Guided tour of the Wertheimer synagogue, accessible as part of the Austrian Jewish Museum. Dedicated to Jewish life in the province of Burgenland, the museum opened in 1982 in the former mansion of Samson Wertheimer (1659-1724). The private synagogue is part of the mansion.
Wertheimer had a prominent role at the Viennese court, where from 1694 to 1709 he worked for emperors Leopold I, Joseph I, and Charles VI as Hofoberfaktor or chief administrator of financial affairs. He also served the Esterhazy family in Burgenland and was Rabbi of Hungary and Moravia.
A mob destroyed Eisenstadt’s main synagogue on Kristallnacht in 1938 but the they overlooked the Wertheimer Shul, hidden in the mansion. The synagogue was re-consecrated for Jewish worship in 1979.
In its current form the synagogue dates almost entirely from 1832, having been refurbished after the Eisenstadt ghetto was badly damaged in a fire of 1795. Its design includes many elements typical of the period, including a high ceiling and a chandelier hanging from a painted rosette. At the inauguration of the building in 1834, members of the community contributed ceremonial silver, a painted glass beaker for the Hevrah Kadisha (Burial Society), Torah scrolls, an elaborate Parohet (Ark curtain) and a parchment Megillah (Scroll of the Book of Esther) executed by the scribe Elie Gabriel, all of which are among the items displayed in the museum today.
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 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.
Baden bei Wien – Baden by Vienna – was long a popular spa and summer guests were originally attracted by the glamorous presence of the Imperial Court.
Many of these families who spent their summers in Baden had Jewish roots. They built villas in a variety of styles – historicist, art nouveau and modernist – a fascinating mixture and shaped summer life in Baden until 1938.
This exhibition is dedicated to ten families and their villas.
Click here for an interactive map with the villas
The Synagogue in Kobersdorf reopens after a three-year restoration process. It will be a cultural and educational centre, with a focus on local Jewish history and heritage.
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.
Dr. Pieter Vlaardingerbroek will present an illustrated talk live from Amsterdam on the architecture and interior of the 1675 Portuguese Synagogue (the Esnoga) in Amsterdam and the synagogue’s direct influence on the architecture of the 1763 Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island.
Pieter Vlaardingerbroek, Ph.D., is a leading expert on Dutch architecture and material culture. He is an architectural historian for the City of Amsterdam, having served in a similar position for the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. He is an Assistant Professor of Architectural History and Conservation at the University of Utrecht. Professor Vlaardingerbroek is the author of many articles and books and served as editor for the definitive volume on the Portuguese Sephardic synagogue, The Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam, published by the City of Amsterdam in 2013.
There is no fee to participate, but reservations are required to receive the Zoom login information.
Guided tour of the Jewish Museum Lecce and the ancient Jewish district, with Fabrizio Ghio (architect and archaeologist, member of the Scientific Committee of the Jewish Museum Lecce), Fabrizio Lelli, director of the Jewish Museum Lecce and professor of Hebrew language and literature at the Sapienza University (Rome), and Claudio Fano, direct witness of the racial laws and the Jews deportation from the Ghetto of Rome on October 16th 1943.
Free admission, reservation required.
Telephone Number & WhatsApp: + 39 0832 247016
Email: info@palazzotaurino.com
Photo exhibition by Rudolf Klein, author of the book Metropolitan Jewish Cemeteries — which will be presented at the opening.
The opening takes place February 21, at 7 p.m.
There will be speeches by Klein and others.
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