Jewish Heritage Europe

Calendar

Mar
31
Sun
Jewish Islington walking tour
Mar 31 @ 14:00 – 17:00

As of Feb. 3 — only the March 31 date is still available! Feb. 24 is sold out!

Walking tours organized by Chabad and led by Chabad Rabbi Mendy

During the 18th and 19th centuries London’s Islington borough had one of the largest Jewish populations in England. Discover the borough’s Jewish history.

The tour includes important sites of the historic Jewish community, including where the North London Synagogue once stood. You will find out about a wide range of characters, where they came from, where they lived, where they worshipped, and what happened to them. A rich cast of politicians, founders of business empires, inventors, mathematicians, artists, architects, writers, eccentrics, and villains is promised – not forgetting the many people with more ordinary lives who made up the community.

Meeting place in Islington will be provided on booking.

Apr
1
Mon
Sacred Space & Sanctity in Judaism & Christianity @ Catholic Theological Union Academic and Conference Center
Apr 1 @ 09:00 – Apr 2 @ 16:30

This two-day conference, co-sponsored by Catholic Theological Union and the University of Notre Dame, will focus on issues of scholarship and community which are at the heart of Jewish-Christian dialogue. It includes panels and presentations from 13 scholars at the forefront of Jewish-Christian studies, both here in the United States and internationally.

Presentations include a panel on: Synagogues, Churches, Shrines: Interacting Sacred Spaces in Antiquity

 

Jul
2
Tue
Art and the Holocaust: Reflections for the Common Future @ Jews in Latvia Museum, Riga
Jul 2 – Jul 3 all-day
Riga Jewish Community, Museum “Jews in Latvia” and Museum of Romans Suta and Aleksandra Belcova (Riga, Latvia), in collaboration with the International Center of Litvak Photography (Kaunas, Lithuania) and Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw, Poland) are sponsoring the International Conference “Art and the Holocaust: Reflections for the Common Future”. 
 
The aim of the conference is to present new researches about the relationships between the Holocaust and art (drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, contemporary art, the art of commemoration), as well as the ways that individuals reacted towards atrocities, how they tried to preserve their human dignity, and how the traumatic experience of the Holocaust has influenced European society. 
Sep
19
Thu
Romaniote Memories – a Jewish Journey from Ioannina, Greece to Manhattan @ Greek Consulate in New York
Sep 19 @ 18:00 – Oct 3 @ 19:00
Romaniote Memories - a Jewish Journey from Ioannina, Greece to Manhattan @ Greek Consulate in New York | New York | New York | United States

Exhibition of Photographs by Vincent Giordano.

The photographs are part of a multi-media archive, created by Giordano, who died in 2010, that was sponsored by International Survey of Jewish Monuments and in 2019 will find a new home at the Hellenic American Project and Special Collections at the Library of Queens College, New York.

Giordano’s photographs document two related communities of Greek Romaniote Jews – in Ioannina, in northwestern Greece and on Broome Street on New York’s Lower East Side. Romaniote Jews trace their religious and cultural heritage to the Judaism of the ancient Greco-Roman world two-thousand years ago, and these two tiny congregations are among the few remaining to follow these traditions. Romaniotes have their own liturgy and cultural traditions, as well as their own language, a dialect of Greek that combines words and phrases from Hebrew and Turkish. This luminous black and white photo essay includes a poignant exploration of liturgy and ritual, conveying how people engage with religious space and carry on their time-honored sacred traditions.

The exhibition will open on Thursday, September 19th , 2019 at 6:00 p.m. it will continue through October 3rd, 2019. 

A panel discussion by experts will take place at the Consulate on Wednesday, September 25th, 2019 at 6:00 p.m.

 

Oct
25
Fri
Southern Jewish Historical Society conference @ Charlottesville, Virginia
Oct 25 – Oct 27 all-day
Southern Jewish Historical Society conference @ Charlottesville, Virginia | Charlottesville | Virginia | United States
“Jews, Race, and Public Memory”
44th Annual Conference of the Southern Jewish Historical Society
Charlottesville, Virginia
October 25-27, 2019
 
JHE Director Ruth Ellen Gruber is speaking on Oct. 26
 
 
Feb
11
Thu
Virtual Opening of Romaniote Memories: Photos of Vincent Giordano @ Online Zoom event
Feb 11 @ 17:00 – 18:00
Virtual Opening of Romaniote Memories: Photos of Vincent Giordano @ Online Zoom event
The exhibition can be seen at this link: https://scalar.usc.edu/works/romaniote-memories/index
 
In 1999, photographer Vincent Giordano made an unplanned visit to the small Kehila Kedosha Janina (KKJ) synagogue on New York’s Lower East Side. He knew little about Judaism or synagogues, and even less about the Romaniote Jewish tradition of which KKJ, built in 1927, is the lone North American representative. In this he was not alone. Romaniotes are among the least known of Jewish communities. Beginning in 2001 and guided by members of the KKJ community, Giordano documented the synagogue and its religious art of the congregation using film, video, and audio.
 
In 2019 the Giordano family donated the archive of Vincent’s work to Queens College, where it is a major part of the Hellenic American Project and is preserved as part of the Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library’s Special Collections and Archives.
 
The exhibition is sponsored by the Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library, Hellenic American Project, and Center for Jewish Studies at Queens College, in partnership with the International Center for Jewish Monuments, an independent non-profit organization.
 
The exhibition includes more than one hundred photographs, presented in ten thematic sections, accessible here.
 
To register for the exhibition’s opening reception on Zoom, featuring a conversation with curators, distinguished guests, and friends go to:
Apr
19
Mon
Swedish Synagogue Architecture @ Online Zoom event
Apr 19 all-day
Swedish Synagogue Architecture @ Online Zoom event

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.

Click here to see the full program, with abstracts of talks 

May
3
Tue
A Jewish Europe? Virtual and Real-Life Spaces in the 21st Century @ Gothenburg University
May 3 – May 5 all-day
A Jewish Europe? Virtual and Real-Life Spaces in the 21st Century @ Gothenburg University | Gothenburg | Västra Götaland County | Sweden

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

 

Jul
11
Mon
British and Irish Association of Jewish Studies conference @ King's Building, Strand Campus, King's College, London
Jul 11 @ 09:00 – Jul 13 @ 17:00
British and Irish Association of Jewish Studies conference @ King's Building, Strand Campus, King's College, London | England | United Kingdom

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.

 
Mon 11 July 9.15-10.45: Jewish Heritage in the UK Context I
Alan Benstock, Connecting Jewish Collections with Jewish Communities: A Case Study of Leeds City Museum
Eva Frojmovic, Paradoxes of Jewish Heritage in Solomon A. Hart’s Album
of Sketches (Leeds University Library)
David Newman, The Preservation of Closed Synagogues and Their
Artefacts (Including Windows)
 
Mon 11 July 11.30-13.00: Jewish Heritage in the UK Context II
Anna Douglas, Shirley Baker’s ‘Jewish Heritage’
Rebecca Tritschler, Langside (Glasgow) as Heritage
Shannon Kirschner, Clifford’s Tower Heritage Reshaped
 
Monday 11 July 14.00-15.30
Miranda Crowdus, Frozen in Time? Contemporary European Jewish Cultural Heritage Displays and Construction of Jewish Temporal Stasis
 
Tuesday 12 July 9.00-10.30: Jewish Country Houses in Pan-European Perspective
Chair: Abigail Green
Colette Bellingham, Reading The Red Book: Ferdinand de Rothschild and the Country House Album
Silvia Davoli, A little known salonnière Juive: Ernesta Stern (1854
1926)
Sietske Van der Veen, A Rothschild Legacy in Utrecht: Hélène van Zuylen van Nyeveltde Rothschild and the Rebuilding of De Haar Castle
Cyril Grange, The expropriation of the castle and winery of Moncontour and the integration of its Jewish seigneur in the locality
Discussant: Laura Leibman
 

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

Jan
12
Thu
The Architecture of the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam @ Online
Jan 12 @ 12:00 – 13:00
The Architecture of the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam @ Online

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.

Click to register.

 

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