Jewish Heritage Europe

Calendar

Oct
24
Sat
Guided Jewish history walk @ Gorizia, Italy
Oct 24 @ 15:00 – 17:00
Guided Jewish history walk @ Gorizia, Italy | Gorizia | Friuli-Venezia Giulia | Italy

A local theatre organizes a walking tour  of Jewish history and heritage in Gorizia, including the synagogue, former ghetto — and the Jewish cemetery, across the border in Slovenia. Participants will wear headphones and as they walk will hear a dramatized presentation keyed to places they are seeing, which will tell stories of people and their experiences linked to the city’s Jewish history.

Participants must reserve, and they also must wear face masks and follow social distancing measures.

On Sunday, October 25 — there will also be a tour at 10 a.m.

 

Oct
25
Sun
Guided Jewish history walk @ Gorizia, Italy
Oct 25 @ 15:00 – 17:00
Guided Jewish history walk @ Gorizia, Italy | Gorizia | Friuli-Venezia Giulia | Italy

A local theatre organizes a walking tour  of Jewish history and heritage in Gorizia, including the synagogue, former ghetto — and the Jewish cemetery, across the border in Slovenia. Participants will wear headphones and as they walk will hear a dramatized presentation keyed to places they are seeing, which will tell stories of people and their experiences linked to the city’s Jewish history.

Participants must reserve, and they also must wear face masks and follow social distancing measures.

On Sunday, October 25 — there will also be a tour at 10 a.m.

 

May
15
Sat
Explore former ghetto, Finale Emilia @ former Jewish ghetto
May 15 @ 09:00 – 17:30

Every half hour there will be a guided walking tour of the former Jewish ghetto in Finale Emilia.

Participants must wear masks and follow other COVID-19 health measures.

The tours are presented as part of the Italian Environment Fund’s Springtime Open Days events around the country.

 

Click here to learn more and register — reservations are necessary

May
16
Sun
Explore Jewish cemetery Finale Emilia @ Jewish cemetery Finale Emilia
May 16 @ 09:00 – 17:30

There will be a guided walking tour every half hour of the Jewish cemetery, founded in the 17th century. The cemetery had been abandoned for decades until a major restoration and clean-up in 1987 and a further restoration in 2015.

Participants must wear masks and follow other COVID-19 health measures.

The tours are presented as part of the Italian Environment Fund’s Springtime Open Days events around the country.

Click here to register — reservations are required

 

 

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

 

Nov
6
Sun
Rededication of Alessandria synagogue @ Alessandria synagogue
Nov 6 @ 16:00 – 18:00
Rededication of Alessandria synagogue @ Alessandria synagogue | Alessandria | Piemonte | Italy

Following a full-scale renovation, there will be an official public rededication ceremony for the synagogue in Alessandria, Italy. 

Click here to read our post about the synagogue’s restoration

Jul
23
Sun
Kos synagogue reopens @ Kal Shalom synagogue
Jul 23 @ 11:30 – 12:30
Kos synagogue reopens @ Kal Shalom synagogue | Greece

Inauguration of the restored synagogue on the island of Kos.

A new Ark and Bimah and other interior furnishings have been installed and — after decades out of its original use — the building will be rededicated as an active house of Jewish worship.

The Kos synagogue was built in the mid-1930s to replace an older synagogue that was destroyed in an earthquake in April 1933. It was abandoned after the near-total destruction of the circa 120 member Jewish community during the Holocaust, and then was purchased by the Municipality around 1984 and used as a local cultural centre.

See our post

 

Jan
23
Tue
“Religious Heritage and Minority Communities” @ online and Centre for Religion and Heritage of the University of Groningen
Jan 23 @ 13:15 – 18:15
“Religious Heritage and Minority  Communities” @ online and Centre for Religion and Heritage of the University of Groningen

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

 

Feb
19
Mon
Book launch of “Zohar: A Photographic Journey through the Places of Italian Jewish Culture” @ Teatro Franco Parenti
Feb 19 @ 18:30
Book launch of "Zohar: A Photographic Journey through the Places of Italian Jewish Culture" @ Teatro Franco Parenti | Milano | Lombardia | Italy

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.

Feb
21
Wed
Slovak synagogues in postcards book launch @ Jewish Culture Museum Bratislava
Feb 21 @ 17:00
Slovak synagogues in postcards book launch @ Jewish Culture Museum Bratislava | Bratislava | Bratislavský kraj | Slovakia

The book “Slovak Synagogues on Old Postcards” will be launched in Bratislava.
The book includes more than 270 old postcards of Jewish places of worship.
Opposite each postcard is a brief history of the Jewish community and synagogue of a particular city or village.
The book is written in English and Slovak. Historical settlement names appear in both Hungarian and German.
***
If you plan to attend the launch, please  confirm your arrival to the contacts in the booking as the number of places is limited.

You can buy the publication directly on the spot, or ordered via the following email address:
jdesbook@gmail.com

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