A Work for the Jewish Soul of Warsaw, Old and New

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 57-58
Author(s):  
Lukas Ligeti
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Computer Technology ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Interactive Performance ◽  
History Of ◽  
Polish Jews ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City

In 2015, Lukas Ligeti created a site-specific, audience-interactive performance work while in residence at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Based on interviews with residents of Warsaw, the piece examined aural memories of Jewish life in the city, tracing the extermination and re-emergence of the Jewish community through speech and songs as well as creative musicians’ reimaginings of these memories, with computer technology as a mediator.

scholarly journals Laws, doctrines and practice: a study of intermarriages and the ways they challenged the Jewish Community of Helsinki from 1930 to 1970

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-54
Author(s):  
Mercédesz Viktória Czimbalmos
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Religious Congregations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Secular Society

The identities, customs and habits of religious congregations are tightly connected to the history of these congregations and to the specific religious tradition or denomination they consider themselves to be a part of. They are also shaped by the legislative and bureaucratic regulations and processes of the secular society that is surrounding them. The aim of this study is to further our knowledge of some of these aspects of Jewish life as they relate to the Jewish Community of Helsinki in the period 1930–70 by showcasing two examples that emerged as a result of the rising number of intermarriages in the congregation.

Sophia Kemlein

2001 ◽  
pp. 390-392
Author(s):  
Jerzy Tomaszewski
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Limited Resources ◽  
Factual Knowledge ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Polish Jews

This chapter reviews The Jews of Poznań 1815–1848: Development of a Polish Jewry under the Rule of Prussia. It shows how this book enlarges our factual knowledge and enables us to correct the errors of older publications. It also shows in what way and why Polish Jews in the Prussian partition gradually became loyal subjects of Prussia, and then Germans of Mosaic faith. An important gap which plagues not only scholars of the history of the Jews in the Prussian partition is the scarcity of sources relevant to the evolution of the attitudes of ordinary people. The chapter asserts that Sophia Kemlein was able to use important records and memoirs that originated from among the wealthy, especially the intelligentsia; but these only partly disclose the views of other strata within the Jewish community. With these limited resources, however, and using many other sources from German and Polish archives, Kemlein has managed to create a convincing picture of the evolution of the whole community.

The new Basrah Museum: dedicated to the archaeological and historical inheritance of Basrah and Iraq

Antiquity ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (369) ◽  
pp. 811-813
Author(s):  
Adil Hashim Ali
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Gulf Coast ◽  
Arabian Gulf ◽  
Fertile Crescent ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
A Site ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
The City

Located in the Fertile Crescent and at the head of the Persian/Arabian Gulf, the city of Basra is steeped in history. Close to the heart of ancient Mesopotamia, the territory of modern Iraq was occupied variously by Achaemenids and Seleucids, Parthians, Romans and Sassanids, before the arrival of Islam in the early middle ages. In more recent history, the city's strategic position near the Gulf coast has made Basra a site of contestation and conflict. This exposure to so many different cultures and civilisations has contributed to the rich identity of Basra, a wealth of history that demands a cultural museum able to present all of the historical periods together in one place. The original Basra Museum was looted and destroyed in 1991, during the first Gulf War. The destruction and loss of so much of Iraq's history and material culture prompted official collaboration to build a new museum that would represent the city of Basrah and showcase its significance in the history of Iraq. The culmination of an eight-year collaborative project between the Iraq Ministry of Culture, the State Board of Antiquities and the Friends of Basrah Museum, the new museum was opened initially in September 2016. Already established as a cultural landmark in the city, with up to 200 visitors a day and rising, the museum was officially opened on 20 March 2019. The author was fortunate to be present for this event and able to explore the new galleries (Figure 1).

JEFFREY A. NEDOROSCIK, The City of the Dead: A History of Cairo's Cemetery Communities (Westport, Conn.: Bergin and Garvey, 1997). Pp. 140.

2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 574-575
Author(s):  
Camilla Gibb
Keyword(s):  
Housing Sector ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
Informal Housing ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City

Jeffrey Nedoroscik's book is a sensitive sociological survey of life in Cairo's City of the Dead, where more than 500,000 people are now enlisted to reside. In an attempt to both demystify and account for this phenomenon, Nedoroscik argues that life in the City of the Dead is as old, and as rich, as life in Cairo itself. Today, residence in and among the family tombs stretching across some five square miles at the base of the muqattam Hills, constitutes an informal housing sector that has developed as a response to Cairo's severe housing crisis. Historically, though, the cemetery also teemed with life as a religious center housing some of the Muslim world's most important monuments, and a site of temporary and permanent shelter to relatives to the deceased, guardians of tombs, itinerants, the poor, the sick, Sufis, and other religious leaders.

scholarly journals Ikere-Ekiti in Art and Cultural Narratives

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dele Jegede
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Art History ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Cultural Narratives ◽  
Southwestern Nigeria ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
Art And Architecture ◽  
The City

Ikere, a city in Ekiti State of southwestern Nigeria, comes up often in the literature of art history on two principal accounts: first, its art and architecture, and second, its major annual fesitval. These are the two central concerns of this paper. In the first part, the unique architecture of the afin and the traditional sculptures that were its central feature present the opportunity to examine the interconnectedness of continuity and change, tradition and modernity, and the centrality of art in the Oba's quest for political pre-eminence. Ikere came to in­ternational attention through the vlrtuoslc sculptures of one of Africa's master carvers--Olowe (ca. 1873-1938), who lived in Ise-Ekiti, a town about 15 miles east of Ikere. In addition to offering new insights into the relevance of Olowe to Ikere, this essay posits a re-examination of the birth year of Olowe. In the sec­ond part, this essay dissects the Olosunta festival, which remains central to the collective identity of a people who subscribe to different religious doctrines. The early history of Ikere acknowledges the city as a site for the simultaneous reign of two rulers, the Ogoga and the Olukere. But it is the annual celebration of the Olosunta festival that serves as the rallying point for the indigenes of the city at the same time that it provides a time-honored structure for handling potentially explosive cultural and political contestations.

scholarly journals Encountering the 'ghetto'

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-19
Author(s):  
Christhard Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Life ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
East European ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
Direct Encounter ◽  
First World

In the history of Western perceptions of Jews and the ‘Jewish problem’, the First World War marks a period of change which was, among other things, influenced by the course of the war on the Eastern Front. The German occupation of large parts of Russian Poland in 1915 brought the difficult conditions of Eastern European Jewry closer to public attention in the West, not only in Central Europe, but also in neutral states. For the Scandinavian writers who travelled to occupied Poland in 1916 and 1917, the direct encounter with East European Jewry was a new and often disturbing experience. Their travelogues represent an illuminating and, so far, unused source for Scandinavian perceptions of Jews in Eastern Europe, focusing on the ‘ghetto’ as the physical embodiment of Eastern Jewish life. Analysing these accounts, the present article discusses the different depictions of Warsaw’s Jews thematically and identifies three interwoven perspectives of the ‘ghetto’: as a site of extreme poverty; as a foreign (‘oriental’) element in Europe; and as an archetype of Jewish life in general.

Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

2021 ◽  
pp. 229-252
Author(s):  
Magda Teter
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Diaspora Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
Polish Jews ◽  
Communal Autonomy

One of the hallmarks of modern diaspora studies is the dichotomy of a “homeland” and “hostland” in relation to a diasporic group. The history of Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth complicates these contemporary categories. The multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Commonwealth was a homeland for Polish Jews. They formed an integral part of its social, cultural, and economic fabric, even as they identified and were identified as Jews. In a pre-modern world, with legal structures grounded in distinct estates, identities were also inscribed in law. Jewish judicial and communal autonomy was a product of the Jews’ legal status. In Poland-Lithuania, Jewish autonomy developed mimicking the governing structures of the Commonwealth itself. Polish Jews were, thus, a part of a larger real and imagined Jewish community whose homeland was Poland.

Restoring and Reconstructing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea A. Sinn
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Federal Republic ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Displaced Persons ◽  
World War ◽  
Postwar Germany ◽  
German Jews ◽  
The City

This chapter examines the path toward recovery of the Jewish community in the city of Munich after World War II. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, a small group of German Jews settled in larger cities outside the displaced persons camps. Against all odds, these Jews began to engage in the process of restoring Jewish communal structures in Germany. The chapter considers the process of restoring and rebuilding Jewish life in postwar Germany as well as the tensions between Jewish displaced persons, German Jews, and international Jewish organizations over the question of whether to remain or to leave. It suggests that the path toward recovery of the Jewish community in the Federal Republic of Germany was made possible by the emergence of a group identity among the so-called stayers and a change in mindset regarding Jewish life in Germany within the global Jewish community.

Wake in Guangzhou

Transfers ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Thereza Alves
Keyword(s):  
City Center ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Landscape Transformation ◽  
Deep Layers ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site

Wake in Guangzhou: The History of the Earth is a site-specific installation exhibited in in the Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou, China, that problematizes issues of migration, trade, and landscape transformation. Wake in Guangzhou investigates the origin of the seeds found on the site of Huagui Lu, in the Liwan district in Guangzhou’s city center, where today a hundred wholesale markets exist. A mound of earth was removed from Huagui lu, a street in the Liwan District, the former merchant quarter’s of Guangdong. The earth sample was put in the courtyard of the Guangzhou Museum so dormant seeds previously buried in deep layers could germinate when exposed. The botanist Heli Jutila writes, “Although seeds seem to be dead, they are in fact alive and can remain vital in soil for decades, and even hundreds of years in a state of dormancy.”

Experimenting with Sociology: A View from the Outlook Tower

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 154-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Bates
Keyword(s):  
Technological Innovation ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
British Sociology

This paper describes a site-specific sociological experiment and looks back at the history of British sociology from the Outlook Tower in Edinburgh. It considers the role of technological innovation in observation, and explores how attention is guided through two exercises in sensory attunement; augmented listening and telescopic looking. Reconfiguring the observer through different technologies and devices, the paper questions what it means to listen and to look, and highlights how our sociological outlook is deeply ethical and historical.

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