Jewish Heritage Europe

Calendar

May
26
Sun
Inheritance Day @ Willesden Jewish Cemetery
May 26 @ 10:00 – 15:00
Inheritance Day @ Willesden Jewish Cemetery | England | United Kingdom

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.

Sep
19
Thu
Romaniote Memories – a Jewish Journey from Ioannina, Greece to Manhattan @ Greek Consulate in New York
Sep 19 @ 18:00 – Oct 3 @ 19:00
Romaniote Memories - a Jewish Journey from Ioannina, Greece to Manhattan @ Greek Consulate in New York | New York | New York | United States

Exhibition of Photographs by Vincent Giordano.

The photographs are part of a multi-media archive, created by Giordano, who died in 2010, that was sponsored by International Survey of Jewish Monuments and in 2019 will find a new home at the Hellenic American Project and Special Collections at the Library of Queens College, New York.

Giordano’s photographs document two related communities of Greek Romaniote Jews – in Ioannina, in northwestern Greece and on Broome Street on New York’s Lower East Side. Romaniote Jews trace their religious and cultural heritage to the Judaism of the ancient Greco-Roman world two-thousand years ago, and these two tiny congregations are among the few remaining to follow these traditions. Romaniotes have their own liturgy and cultural traditions, as well as their own language, a dialect of Greek that combines words and phrases from Hebrew and Turkish. This luminous black and white photo essay includes a poignant exploration of liturgy and ritual, conveying how people engage with religious space and carry on their time-honored sacred traditions.

The exhibition will open on Thursday, September 19th , 2019 at 6:00 p.m. it will continue through October 3rd, 2019. 

A panel discussion by experts will take place at the Consulate on Wednesday, September 25th, 2019 at 6:00 p.m.

 

Sep
26
Thu
Romaniote Memories @ Greek Consulate in New York
Sep 26 @ 18:00 – 19:30
Romaniote Memories @ Greek Consulate in New York | New York | New York | United States

Lecture and panel discussion about Romaniote Jews, linked to the exhibition “Romaniote Memories – A Jewish Journey from Ioannina, Greece to Manhattan: Photographs by Vincent Giordano.”

 

 

 

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.

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.
 
Nov
27
Sat
Extermination – Great Synagogue Grodno @ online - zoom, and on-site
Nov 27 @ 18:00 – 20:30
Extermination - Great Synagogue Grodno @ online - zoom, and on-site | Vilnius | Vilniaus apskritis | Lithuania

European Humanities University (EHU) and the Center for Belarusian Community and Culture in Vilnius will host a premiere presentation of “Extermination” — an audiovisual installation about the Great Synagogue of Grodno, which was constructed in the 16th century and was rebuilt many times after devastating fires. 

Kseniya Shtalenkova (lecturer in the Academic Department of Humanities and Arts at EHU, Philosophy PhD candidate) is the project curator and Viktoryia Bahdanovich (fourth-year student of the BA program in Visual Design) is the project production designer and executive producer.

 The “Extermination” audiovisual installation is a monologue on the history of the place as well as an individual experience of a person in time and space.

The installation has been created as a part of the project on “Preservation and Actualization of Former Synagogues in Belarus for the Benefit of Local Communities” by Stsiapan Stureika, Professor of Humanities and Arts at EHU. Project research conducted for the work on the installation was conducted with the participation of EHU students.

The presentation will be delivered in Russian with subtitles in English. 

Register by November 26.

Click here to register on Zoom (or for in-person attendance)

The event will be also streamed online via EHU’s Facebook page.

NOTE: you can attend the event physically at the Belarusian House (Vilniaus g. 20) by pre-registration at the same link to register on Zoom

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

 

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