The Ninth Annual Conference of the Society for Sephardic Studies.

Sephardi Jews between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean

School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon, 24th – 26^th June 2019, Amphitheatres 3 and 4

The main purpose of the Ninth Annual Conference of the Society for Sephardic Studies (in keeping with this year’s location) is to explore from a broader chronological, geographical, and thematic perspective the long and multifaceted experience of Sephardi Jews between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. While bearing in mind that the Ocean stretches from Northern Europe to the confines of North America and the Strait of Tierra del Fuego, we would like to examine the affinities between different experiences and imperial policies, economic, social, cultural and political agents, and the new state entities of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. These relations are increasingly being understood in a dialectical way. Therefore, we welcome papers that treat them as such or that focus on one of the following subjects:

1. The presence of Jews and conversos in Portugal, Spain and their colonial spaces: religious and cultural affiliations.
2. Jews and conversos in the Atlantic metropolises of Hamburg, Amsterdam, and London: the Mediterranean socioeconomic and cultural background.
3. Jews and conversos in the Atlantic colonial spaces: social, religious, political, and cultural issues.
4. Migration movements to Africa and America in the 19th and 20th centuries: the (re)encounter with Mediterranean values.
5. Cultural production in Diaspora territories: material, oral, and written sources.
6. Memories and thoughts about the Mediterranean in the Atlantic area.

Deadline: 15 January 2019

For submission of proposals and other information, please see the link http://www.centrodehistoria-flul.com/sephardijews.html#

Saint-Petersburg State University

The Department of Jewish Culture

International Conference

“Formation of the Intellectual Vocabulary and Terminology in Jewish thought: Sources and Contexts”

29-31 May 2019

First Call for Papers

Following the success of conferences on Jewish thought in 2017 and 2018 The Department of Jewish Culture of Saint-Petersburg State University, in collaboration with the International Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, will host a three-day conference “Formation of the Intellectual Terminology and Vocabulary in Jewish Thought: Sources and Contexts».

The aim of the conference is to examine the intellectual vocabulary and terminology of Jewish thought. The topic of the conference provides an overview of the broadest spectrum of Jewish philosophical teachings, both in chronological and spatial terms.

The journal Judaica Petropolitana (judaica-petropolitana.philosophy.spbu.ru) may publish participants’ papers extended to a standard article length.

Working languages: English, Hebrew, Russian

The deadline for application is 31 March 2019.

Timeline and place: St. Petersburg, 29-31 May 2019

Please complete your paper proposal with the following information:

1. Full Name
2. E-mail
3. Country
4. Telephone
5. Current institution and/or academic affiliation
6. Academic degree / year of study)
7. Title of the paper
8. Language of the paper
9. Technical equipment for your paper (in case you need it)
10. Abstract of the paper (up to 300 words)

For further information and paper proposals please write to Ilya Dvorkin [idvorkin@mail.ru], Igor Kaufman [igor_kaufman@mail.ru] (please email to both of them)

Contact Info: 
Dr. Prof. Igor Tantlevskiy, Chair of the Department of Jewish Culture, Chair of the Conference Organizing Commitee

Ilya Dvorkin, Co-Chair of the Conference Organizing Commitee

Dr. Igor Kaufman

Call for Papers

The Historical German Jewish Press as Interface

Platform, Mouthpiece, and Sources of Current Research Programmes

Conference to be jointly held between the Universities of Bremen and Portsmouth

25 -27 November 2019 at the University of Bremen

Mapping the Jewish press between German Enlightenment and National Socialism is the theme of this conference, which undertakes to attribute significance to the location of the German-Jewish press at a crossroads in time and space. The conference will examine the cultural and transcultural aspects of periodicals, normally pertaining not just to a city or region but also to a particular era. It will take a hermeneutical approach, the strong emphasis being on a cautious, rigorous, and contextualized interpretation of ongoing research. This includes curation and retrieval, documentary appreciation, conceptual frameworks and questions of citizenship. The latter aspect is of particular relevance in view of the powerful communication ethos characterizing Jewish presses since their emergence as a child of the Haskala, with their traditional tasks of spiritual guidance and knowledge dissemination, both of which reached far beyond the confines of Jewish communal structures.

Papers will focus on

• The contextualized study of periodicals
• Specific agents involved in the production of periodicals: publishers, editors, authors, translators, censors and their ideologies as animating forces
• Aspects of citizenship and transculturality: concepts of home versus Jewish cosmopolitanism
• Interaction, delimitation and polemic between Jewish and non-Jewish presses
• Ephemerality, mechanisms for selection and preservation: What made periodicals survive?
• Conceptual frameworks for the study of German-Jewish periodicals, curation and retrieval
• Language and layout, typography and illustration
• After the deluge: German-Jewish periodicals after 1945, continuities and breaks

We request active researchers and curators to submit your paper proposals / abstracts (in English or German) of no longer than 150 words together with five lines about yourself (principal research interest, current position, recent relevant publications) by 31 January 2019 to:

Susanne.Marten-finnis@port.ac.uk

nagel@uni-bremem.de

Subject to the availability of sufficient funds, contributors may expect their expenses for travel and accommodation (up to four nights) to be covered by the organisers.

6 December 2018

Susanne Marten-Finnis

Michael Nagel

Call for Papers.

Workshop: “The Activities of ‘the Joint’ in Poland and Neighbouring Countries, 1945-1989: Reality and Perceptions”

POLIN Museum

7-9 August 2019

Researchers are invited to submit a proposal for the workshop, “The Activities of ‘the Joint’ in Poland and Neighboring Countries 1945-1989: Reality and Perceptions,” to be held at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw on August 7-9, 2019. This workshop is co-sponsored by the JDC Archives and the POLIN Museum. Other partners include the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, and the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University.

Since its origins in 1914, the Joint, founded to aid the victims of World War I, has played a significant role in Jewish communities throughout the world. While its humanitarian reach in Europe and the Soviet Union during the interwar, World War II, and immediate postwar periods has attracted some scholarly attention, less is known about its work in Eastern and Central Europe in the decades following World War II. Intermittently, JDC was expelled from the various Eastern Bloc countries and invited to return; the timing for each country mirrored the government’s agenda at the time.  Jewish communities in the Eastern Bloc found themselves isolated from the Jewish world and cut off from access to vital material support.  JDC was restricted in the kind of activity it could pursue. During periods when it was unable to operate in-country, the Joint, to the extent possible, provided discreet relief, distributing basic goods to sustain families both physically and spiritually for months at a time.  In periods of political upheaval such as in Hungary in 1956 and in Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Joint also assisted those who chose to leave the countries behind the Iron Curtain. In these times of crisis, JDC often became a target of Communist propagandists and its activities were blatantly distorted, especially during the early 1950s, when Communist propaganda depicted JDC as a “Zionist spy organization” whose goal was to overthrow the socialist system.

We invite proposals that explore the following questions: What roles did JDC play in the survival of the region’s Jewish communities during the period and what impacts did this have? How was JDC able to navigate the political constraints in the region in order to provide assistance to Jewish communities? How should we understand the attacks against the Joint in Communist propaganda?

If you would like to submit a proposal, please send a title, a brief abstract of 250-350 words in English and a brief bio to Isabelle Rohr, Manager of Academic Programs and Outreach at the JDC Archives, (Isabelle.rohr@jdc.org) by January 4, 2019.  The language of the workshop will be English. We will notify invited participants in February 2019.  Participants who are not local will receive room for the duration of the program, and we will provide limited modest subventions to offset travel costs.