Dedication ceremony of the restored tomb of Hungarian Jewish Olympics hero Alfred Hajos, an architect who also designed the monumental Holocaust memorial in the Kozma utca Jewish cemetery.
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.
Lecture by Dr. Vladimir Levin, Director of the Center for Jewish Art at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Levin will discuss the research and collections of the Center, including on-site missions and the Historic Synagogues of Europe web site.
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)
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.
An exhibition presenting the construction history of the Szeged New Synagogue. The opening event is at 16:30 on August 25 (see the picture for the program).
The Hungarian Museum of Architecture and Monument Protection Documentation Center (MÉM MDK), in cooperation with the Jewish Community of Szeged and the Holocaust Memorial Center, is commemorating Lipót Baumhorn and the 120 year-old synagogue in Szeged with an exhibition.
The exhibition on the ground floor of the Páva Street Synagogue, which is part of the Holocaust Memorial Center, focuses on the New Synagogue in Szeged, built between 1900 and 1903. In addition to the construction plans and the documents on the building created at the time of its construction, the sacred textiles made for the inauguration of the synagogue, including the Torah Ark curtain (parochet) and the Torah mantel will also be on display. The Jewish Community of Szeged has had the richly embroidered silk objects restored for this occasion.
Besides these objects, rich photographic material also illustrates the oeuvre of Lipót Baumhorn, who was born 160 years ago. The exhibits will not only present the twenty-six synagogues he designed, but visitors will also be able to see examples of his secular architectural work, as interpreted by the photographer Krisztina Bélavári. The synagogue that houses the exhibition was also designed by Lipót Baumhorn, so he is being commemorated in a worthy setting.
Curator: Ágnes Ivett Oszkó, Ph.D., art historian of the Hungarian Museum of Architecture and Monument Protection Documentation Center
Director of the restoration project for the Jewish Community of Szeged: Dóra Pataricza, Ph.D., historian
Professional consultants: Vera Ábrahám, head of the Archives of the Szeged Jewish Community; Dr. Rudolf Klein, Head of Department, University of Óbuda Ybl Miklós Faculty of Architecture; Pál Ritoók, art historian, head of the Museum Department of the Hungarian Museum of Architecture and Monument Protection Documentation Center
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.
The long-derelict 19th century synagogue in Kőszeg, western Hungary, is reopening to the public after a full-scale renovation that took place over the past two years. The synagogue, which is owned by the state, will become a cultural centre but also will be able to be used for religious services.
JHE’s Ruth Ellen Gruber is on the program of its first public event, Sunday August 28-29 — the opening of an exhibition about Philip (Fülöp) Schey (1798-1881), a Jewish philanthropist born in Kőszeg (known in German as Güns), who had grown rich as a textile merchant and later became a banker for the Hapsburgs. In 1859, Emperor Franz Joseph raised Schey to the Hungarian nobility — he was the first Jew to receive this honor and took the title Philip Schey von Koromla.
The exhibit is called “A Kőszeg Success Story: the Schey Family,” and it presents Philip Schey’s family, life and work: his economic and philanthropic activities, as well as his founding of institutions.
It begins at 3 p.m. and is organized by iAsk — the Institute of Advanced Studies in Kőszeg, which has played a role in the restoration of the building.
The opening is part of a two-day series of events, “Synagogue Week in Kőszeg,” including concerts, lectures, guided tours, and book presentations.
A conversation with Yechiel Weizman on his book
Unsettled Heritage: Living Next to Poland’s Material Jewish Traces after the Holocaust (Ithaca, 2022)
In Unsettled Heritage, Yechiel Weizman explores what happened to the thousands of abandoned Jewish cemeteries and places of worship that remained in Poland after the Holocaust. He asks how postwar Polish society in small, provincial towns perceived, experienced, and interacted with the physical traces of former Jewish neighbors. Combining archival research into hitherto unexamined sources and anthropological field work, the book uncovers the concrete and symbolic fate of Poland’s material Jewish remnants and shows how their presence became the main vehicle through which Polish society was confronted with the memory of the Jews and their annihilation. Leading the conversation with Weizman will be Monika Rice, and joining them will be Alon Confino and Amos Goldberg.
This event will be held via ZOOM Webinar.
Registration is required, register in advance here.
Opening of an exhibition of photographs by Daniella Grinberg to mark the 200th anniversary of the synagogue in the village of Kővágóörs, near the north shore of Hungary’s Lake Balaton. The exhibit runs until June 30.
Long abandoned and ruined, the synagogue is now under the care of a foundation that purchased the building and is working to restore it for use as both a synagogue and a cultural center. It already hosts cultural events there.
The Synagogue of Káli-valley Foundation (in Hungarian, Káli-medence Zsinagógája Alapítvány) officially acquired the building in October, 2020 after a year and a half of discussions, from a Canadian businessman of Hungarian origin, who had owned the synagogue since 2013.
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