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.
The opening of an exhibition of virtual reconstructions of synagogues destroyed by the Nazis.
It is mounted at the the NS Documentation Center in cooperation with the Technical University of Darmstadt.
The exhibition “Synagogues in Germany – A Virtual Reconstruction” runs from from June 11th to September 19th.
The TU Darmstadt has been working on the virtual reconstruction of synagogues that were destroyed in Germany for 25 years. The initial spark for this long-term project was the attack by neo-Nazis on the synagogue in Lübeck in 1994. In 2019, an attack was carried out on the synagogue there in Halle. With this project, the TU Darmstadt shows the cultural loss, the importance of synagogues in the cityscape and the beauty of the architecture.
The exhibition also shows synagogues that were built in Germany after 1945.
The tiny former synagogue in the village of Gleusdorf, out of use for more than a century, opens as an information center about local rural Jewish life and history.
The inauguration ceremony will be a closed event for invited guests because of COVID restrictions.
The synagogue has been owned since 2016 by the Untermerzbach municipality, which sponsored and oversaw the €174,000 project. Funding included a €87,500 grant from the EU’s LEADER funding program for the development of the rural economy.
The synagogue will be operated in cooperation with the Friends of the Synagogue association in nearby Memmelsdorf, and the preservation concept accords with that of the Memmelsdorf synagogue –“conservation instead of reconstruction” — that is, not to reconstruct or restore the building, but to conserve it in a way that shows the history of what it has gone through.
Click to read our article about the restoration and project
The former synagogue in Görlitz reopens after around 30 years of gradual renovation as the “Kulturforum Görlitz Synagogue.”
The Görlitz synagogue is the only community synagogue in saxony that survived Kristallnacht in 1938.
According to the city administration, the total cost of the renovation was 12.6 million euros.
The opening had been postponed several times due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A conference looking at the handling of Jewish cemeteries on both sides of the border between Germany and Poland — both in communist East Germany and Poland after WW2 and since 1989 in post-reunification Germany and post-communist Poland. Register by November 2.
Program
Welcome: Dr. Peter Bahl, State Historical Association for the Mark Brandenburg eV, and Dr. Magdalena Gebala, German Cultural Forum for Eastern Europe eV
Introductory presentation On the situation of the Jewish cemeteries in the Soviet Zone and the GDR, Dr. Monika Schmidt, Berlin
Presentation of the project Jewish cemeteries in Poland in the areas of the former province of Brandenburg, Dr. Magdalena Abraham-Diefenbach and Dr. des. Anke Geißler-Grünberg, both Frankfurt (Oder)
Documentary film Jewish cemeteries in Poland , director: Dietmar Barsig, 2009, 4:05 min., Broadcast in Kulturzeit on November 18, 2009; with the kind permission of ZDF
Followed by a panel discussion with Dr. Magdalena Abraham-Diefenbach, Dr. des. Anke Geißler-Grünberg, Dr. Monika Schmidt and Andrzej Kirmiel, director of the Museum of the Meseritzer Land, Międzyrzecz / Meseritz
Moderation: Dr. Peter Bahl
The event will be held in German and Polish and will be interpreted.
Important NOTE
Limited places. To participate in the event, a confirmed registration up to and including Tuesday, November 2, 2021 by email to ger.wei@web.de (preferred) or on the telephone number (030) 413 82 19 (with AB) is necessary. Proof of COVID vaccination is required to enter. A minimum distance of 1.5 m must be maintained. Wearing an OP or FFP2 mask is mandatory for all participants.
A cooperative event between the Chair for Monument Studies at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), the Chair for Modern History (German-Jewish History) at the University of Potsdam , the State Historical Association for the Mark Brandenburg eV and the German Cultural Forum Eastern Europe eV
The picture shows: Broken tombstone in the Jewish cemetery in Drossen / Ośno Lubuskie, 2021, © Peggy Lohse
The conference aims to explore the development, role, influence and shape of virtual spaces in different forms related to contemporary European Jewry. How are digital practices related to real-life practices and spaces performed and inhabited by Europe’s Jewry? What do virtual spaces reveal about Jewish engagement with the geographical location and the idea of Europe? And, ultimately, what do virtual spaces tell us about the existence and future of a “Jewish Europe”? What do they say about transcending the borders of “Jewish Europe” and fostering membership in a global Jewish presence?
Announced keynote speakers are JHE’s Ruth Ellen Gruber and independent scholar Diana Pinto.
The conference is organised by the University of Gothenburg and the Parkes Institute of Southampton University.
Program:
Tuesday 3 May
09.00 – Welcome and introductions, Joachim Schlör, Maja Hultman and Klas Grinell
09.30 – Keynote: Ruth Ellen Gruber (Jewish Heritage Europe) Life after Life: Shifting Virtualities (and Realities) 20 Years after Virtually Jewish
10.45 – Break and coffee
11.15 – Panel 1: Jewish contribution to Europe – Chair: TBC
- Itai Apter (University of Haifa) – Jewish Legal-Political WWII Era Scholars in the European International Law Space of the Past and Contemporary Virtual Spaces
- Marcela Menachem Zoufalá (Charles University Prague) – TBC
- Vladimir Levin (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) – European Values, Post-Soviet States, and Jewish Heritage
12.45 – Lunch
14.00 – Panel 2: Jewish/non-Jewish Spaces in Europe (J444) – Chair: TBC
- Susanne Korbel (University of Graz) – Jewish Spaces in Vienna Today: A Relational, Hybrid Approach
- Magdalena Abraham-Diefenbach (European University Viadrina) – The Legacy of German Jews in Western Poland: Jewish Cemeteries as Places Between “Jewish Space” and “Virtual Jewishness”
- Jurgita Šiaučiūnaitė-Verbickienė (Vilnius University) – The Process of Learning About the Jews and Their Heritage: Influence of Challenges in Post-Soviet Lithuania to the Contemporary Understanding of the Jewish Culture
15.30 – Break and coffee
16.00 – Panel 3: Jewish Europe from Near and Afar (J444) – Chair: TBC
- Jennifer Cowe (University of British Columbia) – Rootless Nostalgia, Yekke Identity and Intergenerational memory Curation/Creation in Mor Kaplansky’s Café Nagler
- Libby Langsner (independent researcher) – Nostalgia Networks: The Potential of Built Heritage Digitization in European American Jewish Identity Formation and Social Belonging
- Judith Vöcker (University of Leicester) – The Muranów District as a Memorial of the Former Jewish Community of Warsaw
18.00 – City walk of Jewish Gothenburg
19.00 – Tour and dinner @ Gothenburg’s Synagogue
Wednesday 4 May
09.00 – Panel 4: Virtual Heritage Spaces of Jewish Europe – Chair: TBC
- Susanne Urban (University Marburg) – Storytelling in Jewish Spaces: Creating a Bond Between Spaces, History and Present
- Kyra Schulman (University of Chicago) – Memory Space: Probing the Limits of Holocaust Memorialization Projects on Digital Versus Physical Topographies
- Kinga Frojimovics and Éva Kovács (Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies) – Tracing the Holocaust in the Kaiserstadt
10.30 – Break and coffee
11.00 – Panel 5: Digital Practices in Today’s Europe – Chair: Klas Grinell
- Tyson Herberger (University of Southeastern Norway) – Impacts of Norwegian Jewry’s Digital Turn Under Corona
- Dekel Peretz (Heidelberg University) – Searching for Belonging: Jewish-Muslim Dialogue in Virtual Spaces
- Alla Marchenko (The Polish Academy of Sciences) – Virtual Representation of Real Jews and Jewishness in Contemporary Poland
12.30 – Lunch
13.45 – Heritage Session: Jewish Spaces in Sweden – Chair: Maja Hultman
- Yael Fried (Jewish Museum in Stockholm)
- Anna Grinzweig Jacobsson and Karin Brygger (Judiska salongen)
- Lukasz Gorniok (Paideia – The European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden and Ivana Koutniková (Paideia – The European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden/Paideia folkhögskola)
- Tom Shulevitz (Jewish Congregation of Gothenburg)
15.15 – Break and coffee
15.45 – Bus trip Gothenburg-Marstrand
17.00 – Guided tour of Marstrand
19.00 – Dinner @ Grand Tenan
21.30 – Bus trip Marstrand-Gothenburg
Thursday 5 May
09.00 – Panel 6: Being Jewish in Today’s Europe – Chair: TBC
- Katalin Tóth (Institute of Ethnology, Research Centre for the Humanities, Eötvös Loránd Research Network) – “But We Are Also Here – the Descendants of the Survivors”: Everyday Life of a Synagogue in Budapest for the Past Thirty Years
- Stanislaw Krajewski (University of Warsaw) – The Concept of De-Assimilation as a Tool to Describe Present-Day European Jews: The Example of Poland
- Phil Alexander (University of Edinburgh) – “The Most Saving Slum in Glasgow, and the Most Abandoned”: Scotland’s 20th Century Jewish Neighbourhoods as 21st Century Virtual Spaces
10.30 – Break and coffee
11.00 – Virtual Keynote: Diana Pinto (independent researcher) Jewish Spaces in a Topsy Turvy Europe
12.15 – Closing remarks by Joachim Schlör and Maja Hultman
The multi-day event “Mapping Memories” revolves around the violently suppressed traces of Frankfurt’s Judengasse from public space. At its center is a pop-up exhibition in the Museum Judengasse with archaeological finds from the time of Europe’s oldest Jewish ghetto; also an artistic intervention in the current form of the historic site.
The exhibition, with archaeological finds that were recovered from Börneplatz – formerly the southern part of the Judengasse ghetto – in 1987, will be held in the atrium of the Museum Judengasse.
It opens at 18:00 on April 13 — to attend, register with anmeldung@metahubfrankfurt.de
The exhibition is a cooperation with the Archaeological Museum Frankfurt.
It shows archaeological finds that were recovered in 1987 at Börneplatz, at the place where they were found at the time. It presents ongoing research and new insights into the everyday culture of Jews in early modern Frankfurt. The archaeological finds come both from the cellars of the Judengasse and from ditches for water supply and disposal.
The annual conference of the Association of European Jewish Museums.
Inauguration of the restored synagogue on the island of Kos.
A new Ark and Bimah and other interior furnishings have been installed and — after decades out of its original use — the building will be rededicated as an active house of Jewish worship.
The Kos synagogue was built in the mid-1930s to replace an older synagogue that was destroyed in an earthquake in April 1933. It was abandoned after the near-total destruction of the circa 120 member Jewish community during the Holocaust, and then was purchased by the Municipality around 1984 and used as a local cultural centre.
The International Conference on Cemetery Studies, organized by the Harokopio University in collaboration with the University of York, will take place from 18 to 20 April 2024 at the Harokopio University in Athens, Greece.
The event will bring together a wide spread of academics, presenting their latest research findings concerning various aspects of cemeteries (end of 18th century onwards), including history, art and culture, anthropology, geography, social studies, and cemetery tourism.
The conference fee is 30 euros (15 euros for doctoral students). The fee includes a light lunch, refreshments, and a guided tour in the historical cemetery of Athens.
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