Secularization and immigration are changing the religious makeup of European societies. While more people identify as non-religious, new arrivals and conversion mean that the religious landscape is becoming increasingly more complex. This presents challenges and opportunities to organizations, government agencies and scholars engaged with maintaining and promoting cultural heritage. How should Europe’s plural religious pasts be represented? How can heritage be translated for audiences that do not identify with local religious traditions? What challenges and chances lie in the process of secularization? Can or should heritage organizations foster dialogue between groups in multi-religious societies? These pressing questions are at the heart of the conference “Religious Heritage in a Diverse Europe.”
In order to explore answers to these questions, the conference will bring into conversation scholars, museum curators, heritage professionals, visual artists, as well as leaders of religious and secular organizations.
The Centre for Religion and Heritage at the University of Groningen has long provided expertise and training in heritage studies. They have teamed up with two of the most important national heritage organizations: the Museum Catharijneconvent, which is the national Dutch museum for Christian heritage and history, and the Jewish Cultural Quarter, which runs the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam. Our partner on the European level is Future of Religious Heritage, the Brussels-based network for historic places of worship.
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.
Experts from Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Great Britain will meet for a Herrenhausen Symposium at Herrenhausen Palace in Hanover to discuss the issue of reusing church buildings from a European comparative view. The intention is to develop new perspectives.
See details and program at web site
The Autumn Jewish Culture Festival in Subotica includes evening concerts and other programs on various days. Most will be held in the spectacular art nouveau synagogue.
Seating in limited due to coronavirus measures, and masks must be worn. Tickets need to be picked up at the synagogue ahead of time.
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 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
BIAJS Conference 2022: “Unfolding Time: Texts – Practices – Politics”
There’s quite a bit of material on Jewish (built) heritage at this year’s conference of the British and Irish Association of Jewish Studies.
12 July 2022, 15.15-16.45 The state of Jewish tangible heritage in Ukraine: Buildings, monuments, museums and libraries
organised by: Eva Frojmovic (Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Leeds, clsef@leeds.ac.uk)
EUGENY KOTLYAR (Associate Professor at Department of Art History of Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts, eugeny.kotlyar@gmail.com):
Jewish Heritage in Independent Ukraine: Discovery, Study, Preservation and Presentation. Thirty Years of Experience and Challenges
SOFIA DYAK (Director of the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv, website:www.lvivcenter.org, E-mail: s.dyak@lvivcenter.org):
Jewish Urban Heritage and Diversity in Lviv
TETYANA BATANOVA (Research Fellow, Acting Head of the Judaica Department of Institute of Manuscripts, V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, taniabatanova@gmail.com )
The Judaica Department at V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine: Revival, Study, and Preservation
VITALY CHERNOIVANENKO (Senior research fellow, Judaica Department; Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine; President, Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies; Chief editor, Judaica Ukrainica; E-mail: chernoivanenko@gmail.com and president@uajs.org.ua; Website: uajs.org.ua):
Ukraine’s Hebraica collections in international perspective
NADIA UFIMTSEVA (Department of History at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy,nadia.ufimtseva@gmail.com)
Title: the Jewish printed books collection in the Kamianets-Podilskyi state museum and Judaica objects in Ukrainian museums.
MIA SPIRO (Glasgow) and EVA FROJMOVIC (Leeds)
Click here to see full conference program
To register securely, please visit: https://estore.kcl.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/academic-faculties/faculty-of-arts-humanities/department-of-theology-and-religious-studies/biajs-conference-unfolding-time-texts-practices-politics
The 4th International Conference Architectures of the Soul aims at promoting the scientific study and discussion around the architecture and landscape connected to religious and spiritual practices, grounded on the experience of seclusion and solitude.
It’s not focussed on Jewish heritage, but many preservation and other issues are common to religious built heritage as a whole, and we hope that the program includes Jewish heritage, too.
The conference is structured around two main topics, in order to understand the historical and current values of these places and how they can shape the future, through a renewed knowledge and new ways of turning them culturally meaningful:
1. History of religious experience;
2. Future of Religious Heritage.
The conference aims to establish the platform for a multidisciplinary approach on the subject, gathering and crossing history, architecture, landscape architecture, cultural heritage, art history, computing science, among others.
The conference will be hosted by the Monastery of Santa Maria da Vitória, in the municipality of Batalha. This is a former dominican monastery, on the initiative of the Avis dinasty at the end of the 14th century. The complex is recognised as UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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