Jewish Traces and Memory Work: A Transnational Perspective

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

The migratory nature of the Jewish experience, as well as major historic cataclysms, have meant that traces of Jewish presence exist in many dispersed locales, including those that no longer have extant Jewish communities. How do Jews from those places relate to the physical remains of their communities? How do local authorities and activists integrate Jews into their history and memory? Who is responsible for the sites and how should they be marked and preserved? This multi-disciplinary panel will explore sites of Jewish memory in diverse locations, probing the interactions between a variety of types of memory and forgetting in these spaces.

Jaimie Luria, an advanced graduate student in anthropology, will present her ethnographic study of Jewish heritage travel to ritual baths in Spain. Her project engages with identity, belonging, and preservation. Historian Eliyana Adler will examine two modes of interaction with Jewish memorial books in contemporary Poland. Based on interviews and site visits, she will probe new local uses for these commemorative volumes. Jack Kugelmass, from an anthropological perspective, looks at sites that Jewish communities seek to forget. From Turkey to Argentina, he engages with ‘difficult heritage’. Literary scholar Esra Almas will serve as the respondent, relating also to her own project tracing how Turkish Jews inscribe their memories onto the urban fabric of Istanbul. Our chair, anthropologist Alanna Cooper, will bring her research on synagogue closure in the United States to the panel and the discussion.

The different scholarly backgrounds and geographic areas of expertise of our panel members will allow us to move beyond a local heritage lens to think more broadly about sites of Jewish memory and their afterlives. Panelists also combine interests in architecture, archeology, and urban geography with attention to literary and memorial genres. Similarly, our work engages not only with Jewish memory and connection to sites of nostalgia and identity, but also with how tourists and locals move through these same spaces. Bringing these various approaches—often employed in isolation—into conversation, should enable a sophisticated discussion of transnational phenomena of memory work and Jewish traces.

Sub Unit

• Interdisciplinary Approaches

Chair

• Alanna Cooper, Case Western Reserve University

Individual Presentations

• Pools wet and dry: MIKVEH ethnography and Jewish heritage flows - Jaimie Luria, Cornell University

• Revisioning Jewish Spaces in Contemporary Poland: Jewish Memorial Books and Local History and Memory - Eliyana Adler, Binghamton University

• Difficult Heritage - Jack Kugelmass, University of Florida

Respondent

• Esra Almas, Bilkent Universitesi

Zoom Host

• Zoom Host 05