Jewish Heritage Europe

Calendar

Jan
26
Sun
Holocaust and Memory. @ Jewish Museum London
Jan 26 @ 14:45 – 17:00
Holocaust and Memory. @ Jewish Museum London | England | United Kingdom

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.

Mar
30
Mon
Iconography of Subotica synagogue @ Jewish University/Rabbinical Seminary Budapest
Mar 30 @ 18:00 – 19:30
Iconography of Subotica synagogue @ Jewish University/Rabbinical Seminary Budapest | Budapest | Hungary

A talk by by László Márk Negyela on the iconography of the art nouveau synagogue in Subotica, Serbia, designed by the Hungarian architects Komor and Jakab. (In Hungarian)

Apr
21
Tue
History of Synagogue Music in London @ London
Apr 21 @ 18:00 – 19:00
History of Synagogue Music in London @ London | England | United Kingdom

This lecture by Cantor Eliot Alderman will consider some of the main musical developments since then, beginning with the Sephardi and Ashkenazi synagogues which stood practically side-by-side in the City of London for 250 years. He will examine the birth of the Anglo-Jewish choral tradition, the split with the Reform movement and its musical consequences, and the new music brought more recently by immigrants from Eastern Europe and Arab lands.

No reservations are required for this lecture. It will be run on a ‘first come, first served’ basis.
Doors will open 30 minutes before the start of the lecture 

Oct
18
Sun
Hidden Treasures from the UK’s Synagogues @ webinar
Oct 18 @ 18:00 – 19:00

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.

Feb
23
Tue
Legacy of the Shtetl: Investigating Polish-Belarusian-Ukrainian Borderlands @ Online Zoom event
Feb 23 @ 18:00 – 19:00
Legacy of the Shtetl: Investigating Polish-Belarusian-Ukrainian Borderlands @ Online Zoom event | Bentonville | Arkansas | United States
The Legacy of the Shtetl: Investigating Polish-Belarusian-Ukrainian Borderlands
with Dr Magdalena Waligórska, and Dr Natalia Romik, respondent, and with Prof François Guesnet, Chair 
 
Co-organized by the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies and  the UCL Institute of Jewish Studies
 
Magdalena Waligórska takes us on a journey to the post-1945 Polish-Ukrainian-Belorusian borderlands where she explores small towns which had a predominantly Jewish population before the Second World War and the Holocaust. Here, Jewish property both entirely fell under the control of the new ethnic majority and remained a “disinherited heritage” that continues to cause dissonance and psychological discomfort to its current “heirs.”
 
The unsettling presence of Jewish ruins, resurfacing human remains, walled-in objects, collapsing cellars, and the recycled tombstones constitutes an “intrusion of the past into the present” that, decades after the war, still demands action and results in different local responses.
 
The respondent, Natalia Romik, is an artist, urban historian, and architect from Warsaw who has undertaken similar but different explorations of the Jewish heritage in small Polish towns.
 
Apr
20
Tue
“Judapest”: Austria-Hungary and its Jews at the Fin-de-Siècle @ Online Zoom event
Apr 20 @ 18:00 – 19:30
"Judapest": Austria-Hungary and its Jews at the Fin-de-Siècle @ Online Zoom event

Lecture by Michael Miller, of CEU

Budapest is sometimes called the “Paris of the East,” but in the 1890s, it acquired a new, less flattering nickname: “Judapest.” Karl Lueger, the antisemitic mayor of Vienna – who hated Hungarians more than he hated Jews – is often credited with coining this derogatory nickname for a city that he thought had become more “Jewish” than “Hungarian.”  Budapest was Europe’s fastest-growing city at the time, with a flurry of cultural and commercial activity that fascinated — and sometimes appalled — contemporary residents and visitors. This talk will examine the image of Budapest in the decades before and after the First World War, exploring the ways in which Hungary’s capital city was imagined by Jews and non-Jews alike as a quintessentially Jewish metropolis.

The evening will be chaired by Professor Mark E. Smith, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton. It will be hosted by Professor Mark Cornwall (University of Southampton, Parkes Institute)

The event will be held on Zoom. Please register by Monday 19th April 16:00 here:

https://www.southampton.ac.uk/parkes/news/events/2021/04/20-parkes-lecture-2021.page

Speaker biography: Michael L. Miller is Associate Professor in the Nationalism Studies Program at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, and co-founder of the university’s Jewish Studies program. He received his PhD in History from Columbia University, where he specialized in Jewish and Central European History. Michael’s research focuses on the impact of nationality conflicts on the religious, cultural, and political development of Central European Jewry in the long nineteenth century. His articles have appeared in Slavic Review, Austrian History Yearbook, Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, Múlt és Jövő , The Jewish Quarterly Review and AJS Review. Miller’s book, Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation, was published by Stanford University Press in 2011. It appeared in Czech translation as Moravští Židé v době emancipace (Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2015). He is currently working on a history of Hungarian Jewry, titled Manovill: A Tale of Two Hungarys.

May
21
Sun
Licoricia of Winchester: Heritage and Memory of Medieval Anglo Jewry @ The Arc, Winchester
May 21 @ 13:30 – 14:30
Licoricia of Winchester: Heritage and Memory of Medieval Anglo Jewry @ The Arc, Winchester | England | United Kingdom

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

Click here to read an April 2017  JHE Have Your Say essay about invisible medieval Jewish heritage by one of the Roundtable speakers, Dr. Toni Griffiths

 

Dec
4
Mon
History and Residents of Willesden Jewish cemetery, London @ online
Dec 4 @ 19:00 – 20:00
History and Residents of Willesden Jewish cemetery, London @ online

Barnet Libraries presents: The History and Residents of Willesden Jewish Cemetery.

The cemetery is a designated Heritage Site and celebrated its 150th anniversary in June this year.

Many of the people who are buried there were prominent in the fields of industry, commerce, science and the arts.

It is hoped that this talk will be a catalyst to people visiting the grounds and seeing the work delivered by the cemetery’s small team and dedicated volunteers.

 

Feb
18
Sun
Open Day Merthyr Tydfil @ Theatre Soar, Merthyr Tydfil
Feb 18 @ 10:00 – 15:30
Open Day Merthyr Tydfil @ Theatre Soar, Merthyr Tydfil | Wales | United Kingdom

Open Day to share plans for Welsh Jewish Heritage Centre in Merthyr Tydfil.

The public is invited to explore Merthyr Tydfil’s historic synagogue and help shape plans to create a Welsh Jewish Heritage Centre.

There will be tours of the synagogue throughout the day, along with music from a Welsh klezmer band and a talk on the history of Merthyr’s once-thriving
Jewish community.

The project team will be on hand to find out what local people think of the plans for the future of the building, and record their memories of its past life.

Merthyr Tydfil Synagogue was built in the 1870s and is the oldest purpose-built synagogue surviving in Wales. After the congregation left in 1983, its condition deteriorated. The Foundation for Jewish Heritage purchased it in 2019 and the Prince of Wales, now King Charles III, visited in 2021. The following year, the Foundation secured funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Welsh government and Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council to develop the plans.

 

Mar
20
Wed
Journeys to Treblinka @ Holocaust Centre North Huddersfield, and online
Mar 20 @ 17:00 – 18:00

Since 2007, forensic archaeological investigations have revealed new evidence of the crimes undertaken at the notorious Treblinka Extermination Camp in Poland.

In this talk, Professor Caroline Sturdy Colls will outline some of the key findings of this research and discuss the ways they have inspired Holocaust survivors and their descendants based in the UK to undertake their own journeys to commemorate their loved ones.

Professor Caroline Sturdy Colls’ pioneering research focuses on the application of interdisciplinary approaches to the investigation of Holocaust landscapes. She conducted the first forensic archaeological investigations at Treblinka Extermination and Labour Camps, the results of which will be presented in her forthcoming book Finding Treblinka. She is also the author of several other books including Holocaust Archaeologies: Approaches and Future Directions (2015), the Handbook on Missing Persons (2016) and ‘Adolf Island: The Nazi Occupation of Alderney (2022).

 

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