Welcome to Judaica Europeana and the Jewish contribution to Europe's cultural heritage

Welcome to Judaica Europeana and the Jewish heritage in Europe

Judaica Europeana's main challenge is to facilitate access to a critical quantity of European Jewish cultural heritage at the level of the cultural object. The project will aggregate digital collections to reach a comprehensive coverage of Jewish life in European cities. It will reach out to university teachers and students, schools, heritage professionals, tourists and the general public – anyone interested in the history of European cities or Jewish culture.

Listen to Hishki hizki by Abraham Carceres from the repertory of the Portuguese Synagogue, Amsterdam, first half of the 18th century. Sung by Ensemble Texto, on the Album “Musiques juives baroques”, volume 10 of the collection “Musical Heritage of the Jews of France”, produced by the Fondation du Judaïsme Français. (To be released in April 2011)

The Judaica Europeana network

The project is led by
European Association for Jewish Culture, London

Coordinator
Judaica Sammlung der Universitätsbibliothek
der Goethe Universität, Frankfurt/Main

Partners
Alliance Israélite Universelle, Paris
Amitié, Centre for Research and Innovation, Bologna
British Library, London
Hungarian Jewish Archives, Budapest
Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw
The Jewish Museum of Greece, Athens
The Jewish Museum London
Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, Rome

Associate Partners
Ben Uri Gallery – The London Jewish Museum of Art
Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Amsterdam
Center for Jewish History, New York
Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem
Centre français des musiques juives, Paris
Institute for Jewish Policy Research, London
Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam
Jewish Museum Berlin
Jewish Museum, Frankfurt/Main
Leopold Zunz Zentrum, Halle-Wittenberg
Makash, Jerusalem
Ministerio de Cultura, Madrid
National Library of Israel, Jerusalem
Paris Yiddish Centre – Medem Library
Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Institut, Duisburg
Sephardi Museum, Toledo

* Other qualifying Associate Partners will be welcome to join

Virtual exhibitions continued

courtesy of MiBAC/ICCU

The Star of David and the Tricolore: a crowd-sourcing initiative Stella di David e Tricolore was developed by MiBAC/ICCU by inviting users to provide archival material, publications, stories, videos and photographs relating to the history of the Jews in Italy in the 150 years since Italian unification.

Images of Greek Jews is a virtual exhibition from the Jewish Museum of Greece in Athens. It is a small selection of 20th century photographs from the Museum’s extensive photographic archive currently being digitized in the framework of the Judaica Europeana project. Family portraits, school children, scouts and others groups from Athens, Chania, Corfu, Ioannina, Thessaloniki and Volos before and after World War I and II, capture Greek Jews at formal occasions, school trips or simply at leisure. They convey a sense of a flourishing and well integrated community.

150 Years of Achievement in Education A virtual exhibition from a Judaica Europeana partner in Paris celebrates 150 years since the establishment of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, an educational institution which created a vast network of schools in Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, Ottoman Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Syria and other countries. Hundreds of thousands of children have benefited from a broad-minded education provided in the French language and informed by the Jewish tradition. The Alliance helped enrich culturally the lives of generations of men and women while providing them with social and economic opportunities in wider society. Today, the Alliance does its work mainly in France, the United States, Morocco and Israel. It takes an active role in promoting Jewish culture across the world.

Jewish postcards: Networking in Europe. This exhibition presents a selection of the Hungarian Jewish Archive historic collection of postcards from East-Central Europe and the main destinations of Jewish migration. The postcards were the first popular media representations of Jews and Jewish life as they were seen.

Judaica Europeana works with cultural institutions to identify and provide access online to content which documents the Jewish presence and heritage in the cities of Europe.

Since its launch in 2010, Judaica Europeana partners have digitized and uploaded over 3.5 million items from their collections. They include 3,459,000 pages from books, newspapers and archives; 31,600 photographs, postcards and other images; 18,300 sound files of music and oral history; 2,000 moving image files. This content will continue to grow as associate partners provide access to their digital collections to be integrated in Europeana.

Judaica Europeana is one of a series of initiatives supported by the European Commission’s eContentplus programme that harvest and aggregate content for EUROPEANA, Europe's museums, libraries and archives online. Europeana features 20 million items online can be searched from this website using the 'Search Europeana Collections' link on the menu.

Judaica Europeana is co-funded by the European Commission under the eContentplus programme, as part of the i2010 policy.

Judaica Europeana and the Jewish cultural heritage in Europe conference

An international conference at the National Library in Rome reviews the achievements of Judaica Europeana.
Presentations by leading scholars, heritage professionals and artists.

Registration page | Programme (Pdf)

Virtual exhibitions

See the page on Judaica Europeana listing virtual exhibitions about Jewish heritage in Europe and digital resources for creating virtual exhibitions.
Below are links to virtual exhibitions based on our partners' collections.

A Virtual Tour of Jewish Frankfurt
This online exhibition was produced by Frankfurt University Library in cooperation with the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt, associate partner of Judaica Europeana. It will be disseminated jointly with the Tourist Office of the City of Frankfurt.

Frankfurt has been a home to an important Jewish community which contributed greatly to the city’s development. The history of the community is embedded in the city’s architectural heritage. This exhibition takes the visitor to many sites of Jewish life today as well as historic buildings and monuments.

Jewish Neighbourhoods of Greece This photographic exhibition from the Jewish Museum of Greece in Athens depicts mostly pre-war Jewish life in 12 communities around Greece: Athens, Saloniki, Volos, Larissa, Ioannina, Trikala, Verola, Chalikida, Corfu, Rhodes, Xanthi and Zakynthos.

Jewish Britain: A History in 50 Objects showcases highlights from the collections of the Jewish Museum in London. Each object tells a story about the history of the Jewish community in Britain from medieval to modern times. The themes include: working lives and trades, family life and home, growing up, military service, religious life and politics.

Yiddish Theatre in London is a virtual exhibition hosted on Europeana showing a unique collection of photographs, documents and objects held at the Jewish Museum London. The exhibition explores the rich theatre form brought by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in the late 19th century which resulted in the heyday of Yiddish theatres in London in the early 20th century.

From Dada to Surrealism: Jewish Avant-Garde Artists from Romania, 1910–1938 virtual exhibition hosted on Europeana unveils some of the works on show from 1 June to 2 October 2011 in the Jewish Historical Museum, a Judaica Europeana partner in Amsterdam. The exhibition confirms the importance of Bucharest in European avant-garde art and sheds light on the relationship between Jewish identity and radical modernity.

All About Jewish Theatre. From Sholem Aleichem and Chagall to the Fiddler on the Roof: A short glossary of historical events, characters, and actors.