A one-day Conference to Launch POLIN: Studies in Polish-Jewry
Vol. 32: ‘Jewish Musicians and Jewish Music-Making in Polish Lands’
Organized by the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies, and the Institute of Jewish Studies, UCL.
Co-organized and supported by the Embassy of the Republic of Poland, and the Polish Cultural Institute, London, with the support of Ślipaczek Chartered Financial Planners
The astounding variety of music of all genres and styles produced by musicians of Jewish heritage in Europe since 1750 has been examined almost entirely in the context of German-speaking Europe or in studies of a group of composers who strongly self-identified as Jews.
In five thematic sections, this multi-disciplinary volume presents rich coverage of the main genres produced by musicians of Jewish origin in the Polish lands: Cantorial and Religious Music, Jews in Polish Popular Culture, Jews in the Polish classical music scene, The Holocaust reflected in Jewish music, and Klezmer in Poland today. This volume explores the activities and great creativity of musicians of the ‘Mosaic persuasion’, covering the area of the Polish-Lithunanian Commonwealth and its successor states from 1750 to the present.
The conference will look at Cantorial Music, Jews and Polish popular culture, and Klezmer in Poland today. And there will be music!
‘POLIN Vol. 32’ is published by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilisation/Liverpool University Press.
Volume Editors: François Guesnet, Benjamin Matis, and Antony Polonsky.
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.
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 series of events starting September 1 and continuing until the end of the year will be coordinated as the B’nai B’rith Jewish Heritage in the UK Festival — organised under the international umbrella of the European Days of Jewish Culture (EDJC), whose theme this year is “Renewal.”
Click here to download a PDF calendar of events
(Click here for the “flipsnack” online catalogue of events).
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
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.
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