the absence of the built heritage that directly reflects the presence of medieval Winchester Jewry. It will also consider the public and educational issues raised when dealing with questions such as the Jewish role in medieval finance and hostile representations of Jews from the period based on religious bigotry. Addressing the key aims of the Licoricia project, participants will explore the potential of such commemoration to consider the roots of prejudice and discrimination, using this to promote tolerance, diversity, and female empowerment.
Please note that if you wish to attend both the walking tour and the roundtable event, you will need to register for each event separately.
Click here for booking and other details
Photo exhibition by Rudolf Klein, author of the book Metropolitan Jewish Cemeteries — which will be presented at the opening.
The opening takes place February 21, at 7 p.m.
There will be speeches by Klein and others.
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