The Architectural Dialogue between the St. Petersburg Jewish Community and the Tsarist Metropolis
In this lecture, Dr. Vladimir Levin will consider the uneasy relationship between the architectural oeuvre of the Jewish community and the capital city of the Russian Empire. Although concentrating on St. Petersburg, the talk will address questions and problems that many Jewish communities in European and American cities had to wrangle with. Every Jewish community that settled in a large or small city had to decide how to represent itself vis-à-vis that city, how prominent and visible should their representation should be; what are the ways to express Jewishness in the general cityscape and which means should be employed toward achieving this goal. The lecture will discuss how the Jews of St. Petersburg and their non-Jewish allies looked for a style that was best suited for marking their presence in the city, and how a unique convergence of architecture and manuscript illuminations was created to that end.
About the Speaker
Dr. Vladimir Levin is the Director of the Center for Jewish Art at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Born in St. Petersburg, he holds a Ph.D. from the Hebrew University. He authored From Revolution to War: Jewish Politics in Russia, 1907-1914 (in Hebrew, 2016) and co-edited Synagogues in Lithuania: A Catalogue (2010-2012). In 2017 he co-authored with Sergey Kravtsov the book Synagogue in Ukraine: Volhynia, and currently works on the book of Jewish heritage in Siberia with Anna Berezin. He also published 120 articles and essays about social and political aspects of modern Jewish history in Eastern Europe, synagogue architecture and ritual objects, Jewish religious Orthodoxy, Jewish-Muslim relations, Jews and Jewish politics in Lithuania, Russian architecture in the Holy Land, history of East-European Jewish communities etc.
Dr. Levin headed numerous research expeditions to documents synagogues and other monuments of Jewish material culture in eastern and central Europe and lead several research projects in the field of Jewish Art, the most important of which is the creation of the Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art – the world’s largest digital depository of Jewish heritage.
Online lecture by Leon Saltiel on his research on the destruction of the Jewish cemetery of Thessaloniki (Salonika), Greece.
The lecture is sponsored by the @UCLA Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center.
A series of three online talks by Dr. Anna Berezin and Dr. Vladimir Levin on Jews in Siberia and their material culture.
The lectures will take place on Tuesdays, 2, 9, and 16 February 2021, at 20:00 Israel time (1 pm EST).
In order to register, please click here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/1916108823866/WN_lc1OUD4eSmScUFtx8aTt6g
A series of three online talks by Dr. Anna Berezin and Dr. Vladimir Levin on Jews in Siberia and their material culture.
The lectures will take place on Tuesdays, 2, 9, and 16 February 2021, at 20:00 Israel time (1 pm EST).
In order to register, please click here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/1916108823866/WN_lc1OUD4eSmScUFtx8aTt6g
A series of three online talks by Dr. Anna Berezin and Dr. Vladimir Levin on Jews in Siberia and their material culture.
The lectures will take place on Tuesdays, 2, 9, and 16 February 2021, at 20:00 Israel time (1 pm EST).
In order to register, please click here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/1916108823866/WN_lc1OUD4eSmScUFtx8aTt6g
with Dr Magdalena Waligórska, and Dr Natalia Romik, respondent, and with Prof François Guesnet, Chair
The Symposium on Swedish Synagogue Architecture (1795–1870) and the Cultural Milieu of the Early Jewish Immigrants to Sweden will take place on Zoom, on April 19, 2021.
It is organized by the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University, the University of Potsdam, and the Institute of Jewish Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, with the support of the Stockholm Jewish Museum.
To attend, click this link to register:
The opening presentation will be of particular interest, an overview by Daniel Leviathan of his PhD dissertation project, “Jewish Sacred Architecture in the Nordic Countries 1684-1939.”
Besides Leviathan, speakers will include Vladimir Levin and Sergey Kravtsov, of the Center for Jewish Art in Jerusalem; Ilia Rodov of Bar Ilan University; Maja Hultman, of the Centre for European Research and Department of Historical Studies at University of Gothenburg Centre for Business History in Stockholm; Mirko Przystawik, of Bet Tfila – Research Unit for Jewish Architecture in Europe, Technische Universität Braunschweig; Yael Fried, of The Jewish Museum of Stockholm; and Carl Henrik Carlsson, of The Hugo Valentin Centre, Department of History, Uppsala University.
A Zoom seminar about the project to restore the Jewish cemetery of Gorizia, Italy, that now lies across the border outside Nova Gorica, Slovenia. The twin cities will jointly be the European Cultural Capital in 2025, with their shared Jewish heritage playing a role. In Italian
Click here for details and to register
Read our 2017 article about the shared Jewish heritage of the towns
Read an Italian perspective about the project
Commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the destruction of Jewish Rohatyn.
On March 20, 1942, the largest and deadliest of the Nazi “aktions” resulted in the final liquidation of Rohatyn’s Jewish population. 3,500-5,500 victims, half of which were children, were executed and buried in a common grave in the fields south of city center. Rohatyn Jewish Heritage invites all those who wish to remember the victims on-site at 13.00 on 20 March 2022 for prayer and a moment of silence led by Rabbi Kolesnik of Ivano-Frankivisk.
GPS: 49°24’12.7″N 24°37’39.4″E
(Photo shows longtime local activist, the later Mykhailo Vorobets, at the south mass grave in Rohatyn in 2012. Photo © RJH)
Comments are closed.