Jewish Heritage Europe

Calendar

Apr
13
Tue
Jewish Ceremonial Art: Continuing the Conversation @ Online Zoom event
Apr 13 @ 12:00 – 13:00
Jewish Ceremonial Art: Continuing the Conversation @ Online Zoom event

A Program in Memory of Vivian B. Mann Featuring talks by Laura Arnold Leibman (Reed College) and Maya Balakirsky Katz (Bar-Ilan University), in conversation with Magda Teter (Fordham University)

Jewish ceremonial objects have been studied and collected for nearly 150 years. In the past few decades, however, their importance in understanding social, historic, and aesthetic issues in a variety of cultural contexts has begun to increase.

This program is dedicated to the memory of Vivian B. Mann, a long-time Judaica curator at The Jewish Museum in New York and head of the graduate program in Jewish Art and Visual Culture at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Among her many accomplishments, Dr. Mann started initiatives to ensure that the rigorous study of Judaica would become part of the discourse of wider disciplines such as art history, history and Jewish studies. Building on her legacy, Laura Arnold Leibman and Maya Balakirsky Katz will each speak about a ceremonial object from the vantage point of their different disciplines, and then engage in a conversation with Magda Teter about the state of the field today and the possibilities for the future.

 

Click here to register

A Jewish space Called Europe? @ Online Zoom webinar
Apr 13 @ 19:30 – 21:00
A Jewish space Called Europe? @ Online Zoom webinar | Dallas | Texas | United States

Online-Lecture and talk with Dr. Diana Pinto, Paris (in English)

The conversation with Diana Pinto is conducted by Hanno Loewy, Director of the Jewish Museum Hohenems.

It was in the mid-1990’s Diana Pinto coined the term “Jewish Space” to define one of the specificities of the Jewish presence/absence, ongoing creativity and memory inside what was at the time a rapidly expanding European setting. After the fall of the Berlin Wall a new whiff of democratic pluralism allowed Jews across the continent to define themselves well beyond their official Jewish representative institutions. “Jewish Spaces” emerged where Jewish themes, ideas, creativity, life, traditions, and history intersected with the wider society – in a diasporic setting in which, unlike Israel or the United States, non-Jews were also integral actors of these Spaces.

At the same time, in the past thirty years, doubts about an ongoing Jewish future in the former lands of the Holocaust have never gone away. They have even increased with the return of antisemitism and the much publicized departure of many Jews (especially in France) to settle in Israel. For many, Europe was once a continent of Jewish life, but no longer.

Diana Pinto counters this interpretation by explaining why Jewish Spaces across Europe are continuing to expand. The symbolic importance of these Jewish Spaces has even taken on a new relevance in light of the growing populism and right wing revisionism which has infected the entire Western world (including Israel and the US). In the battle between liberal democracy and illiberal populism, such Spaces are destined to play an ever more important role in anchoring pluralist reflexes and universal values across the Continent.

Click for zoom details

Apr
19
Mon
Swedish Synagogue Architecture @ Online Zoom event
Apr 19 all-day
Swedish Synagogue Architecture @ Online Zoom event

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: http://bit.ly/2021-04-19

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.

Click here to see the full program, with abstracts of talks 

Apr
20
Tue
CAJM Global Conference for Jewish Museums @ Online Zoom event
Apr 20 @ 16:00 – 21:30
CAJM Global Conference for Jewish Museums @ Online Zoom event

CAJM — The Council of American Jewish Museums — is partnering with the Association of European Jewish Museums on a first online Global Conference for Jewish Museums.

Click here to register

See the program lineup in the conference brochure

The conferences will collectively examine the topic of Upheaval – knowing that contemporary issues and forces around the world, including the pandemic, have had a great impact on museums and museum professionals.  At the same time, museums are creating their own upheavals – through innovation, reconfiguration, and new priorities that will reshape their work for years to come.

 

“Judapest”: Austria-Hungary and its Jews at the Fin-de-Siècle @ Online Zoom event
Apr 20 @ 18:00 – 19:30
"Judapest": Austria-Hungary and its Jews at the Fin-de-Siècle @ Online Zoom event

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.

Apr
21
Wed
CAJM Global Conference for Jewish Museums @ Online Zoom event
Apr 21 @ 16:00 – 21:30
CAJM Global Conference for Jewish Museums @ Online Zoom event

CAJM — The Council of American Jewish Museums — is partnering with the Association of European Jewish Museums on a first online Global Conference for Jewish Museums.

Click here to register

See the program lineup in the conference brochure

The conferences will collectively examine the topic of Upheaval – knowing that contemporary issues and forces around the world, including the pandemic, have had a great impact on museums and museum professionals.  At the same time, museums are creating their own upheavals – through innovation, reconfiguration, and new priorities that will reshape their work for years to come.

 

Apr
22
Thu
CAJM Global Conference for Jewish Museums @ Online Zoom event
Apr 22 @ 16:00 – 21:30
CAJM Global Conference for Jewish Museums @ Online Zoom event

CAJM — The Council of American Jewish Museums — is partnering with the Association of European Jewish Museums on a first online Global Conference for Jewish Museums.

Click here to register

See the program lineup in the conference brochure

The conferences will collectively examine the topic of Upheaval – knowing that contemporary issues and forces around the world, including the pandemic, have had a great impact on museums and museum professionals.  At the same time, museums are creating their own upheavals – through innovation, reconfiguration, and new priorities that will reshape their work for years to come.

 

Apr
25
Sun
The Preservation of Jewish Monuments in Eastern Europe @ Online Zoom event
Apr 25 @ 16:00 – 17:00
The Preservation of Jewish Monuments in Eastern Europe @ Online Zoom event

A series of three online talks by Dr. Samuel D. Gruber, president of the International Survey of Jewish Monuments. Part of the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program.

Click here to register and find more details

Seventy-five years after the Holocaust, and thirty years after the fall of Communism, how is the Jewish past being preserved and presented in Eastern Europe? In these three illustrated lectures Dr. Samuel Gruber reviews efforts in Eastern Europe by government and private agencies, institutions, and organizations to document, protect, conserve, and maintain Jewish historic and religious sites, especially synagogues, cemeteries, and Holocaust-related sites.  In the decades since the fall of the Iron Curtain, the quantity and quality of this work keeps growing, as well as increased engagement Jewish and non-Jewish communities, and the interest of travelers from around the world. 
Sunday April 11, 2021SAVING SYNAGOGUES – In the world of Jewish “monuments,” synagogues are the big-ticket items. There are always considerable political, financial, and technical challenges in restoring synagogues in Eastern Europe, but the biggest problem is always what will the building be used for. Does it have a Jewish use? Can it retain some Jewish identity? How can saving an old building most effectively do justice to past events and contribute to a better present and future. This talk will look at a range of projects big and small – many of which the speaker has been actively involved – including the restoration of the beautiful Tempel Synagogue in Krakow, Poland and synagogues in Boskovice (Czech Republic), and Plovdiv (Bulgaria). We’ll visit a range of projects in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine.  Some have been successful, some not.
Sunday April 18, 2021PRESERVING CEMETERIES – For Jews, cemeteries are inviolable sacred sites, but Nazi and Communist regimes carried out policies that ruined Jewish cemeteries and often stripped them entirely of their gravestones and even despoiled graves. For decades, the only Jewish cemetery in Eastern Europe that was well known was the Old Cemetery in Prague. Since 1990 enormous strides have been taken in the identification and documentation of thousands Jewish cemeteries in Central and Eastern Europe. Some of these have often stunningly beautiful remaining matzevot (gravestones), but many have been stripped of their stones and have even been paved or built over. Beginning in 1991, as Research Director the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Aboard, Dr. Gruber was a leader in the identification and documentation of thousands of these sites. Since then efforts to protect and preserve these sites have been erratic, but there have been hundreds of successful interventions – ranging from simple cleaning of sites by local school and church groups,  to full-scale restorations of walls and re-erection of gravestones and mausolea by Jewish communities, government agencies and private foundations. Today several organizations are carrying out extensive mapping, fencing and conservation projects.
Sunday April 25, 2021COMMEMORATING HOLOCAUST SITES – In a sense, every place in eastern Europe where Jews once lived but now do not should be considered a Holocaust-related site.  A goal of educators and activists in many countries has been to bring back the history of Jews in a place especially when those communities were irrevocably destroyed. This talk will focus on the commemoration of those destroyed communities and their murdered members and how the places of their suffering – ghettos, deportation centers, concentration, labor and death camps, and mass grave sites are being remembered and identified. Dr. Gruber will discuss key examples of the memorialization process a Holocaust-related sites in Germany, Poland, Lithuania and the Czech Republic.
Apr
27
Tue
Rediscover Project final wrap-up conference @ Online Zoom event
Apr 27 @ 09:30 – 12:30
Rediscover Project final wrap-up conference @ Online Zoom event

The final, wrap-up conference of the three-year EU-funded Rediscover project, which promoted Jewish heritage and Jewish heritage tourism in nine small cities in eight countries in central Europe’s Danube Region.

Register at https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_bckZa1xKR5SWOVX6ePH70g

Program highlights:

  • Talk show about “The Plurality of Modern Judaism” with Mirna Funk, Zvika Kfir, Linda Vero Ban and Ana Lebl
  • Presentation and transferability of the INTERREG-project achievements with Martynas Uzpelkis
  • Ideas for the development of your local tourism strategy: Ruth Ellen Gruber and Victor Sorenssen in conversation about the added value of Jewish Community-sourced tourism and the role of public institutions

 

CAJM Global Conference for Jewish Museums @ Online Zoom event
Apr 27 @ 16:00 – 21:30
CAJM Global Conference for Jewish Museums @ Online Zoom event

CAJM — The Council of American Jewish Museums — is partnering with the Association of European Jewish Museums on a first online Global Conference for Jewish Museums.

Click here to register

See the program lineup in the conference brochure

The conferences will collectively examine the topic of Upheaval – knowing that contemporary issues and forces around the world, including the pandemic, have had a great impact on museums and museum professionals.  At the same time, museums are creating their own upheavals – through innovation, reconfiguration, and new priorities that will reshape their work for years to come.

 

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