Willesden Jewish Cemetery reopens as multifaceted place of public heritage — the House of Life: an example of how Jewish cemeteries can be integrated into tourism while respecting the sanctity of the place
If offers guided tours, lectures, an exhibit in a new visitors’ center, and other public programming.
It respects its sanctity as a burial site but enables visitors to explore Jewish history and heritage, as well as learn about the lives of the many Jewish personalities buried there and engage with issues related to death, funeral traditions, and funerary art.
See cemetery web site for more details — http://www.willesdenjewishcemetery.org.uk
Click to read our article about it
As part of the European Heritage Days, there will be a guided tour of the exhibit Baroque Synagogues in the Czech Lands. The exhibition is complemented by panels mapping the history of Prostějov synagogues and Jewish prayer houses and the Prostějov Jewish community in general. During the guided tour, you will learn more about some of the exhibited objects. For example, part of the rosette stained glass window, which was saved from the destroyed Olomouc synagogue.
The exhibition is organized in cooperation with the Museum and Gallery in Prostějov, the Jewish Museum in Prague, the Statutory City of Prostějov, the Respect and Tolerance Association, the Comenius Museum in Přerov and the Hanácký Jeruzalém Association. The guided tour will be the curator of the exhibition Filip Gregor from the Prostějov Museum.
A live online event to discuss and display photo collections and other “hidden treasures” from the archives of synagogues in the UK.
- Professor David Newman – Ben Gurion University
- Rachel Lichtenstein – Sandys Row synagogue and Manchester Metropolitan University
- Lizzy Baker – Tyne and Wear Archives
The event can be watched live on Hidden Treasures web site or on HT’s Facebook and Twitter pages. The discussion will be recorded and will be available to watch on the HT web site after the event.
The feature picture shows the opening of Hull Central Synagogue, Cogan Street • Hull History Centre.
The Festival brings together both the work of the National Lottery Heritage project “Connecting Small Histories” and 12 other major Jewish Heritage projects.
“Connecting Small Histories” draws the footprint of Jewish life in what are now small or former communities across the United Kingdom. Through stories and memories it identifies the Jewish legacy in the local economies and culture, beginning with six very different locations, Eastbourne, St Annes, Bradford, Sunderland, Cumbria and Somerset.
After almost twelve months of work, the History Festival begins the telling of these “Small Histories”, bringing both them and a wide selection of projects from the project’s Heritage Hub to a wider public.
The program brings together story tellers, academics, our volunteer researchers and the research team, to paint a picture of Jewish life and heritage spread wide across the country, in towns and countryside.
Jewish Heritage Europe is delighted to be one of the partners of this event!
Click here to see the program and register for the online events
A seminar that will be held online on Microsoft Teams. Guests can register, and gain access, by emailing TRS@chester.ac.uk
Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Chester.
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.
Lecture by Michael Miller, of CEU
Budapest is sometimes called the “Paris of the East,” but in the 1890s, it acquired a new, less flattering nickname: “Judapest.” Karl Lueger, the antisemitic mayor of Vienna – who hated Hungarians more than he hated Jews – is often credited with coining this derogatory nickname for a city that he thought had become more “Jewish” than “Hungarian.” Budapest was Europe’s fastest-growing city at the time, with a flurry of cultural and commercial activity that fascinated — and sometimes appalled — contemporary residents and visitors. This talk will examine the image of Budapest in the decades before and after the First World War, exploring the ways in which Hungary’s capital city was imagined by Jews and non-Jews alike as a quintessentially Jewish metropolis.
The evening will be chaired by Professor Mark E. Smith, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton. It will be hosted by Professor Mark Cornwall (University of Southampton, Parkes Institute)
The event will be held on Zoom. Please register by Monday 19th April 16:00 here:
https://www.southampton.ac.uk/parkes/news/events/2021/04/20-parkes-lecture-2021.page
Speaker biography: Michael L. Miller is Associate Professor in the Nationalism Studies Program at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, and co-founder of the university’s Jewish Studies program. He received his PhD in History from Columbia University, where he specialized in Jewish and Central European History. Michael’s research focuses on the impact of nationality conflicts on the religious, cultural, and political development of Central European Jewry in the long nineteenth century. His articles have appeared in Slavic Review, Austrian History Yearbook, Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, Múlt és Jövő , The Jewish Quarterly Review and AJS Review. Miller’s book, Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation, was published by Stanford University Press in 2011. It appeared in Czech translation as Moravští Židé v době emancipace (Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2015). He is currently working on a history of Hungarian Jewry, titled Manovill: A Tale of Two Hungarys.
A Zoom seminar about the project to restore the Jewish cemetery of Gorizia, Italy, that now lies across the border outside Nova Gorica, Slovenia. The twin cities will jointly be the European Cultural Capital in 2025, with their shared Jewish heritage playing a role. In Italian
Click here for details and to register
Read our 2017 article about the shared Jewish heritage of the towns
Read an Italian perspective about the project
Willesden Jewish Cemetery volunteer researchers Corinne Van Colle and Jackie Asher spent 2½ years uncovering the stories of the many Jewish soldiers killed in action during World War 1 who are buried or commemorated in the cemetery. Encountering many challenges including worn headstones, inconsistent records, and changed names, they eventually discovered commemorations relating to over 350 servicemen (and one woman!). Research revealed, too, their many different family backgrounds: these were the sons of Edwardian Anglo-Jewish engineers, bootmakers and bankers. In this webinar, Corinne and Jackie will share some of the forgotten stories of the young Jewish men, memorialised in the cemetery in moving inscriptions and poems, who went to war in 1914.
An exhibition presenting the construction history of the Szeged New Synagogue. The opening event is at 16:30 on August 25 (see the picture for the program).
The Hungarian Museum of Architecture and Monument Protection Documentation Center (MÉM MDK), in cooperation with the Jewish Community of Szeged and the Holocaust Memorial Center, is commemorating Lipót Baumhorn and the 120 year-old synagogue in Szeged with an exhibition.
The exhibition on the ground floor of the Páva Street Synagogue, which is part of the Holocaust Memorial Center, focuses on the New Synagogue in Szeged, built between 1900 and 1903. In addition to the construction plans and the documents on the building created at the time of its construction, the sacred textiles made for the inauguration of the synagogue, including the Torah Ark curtain (parochet) and the Torah mantel will also be on display. The Jewish Community of Szeged has had the richly embroidered silk objects restored for this occasion.
Besides these objects, rich photographic material also illustrates the oeuvre of Lipót Baumhorn, who was born 160 years ago. The exhibits will not only present the twenty-six synagogues he designed, but visitors will also be able to see examples of his secular architectural work, as interpreted by the photographer Krisztina Bélavári. The synagogue that houses the exhibition was also designed by Lipót Baumhorn, so he is being commemorated in a worthy setting.
Curator: Ágnes Ivett Oszkó, Ph.D., art historian of the Hungarian Museum of Architecture and Monument Protection Documentation Center
Director of the restoration project for the Jewish Community of Szeged: Dóra Pataricza, Ph.D., historian
Professional consultants: Vera Ábrahám, head of the Archives of the Szeged Jewish Community; Dr. Rudolf Klein, Head of Department, University of Óbuda Ybl Miklós Faculty of Architecture; Pál Ritoók, art historian, head of the Museum Department of the Hungarian Museum of Architecture and Monument Protection Documentation Center
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