EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2020/21

REPORT

Across Borders and Boundaries: Jewish Be-Longings in the Mediterranean Space and Beyond

Venice, Ca’ Foscari University – 6/7 October 2021

Organisers: Dario Miccoli, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia; Piera Rossetto, Centre for Jewish Studies University of Graz

With the support of: EAJS; FWF (Austrian Science Fund); Department of Asian and North African Studies, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

Abstract

At the intersection of Jewish, postcolonial and migration studies, this discussion-focused workshop explored Jewish migrations from the Middle East and North Africa across the Mediterranean and beyond during the second half of the 20th century. The two-day workshop brought together early career and senior scholars from different disciplines (history, anthropology, sociology, literary studies) to discuss issues of multiple belongings, cultural affiliations, dis-locations as they are evoked in memories and narratives of migration. Building on multiple case studies (Jewish migrants from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Rhodes, Corfu), we aimed at portraying the complexity of a migratory phenomenon that intensified dramatically between the late 1940s and 1970s and deeply changed the demography and social composition of both European and Middle Eastern Jewish communities.

RATIONALE OF THE WORKSHOP

Historical framework

In recent years, the contemporary Jewish diaspora experience in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has attracted more and more the interest of scholars eager to investigate the fate of Jews living – like other minorities – in Muslim-majority countries. As Jews have moved between different countries in late modern and contemporary times, they have been affected by the political, economic and social processes of the whole region. Within the scope of the workshop, it was worth recalling at least three major scenarios. During the nineteenth century, the application of administrative, political and educational reforms (such as the Ottoman Tanzimat between 1839 and 1856) deeply changed the status of religious minorities, among other aspects. It also brought new forms of social relations into the public sphere (Bashkin and Schroeter 2016). The first half of the twentieth century was characterised both by an intensification of European colonial expansion in the region and by the growth of national aspirations. This was especially true among urban populations, which increasingly perceived and claimed themselves as Arab and Muslim (Abécassis and Faü 2011). Finally, the outbreak of the war in Palestine, in 1947, culminated in the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 – which forever changed the political scenery. 1948 is widely regarded as the major turning point for the history of the entire Middle East and North Africa region (Shlaim and Rogan 2001). All these processes have affected the life of Jews living in these areas and played a role in pushing Jews’ mass migration towards Israel, Europe, Canada and the USA – as well as to other countries – between the late 1940s and 1970s. This mass migration resulted in a dramatic, although not complete, disappearance of the Jewish presence in North Africa and the Middle East. The main exceptions to this are Turkey, Iran and – to a lesser extent – Morocco and Tunisia.

(In)Visible Jewish Migrations across the Mediterranean

Many Jews chose Europe to start a new life because they were citizens of a European state or because they considered themselves as Europeans in terms of cultural and linguistic affiliations. In this sense, their story could be interpreted as part of the decolonisation movements during which “an estimated five to seven million people were repatriated to Europe over a thirty-five-year period that began during World War II” (Smith 2003, 9). Given the scale of the phenomenon, Smith lamented a sort of invisibility of these migrants in the academic literature, and in this respect, the history of the Jewish migrations from the MENA region was not in any sense more visible than that of the colonial repatriates. Fifteen years later, the interest in the field of colonial repatriations has grown (Elkins and Pedersen 2005; Borutta and Jansen 2015; Deplano 2017; Dard and Dulphy 2020), as well as the research within the fields of contemporary Sephardi and Mizrahi studies which “grew significantly thanks to new publications that took into consideration unexplored aspects of the history, literature and identity of modern Middle Eastern and North African Jews” (Miccoli 2017, 1), such as those which describe the migration of North African Jews to postcolonial France (Mandel 2014; Katz 2015).
This field of study is not only giving new directions of inquiry in the broader field of Jewish studies – consider especially the contribution to the topic of colonialism and the Jews (Katz E.B. et al., 2017) –but it has also the potential to nurture the current debate on transnational processes of memory, migration and identity in Europe and beyond. Our workshop intended to contribute to both aspects, as illustrated in the next section.

Case studies and research questions
Concerning the field of Jewish Studies, we considered little explored experiences of Jewish migrations across the Mediterranean and beyond, such as the case of Jews from Corfu to Trieste (Catalan and Perissinotto); Jews from Libya, Egypt and Iran to Europe (Bottecchia, Picciotto, Rossetto, Sadjed, Spadaro); Italian Jews in Tunisia (Oppizzi) and Rhodesli Jews in Africa (Miccoli). The comparison of these case studies with more consolidated research on Jewish migrations from North Africa and Europe towards France and Canada (Baussant, Malinovich) and with auto-ethnographic reflections on Jewish memory, material culture and the methodological questions underlying all that (Trevisan Semi, Tartakowsky), helped us tackle the following research questions: aside from the peculiar, individual experience, are there “knots of memory” (Rothberg 2010) – “thick points of identification” (Rossetto 2014) – to be found, among others, around ideas of modernity, national belonging and cultural affiliation? How did North African and Middle Eastern Jews deal with “borders and boundaries” (Fassin 2011), that is, with issues of citizenship (also as lived experience, Ballinger 2007) and identity vis- à-vis host nations and fellow Jews in the country of arrival? We argued that Jewish migrations across the Mediterranean help us understanding contemporary mobilities across the Mediterranean and beyond. This is particularly important today, as the very idea and history of European integration, which promotes multiple religious, ethnic and cultural belonging as a factor that enables integration whilst respecting diversity, are put into question.

PROGRAMME

Wednesday 6 October 2021

Tesa 1, CFZ and online (Zoom streaming)

15.15-15.45 Greetings and Introduction

Piera Rossetto, University of Graz and Dario Miccoli, Ca‘ Foscari University

15.45-16.45 Histories of Mediterranean Mobility I

A Place that Changed Its Place, a Time that Changed Its Time: Egyptian Jews in Transit

Michèle Baussant, CEFRES/ISP/CNRS, Prague

Colonialism and the Holocaust: the Jews of Rhodes in Congo, 1920s-1960s

Dario Miccoli, Ca‘ Foscari University

16.45-17.15 Break

17.15-18.00 Keynote Speech

Between the Bible and Primo Levi? Crossing Disciplines Through a Personal Path of Research

Emanuela Trevisan Semi, Ca‘ Foscari University

Thursday 7 October 2021

Tesa 1, CFZ and online (Zoom streaming)

9.30-10.30 Histories of Mediterranean Mobility II

A Reversal of Fortunes: Opening Immigration Pathways for MENA Jews in the Post-Colonial World

Nadia Malinovich, CNRS/EPHE, Paris

Jewish Mobility From and Towards Libya at the Eve of Libyan Independence, 1949-1951: Attitude and Policies of the Italian Authorities

Giordano Bottecchia, Paris VIII University/Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa

10.30-11.00 Break

11.00-12.00 Memories and Belongings I

Pitigliano, Maryland? Travelling Memories and Moments of Truth

Barbara Spadaro, University of Liverpool

The Rules of the Game: Tennis, Clubs and Postcolonial Society in the Memory of an Italian Immigrant From Tunisia

Martino Oppizzi, Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent, Paris

15-00-16.00 Objects of Memory

Cracovie-Maghreb: Circulations, Images and Usages of a Hand. An Ego-History

Ewa Tartakowsky, ISP and University of Warsaw

The Stuff that Differences are Made of: A Heirloom from Iran​

Ariane Sadjed, Austrian Academy of Sciences (online)

16.15-16.30 Break

16.30-17.30 Memories and Belongings II

Public History and Jewish Migration Through Trieste, 1903-1945

Tullia Catalan, University of Trieste and Matteo Perissinotto, University of Ljubljana

What’s in a Map? Engaging Senses, Memories and Meanings

Piera Rossetto, University of Graz

17.30-18.15 Final Discussion

ABSTRACTS

A Place that Changed Its Place, a Time that Changed Its Time: Egyptian Jews in Transit

Michèle Baussant, CEFRES/ISP/CNRS, Prague

This presentation is dedicated to the emergence of a growing interest in the Egyptian Jewish past, expressed in particular through places, social spaces, and built spaces, while the Jewish community almost disappeared from the country and other minorities for more than fifty years. This resurgence is taking place in a general context of the rise in recent decades of a Jewish movement in the countries of Islam that tends to preserve Jewish heritage in situ and claims both forms of multi-secular coexistence with Muslims and a Jewish refugee history – in order to fight against the Palestinian narrative in particular.

Based on multi-sites fieldwork in Egypt and many countries Egyptian Jews settled, on interviews and observations, my communication will focus on the resurgence today of this interest. Why does this community and this past and not another still stick to the present? I will explore on one side how Egyptian Jews have been working outside Egypt for several decades to build a specific belonging to Egypt, despite their very diverse origins, creating an “inversed diaspora”. On the other side, I will describe how the Egyptian government and different population segments are imagining and promoting an Egypt with a Jewish past. These two movements, not driven by the same interests and stakes, both construct specific cartography of Jewish spaces in Egypt and a Jewish Egypt, one focused on absence and history, the other on the search for presence and a still-living experience.

Colonialism and the Holocaust: the Jews of Rhodes in Congo, 1920s-1960s

Dario Miccoli, Ca‘ Foscari University

Between the 1920s and the 1960s, almost 2000 Jews from the island of Rhodes migrated to Congo, particularly to the region of Katanga and its capital Elisabethville. The migration was due to economic reasons, and then to the impact of the 1938 Italian anti-Jewish laws. In the mid-1940s, also several Holocaust survivors from Rhodes settled in Congo, where a Jewish community continued to exist and thrive until the early 1960s. Basing on literary and archival sources, as well as on oral testimonies, this paper explores the history of this little-known migration and the social and economic activities that the Jews of Rhodes conducted in Katanga. By doing so, it sheds light on the historical and memorial interconnections between colonialism and the Holocaust, Jewishness and whiteness in crucial decades both for the history of Congo and of the Jews of the Mediterranean.

Between the Bible and Primo Levi? Crossing Disciplines Through a Personal Path of Research

Emanuela Trevisan Semi, Ca‘ Foscari University

This keynote speech intends to reflect on the scholarly encounters and research path of the author, at the crossroads between Jewish Studies, anthropology and Diaspora Studies. It does so by reconstructing the difficulties, challenges and intellectual approaches present in the fields from the 1970 to today. It is, in other words, an occasion to revisit Jewish Studies in Italy and across the Mediterranean from an auto-ethnographic point of view that highlights the migration of theories, languages and people.

A Reversal of Fortunes: Opening Immigration Pathways for MENA Jews in the Post-Colonial World

Nadia Malinovich, CNRS/EPHE, Paris

This paper focuses on the role that a postwar “human rights revolution,” declining antisemitism, a re-centering of “the Jew” in the Western imagination, and the activism of the United States, Canadian, and French Jewish communities played in opening emigration pathways for Jews of North Africa and the Middle East in postwar decades. In striking contrast to the situation that German and other European Jews had faced when attempting to flee Europe during the Nazi era, MENA Jews seeking to emigrate in the postwar years were generally considered as desirable future citizens. This desirability was also a function of the fact that, much more so than their Muslim compatriots, they were western-acculturated, thanks in large part to the role of the AIU school network. The legacy of the Holocaust in and of itself played a role in these departures, as MENA Jews were cast as a population in need of “saving.” While they did indeed face hostility and in some instances the threat of violence in their home countries in the wake of the Israeli-Arab conflict and decolonization, the situation of MENA Jews was not akin to that of their European brethren a generation prior. Rather, this post-war Jewish emigration wave must be understood within the theoretical framework of the “pushes and pulls” of immigration history, as individuals weighed their options and decided to emigrate to particular countries for a combination of social, economic, and cultural reasons.

Pitigliano, Maryland? Travelling Memories and Moments of Truth

Barbara Spadaro, University of Liverpool

Barbara Spadaro’s research begins in Pitigliano, an Etruscan hill town in Tuscany known as ‘La piccola Gerusalemme’ (Little Jerusalem) because of the long history of its Jewish community. Pitigliano is the birthplace of Giannetto Paggi (1852–1916), a Jewish teacher who opened the first Italian school in Tripoli and was celebrated as ‘the pioneer of Italian civilization in Libya’ in the colonial and Fascist decades. His story sheds light on a series of tensions and fractures – including the occupation of Tripoli, the anti-Semitic laws introduced under Fascism and the expulsion of Italians from independent Libya in 1967 – that shaped notions of Italianness as much as individual and collective trajectories. Spadaro’s research explores these trajectories in dialogue with members of the Paggi family, who were ‘repatriated’ to Italy in 1967, and with the founder of the Jewish Institute of Pitigliano in Maryland, a scholar of Sephardic history and culture. The study considers the mobility of memory as a series of intersubjective and translational processes. It draws on Luisa Passerini’s concept of intersubjectivity, Naomi Leite’s ethnography of affinity and Francesco Ricatti’s ‘emotion of truth’ to engage with the processes of identification and knowledge exchange that emerged through the fieldwork. Spadaro explores the webs of imaginative and emotional interconnections linking her interviewees with the stories of Giannetto Paggi and Pitigliano, and, by extension, with narratives of Italianness and Jewishness.

Jewish Mobility From and Towards Libya at the Eve of Libyan Independence, 1949-1951: Attitude and Policies of the Italian Authorities

Giordano Bottecchia, Paris VIII University/Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa

The year 1949 marked for Libya, a former Italian colony, the beginning of a process that would lead to its independence in December 1951. In this period, Libya witnessed significant Jewish migratory outflows and, to a lesser extent, inflows. Although Italy no longer directly administered the territory of Libya, since Libya had been occupied by the Allied forces (the United Kingdom and France) during World War Two, most of the country’s population had not acquired a new legal status. The majority of the population kept, at least theoretically, the legal status they had during the Italian colonial period. This is why Italian authorities were often involved or had something to say about the movements of the former colonial citizens. This conference, through the study of visa and passport applications from Libyan Jews residing both in Libya and in other Mediterranean countries (Tunisia, Egypt, and Israel), aims to shed light on the attitude and policies adopted by the Italian authorities (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Italian Africa and Ministry of the Interior) towards these migratory flows and to understand the factors that influenced the possibility of Libyan Jews to move from one country to another.

The Rules of the Game: Tennis, Clubs and Postcolonial Society in the Memory of an Italian Immigrant From Tunisia

Martino Oppizzi, Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent, Paris

My contribution aims to enrich the debate about the relationship between migrant worlds and material cultures by the analysis of a specifical, yet apparently anonymous object: a tennis racket. This object has been part of the life of Carlo U., born and grown up in Tunis in an Italian-Jewish family, then emigrated to Italy and finally arrived in Paris. The tennis racket became the centre of an interview realised on January 2021 in order to understand some aspects of the childhood of its owner, between the 1970s and 1980s. Carlo U.’s story has been an opportunity to reflect on the semantic stratification of the object, which encompasses several meanings: play tool, social marker, symbolic object, vector of sociability. In the memory of its owner, the tennis racket evoked a lost world, a “golden age” rooted in a post-colonial context (but still linked to codes and schemes raised during the colonial era). The central elements of this world were the tennis club, in the European suburbs of Tunis, a place which embodied both an emotional and a symbolic dimension. The tennis club is remembered as a place of physical training, of course, but also a social environment to build crucial networks. A place where young people could learn a set of shared values (often implicitly), the “rules of the game” of the European bourgeoisie of Tunis: respect for the adversary, merit, respectability, self-improvement, importance of social status. The tennis racket acquires a new dimension through the experience of exile, after leaving behind the sport, the country and some of the friendships. As a result, this object seems to remind to its owner the ambiguity of the link between past and present, and the dynamic relationship between continuities and ruptures. From a micro-historical perspective, the analysis of this “object of exile” open to a more articulated reflection about historical issues, such the evolution of colonial society and its legacy after independence, the sociability of the elites of post-colonial Tunisia, the building of a memory from an emigrant perspective.

Cracovie-Maghreb: Circulations, Images and Usages of a Hand. An Ego-History

Ewa Tartakowsky, ISP and University of Warsaw

The paper deals with the author’s ego-history, which is revealed from an object that has accompanied her for about twenty years. The object in question is a pendant, representing an open stylized hand.  It has been given to the author as Fatima’s hand, a Muslim talisman present in North Africa, particularly in Morocco and Tunisia, but also in Persia, Iraq and Kurdistan. Once in France, where its owner started her PhD studies in Jewish Maghrebi and Sephardic literature in post-colonial France, it took another signification, becoming as much a Jewish symbol as a Muslim one, objectively reinforcing the process of identity belonging to a “Maghrebinity” or “Orientality” specific to Jews in Islamic lands. The author, born in Jewish district in Cracow, Kazimierz, noticed its presence in Poland from the 2000s, when the Jewish quarter stared to be revitalized, valorizing Jewish culture – first Ashkenazi, then worldwide one. This process was concomitant to a gentrification made possible by the consequences of the transformation of 1989. In this context, a character of inauthenticity of the Jewishness promoted by the revitalization in Kazimierz, as witnessed by the hamsa massively transplanted to Kazimierz, is associated with a vision of a “hype” Israeli culture, which corresponds to the norms of the middle and upper social categories, urban and globalized, indistinctly Jewish or non-Jewish. Correlatively, it is presented as a typical symbol of Polish Judaism, both constructions having in common that they are totally decontextualized. For the author, the hand pendant symbolizes both her research – on Maghrebi Jews and Polish Jewishness – and her own trajectory of dealing of her Jewishness.

The Stuff that Differences are Made of: A Heirloom from Iran​

Ariane Sadjed, Austrian Academy of Sciences

The region of modern-day Iran has been a trading and cultural epicenter for thousands of years. A rich textile tradition that dates to the time of the medieval Silk Road trade continues today to represent essential concepts of home and female kinship. During the Qajar dynasty (1789 – 1925) tailors were employed by the courts, but textile weaving and embroidery was a cottage industry in cities like Kerman, Isfahan, Tabriz, and Kashan. An oasis on the edge of Iran’s Great Desert, Kashan is an ancient city with an old Jewish community. It was a center for the manufacture and trade of carpets and textiles. The fabric presented in my talk was given as part of a tradition within a Jewish family, or a family whose religious identity was in transition. Jewish rituals were still observed alongside Baha’i ones. In 1925 the family moved to Tehran and in the late 60s to Austria. Iranian aspects that could not unambiguously be connected to the Baha’i religion, had no relevance anymore. This included the erasure of part of the heritage in favor of an Europeanized non-Islamic and non-Iranian identity. By means of this object that was brought from Kashan to Tehran and later to Austria, we can historicize the constitution of new forms of belonging and community formation, in which a formerly shared space becomes divided along national and religious differences.

Public History and Jewish Migration Through Trieste, 1903-1945

Tullia Catalan, University of Trieste and Matteo Perissinotto, University of Ljubljana

Our aim here is to describe our experience of a Public History event, a live painting performance, aimed at a public not necessarily well-versed in the field of Jewish Studies. The Port of Trieste has been, since the proclamation of the Free Port at the start of the eighteenth century, an arrival point for the flow of migrants from around the Mediterranean and from central-eastern Europe. This project has emerged from a long collaboration between the Department of Humanities at the University of Trieste and the Jewish Community of Trieste “Carlo e Vera Wagner” Museum, who have been working for some time on the topic of Jewish emigration through the port. The challenge that we face, and which is at the basis of Public History, is to translate the results of our historical research into a language accessible to the wider public, without losing the methodological rigour of the discipline. The thread which tied together each of the three stories, we had chosen, was the dimension of travel, the central moment in the experience of many Jewish refugees. The journey in fact allowed us to restore the emotions, which we can term collective, of the passage from a situation of danger and uncertainty to a sense of security and freedom, which led us to choose the following title for the show: “Ti porto al sicuro!” “I will lead you to safety!”.

What’s in a Map? Engaging Senses, Memories and Meanings

Piera Rossetto, Centre for Jewish Studies – University of Graz

The paper discusses the use of creative maps and mapping in relation to memories by and about Jews from the MENA region.  Indeed, “memories do not land well on maps” (S. Caquard et al.), at least on maps built only on the Cartesian plan. However,  there are many ways, creative and non-conventional, to support “the descriptive function in human discourse linking territory to what comes with it” (D. Wood), “what comes with the territory” being, in the research project here illustrated, the personal and collective experiences of displacement and attachment, longing and belonging. The challenge, in a way, is to reconcile the fragment and the whole in what I call an ‘AesthEt(h)ics of the fragment’: with ethic I mean — anthropologically — the responsibility of the researcher “to acknowledge and communicate the emotional engagement of ethnography” (Carroll 2015); and with aesthetic I refer to an experience connected to “our ability to develop a certain kind of knowledge through our feelings” and “related to our senses” (Ribeiro and Caquard 2018). The senses are those expressed by the testimonies, my own senses as they are mobilised by the testimonies, and the audience’s senses. In this sense, this is the hypothesis discussed, mapping, as a process, is a powerful tool to train our “Art of Listening,” “an imaginative attention [that] takes notice of what might be at stake in the story itself and how its small details and events connect to larger sets of public issues” (Back 2007: 7).

DISSEMINATION

The workshop was meant to consolidate the collaboration among the participants, including their respective institutions of affiliation. In particular, it aimed at supporting young career scholars – the majority of the invited speakers – in expanding their collaboration network with senior academics. This is in fact crucial in view of submitting project proposals, grant applications or participate in publishing projects. The event actually built upon two previous meetings where the majority of the invited speakers were also involved. The previous meetings were organised by Piera Rossetto (applicant n. 2) in collaboration with Dario Miccoli (applicant n. 1) and Michèle Baussant (CNRS). Participants met for a first methodological workshop on “Be-longing. Roots, Routes and Memories” at Université Paris Nanterre (November 2019) and – due to the COVID-19 pandemic – for a second online event entitled “The Materialities of Be-Longing: Objects in Exile” (September 2020). We are considering gathering the contributions to the Venice workshop in an edited volume, to be published in English with an international academic publisher (e.g. Routledge, Palgrave). Additionally, we are thinking of disseminating the research presented in the workshop to a larger and not necessarily academic audience through the recording of a podcast series (e.g. 5 episodes 10/15 minutes each), that could be hosted for example on Rossetto’s academic Blog Be-longing. Roots, Routes, and Memories Across the Mediterranean (https://memories.hypotheses.org/) or in collaboration with the new podcast series that Ca’ Foscari University is producing (https://www.unive.it/pag/14024/?tx_news_pi1%5Bnews%5D=11368).

CITED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abecassis F. and Faü J.F., “Les Juifs dans le monde musulman à l’âge des nations (1840-1945)”, in Germa A. and al. (eds), Les Juifs dans l ́histoire, Champ Vallon, 2011, 545-570.

Ballinger P., “Borders of the Nation, Borders of Citizenship: Italian Repatriation and the Redefinition of National Identity after World War II”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 49 (2007) 3, 713-741.

Bashkin O., Schroeter D.J., “Historical themes. Muslim–Jewish relations in the modern Middle East and North Africa”, in Meri J. (ed), The Routledge Handbook of Muslim–Jewish Relations, Routledge, 2016, 35- 56.

Borutta M. and Jansen J. (eds), Vetriebene and pieds-noirs, Palgrave Macmillan, London and New York, 2015.

Dard O. and Dulphy A. (eds), Déracinés, exiles, rapatriés? Fins d’empires coloniaux at migrations, Peter Lang, Bruxelles, 2020.

Deplano V., La madrepatria è una terra straniera. Libici, eritrei e somali nell’Italia del dopoguerra (1945- 1960), Le Monnier, Firenze, 2017.

Fassin D., “Policing Borders, Producing Boundaries. The Governmentality of Immigration in Dark Times”, Annual Review of Anthropology 40 (2011), 213-226.

Katz E., The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2015.

Katz E.B. et al. (eds), Colonialism and the Jews, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2017.

Mandel M.S., Muslim and Jews in France: History of a Conflict, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2014.

Miccoli D. (ed.), Contemporary Sephardic and Mizrahi Literature, Routledge, London and New York, 2017.

Rossetto P., “Juifs de Libye: notes pour une ‘cartographie’ des lieux migratoires”, Archivio Antropologico Mediterraneo 16(2014)1, 87-99.

Rothberg M., “Between Memory and Memory: From Lieux de mémoire to Nœuds de mémoire”, Yale French Studies 118/119(2010), 3-12.

Shlaim A. and Rogan E.L. (eds), The War for Palestine. Rewriting the History of 1948, Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Smith A. L. (ed.), Europe’s Invisible Migrants, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2003.

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2020/21

REPORT

Hidden in Plain Sight: Yiddish in the Socialist Bloc and its Transnationality, 1941–1991

Virtual GEOP Workshop, November 22 to 24, 2021

POLIN Jewish Museum in Warsaw

Organizers: Miriam Schulz (University of Toronto) & Alexander Walther (Schiller-Universität Jena)

Event Rationale

The virtual GEOP Interdisciplinary Research Workshop “Hidden in Plain Sight: Yiddish in the Socialist Bloc and its Transnationality, 1941/44–91” at the POLIN Jewish Museum in Warsaw aimed to examine the role of Yiddish in the cultures of Socialist states in Eastern and East-Central Europe in their trans-socialist and transnational entanglements in the second half of the 20th century. Over the course of three days, workshop participants discussed different ways in which Yiddish cultural agents, thousands of whom chose to remain in Eastern Europe, positioned themselves within socialist narratives of the past, present and future, and in dialogue with the Jewish diasporas around the world.

The central research questions included:

• How did various attempts at cultural restitution and revival of Yiddish take shape under the conditions of state socialism?
• Which conceptions of Yiddishkayt, of Jewish secularism and socialism emerged in this context?
• Which actors were involved, against which biographical backgrounds did they act and how did they interact with each other?
• What role did the Shoah and the Cold War play in these efforts?
• How were phenomena such as antifascism and internationalism Yiddishized?

Focusing on Poland, the Soviet Union, Germany (especially the German Democratic Republic), Romania, and individual Western countries such as the United States, Argentina, and Israel/Palestine, discussions orbited around Yiddish as a vehicle of Jewish culture within Socialist states and the diverse cross-bloc interconnections of various actors during the “Yiddish Cold War.” The Yiddish language, which was an essential component of a modern Jewish culture in East(-Central) Europe before the Holocaust, turned out to be particularly suitable for this examination. Although the language lost much of its everyday significance due to the murder of a large part of its speakers, it remained a central factor of transnational interconnections, especially through the flight movements that began before and after the Shoah. While in the Soviet Union, for example, Yiddish cultural figures fell victim to Stalinist persecutions between 1948 and 1953, new, albeit minimal, spaces for Jewish secularism and socialism opened up in the post-Stalinist period to form, among other things, an active front in the Yiddish Cold War. In socialist Poland, the post-war phenomenon of nusekh Poyln (Polish Way) emerged – caught between the deep traumas of the Holocaust, the commitment (of whatever kind) to a socialist present, and in exchange with the Yiddish (Polish) diaspora worldwide. And while there was initially little effort in Germany to revive Yiddish culture, enclaves flourished in the DP camps before the residents moved on, primarily to Israel or the United States, or chose to remain in (often East) Germany.

A niche topic by nature, scholars of history, literature, cultural studies, and musicology discussed with each other interdisciplinarily and drew a broad and complex picture of Yiddish culture(s) in the respective countries by tracing connections, duplications, alterities, or dependencies. The trans-socialist and trans-national approach often, but unfortunately not consistently, challenged the block binarity of older narratives as legacies of the Cold War and were in dialogue with the latest developments in the research fields of Cold War Culture Studies, Diaspora and Transnational Studies, (Soviet/Socialist) Subjectivity and Gender Studies, and postcolonial theory with a special focus on the socialist space. However, consequences of marginality of topic in the academy specifically and of Yiddish generally presented themselves in the discussions, as well, in that it proved difficult to explore distinct countries comprehensively, not to mention Socialist Yiddish’s transnationality throughout the whole Cold War period. So while the goals of the event have been generally achieved, it became apparent that this is only the beginning of an ongoing conversation which will be continued and intensified in the planned conference volume which is set for publication with De Gruyter in 2023.

Section-Overview

The workshop opened on November 22, 2021 with welcoming remarks by POLIN’s director Krzysztof Persak and the workshop organizers, Miriam Schulz (University of Toronto) and Alexander Walther (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena), and was conceived as a tribute to David Shneer. David Shneer was one of the pioneers of a younger generation of scholars who turned to the problem of Yiddish and state Socialism, freed from the ideological burden of the Cold War, and was meant to participate in the workshop. In 2020, Shneer passed away prematurely – leaving behind a field of research that was decisively shaped by him. The opening night was open to the public. It was dedicated to Shneer’s work on Yiddish in the GDR and started with introductory remarks by his widower Gregg Drinkwater. Drinkwater set the stage for the main part: a lecture-concert with Jalda Rebling, Tobias Morgenstern and Daniel Weltlinger who took us back to Yiddish East Berlin with a deep dive into Rebling’s song repertoire. Rebling is the youngest daughter of Lin Jaldati (1912–1988) – the famed voice of socialist Yiddish culture during the Cold War. Jaldati, an Amsterdam native, a Holocaust survivor herself and life-long convinced socialist, decided to follow an invitation by the German Democratic Republic with her husband, the German socialist Eberhard Rebling (1911–2008), and emigrated with her family to East Berlin in 1952. She ascended to fame with her performances of Yiddish antifascist music from the GDR across the spreading global Communist empire touring Western Europe, Israel, and the USA together with her husband Eberhard Rebling and daughters Jalda and Kathinka. Jalda Rebling accompanied her mother already back then and continues her legacy still today. During the opening night, she performed with a band a selection of primarily antifascist Yiddish songs and contextualized them alongside. The concert was followed by a Q&A with both Rebling and Drinkwater who provided further information about the (symbolic) role of Yiddish in the GDR and within the Socialist empire the role of Yiddish in the GDR and the connection to antifascism. The Zoom event was attended by over 50 people from all across the world. As such, it in and of itself spoke to the transnationality of today’s Yiddishland.

The actual workshop (closed to the broader public) started on November 23, 2021 with the panel “Dis/Continuities of Yiddish in Socialist Countries.” Sabine Koller (University of Regensburg) opened with her paper “Yiddish in the Soviet Union – Dovid Hofshteyn’s Literary (Re)Invention in (Post)War Times.” After World War II, the year 1948 turned out to be a crucial date in the history of (Soviet) Jewry. It is the year when the famed Soviet Yiddish actor and head of the Jewish Antifascist Committee Shloyme Mikhoels was killed by Stalin’s order; it is the year when the State of Israel was founded. Against the backdrop of this eventful history and considering Soviet Yiddish literature in the 1940s, the paper explored Dovid Hofshteyn’s (re)invention of Jewishness in his war-time poetry (cf. his cycle Kh’gleyb (I believe) published in 1944 in Moscow and, with a completely different content, in 1945 in New York) and after the war, e.g. Rusland (Russia), L’chaim (To Life), and Bay mayn fentster (At my window), his last poem published before his arrest in September 1948. Koller’s contribution was followed by Kamil Kijek’s (University of Wroclaw) paper “Yiddish in Poland in the late 1940s.” Yiddish as a daily cultural, political, and social practice of Jewish life in Poland in the early postwar period was the focus of this contribution. Based on a broad source base, Kijek contrasted the language use of Polish Jews and showed how Yiddish related to the other spoken languages Polish, Hebrew and Russian. The final panelist was Binyamin Hunyadi (Hebrew University, Jerusalem) with his paper “‘Di lebedike meysim’ (The Walking Dead): Volf Tambur and Romanian Post-WWII Yiddish Prose.” Hunyadi traced the career of Volf Tambur (1915-1995), one of the central figures in Romania’s post-World War II literary milieu, from a representative of the “Yung Rumenye” – a group of young Yiddish writers of interwar Romania – toward becoming an advocate for the Communist regime. However, Hunyadi also highlighted how Tambur experimented with other genres, such as Hasidic stories, in addition to his socialist-shaped texts. The subsequent discussion was very lively and rich. Among the questions that were discussed with Koller was the issue of neatly separating between a Jewish and non-Jewish sphere generally and a Jewish and Soviet sphere specifically and the question of a Soviet anti-racism that works against and beyond the Western idea of ‘race’ altogether. Kijek answered questions that pertained to the specific peripheric places he was examining in his presentation, discussed the potential to decenter the study of Yiddish in postwar Poland from the center in Warsaw to the peripheries and whether this can be applied generally to Yiddish on the Socialist margins. In the Q&A, Hunyadi further discussed the specificity of the Romanian case within the Socialist bloc and in which ways this affected the role of postwar Yiddish literature. As the odd one out, the case of Romania, and Volf Tambur specifically, has the potential to enlighten specific universal conditions beyond its particularities.

The second panel of the day was entitled “Yiddishland and Transnationality” and included contributions by Jan Schwarz (Lund University), Rachelle Grossman (Harvard University), Miriam Schulz (University of Toronto), and Diego Rotman (Hebrew University, Jerusalem). In his paper “Chava Rosenfarb’s Life-Writing: Transnational Yiddish from a Woman’s Perspective,” Jan Schwarz analysed the poetry and diaries of Chava Rosenfarb (1923-2011), one of the most important Yiddish women writers of the post-war period, in terms of their creation and dissemination in a DP camp, in Belgium, and later in Canada, and are examined especially regarding the dimension of gender. This elaboration was followed by Rachelle Grossman’s paper “Postwar Yiddish between East and West” which discussed the state-sponsored Yidish-bukh press in Warsaw. Characterized by a shared political outlook, it was in contact and collaborated with branches of the Yidisher Kultur Farband in New York and in Buenos Aires. These relationships allowed for the circulation of ideas and texts beyond the seemingly impermeable boundary marked by the Iron Curtain. In analysing archival documents as well as official publications by these presses, this paper examined how the transnational character of Yiddish – coupled with socialist politics – enabled these activities despite a larger geopolitical context that would otherwise prevent such contact. Miriam Schulz focused on “Soviet Yiddish and Third World Solidarity.” In post-Stalinist Soviet Union, Yiddish assumed official roles on the Cold War cultural front. While there are promising beginnings to map the geopolitical, ideological, and cultural role that the “Soviet Yiddish front” (Estraikh, 2008) was to play, Schulz, with the help of the paper Sovetish Heymland, turned to the as yet little considered Yiddish ambitions for a transnational, decolonized socialist cultural space of the “Second World” in solidarity with the postcolonies. Panel II concluded with a creative contribution by Diego Rotman entitled “Reconstructing Dzigan and Shumacher Poetics in Post-Holocaust Poland (An Artistic-Research Approach).” He streamed his film “Yiddish Silence” – a mediation on Polish-Yiddish actors Shimen Dzigan and Yisroel Shumacher, who survived World War II and the Shoah in the Soviet Union, performing there in Minsk, Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Kharkiv, etc., before being arrested and spending several years in prison. In 1950 they immigrated to the young state of Israel and again built a career on the Yiddish stage. In the subsequent discussion, Schwarz was questioned about the gendered dimension of his presentation and asked to elaborate on how Rosenfarb’s postwar transnationality enlightens the East-West divide of Cold War Yiddishland generally and on her relations to Yiddish in Socialist countries specifically. He concluded that Avrom Sutzkever as a writer and Israeli Cold Warrior would have probably been a better fit for the workshop. Rachelle Grossman was asked to think about a material turn in Cold War cultural studies and what way the materiality of Yiddish bukh and its Western equivalent speaks to the differences between Socialist and Capitalist book production. Miriam Schulz was asked to elaborate on the relationship between Soviet authorities and Sovetish Heymland and questions whether the specific radical solidarity she examined in her paper could be seen as the intellectual predecessors of today’s inclusive Holocaust education. Diego Rotman’s creative contributions led to a discussion about the resonance and productivity of silence and potential for the study of Yiddish in the Socialist bloc generally.

The workshop session of November 23, 2021 closed with panel III “Performative Yiddish.” Katharina Friedla’s (Warsaw) paper “‘Bist a Yid? Can’t you speak to me in Yiddish?’ Yiddish as an Identity marker among Polish Jews in the Soviet Union” examined the role Yiddish played for Polish Jews in Soviet exile during and after the war, for example as a connecting element between Polish and Soviet Jews or for Jewish soldiers in the Polish army. Especially the phenomenon of German-speaking Jewish refugees in the Soviet Union who turned to Yiddish pointed to as yet unexplored changing power dynamics between German and Yiddish – an incredibly valuable contribution of Friedla’s paper. It was followed by Jeffrey Shandler’s (Rutgers University, New Brunswick) paper “Yiddish as Postvernacularism between East and West.” In it, Shandler showed the role of Yiddish during and after the Shoah in the Soviet Union by way of two transnational events. The use of prominent representatives of Soviet Yiddish culture in August 1941, and the performances of black civil rights activist Paul Robeson for a struggle against fascism in Leningrad in 1949 were presented on the basis of diverse sources. The semiotic and performative meaning of Yiddish was analysed in the respective contexts. The panel was wrapped up by Corina Petrescu’s (University of Mississippi) paper “The Penetrable Iron Curtain: The Jewish State Theater in Bucharest on Tour in Israel (1968).” By analysing the media response to the performances in Israel/Palestine, Petrescu explored the outsider role of Yiddish Romania within the Socialist bloc and showed how the Cold War influenced perceptions and opened up avenues of opportunities heretofore unacknowledged. The subsequent discussion orbited around the question of power and a reconceptualization when it comes to Yiddish vis-a-vis German (Friedla); the applicability of the concept of “post-vernacularism” on the Soviet Yiddish case (Shandler); and around spaces of opportunities that opened up for Yiddish actors not despite but thanks to political instrumentalization.

The last workshop day on November 24, 2021 commenced with the fourth and last panel: “Yiddish and Socialist Memory Cultures of the Holocaust.” Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov (Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw) presented on “Zygmunt Klukowski’s Diary and its Publication in Bleter far Geshikhte.” The journal Bleter far Geshikhte, the Yiddish-language journal of the Jewish Historical Institute Warsaw, was explored as a medium of an early Holocaust discourse in Poland (and beyond). Nalewajko-Kulikov demonstrated instances of censorship, precautionary deletions, or additions in Zygmunt Klukowski’s diary, which was published first in Yiddish and later in Polish, in order to discuss the broader issue of their political implications. Agnieszka Żółkiewska (Jewish Historical Institute Warsaw) framed the rather un-Yiddish Polish historian Michal M. Borwicz as a pioneer and founder of Polish-Jewish Holocaust historiography. As chairman of the Jewish Historical Commission in Cracow, which was active in the immediate postwar period, Borwicz wrote several books on the Shoah. The beginnings of Polish-Jewish historiography on the Holocaust were analysed in this paper with some references to the role of Yiddish and in their tension between the needs of Polish-Jewish survivors and the Polish authorities. Alexander Walther (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena) focused on “Yiddish and Holocaust Remembrance in the GDR.” Translated Yiddish literature was a rarity in the GDR. Yet, Walther’s analysis of the comparatively few publications and their origins showed the strategies translators and editors used for the sake of establishing Yiddish culture in a socialist and – in this context significantly – post-Nazi social order. The accompanying texts also revealed a hidden discourse about the Shoah. Finally, Arkadi Zeltser (Yad Vashem, Jerusalem) concluded the workshop with his presentation on “Yiddish on Holocaust Monuments in the USSR.” Zeltser’s paper turned to the Jewish Holocaust memorial culture in the Soviet Union, which, as a specifically Soviet phenomenon, was nonetheless strongly influenced by Jewish mourning rituals. The tension between modernity and tradition was resolved, Zeltser argued, through Yiddish as a bridge of Soviet loyalty, contemporary needs, and Jewish sensibilities. Within the discussion, participants discussed what the case of Zygmunt Klukowski can help to rethink Jewish-non-Jewish relations in postwar Poland; questioned the positionality of Michal M. Borwicz within the history of specifically Socialist Yiddish; elaborated on the role of Yiddish in translation as part of the history of Yiddish in postwar Socialist bloc and its effects on Yiddish as a still-living vernacular and a symbol of something that is forever lost; and, finally, semantic shifts in Yiddish, the language’s relationship to hegemonic languages such as German or Russian, and what both tell us about the role of Yiddish in the Socialist bloc.

Panel IV was followed by a concluding forum in which the most significant and productive threads in papers and discussions were summarized and further discussed with a view towards the future conference volume that is under contract with De Gruyter and set for publication in 2023. The discussion was guided by two threads: What is Yiddish and what is transnationality? The conference clearly showed that Yiddish is a linguistic system and a vehicle of culture but, in the Cold War context, increasingly also a powerful symbol of a culture destroyed – but also of perseverance and antifascism. In this context, one issue that was raised was the relative absence of the Cold War as a (geo)political and cultural conflict in the papers and discussions – an absence that, the participants agreed, will play a bigger role in the article versions. Another problem pertained to writing Cold War history from behind the Iron Curtain, as it were, and the acknowledgment of one’s ‘Western’ subjectivity as a scholar in today’s capitalist totality and the im/possibility of overcoming this positionality in our inquiries. When it comes to the question of transnationality, concepts like diaspora and the Bundist idea doikayt (hereness) were elaborated in regards to Cold War Yiddish. Especially the importance of the transsocialist dimension of Yiddish was highlighted for the tasks ahead. The concluding discussion was wrapped up with coming up with an agenda for the production of the conference volume in a collaborative way.

The workshop closed on November 24, 2021 with the world premiere of “Fighting with Music: Yiddish Songs of World War II from Central Asia and Chuvashia” – a lecture-concert with Anna Shternshis & Psoy Korolenko – that was open to the public and attended by over 80 people zooming in from all across the world.  In 2018, Shternshis and Korolenko made history when their album Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of World War II was nominated for a Grammy under the category of “World Music” as one of the only Yiddish-language recordings ever. With Yiddish Glory, they released a first selection of hundreds of Yiddish war songs that Soviet Jewish ethnomusicologist Moisei Beregovskii had gathered within the microcosms of Jewish refugees, evacuees, soldiers, and Holocaust survivors in the Soviet Union and that were deemed lost until Shternshis unearthed them in an Ukrainian archive in 2000s. “Fighting with Music: Yiddish Songs of World War II from Central Asia and Chuvashia” are Shternshis’ and Korolenko’s newest recordings of Beregovskii’s treasure trove. They were presented alongside in-depth contextualization during the closing event to the public for the first time. The Q&A further explored the history of these new songs, and what they can teach us about the transnational, social and performative character of Yiddish in extremis and about the concrete social and historical contexts of their creation. Another subject that was discussed was the significance of these songs today in our age of rising transnational fascism.

Output

The organizers, Miriam Schulz and Alexander Walther, have signed a contract with dup | De Gruyter for the publication of the conference volume “Hidden in Plain Sight: Yiddish in the Socialist Bloc and its Transnationality, 1941–1991” as part of the series Yiddish Edition and Research. Based on the interdisciplinary workshop, the volume congregates scholars of history, literature, cultural studies, and musicology and provides a broad description of Yiddish culture(s) in the respective countries with a view towards connections, duplications, alterities, or dependencies.

The volume represents an important contribution to Jewish and explicitly Yiddish studies and aims to challenge Cold War narratives through the trans-socialist and -national approach in dialogue with recent developments in the research fields of Cold War Culture Studies, Diaspora and Transnational Studies, (Soviet/Socialist) Subjectivity and Gender Studies, as well as postcolonial theory with a special focus on the socialist space.

This inter-, if not post-disciplinary, approach is reinforced by a hybrid nature of the volume: the traditional academic contributions (with a standard length of 8000 words, including footnotes) are complemented by (1) a selection of archival documents, (2) heretofore untranslated Socialist Yiddish works, and (3) edited interviews with distinguished experts who provide insights into the challenges of studying Yiddish cultures under socialism and elaborate, through specific case studies, how current research projects can contribute to a better understanding of Yiddish as a cultural practice in the postwar (socialist) period. The interviews as well as, when possible, various contributions will refer to digital references, such as the concerts planned as part of the workshop. This synergy between the analog and the digital allows for deeper insight and the possibility for knowledge production with the anthology as an anchor and beyond.

Final programme

Monday, 22 November, 2021

Welcome Address by: Krzysztof Persak (POLIN Museum); Miriam Schulz (University of Toronto); Alexander Walther (University of Jena)

OPENING NIGHT (FROM JENA)

Yiddish in East Berlin – A Tribute to David Shneer

Concert with Jalda Rebling, Tobias Morgenstern (Accordion) & Daniel Weltlinger (Violin)

Tuesday, 23 November, 2021

PANEL I: DIS/CONTINUITIES OF YIDDISH IN SOCIALIST COUNTRIES

Sabine Koller (University of Regensburg) – Yiddish in the Soviet Union – Dovid Hofshteyn’s Literary (Re)invention in (Post)-War Times

Kamil Kijek (University of Wroclaw) – Yiddish in Poland in the Late 1940s

Binyamin Hunyadi (Hebrew University) – „Di lebedike mesim” – The Walking Dead: Volf Tambur and Romanian Post-WWII Yiddish Prose

PANEL II: YIDDISHLAND AND TRANSNATIONALITY

Jan Schwarz (Lund University) – Chava Rosenfarb’s Life-Writing: Transnational Yiddish from a Woman’s Perspective

Rachelle Grossmann (Harvard University) – Postwar Yiddish between East and West

Miriam Schulz (University of Toronto) – Soviet Yiddish and Third World Solidarity

Diego Rotman (Hebrew University) – Reconstructing Dzigan and Shumacher Poetics in Post-Holocaust Poland (An Artistic-Research Approach)

PANEL III: PERFORMATIVE YIDDISH

Katharina Friedla (Warsaw) – “Bist a Yid? Can’t you speak to me in Yiddish?” Yiddish as an Identity marker among Polish Jews in the Soviet Union

Jeffrey Shandler (Rutgers University) – Yiddish as Postvernacularism between East and West

Corina Petrescu (University of Mississippi) – The Penetrable Iron Curtain: The Jewish State Theater in Bucharest on Tour in Israel (1968)

Wednesday, 24 November, 2021

PANEL IV: YIDDISH AND SOCIALIST MEMORY CULTURES OF THE HOLOCAUST

Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw) – Zygmunt Klukowski’s Diary and its Publication in Bleter far Geshikhte

Agnieszka Żółkiewska (Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw) – Michal M. Borwicz: Pioneer and Founder of Polish-Jewish Holocaust Historiography

Alexander Walther (Jena University) – Yiddish and Holocaust Remembrance in the GDR

Arkadi Zeltser (Yad Vashem) – Yiddish on Holocaust Monuments in the USSR

CLOSING EVENT: WORLD PREMIERE, LIVE FROM TORONTO

Anna Shternshis & Psoy Korolenko – Fighting with Music: Yiddish Songs of World War II from Central Asia and Chuvashia

Lecture-concert followed by Q&A. Sponsored by Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Council for the Arts

EAJS Conference Grant Programme in European Jewish Studies

2019/20 and 2020/21 

Eleven events were planned for 2019-20 and nine events for 2020-21. So far fifteen of these events have taken place, four have been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and one cancelled. The details for these are as follows:

Already taken place

1. Dynamic Jewish-Muslim Interactions (“DJMI”) in Maghribi Material and Performative Cultures; University of Cambridge, UK, 17-18 September 2019.

2. Social Media and Antisemitism: Deciphering the Past and Present Relationship Between Prejudice and Communication; Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, UK, 6-7 November 2019.

3. Biographies and Politics: The Involvement of Jews and Activists of Jewish Origin in Leftist Movements in 19th and 20th Century Poland; POLIN Museum, Warsaw, Poland, 1-2 December 2019.

4. Stranger in a Land: Late-Antique and Medieval Narratives on Foreigners and Exile; University of Córdoba, Spain, 4-6 March 2020.

5. Nordic Postgraduate Forum in Ancient and early Medieval Jewish History and Literature; Lund University, Sweden, 22-23 September 2020.

6. Rural and Urban Jewries Between Tradition and Modernity: International Junior Scholars’ Workshop; University of Bamberg, Germany, 14-15 March 2021 (online event).

7. World in Crisis: Reflections and Responses from Antiquity to the Present (BAJS); University of Southampton, UK. (Rescheduled 5-7 July 2021 as online event)

8. SEFER: Twenty-Seventh Annual International Conference on Jewish Studies; SEFER Center, Moscow, Russia. (Rescheduled 11-13 July 2021 as online event)

9. From Josephus to Josippon and Beyond; University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. (Rescheduled 23-26 August 2021 as online event)

10. International Conference “Revealing of Secrets”: Hasidism and Haskalah in the Ukrainian Lands; Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, Ukraine. (Rescheduled for 31 Aug – 1 Sept 2021) – report pending

11. What’s New, What’s Next? Innovative Methods, New Sources, and Paradigm Shifts in Jewish Studies; POLIN Museum of the History of the Polish Jews, Poland (Rescheduled as online event 3-10 October 2021)

Video Recordings for What’s New, What’s Next? conference: https://polin.pl/en/aktualnosci/2021/12/14/whats-new-whats-next-video-recordings

12. Across Borders and Boundaries. Jewish Belongings in the Mediterranean Space and Beyond; Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy. (Rescheduled 6-7 October 2021)

13. One Biography, Multiple Places: The Life and Work of Shmuel Hugo Bergmann; Between Prague and Jerusalem (1883–1975); Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. (Rescheduled for 3-5 November 2021)

14. Ancient and Medieval Religious Homelands: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Space, Place and Religion; University of Vienna, Austria. (Rescheduled 8-10 November 2021 as online event)

15. Hidden in Plain Sight: Yiddish in the Socialist Bloc, 1941/44–1991; Imre Kertész Kolleg/Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany (venue: POLIN Museum, Warsaw, Poland). (Rescheduled 22 – 24 November 2021 as online event)

Postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic

1. Bibles and Scholars: A Tribute to Paul Kahle and Gérard Weil; Aix-Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence, France. (Rescheduled for 9 – 12 May 2022)

2. Jewish Economic Praxis and its written records: Communicating, accounting, archiving; Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UK. (Postponed until Summer 2022)

3. Schismatics, Heretics, and Religious Crisis: Frankism and the Turbulent 18th Century in East Central European Jewry (Summer School); Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic. (Rescheduled for 11-21 August 2022)

4. The Hasidic Century: New Perspectives on Hasidism in the 20th and 21st Centuries; University of Wrocław, Poland. (Postponed until June 2022)

Cancelled  due to the COVID-19 pandemic

1. Shared Histories: Rabbinic Responsa and Archival Sources from Late Medieval Europe in Legal and Cultural Conversation; Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany.

Link for reports from previous years: https://www.eurojewishstudies.org/cgp/conference-grant-programme-reports/past/

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2020/21

REPORT

SEFER: Twenty-Seventh Annual International Conference on Jewish Studies

The Moscow Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization (SEFER)

Online (Moscow): 11-13 July 2021

The 27th Annual International Conference on Jewish Studies was held online in Moscow on 11-13 July 2021. 218 scientists from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Georgia, Israel, Great Britain, USA, Canada, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Italy, Chile, Argentina, Lebanon, Sudan, as well as numerous guests, graduate students participated in it.

The conference was organized by the Sefer Center with the support of the European Association for Jewish Studies, Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, the Russian Jewish Congress, Genesis Philanthropy Group, and the Russian Presidential Grants Fund.

The variety of problems discussed at the conference was reflected in the structure of its program, which included 42 sections devoted to traditional and up-to-date areas of Jewish studies (Biblical Studies, Jewish Thought, Jewish History of different periods, Eastern European Jewish History, Judeo-Christian relations, the Holocaust, Israeli studies, Mountain Jews and Non-Ashkenazic Communities studies, Languages and Literature, Art, Theatre, Digital Ethnology, Archival sources, etc.). Several round tables were organized during the conference on the actual topics of Jewish Studies, and they attract a lot of visitors and participants.

Previous experience of combining the international conference with a youth conference, which received a positive evaluation, was continued this year, as a result young researchers could submit their presentations to be discussed by the academic community.

The organizing committee of the conference consists of 13 international and Russian scholars, including: Svetlana Amosova (junior researcher, Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences); Oleg Budnitsky (Prof., HSE University); Mikhail Chlenov (Dr., Center “Sefer”); Dmitry Elyashevich (Prof., St. Petersburg Institute of Jewish Studies); Victoria Gerasimova (Dr., Omsk State University; Center “Sefer”); Maria Kaspina (Dr., Russian State University for the Humanities; Center “Sefer”); Irina Kopchenova (junior researcher, Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences; “Sefer” Center); Olga Levitan (Dr., Tel-Aviv University; Hebrew University of Jerusalem); Artur Markowski (Prof., Warsaw University); Victoria Mochalova (Dr., Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences; Center “Sefer”); Mikhail Seleznev (Dr., HSE University); Anna Shaevich (Center “Sefer”); Mikhail Vasylev (Center “Sefer”).

We have developed a special website both in Russian and in English for this conference and its program. Please see the program here: https://www.sefer.ru/eng/conferences/conference/

At the opening of the conference the Director General of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, one of the sponsors of the conference, Haim Ben-Yakov, and President of the Russian Jewish Congress Yuri Kanner, delivered their welcoming speeches.

The presentation of new editions of the Center “Sefer” and the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences was also held, and the following books were presented:

• Tirosh. Works on Jewish Studies, Vol.20;
• Collection of articles Family and Family Values in the Slavic and Jewish Cultural Traditions, Vol.22 (which includes the papers delivered during the annual International Judeo-Slavic Academic Conference)
• Academic Judaic-Slavic Journal in Russian

Maria Kaspina and Mikhail Vasilyev presented an internet database of ethnographic, epigraphic and archival data. SFIRA; Anna Shaevich and Irina Kopchenova presented other Sefer programs, summer and winter student schools, as well as grants for research on Russian Jewry and projects in Jewish studies.

According to tradition, the conference also included a presentation of the newest Judaica publications of the last year by colleagues from different countries. Within the framework of the conference, presentations of the latest editions on Jewish studies in the Russian Language were also held. New books were presented by;  the publishing house “Knizhniki” (Borukh Gorin), the publishing house of Mikhail Grinberg, as well as Oleg Budnitsky, Leonid Terushkin and Giula Shamili.

According to the feedback of all the participants the conference was well prepared and of a high level, as well as being interesting and useful in various ways. Presentations are including more diverse topics, and the Sefer conference year on year is becoming better and more informative.

Here are the reports, impressions and comments on the conference from the chairs of the different sections:

12 papers were presented at the section “The Bible: Translations and Interpretations” (Chair M. Seleznev).

The range of topics was very wide: from the ancient Eastern roots of the biblical tradition to Hellenistic Judaism, Targums and the “search for the historical Jesus.” All 12 reports were of a high level.

It is very joyful that the section has become “younger”: out of 12 speakers, 5 were postgraduates or undergraduates, and this did not in any way affect the high level of reports. A significant number of the speakers were in one way or another connected with the High School of Economy, which is not surprising, given the recent establishment of the Center for the Study of Biblical Studies and the History of Ancient Israel. At the same time, traditional centers for the study of Jewish studies, such as the Russian State University for the Humanities, St. Petersburg State University and PSTGU also presented.

The Semitic Philology and Epigraphy section (Chair: Alexey Lyavdansky) went very well, the papers were accompanied by excellent presentations (especially from Matthew Morgenstern). The researchers united in this section have already formed their own circle, which this time was joined by the largest specialist in Syrian magic bowls, James Ford from Israel. In general, the sessions were very interesting.

The section “Hebrew Manuscripts” (Chair: Dr. Alexander Gordin) was quite successful and left a pleasant impression, there were almost no technical failures, the speakers were interesting and professional.

Reuven Kiperwasser talked about the technological problems of preparing a publication based on handwritten sources. For me, this was the most interesting presentation, stimulating further research, the speaker shared his experience of working on the texts of the Midrash of Ecclesiastes.

Shimon Yakerson presented a series of poetic colophons in Spanish and Portuguese incunabula, performed in a sophisticated manner that has no analogues in manuscript material. Interesting results, inspiring for further research, at the intersection of book history and the history of poetry.

Alina Lisitsina examined the composition of the manuscript collection of the Schneerson library, kept in the Jewish Museum in Moscow. This talk was more technical and therefore inevitably boring, but valuable first-hand information is very important for all those involved in library work with Hebrew manuscripts.

Alexander Gordin’s report was devoted to handwritten sources such as colophons and other accompanying texts of Hebrew manuscripts, shedding light on the teaching and study of astronomy in Late Byzantine and early Ottoman Constantinople. Probably, the topic was somewhat exotic for the majority of listeners, but I hope it was interesting.

We were especially pleased with the performances of the younger participants, who spoke at a very professional level. Ekaterina Belkina spoke about the history, description and actual composition of Ivanov’s Bukhara collection. The fascinating story also contained intrigue, regarding the possible presence of as yet unknown earlier manuscripts, we await the results of further research.

Mikhail Arseniev examined Karaite manuscripts from the Second Collection of Firkovich, containing biblical texts in Arabic script. A detailed analysis of spelling features, line alignment and other characteristics reveals several systems with peculiar influences from both Arabic and Jewish written traditions. The topic seems to be very promising, I am glad that in St. Petersburg, where the manuscripts themselves are kept, there is someone to study them.

The reports were accompanied by questions and discussion. In general, we barely met the time allotted to us. Many thanks to all the organizers, let’s hope for new meetings.

The section Jewish Classical Texts and Thought (Chair: Mikhail Wogman) included both Russian and English language presentations on the different topics; Jewish Classical texts, such as Apocrypha, Rabbinic and Medieval Literature, Talmud and Midrash, Maimonides works, as well as interesting aspects of Jewish and Non-Jewish European Philosophy. The most interesting presentations were of Uri Gershovich, Arcady Kovelman and Mikhail Wogman.

The section “History of the Jews of Eastern Europe” (Chaired by Dr. Semyon Goldin) included 5 reports (three of them in Russian and two in English). Among the speakers were two “venerable” teachers (from Moscow and Jerusalem) and three young researchers; two doctoral students (Warsaw and Klagenfurt) and one undergraduate student (Warsaw). The topics of the reports and their chronology were extremely diverse; from the religious wars of the 17th century to the Holocaust. In general, the section was quite successful, the discussion of the reports was quite active. I would like to thank the organizers for the opportunity to take part in an important conference.

During the conference, 3 sessions of the section “History of the Jews of the Russian Empire” (Chairs: Artur Markovsky and Dmitry Elyashevich) were held, at which 14 reports were presented. Most of them were devoted to the period of the late 19th – early 20th centuries and had a local history character. In general, all the papers were distinguished by a fairly high academic level, although they were of unequal quality. Practically every presentation caused a series of questions and discussion. Among the most interesting and informative are the papers of D. Feldman, I. Barkussky, A. Bezarov, A. Markovsky. Among the reports of young researchers, undoubtedly the best was the report of M. Moldaver.

The traditional section “Jews and Christians: the problem of relationships” (Chaired by Dr. T. Khizhaya) was attended by Russian scholars and researchers from the United States. As always, the chronological coverage of the events, phenomena, processes, trends in the field of interreligious interaction considered by the speakers turned out to be wide: from the 9th century to the present. The geography of the presented studies were extremely varied. This is the phenomenon of crypto-Judaism of the descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jews and their return to Judaism (report by Jenny Milgrom, USA), the relationship between Jews and Christians in late medieval Castile (Isabella Biletskaya, Moscow), Christian apocrypha in a Byzantine work, where the theme of the Old Testament is touched upon ( Polina Ukhanova, St. Petersburg), the Sabbatarian movement in modern Europe and discourses of its perception by Jewish researchers at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. (Tatiana Khizhaya, Vladimir), “Russian world” in Palestine ΧΙΧ-ΧΧ centuries, and modern Israel, which includes Orthodox pilgrims and Russian-speaking Jews (Mikhail Shapovalov, Omsk).

All papers were accompanied by presentations, which is very important for the format of a virtual conference, when you do not always see the faces of the participants, but you can watch the slides. Jenny Milgrom, a descendant of the Spanish crypto-Jews (“Marrans”), who, thanks to the documents of the Inquisition, restored her Jewish ancestry up to the 15th century, gave the audience an excellent presentation.

The performances of the young participants delighted with the use of serious sources, medieval documents and monuments, which were subjected to thorough research (Isabella Biletskaya and Polina Ukhanova).

A rather lively and dynamic discussion took place, all the speakers were asked more than one question. Mikhail Shapovalov’s report on “Russian Palestine” aroused a lot of questions, the material turned out to be topical. Many thanks to V.V. Mochalova, who did not just ask, but gave valuable recommendations, to the moderator Anna Shaevich (the section was conducted without technical failures) and the translator Larisa Privalskaya!

Section on The Study of Anti-Semitism (Chaired by Dr. V. A. Shnirelman).

Judging by sociological data, anti-Semitism in Russia has been declining in recent years, and this affects the decline of interest in its scientific discussion. Therefore, if in the past years the section recruited at least a dozen speakers, this year there were only five applicants. Nevertheless, the meeting was very interesting. Topics not covered by earlier studies were discovered, new approaches and interpretations appeared. For example, in a report on Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries, Dominika Stefania Vysochinska showed that anti-Semitism was not always directly related to Jews. It turned out that representatives of the nobility used it in court intrigues to undermine the positions of their rivals. In turn, Y. Oreshina highlighted the little-studied issue of anti-Semitism in Georgia, which is denied there and does not become a subject of discussion. Meanwhile, in the XIX century in Georgia there were cases of blood libel, the train of which in the form of rumors reached the second half of the 20th century. In a report on the notorious hieromonk Iliodor, Maxim Khizhiy showed him not so much as a convinced anti-Semite, but rather greedy for entertainment and scandalous theatricality. He was a populist and easily changed his views. He only tried to adopt the image of the spiritual leader of the movement, but never organized pogroms. In the report of V.A. Shnirelman, an attempt was made to show the paths leading to anti-Semitism. The biographies of a number of leading contemporary Russian radical right ideologists were analyzed. It turned out that people came to anti-Semitism at different ages, in different social contexts and for different reasons. The turning point happened in their youth, when people met with injustice, experienced disillusionment with ideological clichés, entered into confrontation with the regime and faced life troubles, or even ended up in prison for political reasons. To this was added a connection with Russian nationalist organizations, as well as an acquaintance with Orthodox Judo-phobic literature. It is noteworthy that good relations and friendship with individual Jews did not prevent some of these figures from constructing the image of a consolidated malevolent Jewry, allegedly dreaming of world domination and enslavement, or even genocide of everyone else, above all, of course, the Russian people. In connection with this thesis, an interesting discussion followed the section on the distinction between the private and the general, the individual and the mass.

At the section “(Un) open pages of archival documents” dedicated to the memory of Efim Iosifovich Melamed (Chairs: Alexander Ivanov, Dr. Alla Sokolova), 6 papers were presented.

The section was opened by a short report by Aleksandr Ivanov on the works of Y. I. Melamed in the field of archival Jewish Studies, and, in particular, on the preparation of a three-volume guidebook “Documents on the history and culture of Jews in the archives of Ukraine”.

The presentation of T. Shishkina, a recent graduate of the National University “Kiev-Mohyla Academy” – “The participation of the Cabinet of Jewish Culture in the preparation of materials for the” Black Book “, in fact, continued the research of E.I. Melamed on the study of the history of this institution. The author of the presentation used numerous archival documents, including previously unpublished ones, as well as a visual way of presenting material using network analysis methods. This study is in its early stages and during a discussion some ideas were expressed regarding further work on this topic.

The paper of the head of the Center for Jewish Studies at the Department of Cultural Heritage Research of the National Library of Lithuania Lara Lempertienė; “From Library to Archives: A New Look at the Judaica Collection in the National Library of Lithuania” was dedicated to a new approach to working with the collection of Jewish handwritten and printed materials that came to the funds of the Jewish Studies Center. The author of the presentation suggested considering this collection as a whole without dividing handwritten documents and printed books into separate sets of materials, taking into account the links between them formed in the process of creating the collection. The paper also described the history of the formation of this collection and its fate during the Second World War and the post-war period.

The presentation of an independent researcher from Brno and a representative of East View Information Services in the Czech Republic, Yuri Snopov was about Jewish religious life in Moscow in 1945-1953 through the eyes of S. Besshaposhnikov, Commissioner for Cults in Moscow and the Moscow Region, and his correspondents. The paper presented an analysis of the materials of F. R-6991 (GARF), on the basis of which the main directions of the activities of the Commissioner for Religious Affairs, in work with Moscow Jewish religious organizations in the post-war period, were demonstrated.

In the lecture of Vladimir Kolesov, representing the Kuban State University of Krasnodar, the case of Jegonas Mountain Jews in modern digital archives on the history of the XX century (source study aspect) were discussed.

In addition, reports were presented by the chairs of the section, Alla Sokolova, researcher at the State Museum of the History of Religion and the St. Petersburg Judaica Center of the European University in St. Petersburg, “Jewish” museum cuisine “in the light of the accounting records of the 1930s.” and Alexander Ivanov, Research Fellow at the Petersburg Judaica Center of the European University in St. Petersburg “The Fate of the Archives of the Jewish Section of the State Museum of Ethnography in Leningrad”.

In conclusion, it should be noted that, in general, the section was successful, without any technical problems; on all the presentations during their discussion, questions were asked and comprehensive answers were received from the speakers.

The papers, which were made at the section Non-Shkenaz Jewish Communities (Chair: Maxim Gammal), were devoted to the history of the Karaites and Krymchaks.

It is worth noting the presentation of the Polish researcher Marzhena Zawanowska, compiled in the genre of “history of ideas” and dedicated to the role of Yehuda Halevi in ​​the formation of the medieval myth of the connection between Sadducees and Karaites.

Most of the papers (Gammal, Kondratyuk, Prokhorov, Dobchinsky) were related to the history of the Karaite and Krymchak communities in the New and Modern times. A characteristic feature of this block of reports is the introduction of new archival materials into circulation. In this regard, I would like to note the report of a researcher from Kazan, Doctor of Historical Sciences G.N. Kondratyuk “Krymchaks in the conditions of political and socio-economic transformations of the interwar period (1920s – 1930s)” as an excellent example of the balance between “archival” and “analytical” components.

History and culture of Mountain Jews (Chair: Dr. Boris Rashkovsky)

This year, Mountain Jews were separated from non-Ashkenazi. The meeting was successful, the problems of preserving heritage in the diaspora were touched upon. There were reports on both antiquity and the current state of the communities. The report of Irina Mikhailova, which contained very interesting material, deserves publication. The reports were accompanied by a discussion.

At the section “Yiddish: Language and Literature” (Chair: Dr. Mikhail Krutikov) there were five presentations: two on linguistics, two on literature and one on the intersection of two disciplines. All papers were successful and sparked a lively discussion. In the presentations of Valentina Fedchenko and Alexandra Polyan, previously unknown archival sources were used. I was pleased that both speakers found their place in research projects on Soviet Jewish culture at two German universities, Regensburg and Dusseldorf. Velvl Chernin’s talk on the language of modern Yiddish prose showed that this literature continues to evolve. All reports were in Russian, but the speakers came from five different countries: Russia, Israel, USA, France and Germany, which indicates that Russian-speaking researchers are well integrated into world science.

At the section “Jewish Literature” (Chair: Dr. Victoria Mochalova) all the speakers announced in the program were from Israel, Germany, Hungary and Russia.

Konstantin Bondar presented on the theme of the “Jewish voice” in Ukrainian literature of the 19th-20th centuries. Nicholas Dreyer explored the Jewish theme in the works of the Ukrainian-Russian writer Daniil Mordovtsev (1830-1905), paying particular attention to the motivation of non-Jewish intellectuals who viewed Jewish history as part of their cultural and spiritual heritage.

Galina Eliasberg discussed the heroes and literary types of stories and plays by Lazar Karmen (1876-1920), usually considered in the context of Russian-Jewish literature, the “Odessa text”, presenting a literary analysis of the heroes and literary types typical for stories, reports and plays of L. Carmen, and considering their speech characteristics.

Victoria Mochalova analyzed the shimmering identity of the Austrian writer Josef Roth (1894-1939), who was born on the border of cultures and absorbed the multicultural atmosphere of the Habsburg Empire, which became the basis of his European identity.

Elena Sidorova analyzed Jewish speech in Russian in the works of Friedrich Gorenstein, whose prose is deeply rooted in Jewish life and language. The writer, according to the speaker’s conclusion, perceives the speech of his characters as a kind of intangible “place of memory.”

Anna Branchase focused on the American poet John Berryman’s (1914-1972) essay Imaginary Jew (1945), tracing the language and rhetorical figures associated with Jewish identity and represented both in this text by Berryman and in his other works (Diary of Anne Frank “, “Black book”).

In general, the topics of the reports presented concerned the linguistic and literary aspects of the studied texts, the reflection in them of the processes of national self-awareness and identification.

The reports were made at a high scientific level and were accompanied by a lively discussion.

The theatrical session “Eternal Wanderers of the Jewish Theater” (Chair: Dr. Olga Levitan) was attended by 6 speakers, 5 from Israel (in the past two of them – from Russia) and 1 from the USA (in the past from Germany). Almost all participants are active scholars with an international reputation. The session was very successful with excellent presentations, good questions and discussions on each report. Thematic interconnectedness of the papers exceeded the expectations of the chair person and other participants. Each of the speakers offered their own point of view on the problems of wandering in connection with the Jewish theater, from midrash and ritual to historical wanderings, tours of Jewish theater figures, philosophy of culture and language in a theatrical context and ethno-performance. Almost every report presented an original research at the intersection of theatrical historiography, critical analysis of theatrical texts

Jewish Art and Cinema (Chairs: Dr. Vilma Gradinskaite and Svetlana Pakhomova)

All eight participants of the section; Tatiana Tereshchenko, Massimiliano Tinini, Vilma Gradinskaite, Anna Berezovskaya, Natalya Ogorelysheva, Svetlana Pakhomova, Elina Vasilyeva and Hana Verena have made reports.

All reports were professionally prepared, informative and revealed many new facts and presented interesting research in different areas of Jewish art, cinema and heritage. Most of the reports were accompanied by visual presentations, which greatly facilitated the assimilation of information. The discussion was fascinating, each participant was asked questions, followed by detailed answers.

The triumph of visuality was revealed at the section: visual arts, architecture, preservation of cultural heritage and the problems of monetization of this heritage, relevant for the post-Soviet space and the countries of the social bloc (report by Anna Berezovskaya).

Exploring cinema, all the speakers talked about the ratio of the national to the universal, about the complex national identities that filmmakers are trying to reconstruct on the screen.

The section went smoothly, without technical problems. Translator Marie Morris worked professionally, although the workload was intense and some of the texts were complex.

“Jews in the USSR (part 1)” (Chair: Dr. Gennady Kostyrchenko)

Of the six speakers included in the program, all spoke, except for D. Nechiporuk (Tyumen State University), who notified the Organizing Committee of the impossibility of participating in the conference for a good reason. In this regard, and thanks to the rather substantial time limit initially allocated to the section by the Organizing Committee, the speakers had the opportunity to reveal their topics in detail, speaking an average of 25-30 minutes. In addition, they were able to answer in detail the questions asked to them. Since there were at least 20 of them, we can assume that the section was quite active. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why up to 16 outside observers watched the reports and discussion in the section online. In my opinion, A. Kushkova (“Petersburg Judaica Center” of the European University) and K. Mogarichev (State Archives of the Republic of Crimea) made the most qualitative reports, accompanied by illustrative presentations.

As the chair of the section, on behalf of all its participants, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the Organizing Committee of the Conference for its excellent preparation in scientific, organizational, informational and technical terms, and also to note the high professionalism of the section moderator.

At the section “Jews in the USSR (part 2”) (Chair: Dr. Gennady Estraikh) four reports were presented, all excellent, not just new topics, but also new directions. Good discussion, but mostly a social gathering. Only a few people have connected to this session. I don’t know if this can be interpreted as a weak interest in the history of Jews in the USSR. Two out of four reports were in English, and I got the impression (or even the belief) that not all Russian-speaking participants understood the speakers.

Within the section “Jews in Siberia: Identity, Migration and Interethnic Interaction” (Chairs: Dr. Victoria Gerasimova and Dr. Vladimir Levin), 5 reports were presented by researchers from Russia, Israel and the United States. Researchers dealing with Siberian topics presented their papers in different optics. As part of a personal approach, Elena Berman presented lecture about Solomon Beilin, an Irkutsk government rabbi and an outstanding folklorist, and Irena Vladimirski about Yakov Frizer, a gold miner and philanthropist. Vladimir Rabinovich made an attempt to generalize and comprehend the adaptation strategies of the Jewish minority and its relationship with the surrounding population in Siberia. The papers by Polly Zavadivker and Victoria Gerasimova discussed the evolution of the idea of ​​a Jewish immigration center in Siberia, which emerged during the First World War. After the presentation of the reports, a general discussion was organized, in which both the participants of the section and the audience had the opportunity to speak. As part of the general discussion, questions were raised about the origins and types of anti-Jewish violence, the specifics of the Siberian regional Jewish identity and the prospects for comparative studies of Jewish-immigrant communities in Siberia, the United States and the Scandinavian countries. The upcoming issue of “Judaic-Slavic-Journal” will be devoted to the Jewishness of Siberia, among the authors of which will be the participants of this section.

All 10 participants from Russia and France, mentioned in the program, presented their reports at the session of the section “History of the Holocaust” (Chair: Dr. Ilya Altman). 7 of them are young scholars, who, during the discussion, were given recommendations by the presenter and participants for the continuation of the research. About 20 scholars, including from Belarus, took part in the discussion.

The topics of the speeches were divided into 3 parts: the History of the Holocaust in occupied Europe and its reflection in foreign historiography; source block with analysis of different types of sources; problems of memorialization and opposition to Holocaust denial. Almost all participants based their speeches on the sources introduced into scientific circulation for the first time.

New topics deserve attention; an analysis of the attempts to emigrate Jewish anarchists to the United States (M. Tarasova) and the role of UNESCO in preserving the memory of the Holocaust (N. Koteneva), the initial stage of studying the Holocaust in the United States (M. Gileva).

However, in the case of subsequent publication, almost all reports should be finalized, first of all, to exclude generally known information and emphasize more the display of new or debatable problems.

10 researchers were to take part in the section “Holocaust Memorialization, Traumatic Memory and the Present Situation” (Chairs Dr. Irina Rebrova, Dr. Arkady Zeltser).

The presentations were on different topics – historical, like Babi Yar (V. Khiterer), film studies (Liat Stern Livni), and interesting topics of recent years with combination of historical and modern approaches. The presence of contemporary topics led the discussion in a slightly different direction than is customary in the purely historical section, and led to a discussion of the problems of relevance and problems of methodology (Alexander Fridman, Anna Kirzyuk, Milda Yakulite-Vasil, Mikhail Kizilov). The positive side of this combination was a more lively discussion than is usually the case. Perhaps ZOOM also contributed to the revitalization of the discussion, as it turns the meeting into something more intimate and free. The disadvantages of ZOOM are also obvious: lack of personal communication, lack of understanding of what people are working on outside of their presentation, etc.

At the end of the papers, we had the opportunity to organize an additional general discussion on these topics, including discussing methodological problems.

It should be noted that the meaningful discussions and questions after each presentation, clarified the topic of the speech, and some took them into a new discussion on related up-to-date topics, such as the ethics of memorializing Holocaust victims in Germany in the form of Stolperstein, politicizing the memory of the Holocaust in the post-Soviet space, the relevance of a sociological approach in studying holocaust memory carriers.

Of the shortcomings, only general fatigue from zoom can be noted, since it is difficult to sit for three or more hours and actively participate in discussions without changing your attention. Breaks do not help, however, it would be almost impossible to assemble such a panel in real conditions. Thanks again to the conference organizers and presenters for such a good panel.

The section Digital Ethnography in Jewish Studies (Chairs: Dr. Maria Kaspina, Dr. Irina Dushakova) brought together researchers, most of whom were also participants of the Summer and Winter Schools on Digital Ethnography in Jewish Studies, organized by Center Sefer in 2020 -2021. In many cases, young researchers clarified the topics they started working on in schools and presented refined research. In our opinion, the section has become both a good platform for discussing the intersection of topics in research to clarify the plan for a future monograph, and a good way to learn about the progress of research that begun in schools. So, obviously, a strong collection of studies of Jewish religious communities of different directions is being formed, which allows us to create a more complete picture on this topic, since we have data for comparison. At the same time, it is important that in their reports the researchers relied not only on observations, but also, in most cases, on interviews with religious leaders. At the intersection with the topics, there was a lecture on socially approved ways of representing the Holocaust in the digital space. The section level appears to be high. If we continue to work in this direction, over time it will be possible to fill the current gap in the field of digital ethnography, where the object would be Jewish culture. We would also like to note the difference in the level of methodological training of participants who went through the school and those who did not, this seems to be the best confirmation of the effectiveness of the schools conducted by Sefer.

Gender Studies (Chair: Dr. Galina Zelenina) The session was good, we learned that not all the wives of the Jews were obedient to their spouses, that the image of a muscular Jew was invented a decade and a half before Nordau, and that women rabbis and male rabbis structure their sermon in different ways during a pandemic: the former share their experiences, the latter prefer to play the role of an expert and patron.

The Jewish Identity section (Chair:  Dr. Mikhail Chlenov) was conceived as a podium for discussing the dynamics of Jewish identity of the last century, its transformation in different historical, political, and ethnic environments. The focus of the presentation of Zeev Khanin (Israel) “From Post-Soviet Jewry to Transnational Diaspora. Formation of a new model of Russian-Jewish identity” was precisely on the dramatic change in the character of Jewish self-consciousness of modern Russian-speaking Jewry after the collapse of the political, administrative, and geographical environment in which it was formed. As expected, it was this lecture that caused the most heated discussion, at the center of which was the concept of modern Russian-speaking Jewry, put forward by the author as a transnational entity, settled both in the territory of the former USSR and in many countries of the world, mainly in Israel, the USA and Germany. Indeed, this concept, for all its controversy, was quite interestingly viewed and analyzed both in comparison with the non-Russian-speaking diasporas, and against the background of the Soviet atheistic and exclusively ethnic model of Jewish identity that is receding into the past. The presentation of Elizaveta Zabolotnykh (Russia, Yekaterinburg) “I knew that the Mashiach had to come – the metamorphosis of Jewish festive rituals in the conditions of a Soviet city” was devoted to her analysis, which also provoked a lively discussion. All other reports were, contrary to expectations, devoted to other non-Russian-speaking Jewish diasporas and were very interesting and in many ways unexpectedly new for the usual Sefer audience. Alexander Bar (Great Britain) devoted his report to the identification torments of the famous poet of the early 20th century Tristan Tzara, who was born to a Jewish family in Romania, but then lived most of his life in France and wrote in French. The complex identification processes in the practically unknown Russian-speaking audience of the Jewish community of Chile were highlighted by Jimena Gökke (Chile) in the presentation “Jewish Literature “About Me”: Autobiographical Texts for a Cosmopolitan Identity Archive,” focusing on the evolution of Jewish identity during the Pinochet dictatorship. The report of Boris Cherny (France) “Solomon Reinak and the” Jewish question “in Russia” was devoted to the comparison of the Western European understanding of Jewry and the pre-revolutionary Russian Jewish identity.

I would like to note that a colleague from Egypt Hussein Hassan was present among the audience of the section. The section “Identity” was successful, it was attended by about 20 people from many countries, topical problems of the evolution of Jewish identity, which are especially acute in our days, were raised and discussed.

The round table dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the Sovetsh Heimland magazine and organized by the Sefer Center, the Russian Jewish Congress and the VEK International Yiddish Center (Chairs: Maria Makarova, Victoria Yuse, Mordechai Yushkovsky) included three sessions where various issues were discussed: the life of the editorial board of the magazine and literary courses (Vladimir Beider, Mikhail Krutikov, Alexander Lokshin, Wolf Moskovich, Mikhail Chlenov, Gennady Estraikh, Mordechai Yushkovsky); how the Sovetish Heimland magazine formed a generation of writers (Shlomo Groman, Moisey Lemster, Boris Sandler, Felix Khaimovich); is there a future for literature and journalism in Yiddish in Russia and in the world today (Mikhail Krutikov, Alexander Lokshin, Elena Sarashevskaya, Roman Spektor, Gennady Estraikh).

During three sessions it was possible to consider the phenomenon of “Sovetish Heimland” from very different angles. The participants of the round table actively contributed in the discussions, very vividly shared their memories and opinions, and kept the audience’s interest without interruption for three and a half hours! We are glad that everyone was given the opportunity to speak and express themselves on this important topic close to the speakers. Thank you very much to all the organizers for such a productive, professional and warm cooperation, it seems that this very good experience should be continued. We would like to discuss the idea of ​​publishing a processed transcript of the round table, supplemented by the memories of those who could not attend, articles and other materials.

A Round Table ‘Rybnitser Rebbe: Biography, Hagiography, Cult’ (Chair: Dr. Dov-Ber Kerler, Indiana University, Bloomington) was held at the conference, which presented the results of the international research project. As part of the round table, studies were presented on the role of the Hasidic tzaddik, Chaim Zanvl Abramovich (1896 – 1995) in the Jewish life of the Soviet city of Rybnitsa (Transnistria). The main plots and motives of hagiographic stories featuring him, were characterized by and parallels with, the early Hasidic literary and folk tradition. In addition, unique stories about the emigration of the rebbe from the Soviet Union to Israel and USA, the media perception of the rebbe’s narratives, and the linguistic features of stories about the tzaddik in English, Hebrew and Yiddish were analyzed. The round table aroused the interest of the audience and listeners, there was a meaningful and fruitful discussion on each presentation.

Another Round Table was devoted to “Jews of Lithuania and Russia: Languages of Memory” (Chair: Svetlana Panich, Moscow / Berlin). The opening word was said by the Ambassador of Lithuania in Russia Eitvydas Bajarūnas. The participants include Markas Zingeris, historian, writer, former director of Vilna Gaon of Jewish History (Vilnuis), Alla Sokolova, State Museum of the History of Religion, curator of exhibition programs of St. Petersburg Judaica Center of the European University in St. Petersburg (St. Petersburg), Irina Shcherbakova, historian, a director of the educational programs of the International Memorial (Moscow), Nikolai Epple, Memory Studies scholar, publicist, translator.

One of the participants of the conference, Prof. Shaul Shtampfer notes: I thought the conference was good. The technical side was superb – the Zoom really worked well. There is always a problem with so many talks but only one at a time can be heard. It was difficult to ‘see’ people who were in other sections. It might be desirable to find a way to enable people to connect more. I will try to think of more ideas.

All the sections, that include non-Russian speaking participates, followed by simultaneous English translation. Each section was also technically moderated.

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2019/20

REPORT

MONITOR Global Intelligence on Racism, RSCAS, European University Institute, Italy (http://monitoracism.eu).

International Centre on Racism (ICR), Edge Hill University, UK.

Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung (ZfA), Technische Universität Berlin, Germany.

Hosted by the ICR.

Aims

Social media is impacting in significant ways on anti-Jewish racism- but what is novel about this relationship? Focused on this question, Edge Hill University, UK, hosted the first conference to analyse the connection between innovations in media and changes in antisemitism over the longue durée. Funded by the European Association for Jewish Studies, the event was a collaboration between the magazine MONITOR Global Intelligence on Racism (Monica Gonzalez-Correa) at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence (http://monitoracism.eu), Edge Hill’s new International Centre on Racism (ICR) (James Renton and Jenny Barrett), and the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung (ZfA) (Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, Uffa Jensen, and Marcus Funck) at the Technische Universität Berlin.

A principal aim of the conference was to bring experts in the digital humanities, literature, law, social sciences, and history into dialogue. With historian Professor Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (ZfA) and web epistemologist Professor Richard Rogers (Amsterdam) as keynotes, the organisers attracted participants in these fields from Germany, Israel, Norway, the UK, and the United States.

Scholars, analysts and policymakers have pointed to social media for some time as a driving force behind the increasing virulence of antisemitism. This new form of communication has evidently played an important role in the recent spike in violent attacks and murder of Jews by lone-wolf killers in the United States and Europe. The killers have interacted with like-minded people online, used the web as a means of articulating their ideology, and a platform for broadcasting their acts of violence. Beyond the realm of physical violence, antisemites are engaging with each other globally in new ways, are developing new forms of expression, and antisemitic notions and languages have moved into mainstream online debate and politics.

In order to combat this online racism effectively, we must decipher what, if anything, is really new – in form as well as content. Yet, the fundamental question remains: how can the novelty of contemporary antisemitic ideas, practices, and networks be assessed? The answer must begin, the conference organisers argue, by analysing new developments within a bigger historical framework: the relationship between media and antisemitism over the centuries. In collaboration, the meeting of academic disciplines can, we contend, sketch out new paradigms of analysis. In turn, this larger canvas provides new possibilities for thinking about effective anti-antisemitism.

Outcomes

The conference achieved our goal of providing a new temporal and multi-disciplinary framework for thinking about our subject; we began our analyses in medieval history, extended our discussions into modernity, and then delved into the recent past and the present. The speaker panel included scholars of literature, law, history, the social sciences, and digital humanities. Following recent scholarship on antisemitism, much of our discussions were embedded in the bigger subjects of the far-right, digital culture, and the relational dynamics between racisms.

Taken together, the conference established clear connecting elements that are pronounced in particular moments (for example between early modern Spain and contemporary global digital culture). This is not to say that we found unchanging features of antisemitism- to the contrary. Instead, the research unearthed points of similarity between points in time, including characteristics, defining emotions, and practices, that are brought into sharp relief by our deep historical approach. At the same time, the conference findings also underscore distinctive features of seminal junctures that are tied to innovations in media, and accompanying changes in political, economic, and social cultures.

Significantly for those combating antisemitism today, these findings include the unveiling of new evidence of effective contemporary antiracism strategies, along with suggestive parallels from the past.

These findings are to be communicated via an open access peer-reviewed publication edited by Monica Gonzalez-Correa, MONITOR, EUI, Michael Berkowitz, University College London, and James Renton, Edge Hill University.

The partnership between MONITOR and the ICR has been formalised, and their ongoing events and publications continue to examine antisemitism in the context of other racisms over the longue durée. Their next conference will be on ‘Centring Race in History’, and a webinar series on antiracism in the 2020’s after George Floyd. MONITOR and the ICR will also discuss future collaborations with the ZfA.

Papers and Discussion

The conference was opened by Professor George Talbot, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Edge Hill University.

Medieval Hate

The first panel began with media innovation and antisemitism in medieval Europe. It was chaired by Professor Uffa Jensen, an historian from one of the organising institutions, Technische Universität Berlin, and expert on visual antisemitism. Dr Marcia Kupfer, an art historian based in Washington DC and author of a Yale University Press monograph on the Hereford map, opened proceedings.

Kupfer argued that medieval Christianity’s adoption of the medium of the parchment codex led to it becoming a significant element in the projection of supersessionist theology—of Christianity as Judaism’s replacement. In medieval art, the object of the codex was presented as the glorious encasement of Christ’s teaching, in opposition to the scroll, the embodiment of Judaism as a backward religion. Kupfer went on to discuss the depiction of the Jew in carnival culture, of antisemitism as popular entertainment, rather than theological argument, focused on the controversy over the Aalst carnival.

Medievalist, Dr Lindsay Kaplan, from Georgetown University followed. Kaplan’s paper drew on her new monograph on racism in medieval Europe, and focused specifically on the medium of illuminations in psalters, manuscripts of psalms, which were the most widely read and circulated books of the Bible in the Middle Ages. Kaplan argued that there were marked shifts in these psalters from the 11^th century, through to the 13^th century, in which Jews became the central protagonists in the killing of Christ. In addition, dark Muslims emerge as the partners of the Jews, as anti-Islam and anti-Judaism become racialised in this imagery.

In the discussion that followed the panel, Professor Kitty Millet, San Francisco State University, noted the evolution of the Aalst carnival, and even more extreme antisemitism in the past with the depiction of gestapo guards and Zyklon B. A particular focus of the discussion then centred on racialisation in medieval Europe, and the relationship between figures of the Muslim and the Jew.

Keynote: “Eyes and Ears, Heart and Soul: Anti-Jewish Resentment and the Media: A historical perspective.”

Professor Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, Director of the ZfA, delivered the first keynote of the conference. The Director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, Professor David Feldman, presided over the session.

Schüler-Springorum gave a sweeping lecture that provided an essential link between the medieval session, and the modern/postmodern papers that followed. A highly original contribution, the lecture explored the different senses (seeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling) through which anti-Judaism was conveyed via the media revolutions of modernity (the printing press, sermons, radio, the poster and the postcard, mass theatrical events). Schüler-Springorum argued that joy and amusement were critical emotional features of modern antisemitism.

With regard to the change inaugurated by the printing press and the circulation of books, Schüler-Springorum presented the case that early modern Spain was the originator of defining concepts in the history of antisemitism: Jewish and Muslim racial difference, and the Jewish conspiracy. Whereas most scholarship has pointed to Iberia as a case apart, the presentation contended that books from this part of Europe travelled into central Europe and the new world, and had a profound impact on humanism, the reformation and counter-reformation.

Another critical element of the lecture was the emphasis on participation in mass theatrical events. These range from the auto da fe in Iberia to carnival, football matches, and the web. Schüler-Springorum showed how spectacles themselves pass into different media in history: Francesco Rizzi paintings, Lopez de V songs, Shakespeare plays, to name but a few examples.

As one would expect, lively discussion followed, raising points including early modern “racism” (Kaplan); philology versus biology as the root of race, and the Iberia moment as a strong but not initiating point in antisemitism history (Feldman).

Modern/Postmodern Transitions and Continuities

The next panel shifted our attention to ‘Modern/Postmodern Transitions and Continuities’. It began with Dr James Smith (Royal Holloway, University of London), whose paper, ‘From Trope to Meme’, addressed the UK debate over Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party. He argued that we need to consider the nature of digital media and changes in knowledge, and how they interact with the very quick growth of an explicitly democratic mass political movement (over half a million members). Smith pointed to the theoretical importance of conceptualising digital media as a technology of desire, and a post-modern technology, as well as how old debates among the liberal left around antisemitism are projected onto faceless masses.

Expanding on a key theme in this conversation—the conspiracy theory— Dr Martina L. Weisz (Hebrew University) discussed its contemporary history in the Spanish daily press, especially El País, El Mundo and ABC. Weisz argued that the Jewish conspiracy theory has remained prevalent in print and online in this media from the 1990s to the present. Her starting point was the controversy over the publication by Penguin in English of the book, How They Rule the World, by Pedro Baños, a text that, significantly, was not deemed to be problematic in Spain.

Keeping with the same theme of conspiracy, but shifting to the context of the United States, Dr Victoria Woeste analysed the history of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Her presentation traced the unfolding impact of conspiratorial antisemitism from the early twentieth century in print media, and its legacies in the question of news in the era of Donald Trump. Her presentation compared Henry Ford, who was pivotal in the dissemination of the Protocols in the US, with Trump.

Keynote: “Deplatforming: Following Extremists to Telegram and Alternative Social Media.”

The second day of the conference started with a keynote by the world-leading digital media specialist, Professor Richard Rogers, from the University of Amsterdam. This talk took the conference into the question of how we can respond effectively to online antisemitism. Rogers explored the broad question of whether deplatforming—removing individuals from platforms including Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook—is a successful strategy. His analysis drew upon intensive digital research that he undertook with a group at the University of Bologna. They found that deplatforming did indeed reduce the reach of formerly high-profile extremists, that it reduced their income streams, and had a positive effect on the mainstream platforms that excluded them. Even though they can migrate to other platforms such as Telegram, far-right/alt-right new media celebrities end up with much smaller audiences and exposure.

In the discussion that followed, Dr Aaron Winter (University of East London), pointed out that we must look at the complex political context of prominent individuals, and not just the technical digital side, as they can stride across a ‘liberal Islamophobia’ as well as fringe alt-right fascism. Dr Ben Gidley (Birkbeck) followed with a discussion about deplatforming, the role of software as an intermediary, and the older political strategy of ‘No Platforming’. Rogers concluded by pointing to the contemporary challenges of effective digital research due to restrictions placed on accessing data by platforms such as Facebook.

Far right/alt right

Dr Ariel Koch (Tel Aviv University) kicked off the panel with an examination of the global activism undertaken by the extremist online group, the ‘Atomwaffen Division’. Koch outlined the eclectic ideological influences evinced by the group, from Hindu eschatology to jihadism. The official website is only found on the dark web, and Koch discussed its ideological make-up, with its aim of ‘white jihad’. Whereas those involved would have inhabited a markedly fringe political space years ago, they now have a transnational reach across the darker side of the web.

The theme of mainstreaming was then taken up further by Dr Aaron Winter (UEL) in his presentation concerning the alt-right. Winter discussed older attempts by, for example, the KKK to enter the mainstream, and early use of the internet. But he pointed to two fundamental shifts that have enabled the far-right to become normalised: 9/11, and the Presidency of Barack Obama. The result is ‘Trumpism’, which binds a diverse movement that incorporates liberal Islamophobia and anti-Black racism.

In the panel discussion, Weisz pointed to the resonance between the ideology of the online right and the eschatology of settler Zionism.  

Identities

The next panel dealt with identities. It delved further into the transnational development of online far-right hate, and the relationship between the online and off-line political worlds that this politics inhabits. Professor Kitty Millet (San Francisco State) focused on Polish nationalism, with the relationship between the political crowd of street protest, the football stadium and football culture, and the recruitment/growth of far-right groups. Millet showed how the ideas and political languages being developed and enunciated in this political space are having transnational impacts around the globe, including the United States, with antisemitism and the figure of the Jewish enemy as a binding force. Critically, the digital space functions as the infrastructure for this transnational political activism.

Birgitte P. Haanshuus (Oslo) followed, and spoke about her research on the political left and online antisemitic hate speech in Norway. Her research focuses on the official Facebook pages of organisations that include the Red Party (Rødt), Palestine Committee, BDS Norway, Radikal Portal. Each of these left-wing groups hold either a pro-Palestinian and/or anti-Israel perspective. Using content analysis and interviews, Haanshuus has found that antisemitism is rarely an issue on these pages. Her interest, however, lies in how potential antisemitic content is moderated, given that those running the organisations are aware of its potential— in other words, how is online hate policed in the virtual space, depending on the conceptions of those in a position of authority.

Matthias Becker (Haifa University) also explored the virtual space of hate speech, focused on the UK in relation to Brexit. His talk discussed British news websites and Facebook, and considered whether exclusionary speech has become mainstream concerning Jews, along with Muslims and European immigrants. The focus on the seeping of hate into mainstream discourse dovetailed with several other contributions to the conference, as did the relational approach of exploring antisemitism with other racisms. In addition, Becker made a significant argument in regard to methodology: the importance of combining quantitative digital analysis with qualitative analysis. This point echoed Winter’s argument about the significance of attending to the political context of any digital change.

Antiracism

The penultimate panel addressed how we can respond effectively against antisemitism. Following the keynote by Richard Rogers, this session brought historical insights from print-media antiracism into dialogue with the latest digital research on what works in social media. Dr Patrick Soulsby (Edge Hill, ICR) analysed comparatively two prominent publications in France and the UK in the 1980’s and 1990’s: Le Droit de Vivre, published by the Ligue internationale contre le racisme et l’antisémitisme (LICRA), founded in 1927, and Searchlight magazine, founded in 1975. Even though these publications did not collaborate, their approaches had significant similarities. Both adapted over time in dynamic response to changes in antisemitism and the far-right, and represented an engagement between antiracism and anti-antisemitism. Perhaps most importantly they provided a successful model of intelligence gathering on far-right political activity, which was absolutely crucial for informing antiracists. Searchlight, in particular, possessed a national network that was able to gather real-time information on developments as they happened, enabling effective activism across the country.

From these models of a print-media response to antisemitism, the panel moved into the digital realm with the research of Dr Sefa Ozalp and his colleagues at the HateLab at Cardiff University. Ozalp presented new work that analysed Twitter in the UK for one year from October 2015. Using computational criminology methodology, the team used a machine learning classifier, identifying almost 3 million tweets. The project measured the impact, the digital lifecycle, of antisemitic tweets, as well as countervailing material from those against anti-Jewish online social media. A very important finding was that antisemitic tweets had a smaller and more short-lived influence than those producing anti-racist messages. In short, the recommendation is that widespread organic responses that challenge antisemitism work.

Reflections on Media History and Antisemitism

The final panel gathered several scholars from the conference to reflect on the key themes discussed. The panel began with the Deputy-Director of the ZfA, Professor Uffa Jensen. Jensen praised the multi-disciplinary discussions of the conference, and was particularly struck by the ways in which contributors contextualised antisemitism (and anti-antisemitism) in relation to other racisms. He also pointed to the significance of gender as a field for further investigation, specifically questions around masculinity, and deplatforming as a potential antisemitic trope. Professor David Feldman, Director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism (Birkbeck, University of London) followed by arguing that we need to consider the history of print news (including fake news), and printed books for us to get to grips with contemporary social media. Feldman stated that Benedict Anderson’s notion of ‘imagined communities’ has become such a part of our vocabulary that the content of his work has been largely forgotten: specifically his focus on ‘print capitalism’ and genre (romance novels vs. chronicles).

Professor Kitty Millet built on this point in regard to Anderson on Immanuel Kant and aesthetic judgement. Relating back to the keynote by Schüler-Springorum, Millet argued that our senses (faculties) change with shifting media, with, for example, Burke, on smell, which he connected to being a British subject. Millet concluded with a note of optimism: the conference has shown that effective anti-antisemitism is possible. The panel concluded with interventions from Marcia Kupfer and Lindsey Kaplan. Kupfer discussed the historical dynamic evolution of antisemitism across media, and pointed to the shifting contexts of racisms. The significance of emotions was again underscored. Kaplan made the case for locating antisemitism in its shifting wider contexts of other racisms. This was an ongoing thread throughout the conference with regard to both antisemitism and anti-antisemitism, which began with Kupfer and Kaplan’s opening panel.

Public Engagement

Webinar

Before the opening of the conference, the two keynote speakers and Professor Uffa Jensen, Deputy-Director of the ZfA, and expert on the history of visual antisemitism, delivered a webinar for civil society organisations. The aim was to communicate key research findings in a condensed fashion for groups working in the field to combat antisemitism. Delegates from Jewish community and antiracism organisations participated.

Research Briefing

Based on the conference, organising partner, MONITOR, published a research briefing for civil society organisations and policy communities, a concise summary of the original insights and policy recommendations of the event. The briefing was published in issue 6 of MONITOR, and is available online for free. It can be consulted here: http://monitoracism.eu/monitor-policy-paper/

Event programme

5 November 2019

09.00-12.00 Webinar for Media, Community, and Antiracism professionals

Chair: Professor James Renton, Edge Hill University.

Professor Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, Technische Universität Berlin.

Professor Uffa Jensen, Technische Universität Berlin.

Professor Richard Rogers, University of Amsterdam.

Conference

13.00-13.15 Welcome

13.15-14.15 Medieval Hatred

Chair: Professor Uffa Jensen, Technische Universität Berlin.

From Codex to Carnival, Medium as Part of the Anti-Jewish Message.

Dr Marcia Kupfer, Washington D.C.

Creating Racial Hatred in Medieval Psalter Illuminations.

Dr Lindsay Kaplan, Georgetown University.

14.15-14.30 Break

14.30-16.00 KEYNOTE

Chair: Professor David Feldman, Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism.

Antisemitism and the Media: A Historical Overview.

Professor Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, Technische Universität Berlin.

16.00-16.15 Coffee

16.15-17.45 Modern/Postmodern Transitions & Continuities

Chair: Professor Bryan Cheyette, University of Reading.

From Trope to Meme.

Dr James Smith, Royal Holloway, University of London.

Jewish Conspiracy and the Daily Press in Spain.

Dr Martina L. Weisz, Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Fake News— From the Protocols to the Presidential Election of 2016.

Professor Victoria Woeste, Chicago.

6 November 2019

09.00 Coffee & pastries

09.30-11.00 KEYNOTE

Chair: Monica Gonzalez-Correa, ICR & MONITOR Global Intelligence on Racism, European University Institute.

Deplatforming: Following the extremists to an alternative social media ecosystem

Professor Richard Rogers, University of Amsterdam

11.00-11.30 Coffee

11.30- 12.30 Far-Right/Alt-Right

Chair: Dr Stephen Ashe, ICR & University of Manchester.

Online Hate: From the Far-Right to the ‘Alt-Right’, and from the Margins to the Mainstream.

Dr Aaron Winter, ICR & University of East London.

Nazism, Satanism and Jihadism: Inside the Bizarre Online World of Atomwaffen Division’s Network of Hate and Rage.

Dr Ariel Koch, Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Tel Aviv University.

12.30-13.30 Lunch

13.30-15.00 Identities

Chair: Professor Shirli Gilbert, University College London.

Social Media, Hate and Identification.

Professor Kitty Millet, San Francisco State University.

What is (on the) left? Boundaries and content moderation of antisemitic hate speech online.

Birgitte P. Haanshuus, Norwegian Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies/University of Oslo.

‘I voted Leave! So, why are you still here?’ Antisemitic hate speech on British websites in the context of Brexit.

Dr. Matthias J. Becker,Center for Research on Antisemitism, Technical University Berlin/Weiss-Livnat Center and Department of Communication, University of Haifa.

15.00-15.30 Coffee

15.30-16.30 Antiracism

Chair: Dr Ben Gidley, ICR & Birkbeck.

‘A Resurrected Evil’: Challenging Antisemitism in Antiracist Media, c. 1980-2000.

Dr Patrick Soulsby, ICR, Edge Hill University.

Antisemitism on Twitter: Collective efficacy and the role of community organisations in challenging online hate speech.

Dr Sefa Ozalp, HateLab, Cardiff University.

16.40- 17.30 Reflections on Media History and Antisemitism

Chair: Professor James Renton, Edge Hill University.

Professor David Feldman, Birkbeck.

Dr Lindsay Kaplan, Georgetown University.

Dr Marcia Kupfer, Washington D.C.

Professor Uffa Jensen, Technische Universität Berlin.

Professor Kitty Millet, San Francisco State University.

Conference Acknowledgements

With special thanks to the ZfA in Berlin and the Department of English, History and Creative Writing at Edge Hill University for additional funding; Ruth Carr, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, at Edge Hill for administrative support; the Edge Hill conference team; our conference chairs, Dr Stephen Ashe, Professor David Feldman, Dr Ben Gidley, and Professor Shirli Gilbert; and our student helpers, Ivy Capehart, Helen Meakin, Thomas Ottley, and Alicia Sims.

Conference Steering Committee

Monica Gonzalez-Correa (MONITOR), Stephen Ashe, Jenny Barrett, Ben Gidley, James Renton (ICR).