This festival features concerts in the synagogues of five towns in western Romania:
The repertoire includes new compositions by the violinist and virtuoso Alexander Bălănescu, who also will perform.
PROGRAM:
Monday, September 4th, at 7 PM | Neolog Synagogue in Arad Tuesday, September 5th, at 7 PM | Cetate Synagogue in Timișoara Wednesday, September 6th, at 7 PM | Reșița’s Synagogue Thursday, September 7th, at 5 PM | “Beit El” Synagogue in Caransebeș Thursday, September 7th, at 8:30 PM | Neolog Synagogue in Lugoj
Admission to the concerts is free, and no prior registration is required.
Closing event of the conservation and restoration camps held this year in the Jewish Cemetery of Alba Iolia, as part of the project Conservation and restoration of the monumental funeral stones of the Jewish cemetery in Alba Iulia.
Instead of September 3, as in other participating countries, the European Days of Jewish Culture is centered on September 10 — with the theme “Beauty,” not “Memory” as in the other countries.
It takes place in scores of localities up and down the Italian peninsula, with Florence as the lead city.
The history of the Jewish ghetto of Florence, which existed in the city between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, is an exhibition organized by the Uffizi Galleries and arranged in the Gallery of Modern Art of Pitti Palace. Curated by Piergabriele Mancuso, Alice S. Legé and Sefy Hendler (The Medici Archive Project), the exhibition can be visited until January 28, 2024.
The ghetto of Florence was established in 1570 by Cosimo I and Carlo Pitti, and was demolished between 1892 and 1895. For almost three centuries the ghetto was the gravity point of Hebraism in Florence.
Subdivided into five sections,the exhibition draws from the extraordinary cultural heritage of Florence as well as from important international loans. It reveals a significant and forgotten chapter of the Medici’s political strategy in a centuries-old context of conflicts, diplomacy and cultural exchanges.
The exhibition starts with the Florence of Cosimo the Elder and Lorenzo the Magnificent; illuminated manuscripts commissioned by Jewish and Medici patrons, which was the result of the interaction between Jewish scribes and Christian artists of the early Tuscan Renaissance; loans from the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York and many Italian libraries. Republican and Medicean imagery intertwine in the depiction of paradigmatic biblical figures, “Jewish heroes” such as Donatello’s bronze David (on loan from the Berlin Museums), or Joseph from the series of tapestries woven in Flanders for Cosimo I. The exhibition places mythical figures alongside real ones, revealing little-known pieces of the history of Florentine Judaism, such as the activity of the explorer Moisè Vita Cafsuto or that of the Jewish painter Jona Ostiglio, whose pantings were all commissioned by the Medici court, together with the self-portrait of Isaia or David Tedesco, a little-known author who was probably a pupil of Ostiglio in the first ever art workshop inside an Italian ghetto.
A place of segregation, but also the fulcrum of an important human, cultural and spiritual microcosm, the ghetto of Florence is also reconstructed through a three-dimensional model, the result of a decade of research conducted by the Eugene Grant Jewish History Program of The Medici Archive Project.
Caring about the multiplicity of audiences and the need to break down prejudices and stereotypes, the exhibition investigates the way in which the history of the Grand Duchy is intertwined with that of the Jewish minority, finally shedding light on the events of an important and so far little known chapter of the Renaissance Florence.
An exhibit that documents the urban and architectural experience of the historic ghetto in Verona. It is mounted in connection with Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27.
Opening hours are:
Mondays 14:00 – 19:00
Tuesday-Saturday 9:00 – 19:00
Special opening
Sunday January 28 9:00 – 19:00
A photographic exhibit highlighting the Sephardic Jewish presence in Bucharest, curated by Felicia Waldman and Anca Tudorancea.
Photos depict synagogues, Jewish communal buildings, private buildings, and shops, etc, as well as personalities such as professionals, doctors, merchants, artisans, doctors, cultural figures, etc.
The Centre for Religion and Heritage of the University of Groningen will host a half-day public symposium to launch the Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Heritage in Contemporary Europe. This event will also inaugurate a new European project on minority religious heritage.
The event takes place in person and also online. Click HERE to register
The organizers state:
The Handbook provides a state-of-the-art guide by leading international scholars, policy makers and heritage practitioners. With 46 chapters, we cannot address all the contributions, thus we have chosen to concentrate on those which examine how religious communities are using their rich heritage to make new meanings for themselves in Europe. Our focus will be on Jewish, Muslim and Christian heritage. We want to think together about the challenges facing these communities, as they grapple with being Jewish or Muslim minorities in a historically Christian landscape, or with being a minority of practicing Christians in the highly secularized society, such as that of Northern Netherlands. Reflecting on these questions together with our Handbook authors will aid the start of a new project in the Erasmus Plus program called European Pathways to Minority Religious Heritage (Miretage). Over three years we are exploring how minority religious heritage can be taught as a co-creative activity between heritage institutions, creative organizations and minority communities. On hand to participate in the symposium are partners from Storytelling Center Amsterdam, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Moslim Archief Rotterdam, KU Leuven, Future for Religious
Click here to see the program for the January 23 event
Book launch of “Zohar: A Photographic Journey through the Places of Italian Jewish Culture,” with the author Francesco Maria Colombo, Ferruccio de Bortoli, President of the Shoah Memorial Foundation, and Sandro Parmiggiani, editor of the book.
The book is under the patronage of the Foundation for Jewish Cultural Heritage in Italy and is enriched by contributions from Sandro Parmiggiani, Adachiara Zevi, Alberto Manguel, and Dario Disegni.
Free admission with reservation.
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.
The exhibit showcases Italian Jewish experience in the 20th century, beginning with the destruction of the ghettos at the end of the 19th century, through the Shoah, and up until almost the present day.
It includes contemporary artworks; photographs from public and private archives; historical documents, and family objects.
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