Jewish Heritage Europe

Calendar

May
21
Sun
Licoricia of Winchester: Heritage and Memory of Medieval Anglo Jewry @ The Arc, Winchester
May 21 @ 13:30 – 14:30
Licoricia of Winchester: Heritage and Memory of Medieval Anglo Jewry @ The Arc, Winchester | England | United Kingdom

A round-table discussion, plus optional walking tours through the “invisible” medieval Jewish history of Winchester. The Roundtable is free, the walking tours — at 10:30-11:30am or 11:30-12:30pm, cost £5. 

The event event focuses on Licoricia of Winchester and the heritage and memory of medieval Anglo-Jewry.

The bronze statue of the remarkable Anglo-Jewish woman, Licoricia, was unveiled in Winchester in 2021. This is the most prominent heritage work carried out relating to medieval Anglo- Jewry. 

The event, through a walking tour (£5) and free round table discussion, will consider the achievements of the Licoricia project, and the challenges of creating heritage in the absence of the built heritage that directly reflects the presence of medieval Winchester Jewry. It will also consider the public and educational issues raised when dealing with questions such as the Jewish role in medieval finance and hostile representations of Jews from the period based on religious bigotry. Addressing the key aims of the Licoricia project, participants will explore the potential of such commemoration to consider the roots of prejudice and discrimination, using this to promote tolerance, diversity, and female empowerment.

Please note that if you wish to attend both the walking tour and the roundtable event, you will need to register for each event separately.

Click here for booking and other details

Click here to read an April 2017  JHE Have Your Say essay about invisible medieval Jewish heritage by one of the Roundtable speakers, Dr. Toni Griffiths

 

Beginnings: The Story of the Willesden Jewish Cemetery @ Willesdan Jewish Cemetery
May 21 @ 14:00 – 15:30
Beginnings: The Story of the Willesden Jewish Cemetery @ Willesdan Jewish Cemetery | England | United Kingdom

Willesden Jewish Cemetery: 150 years of Heritage 1873 – 2023 Guided Walk

As part of the year long celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the Willesden Jewish Cemetery, this guided walk will tell the story of the establishment of the cemetery, highlighting the early years of the United Synagogue, the people who made it happen and their role in the community.

Jun
22
Thu
Webinar: Italian Synagogues and Jewish Cemeteries @ Online
Jun 22 @ 17:00 – 18:00
Webinar: Italian Synagogues and Jewish Cemeteries @ Online

A Zoom webinar in English introducing the current temporary exhibition at MEIS — the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah in Ferrara— Houses of Life; Synagogues and Jewish Cemeteries in Italy.

The exhibition mainly features plans and architectural drawings of synagogues, as well as gravestones, tombs, and other architecture features, through the ages.

A historic ark and other Judaica are also featured.

Speakers in the webinar include the two curators of the exhibition, Andrea Morpurgo and MEIS director Amadeo Spagnoletto, as well as Dr. Jessica Del Russo.

Click here to receive the Zoom link

 

Jul
30
Sun
IAJGS conference
Jul 30 – Aug 3 all-day
IAJGS conference

The annual conference of the International Association of Jewish Genealogy Societies takes place this year in London.

 

Oct
24
Tue
The Jews, the Medici, and the Ghetto of Florence @ Pitti Palace
Oct 24 2023 – Jan 28 2024 all-day
The Jews, the Medici, and the Ghetto of Florence @ Pitti Palace | Firenze | Toscana | Italy
The history of the ghetto of Florence on display at Pitti Palace — open Tuesday to Sunday, 8.15 a.m. to 6.30 p.m.

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.

 

Jan
12
Fri
Tracce e Memorie del Ghetto – Traces and Memories of the Ghetto @ Biblioteca Civica di Verona
Jan 12 – Feb 3 all-day
Tracce e Memorie del Ghetto - Traces and Memories of the Ghetto @ Biblioteca Civica di Verona

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

Jan
19
Fri
Sephardic Bucharest @ Romanian Institute of Culture and Humanistic Research, Venice
Jan 19 – Jan 27 all-day
Sephardic Bucharest @ Romanian Institute of Culture and Humanistic Research, Venice

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.

 

Feb
21
Wed
House of the World to Come: Immortal Jewish Cemeteries @ Parobrod Galeria, Belgrade
Feb 21 – Mar 7 all-day

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.

Mar
29
Fri
Jews in 20th Century Italy @ National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah
Mar 29 – Oct 6 all-day

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. 

Tempio Maggiore, Great Synagogue, Rome,
Tempio Maggiore, Great Synagogue, Rome, built in 1904 after the opening of the Ghetto

 

May
2
Thu
Le sinagoghe in eta’ contemporanea: tra memoria e innovazione. @ Online or Biblioteca Nazionale dell’Ebraismo Italiano “Tullia Zevi”
May 2 @ 18:00 – 19:00
Le sinagoghe in eta’ contemporanea: tra memoria e innovazione. @ Online or Biblioteca Nazionale dell’Ebraismo Italiano “Tullia Zevi” | Roma | Lazio | Italy

For Italian speakers — a meeting with architect and historian Andrea Morpurgo who last year curated a major exhibition on synagogues and Jewish cemeteries at the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah in Ferrara.

You can attend in person or via streaming:

In presenza:
Biblioteca Nazionale dell’Ebraismo Italiano “Tullia Zevi” – Lungotevere Sanzio 5, Roma

In streaming:
Facebook e YouTube della Fondazione per i Beni Culturali Ebraici in Italia
Webtv dell’Unione delle Comunità Ebraiche Italiane

 

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