Call for Papers

Annual International Conference of the Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem

“Natural Jews. New Approaches to (German) Jews in Environmental History”

27/28 January 2021

in cooperation with the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies, the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp, the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Israel, the Wissenschaftliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Leo Baeck Institute in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 

The proposed conference will open a discussion on the history of the Jews in Germany and Central Europe in relation to nature, landscape and physical environment – in their native countries and later in the Land of Israel and the State of Israel. We intend to link the study of Jewish history in Germany and Central Europe and the Jewish emigration from Germany to the Land of Israel to environmental history and thereby explore new perspectives on  richly debated political, social, religious, economic aspects of the history of Central European Jewry. 

Studies in the field of environmental history have revealed fascinating aspects of the relationship between modern German nationalism, the German state and the environment. For example, the attitude to water, forest, and landscape as developed in Germany was shaped by Enlightenment thought and “improvement” politics through romanticism, the rise of nationalism in the 19th century until the First World War, the Weimar era and the Nazi regime. Political and cultural forces in Germany needed images of the landscape (among other things around the establishment and development of the Heimat concept) and even took an active part in its redesign. As (local) natural history societies as well as natural history museums and collections were also fundamental institutions in this process, Jewish membership and participation in these endeavors was widespread but has not yet gained sufficient attention.

The historiography of German Jews, which recently faced the challenge of the spatial turn and its impact on the life of the Jews in the era of emancipation as well as in the face of anti-Semitism and Nazism, has so far mainly dealt with aspects of urban life. The relationship to nature was mainly addressed in the context of Jewish youth movements and the work of the Hachsharot activities (agricultural training), but has not yet been widely discussed. The proposed conference will strive to advance research on the history of the Jews in Germany in relation to rural spaces and nature and to connect the field of Jewish Studies to environmental history.

Studies of Zionism have already analyzed links to images and practices related to nature and landscape, but have not yet systematically engaged with environmental history. In a more focused way, the attitude of Jewish immigrants from Europe in general and from Germany and Central Europe in particular to the different aspects of nature and landscape in their new homeland has not yet been fully examined. We intend to develop a discussion of attitudes to the climate of Israeli land, sea, desert, flora and fauna and other dimensions of human-nature interactions and to examine their reflection in the world-views and self-consciousness of Jewish and German immigrants from Central Europe in the face of landscape memory and homeland (Heimat) construction.

Because of the current limitations in movement due to the COVID-19 pandemic we plan to hold the conference online.

Applicants should include a summary of no more than 200 words, and a CV not exceeding 150 words in text.

Proposals for paper topics should be submitted by 31 July 2020 to leobaeck@leobaeck.org

Proposals will be reviewed and selected by a committee. Applicants will be notified by August.

Organizing Committee:

Dr. Irene Aue-Ben-David, Dr. Steffen Hagemann, Dr. Dominik Hünniger, Dr. Sharon Livne, Prof. Guy Miron, Prof. Miriam Rürup, Prof. Galili Shahar

Contact: leobaeck@leobaeck.org

Website: www.leobaeck.org

Call for Papers: Online Workshop Series (Oct – Dec 2020)

Picturing Jewish Dress: Researching Belonging and Identification Through Historical Visual Sources

This online workshop series seeks to explore the significance of dress in Jewish history through engagement with and exploration of visual sources. Scholars interested in Jewish history have emphasised the importance of cultural practices as an expression of belonging and identification across broad time periods. A few of them have also fruitfully explored the significance of dress and visual representations. However, studies that integrate these different lines of inquiry with an explicit focus on visual representations of Jewish dress and the visual creation of notions of ‘Jewishness’ through dress are scarce. Organised by Svenja Bethke (Hebrew University of Jerusalem/University of Leicester) and Gil Pasternak (De Montfort University Leicester), the workshop series Picturing Jewish Dress seeks to integrate these impulses across a broad historical timeframe by exploring the crucial role played by dress in Jewish history through engagement with and exploration of visual sources.

Dress, for any community, is situated at the intersection of the private and the public domains. While intimately covering the individual’s body, it is always perceived and interpreted by others in the public sphere. Throughout history dress has been employed as one key means to express one’s self-understanding, identification, values, and feelings of belonging to social groups, cultural spheres or communities.

Through the organisation of the workshop series we want to shed light on the significance of such notions within Jewish history with a broad chronological focus from a global perspective. We specifically wish to explore how visual representations of dress can be used to gain insights into questions of belonging and identification, values, traditions and histories across diverse Jewish communities. We are equally interested in investigating how visual representations of Jewish dress may enable us to understand the mechanisms of discrimination and exclusion used by non-Jewish actors. Alongside analysis of photographic images taken since the 19th century, we want to explore the use of photography in circulating and perpetuating imagery about Jewish life and culture from earlier time periods, and the role played by digital technology and digitisation processes in preserving Jewish heritage. This seems timely as historical photographs in particular become increasingly available to scholars and members of the public through their digitisation and subsequent increased accessibility. Similar to the emergence of the medium of photography and the impact it has exerted on the documentation as well as on the distortion of Jewish identities, digital technology and digitisation processes now take responsibility to preserve Jewish heritage and social approaches to the Jewish people.

The workshop series will take place at least once a month between October and December 2020 and will be delivered via an online video communication platform. In addition, we intend to publish extended versions of the contributions in a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal, which will be dedicated to the same theme.

We invite proposals for 15-minute papers on any historical time period that explore how:

• photographic sources have led to the perpetuation of “old” or “new” images of Jewish dress (whether they were originally produced as photographs, paintings, drawings, sketches or any other medium of representation);
• photographic sources allow us to explore the changing role and meaning of dress in Jewish history.

Although not limited to these, paper proposals may refer to explorations of Jewish dress and visual sources in contexts such as:

• Archives, museums and digital collections;
• Research methods and approaches;
• Photographic production and reproduction practices.

Proposals of maximum 300 words for 15-minute papers should be sent by 7 August 2020 to picturingjewishdress@gmail.com For more details please consult a longer version of the call for papers.

Call for papers for the 27^th  International Conference on Jewish Studies

Dear Colleagues,

we are pleased to inform you that the call for papers for the 27^th  International Conference on Jewish Studies has been announced. The Conference will be held in Moscow on 31 January – 2 February 2021.

The 27^th  International conference program will include sections on traditional areas of Jewish studies (Biblical and Talmudic Studies, Jewish Thought, Jewish History, Judeo-Christian Relations, the Holocaust, Israeli Studies, Languages and Literature, Art, Ethnology, Demography, Jewish Genealogy, Museums and Archives, etc.). We also welcome topics that require interdisciplinary approach.

Graduate students and young researchers are invited to take part in the youth panels of the conference, moderated by the leading experts in their fields of study.

Presentation of last year publications on Jewish studies will also take place. If you wish to submit new published works, please contact us so we will include it in the program.

To apply for the conference please fill in this online form. 

The deadline for the submissions is October, 1, 2020. 

We will inform you about the results and send all the organizational details on November, 1, 2020.

The time limit for one presenter is 20 minutes (including questions). The Conference will be held in Russian and English.

The participants will be provided with accommodation and meals during the Conference.

The full program of the conference will be published on our website after December 20, 2020.

We will be glad to see you at the conference!