Opening of an exhibition of photographs by photographer Rimantas Dichavičius showing the Uzupis Jewish cemetery in Vilnius in 1964, before it was destroyed by the communist regime.
The exhibition marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The synagogue in Hârlâu, Romania will be rededicated following restoration.
A day-long program of events starts at 10:30 a.m. (See photo)
Launch of the book “In the Footsteps of Jewish Timisoara,” by Getta Neumann.
The Romanian-language guide includes tourist trails, information on history and tradition, as well as about synagogues and the Jewish cemetery, personalities, and more.
In the Synagogue is a short film by young Ukrainian director Ivan Orlenko based on an unfinished story by Franz Kafka. One of few works by Kafka to deal with Jewish culture overtly, the story describes a strange vision of a beast that a Jewish boy experiences while praying in a synagogue, a metaphor which could be interpreted in several ways. Young Ukrainian director Ivan Orlenko has adapted Kafka’s fragment into a 30-minute film, shot entirely in Yiddish, and transposed its action to a synagogue in western Ukraine.
The screening will be preceded by a talk by Dr Uilleam Blacker of UCL SSEES on the ways in which the rich Jewish cultural heritage of Ukraine is remembered and reimagined in the country today, and the challenges which this process of recovery faces.
The screening will be followed by a discussion with the director.
The event is co-organised by Ukrainian Institute, London and UCL SSEES, with the support of the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter.
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.
Lecture and panel discussion about Romaniote Jews, linked to the exhibition “Romaniote Memories – A Jewish Journey from Ioannina, Greece to Manhattan: Photographs by Vincent Giordano.”
Screening of the film Jewish Routes in Romania, a documentary about Jewish heritage sites in the country.
According to a press release:
Jewish itineraries in Romania is a documentary film that captures a small part of the traces left by the Jewish communities in Romania. From Săpânţa to Ştefăneşti, from Bacău to Siret, the film crew tried to recover the atmosphere in the visited cemeteries and synagogues. Hard to locate, remaining outside the tourist circuit of many localities in Romania, the Jewish cemeteries are in an accelerated process of degradation, although they represent an invaluable heritage. And in the few synagogues that remained functional in Romania, only a handful of people celebrate the old beliefs.
For over 40 minutes, the viewer can admire unique funeral stones or synagogues painted in an impressive manner. Botoşani, Bucureşti, Câmpulung Moldovenesc, Fălticeni, Săpânţa, Ştefăneşti, Suceava, Dorohoi, Piatra Neamt, Sighetu Marmaiei, Simleu Silvaniei, Buhuşi, Târgu Neamţ, Sighet, Siret, Rădăuţi and Bacău, are the following localities: they revealed a flourishing world, a Jewish world that used to call Romania’s territory home.
Dr Sofiya Dyak, Nikita Kadan and Professor Philippe Sands discuss the evolution of the practices of Holocaust remembrance and its public discourse in Ukraine: How are these tragic events remembered across different communities and why? How to deal with histories of lands subjected to multiple occupations and mass murder across communities? How to write a historic narrative for the country, which is still in a state of war?
This event is part of Holocaust Memorial Day.
Dr Sofiya Dyak is the Director of the Lviv Centre of Urban History, a private institution which initiated a number of important initiatives commemorating Jewish community presence in Lviv in partnership with Lviv’s municipality, including the Space of Synagogues memorial. In 2017, the centre hosted the “Un-named” project, reflecting on mass violence in Ukraine between 1931 and 1945. The project included visual work by Nikita Kadan, Ukraine’s contemporary artist. Similarly, Professor Philippe Sands traced his family history back to Lviv, with the city becoming the focus of much of his literary work and intellectual reflection.
There will be a live virtual tour of Jewish Timisoara, hosted and broadcast live on the Travel to Live.co.il Facebook page
The guides will include Getta Neumann, author of a Jewish guidebook to Timisoara.
We will broadcast the event live on our Facebook page.
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