Abstract: The afterword reflects on the various contributions in this special issue of Ethnoscripts, which explores the dynamics of contemporary Jewish agency in the context of Jewish cultural heritage. It emphasises the complexities and tensions that arise as Jewish subjects engage with their heritage, highlighting negotiations within communities, intergenerational dialogues, and the interplay between State and minority interests. The afterword revisits several matters discussed in the contributions, such as post-vernacularity, counter-heritagisation, and State and national narratives and policies. It highlights dimensions of critical reflection and attention to complexity. It argues that Jewish heritage should not only be revived and enlivened but also critically engaged with, fostering a dialogue that recognises its complexities and contradictions across different contexts and historical narratives. This text introduces the concept of iridescent heritage, which articulates heritage as dynamic, multifaceted, and shaped by the interactions between subjects, heritage objects, and interpretive frameworks. This idea moves away from fixed and flat conceptions of heritage towards a more processual and complex understanding of its meanings. The afterword suggests the explanatory resonance of a conceptualisation of iridescence with the insights from several contributions in the special issue.
Abstract: Haketia, a hybrid Judaeo-Spanish trans-language suppressed under imperial rule in the Maghreb, is being actively reanimated through digital heritagisation practices amongst dispersed communities of speech. How do digital heritage practices enable the postvernacular transformation of Haketia from suppressed vernacular to an active tool of cross-cultural coalition-building? Drawing on virtual ethnography of the eSefarad online platform, this study examines how such platforms operate not as static preservation but through processes of ‘trans situ’ heritagisation, where cultural elements are exchanged across multiple sites, temporalities, and modes of presence. The analysis traces Haketia’s transition to postvernacular performance, where using the language becomes a conscious cultural enactment that forges virtual communities across historical rupture. Rather than representing continuous transmission, these digital practices are marked by inventive reconstruction and purposeful reassembly, conceptualised here as ‘open-source Sephardism’ – a framework grounded in diasporism that privileges relational ‘hereness’ over territorial return. Through collaborative negotiation and cross-cultural coalition, this digital heritage practice fosters the revival of Judaeo-Muslim virtual worldly commons, demonstrating how minoritised vernaculars can be reactivated as living threads of diasporic connection that transcend traditional boundaries of heritage preservation.
Abstract: This article examines contemporary curatorial practices in France as contested sites where North African Sephardic Jewish cultural heritage intersects with broader questions of memory, transmission, and return. It is based on an ethnographic analysis of four case studies: an academic meeting in Cassis in 2019, two exhibitions at the Palais de la Porte Dorée and the Institut du Monde Arabe in 2022, the grassroots Dalâla festival in Paris in 2023, and the 2024–2025 ‘Revenir’ exhibition at the Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée in Marseille. The article explores how ‘interrupted transmission’ shapes intergenerational creative memory work among Maghrebi Jewish communities and individuals in France. The study contributes to critical heritage studies by illuminating how minority communities navigate state-sanctioned representations while creating alternative spaces for cultural transmission. Drawing on Svetlana Boym’s concept of reflective nostalgia, Marianne Hirsch’s theory of post-memory, and David Berliner’s work on heritage temporality, the analysis reveals how different curatorial modes – from institutional to grassroots – negotiate the complexities of colonial legacies, displacement trauma, and cultural reclamation. Central to the analysis is the examination of ‘return’ – both the physical journey to an ancestral homeland and the imaginative process of cultural reconnection – as an agential mode of self-affirmation for French-born Jews of Maghrebi descent. I argue that effective engagement with Maghrebi Jewish memory requires multilayered approaches that balance institutional resources with community agency, moving beyond binary frameworks of assimilation/marginalisation or a Jewish/Arab division.
Abstract: State-approved and -funded Jewish cultural heritage has largely focused on concrete tangible spaces or structures, such as synagogues and mikvaot (ritual baths), and material objects. They often represent and evoke an idealised, unchanging Jewishness of the past that is presumed to be acceptable to non-Jewish audiences, yet one that bears little resemblance to lived Judaism, whether past or present. Using hip-hop by Jewish subjects in Germany as a case study, with a special focus on rapper Dimitri Chpakov, this article investigates the mobilisation of popular culture in the twenty-first century by diverse Jewish subjects under the radar of state-sanctioned conceptualisations and representations. Past studies have examined Jewish hip-hop in Germany within the authorised heritage discourse around Holocaust commemoration and anti-Semitism. This article argues that Jewish hip-hop initiatives need to be explored as alternative statements of Jewish heritage, Jewish communal identity, and Jewish diversity, geared towards young living Jewish community members. Such functions tend to be ignored or misunderstood in top-down discourses perpetuated in the public sphere. This article examines the extent to which present-day German Jewish hip-hop prompts a counter-heritagisation process: by creating compelling, deeply personal, and imitable musical forms, it reimagines and reforms conventional definitions of heritage in the service of young Jews living in Germany.
Abstract: Using an interdisciplinary perspective at the intersections of anthropology, Jewish Studies, and critical academic scholarship of heritage, this special issue presents ethnographic examples to explore the relationship between minority groups and the state through the prism of representations of Jewish cultural heritage in the European public sphere. On an empirical level, the articles focus on personal, community-led, and wider public discussions of the way Jewish experience and histories of migration have been (or should be) represented in museums and historical sites, in musical productions and open-air displays, at sites of restitution and in virtual spaces. In this introductory article we summarise the main points of each contribution and some of their connected themes. We then briefly discuss the articles we brought together and outline the main matters of theoretical concern they raise. Key are the aspirations that members of Jewish communities have in negotiating representations of Jewish heritage in Europe and the agentive capacity that diverse Jewish publics, including individual artists and professionals, demonstrate in shaping these representations to achieve, disrupt, or suspend state-sponsored consensus about the preservation of minority heritage.
Abstract: The study, preservation and dissemination of the synagogues of Greece has been a 30-year project initiated by the author in 1993. It included a journey to cities throughout Greece, documenting synagogues—some in use, others abandoned or in ruins—engaging in surveys and interviews. The project focused on people, architecture, the urban context and local history. Over the years, the work evolved to give a form and a voice to invisible buildings and places once vibrant with Jewish life. Through digital tools, books, exhibitions and in-situ journeys, the author aims to make this invisible architectural and historic evidence visible again, and accessible to a wider audience. This chapter addresses the question “How lost synagogues become visible again?” The author unfolds a methodology that combines low and high tech, and examples of restoration and dissemination projects, spanning three-decades until today. The survey and study of the synagogues of Greece that began between 1993 and 1999 is still in progress. Architectural restorations were completed between 2016 and 2023, while numerous exhibitions, presentations and publications has made his work accessible to a wider audience since 1997.
Abstract: Introduction. This study addresses the representation of ethnic minority cultures in online museum collections, which often reflect diverse viewpoints. We propose a data-driven methodology to construct a large-scale multi-viewpoint knowledge graph, using Jewish cultural heritage as a case study.
Method. We developed an LLM-based pipeline that combines object typing, named entity recognition, relation extraction, enrichment, and clustering.
Results. An analysis of 647,951 records and 178,444 extracted subjects from the collections of Jewish museums across the globe revealed diverse thematic emphases: Israel and the Netherlands prioritised religious themes, while others highlighted everyday life. Surprisingly, only Australia emphasised the Holocaust.
Conclusion(s). The central contribution of this study is the development of a knowledge organisation system capable of tracing major trends and identifying patterns in the polyvocality of perspectives. The methodology provides quantifiable, scalable analysis of multi-viewpoint cultural heritage, extendable to other minorities.
Abstract: Gdańsk with its multinational past, a thriving Jewish community in the prewar period, the history of the November pogrom and Kindertransporten, and a small, yet rather active Jewish community in the twenty-first century is an example of an attempt at refocusing the memory of the Jewish presence by demarginalising it: just like the Jewish merchants were finally allowed to settle within the city walls in the nineteenth century, the memory of the Jewish history – and presence – might be reconstructed, reconceptualized and redefined both via fleeting actions (walks, performances or barely visible sgraffito), the official educational programmes, state policy, and other memory practices, to mention only a popular Jewish culture festival Zbliżenia, organized in Gdańsk since 2013. Thus, as Kapralski (2017, p. 172) states, “[m]emoryscapes form a matrix of possible attitudes towards the past that can be activated in the commemorative actions of individuals and groups”.
Abstract: In the wake of the Holocaust and the post-war reconstruction of Greece’s historic city centers, many Greek synagogues were demolished, abandoned, or appropriated, erasing centuries of Jewish architectural and communal presence. This study presents a thirty year-long research and documentation initiative aimed at preserving, recovering, and eventually digitally reconstructing these “lost” synagogues, both as individual buildings and within their urban context. Drawing on architectural surveys, archival research, oral histories, and previously unpublished materials, including the recently rediscovered Shemtov Samuel archive, the project grew through the use of technology. Beginning with in situ surveys in the early 1990s, it evolved into full-scale digitally enhanced architectural drawings that formed the basis for further digital exploration, 3D models, and virtual reality outputs. With the addition of these new tools to existing documentation, the project can restore architectural detail and cultural context with a high degree of fidelity, even in cases where only fragmentary evidence survives. These digital reconstructions have informed physical restoration efforts as well as public exhibitions, heritage education, and urban memory initiatives across Greece. By reintroducing “invisible” Jewish landmarks into contemporary consciousness, the study addresses the broader implications of post-war urban homogenization, the marginalization of minority heritage, and the ethical dimensions of digital preservation. This interdisciplinary approach, which bridges architectural history, digital humanities, urban studies, and cultural heritage, demonstrates the value of digital tools in reconstructing “lost” pasts and highlights the potential for similar projects in other regions facing comparable erasures.
Abstract: The synagogues that suffered the ravages of World War II in Central and Eastern Europe faced an uncertain future. A limited number managed to retain their original religious functions, while the majority were either neglected or repurposed for entirely different uses. In the last thirty years, numerous towns and cities have started to “rediscover” these buildings as vital components of local history and culture. With their original roles as pivotal religious, cultural, and social centres for Jewish communities inevitably diminished, issues of ownership, control, and authenticity have emerged. The ongoing debate about whether these structures represent “Jewish heritage” or a more expansive cultural heritage that encompasses local, national, and international dimensions remains unresolved. This study examines the situation in Bucharest, which once boasted a significant Jewish population that has since dwindled. Although many synagogues have been lost over time, four have recently been restored, showcasing their fascinating eclectic architectural styles. These buildings now serve a combination of religious, social, cultural, and museum functions, gradually reintegrating them into the city’s identity and practices. Nonetheless, challenges and disagreements emerge, within the Jewish community itself, regarding the management and representation of these sites, as well as their inclusion into the tourism dynamics.
Abstract: After the Holocaust, in which 87 per cent of Greek Jewry was annihilated, communities confronted the challenge
of survival with limited resources. In many cases, synagogues and communal properties were sold and demolished
to support the surviving Jewish populations or to establish new institutions, such as the Jewish Museum of Greece.
This process illustrates a critical social dilemma: whether the continuity of community should be ensured through
the maintenance of living institutions or through the preservation of monuments as bearers of collective memory.
But what occurs when members of the community object to leadership decisions or challenge institutional
authority? This article examines the interplay between antisemitism and internal mechanisms of exclusion within
the Jewish communities in Greece, and how these dynamics shape both communal identity and the urban
landscape. Drawing on archival research and documentation of synagogues initiated by the author in 1993, it
highlights the tension between assimilation and self-preservation expressed both socially and spatially. Traditional
Jewish neighbourhoods, with their defensive layouts and gates, embodied a morphology of protection that
reinforced boundaries while becoming landmarks within historic city centres in cities such as Veroia, Komotini,
Kos, and Serres. The discussion situates the destruction and preservation of synagogues within broader patterns of
urban renewal, reconstruction, and transformation, where redevelopment often erases valuable cultural heritage,
and considers how such processes engage the voices that object to this erasure. Framed through the thought of
Ricœur, Arendt, and Levinas, the argument also emphasizes the moral responsibility of the researcher, alongside
that of community members, to act as a guardian of memory, recognising that the loss of monuments constitutes
both an urban and existential rupture, with implications for present and future generations.
Abstract: En dépit d'une ancienne présence sur le territoire de la France, les Juifs, parmi les diverses populations assemblées dans la construction historique de la nation française, semblent n'avoir pas été, pendant longtemps, considérés comme un élément constitutif du groupe national. La recherche se propose d'examiner cette dissonance entre la mémoire nationale et l'histoire, à travers ce que l'Ecole, pièce essentielle d'un dispositif de transmission, a retenu des Juifs dans l'histoire enseignée depuis plus d'un siècle, et qui se trouve à présent conservé dans les manuels scolaires. Ceux-ci, en effet, sans avoir été conçus pour cet usage, témoignent des termes dans lesquels une société élabore son passé historique et souhaite le transmettre aux générations ultérieures, dans une forme où se mêlent une préoccupation d'éducation civique et une volonté de diffusion de la connaissance. Des débuts de la Troisième république à nos jours, les manuels permettent d'observer quelle sorte de représentation des Juifs la mémoire historique de la France, modelée par une conception puissamment unitaire, a pu élaborer ; comment et selon quels mécanismes ces images perdurent, s'effacent ou se modifient. Les Juifs de l'histoire de France apparaissent alors étroitement liés à l'idée même de nation.
Topics: Antisemitism, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Law, Policy, European Union, Antisemitism: Education against, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Education, Hate crime, Jewish Heritage, Jewish Culture
Abstract: The Pluralism Seminar Papers is a collection of twenty insightful papers born from a series of four seminars dedicated to exploring the theme of Pluralism. These seminars, held in the vibrant cities of Prague, Sarajevo, Cordoba, and Florence, were part of the European Routes of Jewish Heritage initiative. This initiative, certified by the Council of Europe since 2004, spans across 17 countries, each actively engaged in research, heritage preservation, contemporary culture, art, and sustainable cultural tourism.
Abstract: Eine Vielzahl von Institutionen und Initiativen in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz sammelt, erforscht und vermittelt jüdische Geschichte und Kultur. Dazu gehören Museen, Bibliotheken und Archive, Gedenkstätten, Vereine, Kommissionen, Universitätsinstitute und private Initiativen; es gibt Projekte zur Erforschung jüdischer Friedhöfe ebenso wie genealogische Gesellschaften. Sie sind lokal, regional sowie überregional tätig und werden durch staatliche Förderung oder privates Engagement getragen.
Das Buch bietet erstmals eine aktuelle Bestandsaufnahme dieser Institutionen und Initiativen, die mitunter auf eine lange Tradition zurückblicken können, insbesondere in den letzten drei Jahrzehnten aber an Zahl zugenommen und Bedeutung gewonnen haben. In diesem übersichtlichen Nachschlagewerk beschreiben die einzelnen Institutionen ihre Entstehung, Entwicklung und Aufgaben. Genaue Angaben zu den Archiv- und Sammlungsbeständen ermöglichen Interessierten einen Zugang zu schriftlichen, bildlichen und materiellen Überlieferungen zur jüdischen Geschichte und Kultur im deutschsprachigen Raum.
Abstract: Since the 1989 political transition, a multifaceted process of knowledge production and memory formation regarding rural Jews has been ongoing in Hungary’s civil and academic spheres, often starting from or leading to local history research. These initiatives typically have multiple aims and functions: mourning the losses of the Holocaust, confronting and facing the difficult past, and uncovering the historical values of specific localities. Through the
presentation of examples and analysis of a bibliography on the subject, this article evaluates the achievements, directions, and shortcomings in this field, using historian Diana Pinto’s conceptual framework of “Jewish Space.” Building on the theoretical and practical analyses by Diana Pinto, Erica Lehrer, and Ruth Ellen Gruber, the author emphasizes that the social memory of European Jews can be most effectively created in spaces where Jewish and non-Jewish organizations and individuals can collaborate, engage in dialogue, and make joint contributions. The analysis also highlights the need for more professional and financial support for individuals and organizations active in this area and stresses the importance of coordinating their work and developing strategies based on professional criteria to ensure the efficient use of resources.
Topics: Antisemitism, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Law, Policy, European Union, Antisemitism: Education against, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Education, Hate crime, Jewish Heritage, Jewish Culture
Topics: Antisemitism, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Law, Policy, European Union, Antisemitism: Education against, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Education, Hate crime, Jewish Heritage, Jewish Culture
Abstract: This paper uses archival and ethnological research to analyze the fates of former synagogues during two totalitarian regimes in present-day Slovakia. The processes described here were catalyzed by the Holocaust. Between 1938 and 1945, over 100,000 Jews from Slovakia were murdered. Out of the 228 Jewish religious communities (JRCs) active before the war, only 79 were reconstituted after liberation. Most were later disbanded because of aliyah to Palestine/Israel. Their abandoned synagogues passed into the administration of the newly founded Central Union of Jewish Religious Communities (CUJRC). During the Communist era (1948-1989), the majority of these synagogues were sold because the CUJRC did not have sufficient resources for their maintenance.
The second section of this paper discusses synagogues in different parts of Slovakia to show how representatives of the CUJRC tried to ensure the temples’ new owners did not violate their religious dignity. Purchase and sale agreements generally prohibited using the synagogues for entertainment purposes, instead preferring their conversion into warehouses, silos, workshops, etc. Although, as soon as the 1940s, part of the community requested that the synagogues be used as cultural centers, this did not happen on a large scale until after the revolution of 1989. A synagogue is not defined by its four walls but rather by the activities that take place inside it. The repurposed buildings are frequently located in regions with no active Jewish organizations. They are mere relics of the past and, bar a few exceptions, do not contribute to the renewal of traditional Jewish life. Believers nevertheless tend to have a negative view of the events that are held in the former synagogues, with some going as far as to consider them disrespectful. Even many secular Jews feel that the former synagogues do not fulfil their original purpose and have definitively transformed into non-synagogues.
Abstract: This book explores and reveals the intricacies of Jewish heritage in contemporary Germany, the role it plays as a "moral heritage" in the symbolic representation of Jews and Judaism in the national landscape, and its relevance for the cultural sustainability of local Jewish communities. The practice of synagogue music in the past and present is a central case study in the discussions. This ethnographic study examines how Jewish liturgical music as the cultural heritage of minorities has been constructed, treated, discussed, appropriated, and passed on to different actors in different forms and for different purposes over time. It also examines the resulting moral and ethical questions and power imbalances. The author discusses how both Jewish and non-Jewish stakeholders utilize the music of 19th- and early 20th-century Reform Judaism and the Minhag Ashkenaz for a symbolic reconstruction of German Jewry. Furthermore, they repatriate it in local Jewish communities today. This is usually done for individual, sometimes commercial, rather than religious reasons. The Jewish-musical cultural heritage process is characterized by moral imperatives and complex negotiations about power and representation. It reveals problematic aspects of German-Jewish relations, cross-generational rifts, and denominational differences between the Jewish communities in post-war Germany.
Abstract: Aujourd’hui, le djudyó (judéo-espagnol) n’est plus transmis en France. Des associations, comme Aki Estamos, offrent aux personnes qui le parlent ou le comprennent la possibilité de suivre des cours de langue. Les participants, sans être des locuteurs à part entière, ne sont pas non plus des apprenants stricto sensu, puisqu’ils possèdent des compétences linguistiques acquises dans leur enfance. Dans leur cas, la dichotomie entre acquisition et apprentissage est inopérante. Il convient d’identifier les objectifs de ces locuteurs-apprenants, qui suivent les cours sans développer de nouvelles compétences langagières. Ce sont les mots et leurs sonorités qui montent alors sur le devant de la scène, délaissant la grammaire. Le cadre des cours constitue un prétexte pour retrouver une langue et un monde disparus. M’appuyant sur l’observation participante, j’esquisserai les profils linguistiques de ces participants pour tenter d’en comprendre la démarche.
Abstract: As elsewhere in eastern and southern Europe, many Jewish communities in Greece were almost completely destroyed during the Holocaust, which resulted in the near erasure of many distinctive religious and cultural practices. Among these erased communities were the Romaniote Jews, an Indigenous Judeo-Greek population distinct from the Sephardic Jews who arrived in Greece following the Spanish Inquisition. The cultural losses included their musical practices, which were largely orally transmitted. A few Romaniote leaders and practitioners continue the musical-liturgical traditions today in Greece, as well as in the United States and Israel. The living practice of this musical liturgy that is ever-changing in the typical manner of orally transmitted repertoires arguably embodies a process of remembering destruction. This process is shown by the imprint of gaps in memory caused by rupture embedded in the repertoire. While remembering destruction is an intrinsically Jewish practice, it is of specific importance to the Jews of Ioannina (a city that once was, and arguably still is, the spiritual center of Romaniote Jews) and their descendants. In the past decade, an annual pilgrimage to Ioannina to attend a Romaniote Yom Kippur service has become a pivotal experience for both Romaniote Jews and others, enabling them to remember and mourn the pre-Holocaust community. This annual pilgrimage, at the epicenter of Romaniote religious and social significance, generates a new Jewish collective based on Romaniote identity and history that includes the restoration of distinct musical practices.
Abstract: The main issue explored in this thesis is how and why food is used as a channel through which everyday identities are informed and elaborated. The thesis explores when, how and in which circumstances food and the activities involved in its preparation, consumption and exchange can be used as vehicles for identities. My ethnographic focus is on the Jewish population of Thessaloniki, the largest and most economically viable city of Northern Greece. The Jewish past of this city is quite remarkable: the Thessalonikian Jews remained a significant part of the overall population and existed continuously until early twentieth century. Dramatic events during the twentieth century and in particular the coming of Asia Minor refugees in 1922-3 and the Second World War in 1939-45 caused significant upheavals and resulted in a radical reduction of the city's Jewish population. My ethnographic data confirm that this turbulent history is reflected in the construction of present-day Thessalonikian Jewish identities. Food and the associated activities like preparing, serving, eating, talking and remembering through food are explored as meaningful contexts in which the Jews of Thessaloniki make statements about their past, create their present, construct or reject collective identifications, express their fears and preoccupations, imagine their future. The identities of my informants were multiple and complex. Being Jewish interacted with being Sephardic, Thessalonikian and Greek. In the thesis I argue that food was a way of experiencing and expressing these identities. I use the term "community" cautiously since it fails to reflect the complexity of Thessalonikian Jewish experiences and the varying degrees of identification by individuals with that community. Different degrees of belonging are considered in relation to gender, age, economic and social status. Therefore, the ambivalence or often the reluctance of Jewish people living in Thessaloniki to be identified as members of "a community" is an important theme of the thesis. Another important theme discussed is the tension and the overlapping between religion and tradition meaning kosher diet and Sephardic food as it is translated and perceived by the Jewish people themselves.
Abstract: The filigree ground mosaic is placed at the heart of the Grindel neighbourhood in Hamburg, Germany. Tracing the footprint of the former synagogue that once stood there, proudly, it demarcates an absence. It is a reminder of what the Nazis destroyed and sought to extinguish. The fact that the synagogue will finally be rebuilt, in the same place, with the support of the Federal government and the city, is anything but a matter of course. This will be the first reconstruction project of a synagogue of this size in Germany since the Second World War. Yet the project has been controversial in some respects. The two main concerns expressed in the public debate about the form of reconstruction and whether and how to integrate the Synagogue Monument at first sight appeared to be in irreconcilable competition: the importance of maintaining a culture of remembrance, and the legitimate claim of the Jewish Community to recover and rebuild its former place of worship. This would not merely be, as is often said, a sign of Jewish belonging, of identity and representation, in the urban society. Rather, it is about modes of existence that the architecture itself, in the materiality of its form and its presence, embodies and makes possible. To the people, architecture is what makes the difference. It thus shapes the political landscape.
