Activity Update Summer 2015

Transcription

Activity Update
Summer 2015 – Spring 2016
Wooden synagogue in Kansk, documented by the CJA researchers
during the expedition to Siberia in August 2015
Center for Jewish Art
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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Humanities Building, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 91905; tel. 972-2-5882281/8; fax 972-2-5400105
cja@mail.huji.ac.il
http://cja.huji.ac.il
The Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art
Just as in the previous year, the main efforts of our staff were devoted to the digitization of the
Center for Jewish Art collections. The vision of the late founder, Prof. Bezalel Narkiss, came to
its realization and the Index of Jewish Art (named after him) is available to all. It can be accessed
on the Center’s webpage (http://cja.huji.ac.il/browser.php) and includes currently 193,000 scanned
images. The Index is an iconographical database, which offers the widest representation of Jewish
iconography in all media: Ancient art, Hebrew illuminated manuscripts, ritual objects,
architecture, funeral monuments, and modern art. The documentation, gathered by the CJA
researchers over 37 years and presented in the Index, is a unique source of information on artifacts
and monuments, that may have disappeared or changed beyond recognition.
The digitization project is carried out in cooperation with the National Library of Israel.
The digitization project is supported by the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe,
Landmarks Program of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, Harvard University Library, the
Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, and the Morris and Beverly Baker
Foundation.
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cja@vms.huji.ac.il, http://cja.huji.ac.il
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Expedition to document Jewish heritage in Siberia
The major achievement of the Center for Jewish Art in this period was a research expedition to
Siberia in August 2015. Over the course of 21 days, the expedition spanned 6,000 km and visited
16 cities in Siberia and the Russian Far East: Tomsk, Mariinsk, Achinsk, Krasnoyarsk, Kansk,
Nizhneudinsk, Irkutsk, Babushkin, Kabansk, Ulan-Ude, Barguzin, Petrovsk Zabaikalskii, Chita,
Khabarovsk, Birobidzhan, and Vladivostok. Sixteen synagogues and four collections of ritual
objects were documented alongside a survey of eleven Jewish cemeteries and numerous Jewish
houses.
Wooden Soldiers’ Synagogue in Tomsk (1907), window decorations on the upper floor
The expedition team consisted of Prof. Aliza Cohen-Mushlin, Dr. Vladimir Levin, Dr. Katrin
Kessler, Dr. Anna Berezin, and Arch. Zoya Arshavsky. The detailed report on the expedition is
available here:
cja.huji.ac.il/Home_Page/Report%20on%20CJA%20expedition%20to%20Siberia%202015.pdf.
The expedition was made possible thanks to the generous support of Mrs. Josephine Urban,
London and an anonymous donor.
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A Catalogue of Wall Paintings in Central and East European
Synagogues
The research project conducted by the Center for Jewish Art on wall paintings in Central and East
European Synagogues now enters its third year. We have already created a methodology for
presenting wall paintings and implemented it in an interactive database. For now, the catalogue
contains descriptions of the wall painting programs and individual images from 113 synagogues
from Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania,
Ukraine, and Israel. Those synagogues are represented in three thousand photographs. The images
and their descriptions can be browsed according to their origin, iconographical subject, and artist.
The
catalogue
is
accessible
to
the
public
at
the
Center’s
website:
http://cja.huji.ac.il/wpc/browser.php?mode=enter.
The Catalogue will be presented to the researchers in the International Workshop “Synagogue
Wall Paintings: Research, Preservation, Presentation” on September 13 and 14, 2016.
Virgo, Zodiac Sign of Elul, Kupa synagogue in Cracow, Poland, 1920s, restored in the 2000s.
Photo 2015 by Boris Khaimovich.
Expedition to document synagogue wall paintings in Poland
For the preparation of the Catalogue of Wall Paintings, Dr. Boris Khaimovich undertook an
expedition to Poland. He visited Warsaw, Cracow, Tykochin, Łańcut, and Włodawa. Besides
photographing the current situation of the wall paintings, Dr. Khaimovich also visited the Institute
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of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences and copied archival photographs of destroyed
synagogues with murals.
A Project to document Judaica produced by the Bezalel School in
past and present
The new project of the Center for Jewish Art aims to include into the Index of Jewish Art
documentation of objects of Judaica produced by the artists from the Bezalel School of Art
(currently the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design), from its establishment in 1906 until today.
This project will demonstrate the continuity and change in the production of Jewish ceremonial
objects, and place the oeuvre of contemporary artists in historical context, thus stressing the tension
between tradition and innovation.
We are looking for grants in order to advance with this project.
Documentation of Rimma Bobov Collection
As one of the facets of our interest in contemporary art, the CJA undertook documentation of the
collection of Sabbath candlesticks produced in Israel in the 1950s–1980s. The collection belongs
to Mrs. Rimma Bobov; it was described and photographed by our researcher Rony Katz; the
documentation is now available in the Index of Jewish Art (http://cja.huji.ac.il/browser.php).
Sabbath Candlesticks with the images of Baba Sali and his tomb in Netivot
From the Rimma Bobov Collection
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Cooperation with the MASA Program
This year the CJA successfully cooperated with the international Masa "Top Israel Interns"
program. Masa brings young Jewish people from abroad to experience the real life in Israel. In the
framework of the project, the CJA accepted three interns: Willi Mendelson and Carmen Echevarria
from the USA, and Ekaterina Sosenskaya from Russia. During their internship in the Center, Willi,
Carmen, and Ekaterina had a unique possibility to explore Jewish visual heritage and contributed
a great deal to the development and improvement of the Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art.
Ekaterina Sosenskaya updating the Bezalel
Narkiss Index of Jewish Art
Carmen Echevarria on Mt. Scopus Campus
of Hebrew University
Mapping and Evaluating Synagogue Buildings in Europe
This year the Center for Jewish Art and the Foundation for Jewish Heritage, London, began a
project of Mapping and Evaluating Synagogue Buildings in Europe. The aim of the project is to
map out all extant buildings in Europe, which serve or once served as synagogues, identify the
most important ones in terms of their architectural, artistic and historical value, and single out
those that are currently at risk of destruction and should be urgently restored.
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Commemoration of the late Professors
Ursula and Kurt Schubert
The Center for Jewish Art is one of the organizers of the event dedicated to the memory of
prominent researchers of Jewish history and art, Professors Ursula and Kurt Schubert. In 1999,
Ursula and Kurt Schubert donated their collection of photographs of Hebrew Illuminated
manuscripts to the Center for Jewish Art where it is kept as the “Schubert Archive” and serves
researchers from all over the world.
A one-day conference, “Between Jewish Traditions and Early Christian Art,” devoted to the
research of Ursula and Kurt Schubert, was held in the Academy of Sciences in Vienna on January
19, 2016. It included a joint presentation by their former students, Prof. Katrin Kogman-Appel and
Prof. Bernhard Dolna, as well as concluding remarks by Dr. Vladimir Levin of the Center for
Jewish Art. On January 20, 2016 the same presentation was given in the Kurt and Ursula Schubert
Center for Jewish Studies at Palacký University of Olomouc, Czech Republic. The same event will
be repeated in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on November 13, 2016.
Opening of the conference “Between Jewish Traditions and Early Christian Art,”
the Academy of Science in Vienna
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Events
On December 13, 2015, Prof. Shalom Sabar from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem received
the Bezalel, Mordechai, and Nessia Narkiss Prize for Excellence in Research on Jewish Art. The
award ceremony took place in the Umberto Nachon Museum of Italian Jewish Art in Jerusalem.
Prof. Sabar gave the lecture “The image of Shabtai Zvi in Jewish and Christian visual
representations in the 17th century.”
On March 31, 2016, the Center of Jewish Art together with the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center
for Russian and East European Jewry, organized a lecture evening “Jewish Museum and Its Place
in Contemporary Culture” to celebrate the publication of the album Museum of Jewish History in
Russia. Dr. Boris Khaimovich and Hillel Kazovsky presented the album, Prof. Shalom Sabar
lectured on “Flags for Simhat-Torah in Jewish Folk Culture in Eastern Europe,” and Prof. Ziva
Amishai-Maisels, the Israel Prize laureate, spoke on “Art for the sake of Art or Art as document
in a Jewish Museum.”
Prof. Ziva Amishai-Maisels lecturing on
“Art for the sake of Art or Art as document in a Jewish Museum”
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On December 2, 2015, the Center for Jewish Art together with the Department of Jewish Art in
Bar-Ilan University co-organized a colloquium on Synagogue Art. The main participants were Drs.
Eszter and Sándor Tárkányi from Sopron, Hungary, who spoke on “Surviving Synagogues of the
Forgotten Sopronians: Medieval Architecture and Contemporary Art Project,” and Dr. Ilya Rodov
of Bar-Ilan University who gave a paper entitled “Stones and names.”
On November 18, 2015, the Center for Jewish Art together with the Department of Jewish Art in
Bar-Ilan University, Art History Department in the Hebrew University, the Cummings Center in
the Tel Aviv University, and the Maria and Michael Zeitlin Museum of Russian Art in Ramat Gan
co-organized the presentation of the book Yakov Kagan Shabbtai and his Jewish Artistic Gallery
by Moscow researcher Yakov Bruk.
Exhibitions
Ido Noy, a researcher in the Center for Jewish Art, served as a curator and catalogue editor of the
exhibition “Bezalel: In and Out in Jewish Contemporary Art,” organized in the framework of the
Second Jerusalem Biennale for Contemporary Jewish Art in October 2015. Dr. Vladimir Levin
spoke on the festive opening of the exhibition.
In February 2016 the Center for Jewish Art together with the Art History Department of Hebrew
University, organized the exhibition “Ima Iyla’ah: the Art of Motherhood” in the Humanities
Faculty in Mount Scopus. The exhibition is a continuation of one of those undertaken during the
Jerusalem Biennale for Contemporary Jewish Art and curated by Nurit Sirkis-Bank and Noa Lea
Cohn.
On October 15, 2015, Dr. Sergey Kravtsov gave a lecture at the opening of the exhibition “Jewish
Marriage Contracts. Collection of Ketubbot in the Borys Voznytsky National Gallery” in Lviv,
Ukraine.
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Education
In the beginning of August 2015, Dr. Vladimir Levin participated in the field school expedition of
the Moscow-based Center “Sefer.” The school expedition worked in the westernmost region of the
Russian Federation. It documented Jewish cemeteries and collected oral history in Smolensk,
Luibavichi (the town where the leaders of the Habad Hasidism resided for one hundred years),
Shumiachi, Roslavl, Monastyrshchina, and Petrovichi (the birth place of Isaac Azimov).
Michal Sternthal gave a lecture “Introduction to Hebrew illuminated manuscript” in the Senior
Club, Hashmonaim, in July 2015.
Dr. Sergey Kravtsov gave five seminars at the “Festival of Slow Reading,” Eshkolot Program of
Jewish Studies in Moscow on December 4–6, 2015.
Dr. Sergey Kravtsov lecturing at the “Festival of Slow Reading,” Moscow.
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Participation of the CJA researchers in conferences
In June 2015 Dr. Vladimir Levin participated in the Seminar “Mental Maps and Making of
National Spaces: The Case of Lithuania” of the Lithuanian Institute of History in Vilnius. He
lectured on “Lite in Jewish Mental Maps.”
In September 2015, Dr. Sergey Kravtsov and Dr. Vladimir Levin took part in the International
Workshop “Constructing and Deconstructing of Jewish Art” in Bar-Ilan University. Dr. Kravtsov
gave a paper “Polish-Jewish Art History Discourse: From Karol Maszkowski to Zofia
Ameisenowa” and Dr. Levin spoke on “Between History and Architecture: Eastern European
Synagogues in Siberia.”
Zoya Arshavsky participated in the conference “Dialog of Cultures on the Great Silk Road,” held
in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, on November 11-13, 2015.
Dr. Kravtsov gave a lecture “Artist’s Destiny in Jewish Collecive Memory” at the Sefer
Conference in the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow on December 3, 2015.
In December 2015, Prof. Aliza Cohen-Mushlin and Dr. Vladimir Levin participated in the
workshop “Network for Jewish Material Culture,” organized by our colleagues from the Beit Tfila
Research Unit for Jewish Architecture in Europe (Braunschweig, Germany). The workshop was
held in Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald and lead to the establishment of the Israel
Jakobson Network, which united the majority of German institutions and researchers dealing with
Jewish material culture. The next meeting of the members of the network will take place in
Braunschweig in April 2016 and will be devoted to the topic “Object and Script.”
Recent Publications of the CJA researchers
Zoya Arshavsky and Ruth Jacoby, Jewish Architecture in Samarkand: The House of Rafael
Abramov (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 2016) [in Hebrew].
Zoya Arshavsky, “Archaeological Sites of the Western Part of the Great Silk Road in the National
Parks of the East Mediterranean,” in Materials of the international scientific conference
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“Dialog of Cultures on the Great Silk Road,” Ashgabat, 11-13 November 2015 (Ashgabat,
2015).
Ido Noy, “The Fleuron Crown from Neumarkt in Silesia (Środa Śląska): Christian Material Culture
in Jewish Context,” Art Judaica 12 (2016): 23‒38.
Vladimir Levin, From Revolution to War: Jewish Politics in Russia, 1907–1914 (Jerusalem:
Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2016) [In Hebrew].
Vladimir Levin, “Common Problems, Different Solutions: Jewish and Muslim Politics in Late
Imperial Russia” in Franziska Davies, Martin Schulze Wessel, Michael Brenner (eds.), Jews
and Muslims in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 2015), 65‒86.
Vladimir Levin, “Jewish National Quasi-Autonomy in the Russian Empire: Parliamentary Politics,
Civil Society and the Issue of Refugees during the First World War,” in Rustem Tsionchuk
(ed.), The First World War and the State Duma: Proceedings of an International Conference,
Kazan’, 17-18 October, 2014 (Moscow: The State Duma, 2015), 150‒157 [In Russian].
Vladimir Levin and Darius Staliūnas, “Lite in the Jewish Mental Maps” in Darius Staliūnas (ed.),
Spatial Images of Lithuania in the Long Nineteenth Century (Vilnius: UAB Baltijos kopija,
2015), 227‒260 [In Lithuanian].
Sergey Kravtsov and Artur Lilien-Brozdowieski, Thoughts of a Polish Jew: To Kasieńka from
Grandpa, transl. by Marya Lilien-Czarnecka and Joanna Grun (Boston: Academic Studies
Press, 20016). Forthcoming in April 2016.
Sergey Kravtsov, “Marek Reichenstein: Collector and His Collection,” in Vita Susak (ed.), Jewish
Marriage Contracts: Collection of Ketubbot in the Borys Voznytsky National Art Gallery of
Lviv (exhibition catalog) (Lviv: Borys Voznytsky National Art Gallery, 2015), 11‒29.
Sergey Kravtsov, “Plan of the Temple,” in Vita Susak (ed.), Jewish Marriage Contracts:
Collection of Ketubbot in the Borys Voznytsky National Art Gallery of Lviv (exhibition
catalog) (Lviv: Borys Voznytsky National Art Gallery, 2015), 94‒97.
Sergey Kravtsov, “The Modern-Time Theoretical Reconstructions of the Mishnaic Temple as a
Source for Synagogue Architecture,” in Katrin Keßler and Alexander von Kienlin (eds.),
Jewish Architecture: New Sources and Approaches (Petersberg: Imfof Verlag, 2015), 105–
114.
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Future Events
April 13–15, 2015 – "Objekt und Schrift: Erste Arbeitstagung des Netzwerks jüdische Sachkultur,"
Beit Tfila Research Unit, TU Braunschweig, and Europäisches Zentrum für jüdische
Musik, Hannover, Germany.
September 13–14, 2016 – International Workshop “Synagogue Wall Paintings: Research,
Preservation, Presentation.”
October 2016 – Exhibition of the Rimma Bobov Collection of Sabbath Candlesticks, Department
of Jewish Art, Bar-Ilan University.
November 13, 2016 – Conference "Between Jewish Traditions and Early Christian Art," devoted
to the research of Ursula and Kurt Schubert.
December 2016 – Bezalel, Mordechai and Nessia Narkiss Prize for Excellence in Research on
Jewish Art.
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Activity Update Summer 2015

Transcription

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