6) Dissemination

Apart of the main publication outcome mentioned separately (The Special Issue of the Journal of Ethnicities) a several other publications have been dedicated and greatly benefited of the project and its partnership:

Shmuel Hugo Bergmann: A Life between Prague and Jerusalem. Olaf Glöckner, Boaz Huss, Marcela Menachem Zoufalá /eds./, Series: Europäisch-jüdische Studien, De Gruyter, 2024. ISBN 978-3-11-104513-9, https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111046013/html

About this book

In recent years, the interest on life and work of the Jewish writer, philosopher, mystic and politician Shmuel Hugo Bergmann (1883–1975) has perceptibly increased. Well-known as a protagonist of the famous „Prague Circle“, Bergmann headed for Palestine in 1920, became the driving force for building the Jewish National Library in Jerusalem and finally advanced as first Rector of the Hebrew University. All his life, close ties to the Czech Republic remained.
In the State of Israel, Bergmann became a leading philosopher and highly admired cultural figure. He himself showed great interest in world religions, mysticism, and Western esotericism. Bergmann also emerged as an important point of reference for left-wing Israeli discourse. Up from the late 1920ies has was one of the protagonists of the “Brit Shalom”, an initiative which called for an advocated peaceful coexistence of Jews and Arabs and a bi-national State in Israel/Palestine.

In this volume, distinguished historians, scholars of religion, and cultural scientists conflate a fascinating life story of a man who always worked on social and educational improvements and searched for fairness and deeper truths in a world full of conflict and antagonisms.

“Israel Studies in Poland, Czech Republic, and Germany: paths of development, dynamics, and directions of changes,” Journal of Israeli History, Joanna Dyduch, Marcela Menachem Zoufalá & Olaf Glöckner (2023) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13531042.2023.2212891

Interim outcomes of the project were presented at several academic workshops and conferences by all the partners. Among others:

2023 39th Annual Conference of the Association for Israel Studies, New York University: “Studying Contemporary Israel in the Czech Republic: Mythologisation, Exceptionalism, and Mutual Recognition”, Marcela Menachem Zoufalá

The conference Israel at 75: Archives, History and Society was hosted by The Taub Center for Israel Studies, New York University, June 26-28, 2023 and brought together more than 400 hundred scholars worldwide. Conference program.

International Terezín Declaration Conference

At the beginning of November, the Centre for the Study of the Holocaust and Jewish Literature at the Department of Czech and Comparative Literature FA CU co-organised a meeting of experts during a three-day international conference on the Terezín Declaration at the Foreign Ministry. The conference addressed the current rise of anti-Semitism, xenophobia and racism, highlighted the role of education and called for redressing the wrongs of the Holocaust. The event, which took place as one of the important milestones of the Czech EU Presidency, also focused on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine.

The meeting of experts at the Trauttmansdorff Palace was opened by the Rector of Charles University Prof. MUDr. Milena Králíčková, Ph.D., and was followed by a speech by the Vice Dean for Foreign Affairs of the Faculty of Arts, PhDr. Milan Žonca, Ph.D., and the Director of the of the Department of Czech and Comparative Literature, doc. Mgr. Libuše Heczková, Ph.D.

Twelve speakers from the CU and other European universities presented the keynote lectures and two sessions, Terezín after Three-quarters of a Century and Reflecting upon the Holocaust. Members of the Centre for the Study of the Holocaust and Jewish Literature delivered the following papers:

Jiří Holý: Czech and German-Language Literature in Terezín
Šárka Sladovníková: Ghetto Theresienstadt in Czechoslovak and Czech Feature Film
Marcela Menachem Zoufalá: Joint-Reading of the names of Jewish and Romani Holocaust victims on Yom HaShoah: Contemporary polemic in the Czech Republic
Olaf Glöckner: Between silent commemoration and „yolocaust“: Debates on handling the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin

The full programme is available here.

https://www.ff.cuni.cz/2022/12/centre-study-holocaust-jewish-literature-cu-fa-co-organised-international-conference-terezin-declaration/

https://www.ff.cuni.cz/2022/12/centrum-pro-studium-holocaustu-zidovske-literatury-ff-uk-spoluporadalo-mezinarodni-konferenci-terezinske-deklaraci/

8th International Symposium “Politics and society in the Islamic world”, Krakow, 24-25 October 2024

Planned as a joint initiative of the Institute of the Middle and Far East (Jagiellonian University) in Cracow, the Department of Middle East and North Africa (University of Lodz), and the Department for European Islam Studies (University of Warsaw), the International Symposium focuses on political and social issues in the so-called “Muslim world” in the 20th and 21st centuries. While the Symposium recognizes the vast social, cultural, and political complexity of those societies, we encourage participants to engage in the “Muslim” framework of analysis that may both affirm the framework or constructively critique it. The “Islamic”, “Muslim” category is often confused as both an analytical and practical category of research inquiry. The symposium, therefore, warmly welcomes researchers from various disciplines, from political studies to cultural studies, to engage the still-burning question of the interrelatedness of religious tradition, discourse, and practice with politics, international relations, security, social change, identity politics, and so on. https://islamicsymposiumeng.wordpress.com

ENCOUNTERS Workshop. Studying Jewish-Muslims Relations – Approaches, Challenges, Perspectives. Heidelberg, June 13-14, 2024

Relationships between Jews and Muslims have gained prominence in public debates in Europe, particularly since Hamas’ terrorist attacks on October 7 and Israel’s ongoing military response in Gaza. These heated debates, often feeding deep-seated tropes of antisemitism and Islamophobia, tend to focus on rather narrowly defined constellations of conflict, thus ignoring the immense variation of Jewish-Muslim relations across both time and space. A number of collaborative research projects have been established, which scrutinize these oftentimes co-constitutive relations in broader historical and comparative perspective, situating them in their respective local, national (or imperial), and international contexts. Acknowledging the urgency of current debates, the workshop aims to bring these projects into closer conversation. Spanning approaches from religious studies, history, anthropology, and sociology, it focuses on shared methodological problems and underlying themes in the study of religious and ethnic diversities, while addressing the distinctive challenges of the current geopolitical moment. The program is available here.

40th Annual Conference of the AIS and 12th Annual Conference of the EAIS: Israel and Israel Studies: The European and International Perspective was held on July 1-3, 2024, at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University.

With over 550 active participants and more than 160 panels, this gathering was the largest conference on Israel Studies to date. The program is available here.

Our project dissemination event took place on the first day of the AIS-EAIS joint annual conference: MB:03 Roundtable on Jewish and Muslim Communities in European Urban Spaces, Monday, July 1, 2024, 11:00–12:30, Chair: Marcela Menachem Zoufalá, MB:03-1 Jewish and Muslim Communities in European Urban Spaces: A Comparative Approach
Marcela Menachem Zoufalá, Yulia Egorova, Olaf Glockner, Joanna Dyduch, Artur Skorek, Gunther Jikeli, Dekel Peretz, Carol Troen

The project partners at Jagiellonian University (Prof. Joanna Dyduch and Dr. Artur Skorek with the project external collaborators: Dr. Magdalena Pycińska and Dr. Ida Balwierz) held another dissemination event on April 25, 2024. The scientific seminar strengthened the project’s impact on local and international scholarly audiences.

Prague through the Eyes of Minorities (April 17, 2024), an event dedicated to the public, was co-organized by the Centre for the Care of the Soul of Charles University, and the Centre for the Study of the Holocaust and Jewish Literature, Faculty of Arts of Charles University. The Meditative walk was attended by students, teachers, the general public, and international high school students.