Modern Jewish Spaces From the Venice Ghetto to Contemporary Classifications

Summer Workshop for Young Researchers in Jewish Culture and Identity

In conjunction with the University of California, Santa Cruz

June 30 – July 2, 2014 at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute

Attending the workshop is by invitation only

Summer Workshop Program

Contemporary globalization brings to the forefront the relation between identity and spatial location; it highlights new and multiple cross-cutting transnational allegiances that bear on central aspects of Jewish identity, which some contemporary writers and researchers have begun to explore and elaborate. The Venice Ghetto raises a range of questions about Modern Jewish Spaces that have played central roles in Jewish and European culture since the Jews were sequestered in the Ghetto at its founding in 1516. The history of the Ghetto, its image and its symbolic resonances have generated different models that have become subtexts of several Modern Jewish Spaces, often implicitly reverted to in desperate Jewish historical moments. A broad range of questions arise from the study of Modern Jewish Spaces, such as the following:

• Are there sets of necessary and sufficient conditions that constitute different paradigmatic Modern Jewish Spaces?
• What do Modern Jewish Spaces mean for those who live in them, or for those outside?
• What roles do political, social and cultural power play in and for these Modern Jewish Spaces?
• What was/is the influence of the State of Israel on contemporary definitions of Jewish people?
• What roles do minority cultures in Modern Jewish Spaces assume and fulfill?

The summer workshop will provide an opportunity to investigate these and other related questions.

Academic committee:
Prof. Shaul Bassi, Prof. Elisheva Baumgarten,
Prof. Murray Baumgarten, Dr. Yotam Benziman,
Dr. Manuela Consonni, Prof. Shmuel Feiner,
Prof. Aviad Hacohen, Prof. Debra Kaplan,
Prof. Haviva Pedaya, Prof. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin,
Prof. Uzi Rebhun, Dr. Avinoam Rosenak,
Rabbi Naftali Rothenberg, Dafna Schreiber

The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
43 Jabotinsky St., Jerusalem
www.vanleer.org.il
Photographs taken at the event will be posted on the Institute’s website and on social networks.