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The Beginnings of the Israeli Right

A lecture by Jan Zouplna (Oriental Studies, Czech Academy of Sciences) in the frame of the seminar on Modern Jewish History of the Institute of Contemporary History (AV ČR) and CEFRES in partnership with the Jewish Museum

Language: Czech

The genealogy of the Israeli right wing is very complex indeed. From the 1920s to the 1940s the right wing was a loosely defined alliance ranging from intellectuals who were demanding the democratization of public life all the way to paramilitary units that included political terrorism in their programme. The ideas of the right wing included plans for the full integration of the Jewish national homeland in the British Empire and also appeals for the expulsion of the British from the Palestine. In this lecture, Jan Zouplna considers the reasons for such radical antagonisms within the movement, and the extent to which the situation after May 1945 reflected conflicts before the Second World War. He asks to what extent one may legitimately talk about continuity within the Zionist and the Israeli right wing, and he examines the differences between the recent scholarship and the established historiography on this question.

Developments in Post-Soviet Studies on Soviet Jewry

A lecture by Professor Yaacov Ro’i (Tel Aviv University)

Where: CEFRES library
Language: English

Professor Yaacov Ro’i from the Cummings Center for Russian and East European Studies at the Tel Aviv University is a leading expert on history of Jews in the Soviet Union.  Among his recent publications are however also books on Islam in the postwar Soviet Union.

The lecture will be followed by a workshop during which Dr. Kamil Kijek, Dr. Kateřina Čapková and Dr. Stephan Stach will present their projects on postwar history of Jews in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Basis of the workshop will be a discussion of their texts under the leadership of Prof. Ro’i.

To take part in the workshop following the lecture of Prof. Ro’i, please write to capkova@usd.cas.cz.

The event is co-organized by the Institute for Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences and by CEFRES.

Ethnology in the 3rd Millenium: Topics, Methods, Challenges

International Conference organised on the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Institute of Ethnology SAS under the auspices of the European Commission Representation to the Slovak Republic.

Where: SAS Congress Centre, Smolenice Castle, Slovakia

Organizers: T. Podolinská, G. Kiliánová, M. Vrzgulová, K. Popelková (Bratislava, Slovakia), Z. Uherek (Prague, Czech Republic), G. Bárna (Szeged, Hungary), T. Smolińska (Opole, Poland), C. Royer (CEFRES, Prague, Czech Republic)

See the complete program on the SAS Institute of Ethnology website

Panels:

  1. Thematic and methodological challenges in current ethnology and anthropology
  2. Applied anthropology – How to cope with current social and societal challenges? (migrants, poverty, unemployment, the ageing of Europe, marginalised communities, intercultural communication)
  3. Ritual as a social practice in present-day society (private and public celebrating as a form of establishing personal or group/nation/state identity
  4. Communication and memory: inter-generational transfer (focus on shifting sets of values and behaviours – generation-based focus)
  5. Rumours and their functions in relationships between groups
  6. Cultural heritage
  7. Young Scientist Forum (PhD students´ poster presentation)
  8. V4-Networking Panel (presentation of the recent research of all partners and creating a new platform for further cooperation and networking)

Firefighters, Gipsy Bands, Peasant Riders, Canteens: East Central European Post-Imperial Local Societies in the World of Nation States 1918-1930

A lecture by Gábor Egry (Institute of History – Hungarian Academy of Sciences)

Discussant: Rudolf Kučera (Masaryk Institute – AV ČR)

Where: Na Florenci 3, building C, 3rd floor, conference room.

Volunatry firefighters from Ciacova. Source: romaniainterbelica.memoria.ro
Volunatry firefighters from Ciacova. Source: romaniainterbelica.memoria.ro

The end of WWI in East Central Europe brought about similar developments: the collapse of empires and the emergence of nation states. But behind the façade of seemingly uniform transformations and the general tendency of nationalizing in the new states, local societies and micro regions were sometimes less constrained in exerting influence upon the specific conditions of transition than it is presumed according to the overarching narrative of imperial collapse and nation-state building. The imperial past did not vanish without a trace, furthermore, the new entities often operated as mini-empires reviving or retaining people, methods and structures of imperial management of power and population.

Comparing case studies of local transition offers an insight into the local contexts, how different local social constellations, imperial prehistories, helped local groups to negotiate their positon in the new states. While certain practices, habits, institutions were retained and often used to co-opt the new elites into the circles of the old, peculiar imperial figures managed to move swiftly between successor states and broader social changes altered the general balance and conferred agency to hitherto disadvantaged groups. In my lecture I will outline the most important factors behind different paths of transitions and how individuals situated themselves in the new world of nation states.

Conference: New Approaches to the History of the Jews under Communism

European Association of Jewish Studies Conference, Prague

Date & Place: from 23 to 25 May 2017, Villa Lanna, Prague
Language: English
Organizers: Kateřina Čapková (Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences), Kamil Kijek (Department of Jewish Studies, University of Wrocław), Stephan Stach (Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences)

Program

23 May 2017 

20.00 –20.30 Oleg Zhidkov (Jerusalem): The Jewish Movement in the USSR: New Sources and Perspectives (Video Testimonies)

24 May 2017 

9.00 Welcome

9.15–11.00 Panel I – Jewish Life, Religious Practise and Folklore under Soviet Communism (I)

Chair: Ilana Miller (Chicago/Prague)

  • Valery Dymshits (St Petersburg), The Boundaries of Illegal: Religious Practices and Shadow Economy in Soviet Jewish Life
  • Victoria Gerasimova (Omsk), The Jewish Community of Omsk under the Soviets, from 1940 to the 1960s: Between Tradition and Survival
  • Diana Dumitru (Chişinău), ‘It is Better to Live in Romania Than in the Soviet Union’: How Bessarabian Jews Tried and Frequently Failed to Become Soviet Citizens during Late Stalinism

11.00–11.15 Coffee break

11.15–13.00 Panel II – Literature and Jewish Identity

Chair: Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov (Warsaw)

  • Daria Vakhrushova (Düsseldorf), The Utopia of Yiddish Literature after the Revolution
  • Magdalena Ruta (Krakow), Nusekh Poyln and the ‘New Jewish Man’: The Image of the Jewish Communist in Yiddish Literature of Post-war Poland
  • Gennady Estraikh (New York), Soviet Yiddish Cultural Diplomacy, from the 1950s to 1991

13.00–14.00 Lunch

14.00–15.45 Panel III – Paths of Integration/Disintegration into the Communist Political System and Society

Chair: Michal Kopeček (Prague)

  • Galina Zelenina (Moscow), ‘Po Kurskoi, Kazanskoi zheleznoi doroge’: Jewish Private Life in the Moscow Oblast between Leisure, Underground Religion, and National Revival
  • Agata Maksimowska (Warsaw), Being Jewish in Soviet Birobidzhan
  • Kateřina Čapková (Prague), Centre and Periphery: Jewish Experience in Communist Czechoslovakia

15.45–16.15 Coffee break

16.15–18.00 Round table: The Diversity of Jewish Experiences under Communism

Chair: Marcos Silber (Haifa)

  • Zvi Gitelman (Ann Arbor)
  • Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov (Warsaw)
  • Bożena Szaynok (Wrocław)
  • Andrea Pető (Budapest)
25 May 2017 

9.00–10.45 Panel IV – Jewish Identities and Ways of Life under Communism

Chair: Stephan Stach (Prague)

  • Anna Shternshis (Toronto), ‘I was not like everyone else’: Soviet Jewish Doctors Remember the Doctors’ Plot of 1953
  • Anna Koch (Southampton), ‘After Auschwitz you must take your origin seriously’: Perceptions of Jewishness among Communists of Jewish Origin in the Emerging German Democratic Republic
  • Kata Bohus (Frankfurt am Main), The Opposition of the Opposition: New Jewish Identities in the Samizdat of Late Communist Hungary

10.45–11.15 Coffee break

11.15–13.00 Panel V – Jewish Religious Life and Folklore under Soviet Communism II

Chair: Raphael Utz (Jena)

  • Ella Stiniguță (Cluj-Napoca), Mountain Jews and the Challenges of Ritual Life in the Soviet Caucasus
  • Mikhail Mitsel (New York), Jewish Religious Communities in Ukraine, 1945–81
  • Karīna Barkane (Riga), Beyond Assimilation: Jewish Religious Communities in the Latvian SSR

13.00–14.30 Lunch

14.30–15.45 Panel VI Jewish Transnational Encounters

Chair: Katrin Steffen (Hamburg)

  • David Shneer (Boulder), East Germany’s Jews, Their Transnational Networks, and East German Anti-Fascism
  • Eliyana R. Adler (State College/Warsaw), Strange Bedfellows: The Soviet Red Cross, Polish Jewish Refugees, and the American Joint Distribution Committee

15.45–16.15 Coffee break

16.15–17.45 Concluding Round Table

Chair: Kamil Kijek (Wrocław/Prague)

  • Audrey Kichelewski (Strasbourg)
  • Elissa Bemporad (New York)
  • Arkadi Zeltser (Jerusalem)

The experience of the Jews under the Communist régimes of east-central and eastern Europe has been a hotly debated topic of historiography since the 1950s. Until the 1980s, Cold War propaganda exerted a powerful influence on most interpretations presented in articles and books published on both sides of the ‘Iron Curtain’. Moreover, most works focused both on the relationship between the régime and the Jews living under it and on the role of the Jews in the Communist/Socialist movements and the political events connected with the rise of antisemitism and emigration.

Continue reading Conference: New Approaches to the History of the Jews under Communism →

Conclusive Seminar of 2015-2016

CEFRES team gathers one last time before the Summer break to discuss their work. Where: Národní 18, 7th floor, conference room.

9:45-10:20 Giuseppe Bianco: From Paris to Prague and Back (1900-1937). The International Conferences of Philosophy Before and After World War I

10:20-10:55 Lara Bonneau: Light At the End of the Tunnel – On Aby Warburg’s Method

Coffee Break

11:10-11:45 Edita Wolf: Iudicium Between Concept and Metaphor

11:45-12:20 Monika Brenišínová: The (16th Century Mexico) Architecture of Conversion. Problems and Responses

12:20-12:55 Perin Emel Yavuz: Elsewhere Right Here. The Non-Offical Artists’ Art of Worldmaking in Bratislava, 1960-80

Lunch Break

14:30-14:55 István Pál Ádám: Budapest Concierges in Changing Times

14:55-15:30 Mátyás Erdélyi: The Case Study as a Methodological Tool in Habsburg History

Coffee Break

15:55-16:30 Jana Vargovčíková: Defining Legitimate Actors and Practices: What the Institutionalization of Lobbying Tells Us About Governance

16:30-17:05 Filip Vostal: Challenging the Culture of Slowness