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
A one-day international online conference called “Jewish Crossroads: Between Italy and Eastern Europe” organized by the Foundation for Jewish Cultural Heritage in Italy and the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The close contacts between Italy and eastern Europe have evolved over the centuries and Jews have been an integral part of this relationship.
The most known examples of Italian influences on eastern European Jews are the construction of synagogues in Poland and Lithuania by Italian architects; Jewish medics from Italy practicing in noble east European courts; or the selling of Hebrew books printed in Italy.
The interaction obviously was in the opposite direction: many Polish and Lithuanian rabbis moved to Italy or transferred their texts to be published there; the Council of the Four Lands sent emissaries to Rome; and many eastern European Jewish artists spent years in Italy.
The conference is planned to concentrate on those contacts and interactions, during the Early Modern and Modern periods.
The conference will be conducted in English. The keynote lecture will be given by Prof. Ilia Rodov of Bar-Ilan University.
I-Tal-Ya is a collaborative effort to identify and catalogue every Hebrew book in Italy. It is being carried out by the Union of Jewish Communities in Italy (UCEI), the Rome National Central Library (BNCR), and the National Library of Israel (NLI) in Jerusalem, with the support of the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe.
The project includes cataloguing an estimated 35,000 volumes from 14 Jewish communities and 25 state institutions and will take approximately three years to complete.
The event is held within the program of Ferrara’s annual Jewish Book Festival.
Les stèles funéraires de l’ancien cimetière juif de Venise. Art, histoire et poésie
A lecture in French by Sofia Locatelli about the carved imagery found in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Venice, 1386-1774.
Construit en 1386 sur un terrain stérile concédé aux juifs par la République de Venise au Lido, à l’Est de la ville, l’ancien cimetière juif San Nicolò précède de plus d’un siècle la clôture du ghetto. En raison de son emplacement favorable, face à la lagune, la nécropole fut parfois utilisée à des fins défensives et militaires. De nombreuses stèles funéraires furent perdues, détruites ou réutilisées, et d’autres déplacées sur un terrain situé plus au Sud, devenu officiellement le « nouveau cimetière » en 1774. Les tombes de l’ancienne nécropole sont des artefacts riches en histoire, en poésie et en art. Leur étude permet de restituer la vie et les événements des membres de la communauté, mais également de détecter des aspects significatifs de la culture littéraire et artistique de l’époque.
Les épitaphes, véritables poèmes en rimes et en rythme, et le complexe réseau iconographique et symbolique gravé sur les stèles, font de l’ancien cimetière du Lido une source de connaissance exceptionnelle sur l’art et la poésie juives dans l’Italie de l’époque moderne.
Sharing the catacombs. Religious interactions in funeral spaces of Rome, 3rd-4th centuries CE
A round-table of interational scholars, in Italian and English, about Jewish and Christian catacombs in Rome.
To register for Zoom attendance, go to https://www.istitutosvizzero.it/it/tavola-rotonda/19933/
Program:
H17:00-17:15 – Caroline Bridel, Introduzione
H17:15-17:45 – Giandomenico Spinola (Musei Vaticani), La necropoli vaticana della via Triumphalis: tra religione e superstizione
H17:45-18:15 – Giancarlo Lacerenza (Università di Napoli L’Orientale), Ebraico e aramaico negli epitaffi delle catacombe ebraiche di Roma: segni di plurilinguismo o marcatori identitari?
H18:15-18:30 – Pausa
H18:30-19:00 – Norbert Zimmermann (Deutsche Archäologisches Institut), Space, tombs, images: Experiencing Christian Catacombs of Rome
H19:00-19:30 – Discussione moderata da Caroline Bridel
The annual “Open Jewish Homes” Holocaust commemoration event in more than a dozen towns and cities in the Netherlands.
Small-scale, locally organized commemorative events takes place in homes where Jews (or members of the resistance) lived before, during, or just after World War II.
The web site states:
The focus is on Jewish life in these houses before, during and immediately after the war. History comes to life during Open Jewish Homes. Direct witnesses, descendants and connoisseurs tell stories about persecution, resistance and liberation on the basis of photographs, films, diary fragments, poems, literature and music. […]
The Jewish Cultural Quarter organised in 2012 the first edition of Open Jewish Homes in Amsterdam. Since then local work groups have been organising Open Jewish Homes in various other cities in the country as well. Everyone is free to initiate Open Jewish Homes in his or her place of residence.
Open Jewish Homes was conceived as a way to engage “in real life” with the interactive Digital Monument to the Jewish Community in the Netherlands, which personalizes the more than 104,000 victims of Holocaust in the Netherlands. Every victim has a personal page — with their home address as well as photos and other material.
Click here to see the program in the various locations
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
A celebratory event marks the 20th anniversary of the little Jewish Museum, located in the synagogue complex in the hill town of Pitigliano in southern Tuscany.
This year also marks the 400th anniversary of the imposition of a ghetto in Pitigliano.
Dr. Pieter Vlaardingerbroek will present an illustrated talk live from Amsterdam on the architecture and interior of the 1675 Portuguese Synagogue (the Esnoga) in Amsterdam and the synagogue’s direct influence on the architecture of the 1763 Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island.
Pieter Vlaardingerbroek, Ph.D., is a leading expert on Dutch architecture and material culture. He is an architectural historian for the City of Amsterdam, having served in a similar position for the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. He is an Assistant Professor of Architectural History and Conservation at the University of Utrecht. Professor Vlaardingerbroek is the author of many articles and books and served as editor for the definitive volume on the Portuguese Sephardic synagogue, The Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam, published by the City of Amsterdam in 2013.
There is no fee to participate, but reservations are required to receive the Zoom login information.
“Case di vita. Sinagoghe e cimiteri in Italia” — “Houses of Life: Synagogues and cemeteries in Italy”
The exhibit, curated by Andrea Morpurgo and the MEIS director Amadeo Spagnoletto, focuses on the architectural, ritual, and social dimensions of the synagogues and Jewish cemeteries in Italy.
It displays architectural plans, documents from state archives and Jewish communities, family heirlooms, and prestigious loans such as the Ark of the Jewish Community of Vercelli.
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