Call for Papers: 'The Image and the Prohibition of the Image in Judaism',

Call for Papers: 'The Image and the Prohibition of the Image in Judaism'

(ISJM) Scholars of Jewish art and visual communication will want to note what may prove to be an important gathering in Southampton, England next September.

Call for Papers:
The Image and the Prohibition of the Image in Judaism,
British Association for Jewish Studies (BAJS), Southampton,
5-7 September, 2010

Call for Papers:
The theme of 2010 BAJS Conference (Sunday 5th - Tuesday 7th September 2010) is 'The Image and the Prohibition of the Image in Judaism'. Topics may cover any time period from antiquity to the contemporary, and any place or cultural context relevant for Jewish Studies. The 'image' may be interpreted broadly to include the non-visual (e.g. literary representations and conceptual images) as well as the visual. The expectation is that papers will explore different aspects of the acceptance and the rejection of images in Jewish thought and practice from the Bible to the modern world. Topics may include the secular as well as the religious sphere.

Proposals for papers (and panels) in the following areas are especially welcome:

* biblical traditions and their interpretation
* notions of 'the image of God'
* Jewish art and Jewish symbols
* idolatry and iconoclasm
* the prohibition and acceptance of images in Holocaust representation
* representing Jewishness in film and television
* Jewish/non-Jewish relations and the second commandment

Practical details:
Single paper proposals should be no longer than 250 words and panel proposals need not exceed one page. Please email proposals to Dr Sarah Pearce (s.j.pearce@soton.ac.uk) with 'BAJS 2010' in the subject line. The deadline for paper abstracts and proposed panels is 31 May 2010. Registration details will be circulated soon.

Please note the September date for this meeting instead of the usual July date. This change was made for 2010 in order to avoid clashes with the July 2010 conferences of the European Association of Jewish Studies (Ravenna) and the UK Society for Old Testament Studies (Sheffield).

Please note that though the conference is open to all (see details below), anyone wishing to present a paper who is not a member of BAJS must join by the time of the conference. Membership is open to anyone interested in an academic approach to Jewish studies. For membership enquiries and applications, please write to: Dr James K. Aitken, Lecturer in Hebrew, Old Testament and Second Temple Studies, Faculty of Divinity | West Road | Cambridge CB3 9BS | UK. Email: jka12@hermes.cam.ac.uk BAJS Website : http://britishjewishstudies.org/about/join-bajs/

There are three categories of membership of BAJS:

1. Ordinary Members
Ordinary membership is open to scholars concerned with the academic pursuit of Jewish Studies.

2. Student Members
Student membership is open to graduate students working for a higher degree in the field of Jewish Studies.

3. Associate Members
Associate membership is open to (a) those outside the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland who have a serious academic interest in Jewish Studies, and (b) those within the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland with a serious academic interest in Jewish Studies but who are not professionally involved in the subject. Members of all categories are welcome to attend the annual conference and to present papers at it (subject to acceptance via the Call for Papers process).

Ukraine: Jewish Foundation of Ukraine and Lo Tishkach Plans Cemetery Survey by Young People

Ukraine: Jewish Foundation of Ukraine d Lo Tishkach Plan Cemetery Survey by Young People
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM)The Jewish Foundation of Ukraine (JFU) and the "Lo Tishkach" Foundation will begin a joint research project on Jewish cemeteries and mass graves of Holocaust victims of the Chernihiv region of Ukraine. Similar surveys backed by historical research, local interviews and education projects are also to be launched at hundreds of sites across the Zhytomyr, Zakarpattia and Dnipropetrovsk regions of Ukraine with a national teacher-training program on the subject across the country.

According to the JFU, a key objective of the project is to draw the attention of young people to Jewish history and values and “to build cross-cultural communication, to foster tolerance in society and help [Jewish] young people connect to their past.” Project participants will explore all the Jewish cemeteries and known places of execution of Jews in the area. In this, the groups will follow in the footsteps of the young people of the Jewish Preservation Committee of Ukraine, which was active in the 1990s, and first identified many of these sites, including 44 cemeteries in the Chernihiv Region.

The project will begin this month (November 2009) and continue until August 2010. One-day seminars will provide training in research, and also instruction about the history of Jewish life of the region, Jewish traditions, and the history of the Holocaust.

At the conclusion of the project there will be a seminar for all participants, which will present the results of the research, and plan for the future of memorial sites in the region.

Publication: New Book on Ancient Synagogues

Publication: New Book on Ancient Synagogue

(ISJM) ISJM has been notified about a new book published about the art and architecture of the ancient synagogue at Khirbet Gikke (c. 460 CE), located near the Jordan River, on the east Golan Side. The book includes comparative material from other sites in the Golan area and from Chorazin.

Khirbet Dikke and the Synagogues in and around Bethsaida Valley (Archaostyle Scientific Series 7), Qazrin 2009: Archaostyle (191 pp; 58 illustrations; 1 map).

For orders contact the Golan Archaeological Museum (Qazrin)
museumga@netvision.net.il Tel: 972-6961350; Fax 9724694665.

Publication and Video: Laszlo Regos Photographed Dohany Synagogue in Budapest

Budapest, Hungary. Dohany Street Synagogue, ceiling detail. Photo: Courtesy of Laszlo Regos.

Publication and Video: Laszlo Regos Photographed Dohany Synagogue in Budapest
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) Anniversaries are the occasion for celebration, commemoration and publications. The 150th anniversary of the Dohany Street Synagogue in Budapest is no exception, and following last months celebrations, there is a new publication of ravishing photographs of the building by Hungarian-born American photographer Laszlo Regos.

The book, published by the Hungarian publisher Alexandra, was just presented in Hungary and I have not yet seen a copy, but Laszlo has posted a beautiful video presentation of many of the images, accompanied by a sound track of Kol Nidre sung by the late Sandor Kovacs, the chief cantor of the Dohany Street Synagogue. Regos is an accomplished commercial and architectural photographer based in Detroit, Michigan. His previous book The Opera House (Pecs: Alexandra, 2006) documented the Budapest Opera House, designed by Miklos Ybl, and opened in 1884. Regos also contributed many superb photographs of American synagogues to Synagogue Architecture in America by Henry Stolzman (Images Publishing, 2006)

Laslzo has been working on the Dohany book for as long as I have known him. He told me about his commitment to photographing the building, "I gave my soul. It took me eight years to do it." Because of his emotional attachment to the building he did not approach it "just as an architectural photographer," though his skill is evident in the photographs.

For more about Regos and his work you can see my review of his 2004 New York exhibition.

This is the second recent book about the Dohany Synagogue. Rudolph Klein published a book last year. For those interested in a deeper history of the Jewish and Budapest context in which the synagogue project was conceived and realized, and the vicissitudes of the building over its 150 years, I also recommend the essential work Jewish Budapest: Monuments, Rites, History, edited by Geza Komorockzy (Budapest: Central European University, 1999)