Jewish Cultural Heritage in Light of Critical Heritage Studies
International Conference of the DFG Priority Program on “Jewish Cultural Heritage” (SPP 2357)
The definitions of what Jewish cultural heritage is or should be, what significance it has for various stakeholders, and how it is used as a social, cultural, religious, economic, and political resource are subject to social and political changes. The conference is dedicated to various tangible and intangible manifestations of Jewish cultural heritage, which will be discussed from the perspective of Critical Heritage Studies. The field of Critical Heritage Studies reconceptualizes heritage by paying attention to themes such as power, identity, economic development, and conflict, and by engaging with wide areas of critical inquiry. It is further concerned with locating heritage in the present and not the past, as it is in the present that people assume responsibility for the safeguarding of Jewish heritage; in the present, different groups of stakeholders interpret the meaning of Jewish heritage and associate it with particular meanings, values, and even identities. Jewish heritage is thus both a cultural asset and a social and political instrument for (re-)defining Jewish culture, Judaism, and Jewishness.
Conference objectives
The objective of the conference is to facilitate a more profound comprehension of the intricacies of Jewish cultural heritage and to identify novel avenues for both academic inquiry and cultural policy, in light of Critical Heritage Studies. The conference aims to challenge dominant narratives and to expand the discourses and horizon of Jewish cultural heritage in a fast-paced, almost daily changing world. Comparative perspectives on Jewish heritage are welcome.
Further Information
March 3-6, 2025
at the Gustav-Stresemann-Institute, Bonn, Deutschland
Funded By
Preliminary Programme
| 09:00 | Registration |
| Opening | “Plenarraum” (Plenary Room) |
|---|---|
| 11:00 | Official Opening of the Conference (Sarah Ross) |
| 11:15 | Welcome address by the German Commission for UNESCO (Marlen Meißner) |
| 11:30 | Opening Keynote Lecture: The Heritage of Heritage and Its Futures: Jewish Musical Perspectives by Edwin Seroussi |
| 12:30 | Lunch |
| 14:00-15:30 | Session A | |
|---|---|---|
| Panel 1: Reclaiming Jewish Heritage: Contemporary Identities in Europe (Chair: Sarah M. Ross) | Panel 2: Jewish Heritage Across Borders: Migration, Memory, and Cultural Adaptation (Chair: Samuel Weigel) | |
| “Plenarraum” (Plenary Room) | “Gruppenraum” (Group Room) | |
| 14:00 | Paul Liffman: “Restoring Heimat: From Kreuzplatz to Jewish Memorial in a German village” | Jeffrey Abt: “Objects and Migration: On Things Carried Into Exile” |
| 14:30 | Sacha Kagan: “Contemporary Queer(ing) Appropriations of Jewish Cultural Heritage in Europe” | Birgit Klein: “(Re-)Constructing Jewish Heritage in a Present-Day Colonial Setting: The Case of Curacao (Netherlands Antilles)” |
| 15:00 | Naomi Leite: “Memory, Divination, Expertise: The Role of Individuals in the Making of Portugal’s Jewish Heritage” | Saptarshi Sengupta: “Beyond Bread: Exploring the Intersection of Food, Memory, and Emotion in Calcutta’s Jewish Bakery Heritage” |
| 15:30 | Coffee break |
| 16:00 | Keynote Panel I: “Jewish Heritage shaped by War” Marina Nahum-Sapritzky, Josef Frischer, Gabriel Levy (Chair: Ina Henning) |
|---|---|
| “Plenarraum” (Plenary Room) |
| 18:00 | Dinner at GSI |
| 09:00-10:30 | Session B | |
|---|---|---|
| Panel 3: Jewish Social Work and Cultural Heritage (Chair: Mirko Przystawik) | Panel 4: Authorizing Jewish Heritage: Education, Representation, and Identity in Contemporary Pedagogical Practices (Chair: Marina Nahum-Sapritzky) | |
| “Plenarraum” (Plenary Room) | “Gruppenraum” (Group Room) | |
| 09:00 | Norman Böttcher:“’Cultural Work Had Become Social Work’ (Henry Maòr)” | Markus Tauschek & Laura-Marie Steinhaus: “In Search of Jewish Heritage? Strategies and Practices of (De-)Autho-rization in Jewish Educational Initiatives“ |
| 09:30 | Sina Polchert: “’The Importance of Jewish Communities as a Social Support and Infrastructure’ (Laura Cazés)” | Ina Henning: “Authorizing Jewish Heritage: A Search for Traces Behind the Scenes of Music Textbook Production” |
| 10:00 | Böttcher/ Polchert: “Jewish Social Work as an Important Factor in Jewish Cultural Heritage” | Nataliia Bakulina: “Jewish Cultural Heritage in Bilingual Hebrew Textbooks for Primary School Grades and a Jewish Art Guide for Lyceum Students in Ukraine” |
| 10:30 | Coffee break |
| 09:00-10:30 | Session C | |
|---|---|---|
| Panel 5: Jewish Sounds: Heritage, Technology, and Space (Chair: Sarah M. Ross) | Panel 6: Perspectives on Mizrahi Jewry: History, Identity, and Heritage (Chair: Tom Kellner) | |
| “Plenarraum” (Plenary Room) | “Gruppenraum” (Group Room) | |
| 11:00 | Stefanie Mockert: “Munich’s Broken Tablets: Sounding Silence in Emanuel Kirschner’s Musical Legacy” | Michal Ohana: “Moroccan Jew’s Gaze Upon His Native Land from 1830’s London” |
| 11:30 | Miranda Crowdus: “Untidy Sounds in Pristine Places: Jewish Sonic Interventions in Authorized Heritage and Virtually Jewish Spaces” | David Guedj: “A Judeo Arabic Treatise on the History of Moroccan Jewry from the Point of view of the Toshavim” |
| 12:30 | Samuel Weigel: “Making Jewish Heritages Online – On Digital Knowledge Architectures of Jewish Liturgical Music” | Hila Shalem Baharad: “Ethnic Relations Among Immigrants in the Israeli Transit Camps” |
| 12:30 | Lunch |
| 14:30-16:00 | Session D | |
|---|---|---|
| Panel 7: Jewish Heritage and National Narratives (Chair: Thorsten Fehlberg) | Panel 8: Ethics, Provenance, and Representation: Jewish Heritage in Manuscripts and Exhibitions (Chair: Laura-Marie Steinhaus) | |
| “Plenarraum” (Plenary Room) | “Gruppenraum” (Group Room) | |
| 14:30 | Narciss Sohrabi: “Critical Jewish Heritage and Memory in Iran: Construction of Identity Through Reflections on Islam” | Yoel Finkelman: “Pragmatism and the Ethics of Poorly Provenanced Judaica Books, Manuscripts, and Archives” |
| 15:00 | Elsa Pinar Kilavuz: “Navigating National Narratives and Social Communication: The Visibility of Jewish Heritage in Istanbul” | William J. Diebold: “’Contrary to Nature?’ The Alienation of Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts from West German Public Collections After the Shoah” |
| 15:30 | Daniël Metz: “Heritage as Anchor for Jewish Identity: A Dutch Approach” | Ewa Kędziora: “The Beach as a Jewish Cultural Heritage? Analysis of the Exhibition on the Coast of Tel Aviv (2019-2020) in MUSA Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv” |
| 16:00 | Coffee break |
| 17:00 | Keynote Panel II: “European Jewish Cultural Heritage” Ruth-Ellen Gruber, Helise Liebermann, Victor Sorenssen, Francesco Spagnolo – Moderation: Markus Tauschek |
|---|---|
| “Plenarraum” (Plenary Room) |
| 19:00 | Conference Banquet |
| 9:00–10:30 | Session E | |
|---|---|---|
| Panel 9: Literary Landscapes of Jewish Heritage: Space, Architecture, and Identity (Chair: Tom Kellner) | Panel 10 Urban Echoes: Jewish Heritage, Erasure, and the Politics of Memory (Chair: Mirko Przystawik) | |
| “Plenarraum” (Plenary Room) | “Gruppenraum” (Group Room) | |
| 9:00 | Tamar Gutfeld: Heritage Between Places and Spaces: Micha Yosef Berdichevsky’s The Partition | Meitar Tewel: “An Office Building, a Desolate Lot and a Lost Jewish Past: Reclaiming the Mundane Postwar History of Frankfurt Am Main’s Judengasse” |
| 9:30 | Sonja Dickow-Rotter: Constructions of Jewish Cultural Heritage in Literary Texts on Architecture and Space | Elias Messinas: “Invisible Jewish Heritage: the lost synagogues of Greece. Using technology and story-telling to preserve their urban presence” |
| 10:30 | Coffee break |
| 11:00–12:30 | Session F | |
|---|---|---|
| Panel 11: Jewish Heritage and the Culture of Memory (Chair: Sarah M. Ross) | Panel 12: Jewish Heritage in Northern Europe (Chair: Thorsten Fehlberg) | |
| “Plenarraum” (Plenary Room) | “Gruppenraum” (Group Room) | |
| 11:00 | Tom Kellner: “Dark Heritage and Jewish Cultural Memory: Navigating Authority, Memory, and Meaning” | Nathan Abrams: “Hiraeth and Hirael: Heritage in Wales” |
| 11:30 | Magdalena Abraham Diefenbach: “German Expellees and Their Memory of Their Jewish Neighbors in Post-war Germany” | Mercédez Czimbalmos: “Perceptions of Jews Living in Finland on Combating Antisemitism via Educating About Jewish Heritage” |
| 12:00 | Christiane Dätsch: “Sharing Heritage?! A Concept and Its Variations: A Workshop Report on a German Israeli Student Project” | / |
| 12:30 | Lunch |
| 18:30 | Public Podium Discussion: “Jüdisches Kulturerbe und Antisemitismusprävention in Deutschland. Rückblick, aktuelle Herausforderungen und Perspektiven” Panelists: Volker Beck, Deidre Berger, Andreas Brämer, Christiane Dätsch, Ludwig Spaenle, Christiane Twiehaus – Moderation: Anselm Hagedorn |
|---|---|
| “Plenarraum” (Plenary Room) |
| 9:00 | Keynote Panel III: “Secular Jewish Heritage” – Paul Brody, Amir Engel, Anna-Dorothea Ludewig, Judith Müller, Ulrike Schneider – Moderation: Tom Kellner |
|---|---|
| “Plenarraum” (Plenary Room) | |
| 10:30 | Coffee break |
| 11:00–12:30 | Session G | |
|---|---|---|
| Panel 13: The Patrimonialization of Jewish Historical Sites in Regensburg (Chair: Norman Böttcher) | Panel 14: Constructing Jewish Heritage: From Art History to Digital Humanities (Chair: Samuel Weigel) | |
| “Plenarraum” (Plenary Room) | “Gruppenraum” (Group Room) | |
| 11:00 | Astrid Riedler-Pohlers: “How to Present the Jewish Quarter on the Neupfarrplatz to Jewish and Non-Jewish Visitors?” | Cornelia Wilhelm: “The Making of Jewish Heritage in the Digital Age I – History: From the Invisible to Mapping the Trials and Transmissions of German Refugee Rabbis” |
| 11:30 | Susanne Weigand: “How to Present the Jewish Tombstones to Jewish and Non-jewish Visitors?” | Christian Riepl: “The Making of Jewish Heritage in the Digital Age II: Technology: With Data Science to History” |
| 12:30 | Eva Haverkamp-Rott: “How to Present the Current Objects in the Section on Jewish History of the Historical Museum of Regensburg to Jewish and Non-jewish Visitors?” | Mirko Prystawik: “The Establishment of Jewish Art History: Constructions of Cultural Heritage in Texts on Jewish Architecture in the Early 20th Century” |
Downloads
Registrierung
Conference Fees
EUR 50,- (reduced for post-docs: 30,- / PhD students: 20,-)
Payment information: Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover, Neues Haus 1, 30175 Hannover, Germany
IBAN: DE11 2505 0000 0106 0350 58, Bank: Nord LB Hannover, SWIFT: NOLADE2HXXX
Reference: 73061 004 Conference EZJM+[YOUR NAME]
If you would like to attend one of the public keynote events, please use our registration form. Attendance at the keynotes or individual keynote panels is free of charge and only requires pre-registration. Seating is limited.
Contact Information
Coordination Office of the Priority Program 2357: “Jewish Cultural Heritage”
E-Mail: spp.ezjm@hmtm-hannover.de
