Abstract: This thesis critically examines the public representation of medieval Anglo-Jewish history today through a cross-section of medieval Anglo-Jewish communities which act as case studies; Winchester, York, Norwich, Bristol, and Northampton respectively. These case studies frame the investigation of issues associated with the limited and often contested archaeological evidence relating to England’s medieval Jews, as well as the frequent tendency of contemporary public facing history to focus on the negative aspects of medieval Jewish life, notably by highlighting persecution and victimisation. It also analyses the development of the most recent public facing interpretations of medieval Anglo-Jewish history in each location, which have been deliberately chosen to provide a range of towns and cities which contain evidence of alleged medieval Jewish human remains.
The assessment of key stakeholders in the public representation of medieval Anglo-Jews was central to this study, and as such this thesis carefully considered the roles of various stakeholders in the preservation and representation of medieval Anglo-Jewish history and memory. Within this thesis, each stakeholder had a valid voice in the assessment of how the history and memory of England’s medieval Jews had been treated and represented. Decolonialist research methodologies were herein utilised in order to fully address the complexities of the various voices of stakeholders; from the perspectives of individuals, communities, and organisations, through a sensitive approach towards respectful interviewing and data collection. This thesis, therefore, provides a uniquely rounded interpretation of stakeholder involvement and investment in how medieval Anglo-Jewish communities are remembered today.
The history and memory of medieval Anglo-Jews has been subject to periods of omission and marginalisation, with the study of medieval Jewish history often hindered by a lack of sources on everyday life. This thesis contributes to the increasingly multi- and inter-disciplinary study of England’s medieval Jews through the application of Death Studies, offers new hypotheses based on traditional Jewish approaches to death ritual and burial practice, and provides fresh insights into aspects of medieval Jewish life with a focus on the dead.
Abstract: The tradition of Jewish studies in Poland has been drastically interrupted by the Second World War and the Holocaust. In the immediate postwar period the process of re-establishing research on Jewish history and heritage was undertaken by the Jewish Historical Commissions and later Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. More examples of the individual and group initiatives can be traced only in the 1970s and 1980s. The real happened in the late 1980s with Kraków as one of the first and main centers of revitalized Jewish studies in Poland. The first postwar academic institution in Krakow specializing in Jewish studies – Research Center for Jewish History and Culture in Poland – was established already in 1986 in the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. More than a decade later, in 2000, it was transformed into the first Poland’s Department of Jewish Studies (Katedra Judaistyki) – now the Institute of Jewish Studies. Nowadays there are more similar programs and institutions – at the universities in Warsaw, Wrocław and Lublin (UMCS). Also other academic centers tend to have at least individual scholars, programs, classes or projects focusing on widely understood “Jewish topics.” Jewish studies in Poland, along with the revival of Jewish culture, reflect the contemporary Polish attitude to the Jewish heritage, and their scale and intensity remains unique in the European context. The growing interest in Jewish studies in Poland can be seen as a sign of respect for the role of Jewish Poles in the country’s history, and as an attempt to recreate the missing Jewish part of Poland through research, education and commemoration, accompanied by slow but promising revival of Jewish life in Poland.
Abstract: This chapter situates France’s diverse Jewish community, the largest in Europe, in relation to Holocaust memory, exile from North Africa, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, anti-Semitism and cultural (co-)production. The chapter begins by historically contextualising contemporary anti-Semitism and goes on to explore cultural representations, including Jewish-Muslim artistic collaborations. Contemporary anti-Semitism in France is driven by three main motivations which sometimes overlap, namely radical Islam, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and old anti-Jewish stereotypes. Education and cultural production (particularly collaborative, that is, through Jewish–Muslim cooperation) are particularly important in combating the conflation between Jews and Zionists, and in expressing solidarity between Jews and Muslims, who are both victims of racism in France albeit in the differing forms of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
Abstract: Introduction de Jean-Pierre Allai
Les événements tragiques qui ont traumatisé notre pays ces dernières années : Toulouse, Charlie Hebdo, Hyper Cacher, Bataclan et, plus récemment, le camion fou de la promenade des Anglais à Nice, nous amènent, légitimement, à nous poser la question : l’offensive islamique contre le monde occidental finira-t-elle par avoir raison d’une civilisation millénaire ou parviendra-t-on un jour à dominer et à terrasser ce fléau impitoyable ? En d’autre termes, et pour ce qui concerne la France : la culture en général et sa composante juive en particulier, pourront-elles survivre à cette offensive des tenants d’un obscurantisme dévoyé qu’on pensait à jamais disparu ?
Pour répondre à cette question essentielle, Sandrine Szwarc, historienne, enseignante à l’Institut Universitaire d’Etudes Juives Elie Wiesel et membre du Comité de Rédaction d’ Actualité Juive, commence par brosser un tableau de la situation culturelle de la communauté juive de France au lendemain de la Shoah. Cette communauté, qui a perdu 76 000 de ses membres, se resserre autour de la « yiddishkeit française ». Les titres de la presse yiddish, d’Unzer Wort à Die Naïe Presse en passant par Unzer Kiyoum et bien d’autres, traduisent le besoin impératif de maintenir une culture qui était le quotidien d’un monde englouti par la folie meurtrière du nazisme. C’est le temps du Cabaret Yiddish et du Centre Medem. C’est le temps aussi des controverses infinies entre sionistes, communistes et bundistes. L’arrivée massive, dans les années soixante, de Juifs d’Afrique du Nord et du Moyen-Orient, renforcera numériquement la communauté tout en apportant une touche de jasmin et de piment que porteront haut les Albert Memmi, Marco Koskas, Chochana Boukhobza et tant d’autres.
Abstract: This research offers an original contribution to the study of contemporary klezmer
music by analysing it in relation to a particular urban environment. With its origins in a
largely destroyed Eastern European Jewish culture, contemporary klezmer is both
historically-grounded and paradoxically rootless, cut loose from geographical
specificity by the internationalism of its recent revival. Seeking to counteract the
music’s modern placeless-ness, this dissertation analyses the musical and spatial means
by which klezmer has been re-rooted in the distinctive material and symbolic conditions
of today’s Berlin. The theoretical framework takes in questions of cultural identity,
music and place, authenticities of tradition and instrumental practice, to show how this
transnational and syncretic music – with few historical ties to Berlin – can be
understood in relation to the city’s particular post-reunification bricolage aesthetic and
subversively creative everyday tactics. Beginning by mapping the criss-crossing
networks of musicians and their multiple artistic perspectives, the dissertation proceeds
through an exploration of the official and unofficial spaces within which these fluid
musical practices operate, leading onto ways that the city of Berlin is made manifest in
the music itself – how the city is interpellated sonically and textually. Processes of
musical transmission and education are analysed through the filters of tradition and
pedagogical ideologies, from which my own instrument, the piano accordion, is used as
a lens through which to uncover the balance between personal expression and
historically-informed performance. The final chapter looks at the relationship between
history, Jewish identity and music in the city. It explores the resonances between the
contested discourse of memorial and present-day cultural and musical production,
discovering how at times sound and music can act as a living sonic embodiment that
speaks against the silence of historical memory
Abstract: With contributions from a dozen American and European scholars, this volume presents an overview of Jewish writing in post–World War II Europe. Striking a balance between close readings of individual texts and general surveys of larger movements and underlying themes, the essays portray Jewish authors across Europe as writers and intellectuals of multiple affiliations and hybrid identities. Aimed at a general readership and guided by the idea of constructing bridges across national cultures, this book maps for English-speaking readers the productivity and diversity of Jewish writers and writing that has marked a revitalization of Jewish culture in France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, and Russia.
Introduction Thomas Nolden and Vivian Liska
1. Secret Affinities: Contemporary Jewish Writing in Austria Vivian Liska
2. Writing against Reconciliation: Contemporary Jewish Writing in Germany Stephan Braese
3. Remembering or Inventing the Past: Second-Generation Jewish Writers in the Netherlands Elrud Ibsch
4. Bonds with a Vanished Past: Contemporary Jewish Writing in Scandinavia Eva Ekselius
5. Imagined Communities: Contemporary Jewish Writing in Great Britain Bryan Cheyette
6. A la recherche du Judaïsme perdu: Contemporary Jewish Writing in France Thomas Nolden
7. Ital'Yah Letteraria: Contemporary Jewish Writing in Italy Christoph Miething
8. Writing along Borders: Contemporary Jewish Writing in Hungary Péter Varga with Thomas Nolden
9. Making Up for Lost Time: Contemporary Jewish Writing in Poland Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska
10. De-Centered Writing: Aspects of Contemporary Jewish Writing in Russia Rainer Grübel and Vladimir Novikov
Abstract: Los instrumentos y técnicas docentes, tanto en estudios primarios y secundarios como en el ámbito universitario, se adaptan a los nuevos métodos desarrollados por la ciencia de la didáctica para un mejor entendimiento y asimilación. Este hecho encuen-tra también formas en las nuevas tecnologías (TIC) que sirven como refuerzo para el aprendizaje. Sin embargo, herramientas clásicas tales como el uso del teatro aún siguen teniendo resultados destacables. El objetivo de estas páginas es el de ofrecer el modo en que se articula el género dramático en la adquisición de elementos lingüísticos, culturales e histórico-sociales y su practicidad en los estudiantes de grado en la Uni-versidad de Granada a través de dos ejemplos prácticos, el teatro en lengua hebrea y en judeoespañol o sefardí. 1. El género teatral en el contexto pedagógico: técnicas y aprendizaje de idiomas La enseñanza de técnicas teatrales no está programada en las guías docentes ni for-ma parte de ellas como una materia optativa, en nuestro caso, en el grado de Lenguas Modernas y sus Literaturas de la Universidad de Granada. Esta tarea, aunque requiere importante consideración y queda en manos de los responsables del taller, docentes que actúan como los directores del mismo. Las claves que se aplican en esta actividad, destinada a alumnos de idioma y cultura, tienen que ver con las formas de comuni-cación y la construcción de un conocimiento intercultural. El espacio teatral genera un lugar en el cual el alumno/actor puede discutir su personalidad y confrontarla con
Abstract: The dissertation explores the work of Tanya Ury and Esther Dischereit as political interventional, contemporary, Jewish art in Germany. Ury and Dischereit analyze the power relationships surrounding the body, femininity, and expressions of Jewishness in contemporary Germany. The dissertation focuses on the nature of their artistic work - such as video art performances, sound installations, and radio plays- in its relation to, and impact on the public discourse about history, memory, and a culturally diverse society in contemporary Germany. Performance and Body Art comment in the strategies of `re-embodiment' and `re-enactment', illustrate the historical facts from a contemporary perspective, and urge us to reconsider the transmissions of memory. Ury and Dischereit offer experimental spaces of experience, and succeed in preserving Jewish knowledge and art. The work by Ury and Dischereit unfolds a vital political function, as it creates and fosters a creative critical resistance.
Abstract: À Paris, Tel-Aviv, Istanbul ou Los Angeles, on entend et chante les fameux standards judéo-espagnols. Ce partage de connaissances est le résultat d’une patrimonialisation qui a commencé dès les années 1950 dans un espace transnational à la suite de l’éclatement géographique des Judéo-Espagnols de l’Empire ottoman. Cet article expose les différentes étapes de ce processus, tant dans la diachronie que dans la synchronie, à partir d’un terrain multisite mené en France, aux États-Unis et sur le cyberespace. On découvrira que la construction du patrimoine à travers l’expérience de la migration peut être envisagée comme un mouvement de reterritorialisation permettant aux Judéo-Espagnols de faire communauté, de reconsolider la filiation judéo-espagnole dans l’espace familial et ainsi, de constituer un territoire historique fédérateur incarné par le patrimoine. Au-delà de ce cas spécifique, l’article montre comment le patrimoine musical, en raison de son statut d’objet immatériel facilement transportable, peut nous conduire à repenser la patrimonialisation au-delà du territoire et à l’envisager comme un processus de consolidation et de création de liens entre des individus et des groupes d’individus partageant un sentiment d’appartenance.
Abstract: This article explores memory studies from the audience’s perspective, focusing on the perception of Holocaust narratives in two museums in Berlin. This research builds on and contributes to a number of emerging issues on memory studies, tourism perception and museum design: the debate on experiential authenticity, Dark Tourism, as well as the analysis of memory studies from the perspective of the user. The main data facilitating the analysis is based on responses shared on TripAdvisor; the case studies being the Otto Weidt Workshop for the Blind Museum and the Jewish Museum Berlin. The analysis of these museums, focusing on their narratives, design features and comments from visitors, will highlight a potential shift from the traditional object-focused museum, to a phenomenological subject-focused one. It will be argued, then, that the understanding and consumption of authenticity encompasses a very flexible definition, not only based on the nature of the objects exhibited, but on the production of authentic experiences.
Abstract: The thesis is based on three starting points. The first is on the
acknowledgement of the lamentable condition of buildings of Jewish-related
heritage in cities with a multicultural past across the present-day former Soviet
Union. The second is on the acknowledgement of a slow process of gradual
recognition of these traces as examples of tangible heritage and a provisional
resource for heritage commodification. The third is the on the
acknowledgement of ‘heritage’, ‘memory’ and ‘space’ as phenomena that are
subject to manipulation on various levels.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the understanding of what
constitutes national heritage in the newly-appeared independent states has
conformed to correspond with the interpretations and values of national histories.
In managerial terms some immovable heritage of ethnic minorities has been
returned to the symbolic successors of previous owners. This defined provisional
sources of funding for partial renovation of this heritage, as well as its use. The
remaining sites, the majority of which are monuments protected by the state, most
frequently stay unattended. In order to design policy recommendations to improve
the situation, a complex understanding of factors that influence heritage protection,
interpretation, and promotion in the post-Soviet space is needed.
Within this state of affairs, the thesis aims to analyze agency behind
'top-down' policies and 'down-up' grass-roots initiatives towards
(non)interpretation of Jewish-related heritage sites in Chişinǎu (Moldova),
Odessa and L’viv (Ukraine) and Minsk (Belarus). This selection of cities is
chosen to reveal the multiplicity of factors that determine apparent similarity in
heritage condition and management in the post-Soviet space, but instead reveal
diverse dynamics of interaction between heritage and politics; heritage and
nationalism; heritage and civil society, etc.
The methodology utilized here includes archival search, participant
observation, media and expert opinion analysis, as well as examination of
museum exhibitions. The fieldwork included data collection on the actual
condition of Jewish heritage in the cities under discussion and interviews with
various agents. Elite interviews were analyzed as basis for authoritative
heritage discourse before discussing actual heritage projects in these cities.
Based on interdisciplinary analysis, the thesis provides an embracing
overview of the broad spectrum of agency behind Jewish heritage-related
initiatives (or their absence). It then offers recommendations for the
advancement of managerial strategies.
Abstract: Looking at different perspectives and practices regarding Hebrew’s use or place of use, this chapter seeks to find connections between perceptions of diasporic Hebrew as they are envisioned and practiced in contemporary Berlin. What are the various events and activities taking place with regards to Hebrew in contemporary Berlin? How do Hebrew texts written today in Berlin correspond to the work of Scholem, Rosenzweig and others? Who are the people behind these activities and texts, and what is the political significance of their activities?
The article will open with a description of important notions of Zionist ideology. Then, I will describe briefly main aspects relevant to Israeli emigration. I will explain the importance of the city of Berlin to the Hebrew culture starting from the 18th century, as well as a Zionist center in the first half of the 20st century. The last two sections of this article will explore two figures of Israeli emigrants and their activities in contemporary Berlin. I will follow the activist Tal Hever-Chybowski, who claims to have established the first literary journal to be published in Hebrew in Europe since 1944 (entitled: Mikan Va'eilah - “from here and onwards”). Hever- Chybowski describes his motivation in the following words: “The goal of the journal is to become a literary cultural platform for non-hegemonic and non-sovereign Hebrew, a Hebrew that is free from the shackles of nationality and territory.” I say “claim to have established,” because this journal is not yet published, even though Hever-Chybowski describes it as if it is.
I will also follow the work of Mati Shemoeluf, a Hebrew author working in Berlin, who described the wonders of a Hebrew Library in Berlin. Shemoeluf, just like Hever-Chybowski, can be criticized for his embellishments of reality, since the Hebrew library – at least as Shemoeluf describes it - does not really exist. What are their political motivations, and what form of political activity are they practicing, are the questions I address in this chapter.
Abstract: The study investigates the main motives for preservation of sites of Jewish heritage tourism (JHT) by studying three locations in Macedonia: Skopje (the capital), Štip (the largest city in the east part of Macedonia) and Bitola (the largest city in the southwest part of Macedonia). The article assesses the presence of several motivations, like: (i) Guilt; (ii) Interest in national history; (iii) Revival of a glorious Past; (iv) Economic benefits; (v) Display of sympathy; and (vi) Dark tourism development. The analysis is based on a qualitative research method and incorporates: (a) Qualitative data analysis, by conducting interviews in June 2016 with key stakeholders from central and local governments as the main policy makers; and (b) Analysis of secondary data sources, achieved by reviewing literature, historical, and statistical data related to Jewish history in Macedonia. Generally, the results point to the presence of strong iconic connection among Macedonians and the Jews that lived in Macedonia. The general findings indicate that by establishing and maintaining JH sites, stakeholders reflect sentiments of sympathy and even admiration to the perished Jewish community and a strong desire to revive a glorious past. Only in the case of Bitola, the potential economic benefits were surfaced as the main motive for initiating activities and investments in JH sites. Finally, the study recommends design and development of JHT product and tailor-made tourist packages as key elements that may boost tourism development in Macedonia alongside with commemoration of the Jews and their ties with the Macedonian people.
