Modern Jewish Spaces, Memory and Identity

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

The purpose of this panel is to arouse discussion of modern Jewish spaces and places and their relation to modern Jewish identity. Building upon Barbara Mann’s methodologies put forth in SPACE AND PLACE IN JEWISH STUDIES, this panel examines key historical sites “through the lens of text[s]” as a way to provocatively hold in tension what Todd Samuel Presner has argued are the “layered histories” of modern cityspaces for Jewish and non-Jewish communities (Mann 2; Presner 265). Taking an interdisciplinary—historical, literary and media studies—approach, this panel explores built environments that contain multiple or contested histories—memorials, public sculptures and ruins—that are simultaneously sites of Jewish and non-Jewish memory. Additionally, each paper demonstrates that these contested spaces and places offer insight into alternate ways of reading modern Jewish identity across various geographies—Italy, Latin America, and Israel—and temporalities, from the 16th to the 21st centuries (2).

The papers presented by Dr. Murray Baumgarten and Katie Trostel both examine sites of historical trauma, the legacy of the 1516 Venetian ghetto and Holocaust respectively, that are represented as or transfigured into Jewish spaces by various authors’ literary expressions. Baumgarten’s paper considers how the ghetto functions as an important subtext of several modern Jewish spaces, especially for Jewish writers who were forced to negotiate their identities amidst the hostility of imperial cultures. In contrast, Katie Trostel considers Latin American representations of post-Holocaust sites of Jewish memory that simultaneously point toward Jewish and non-Jewish trauma in the wake of violent social upheavals due to communist and dictatorial rule. Complimenting these literary approaches, Amanda Sharick’s paper considers Israeli artist Motti Mizrachi’s 2012 public sculpture “Herzl meets the Emperor…”, which is a “figurative” response to a controversial composite photograph of Theodore Herzl meeting the German Kaiser at Mikveh Israel in 1898. Sharick argues that the spatial arrangement of the memorial models a productive expression of modern Jewish identity that is capable of holding in tension contested and conflicting historical narratives. As our purpose is to promote interdisciplinary discussion of Jewish space and places, this panel is open to adding participants if appropriate.

Sub Unit

• Interdisciplinary, Theoretical, and New Approaches

Chair

• Esther Schor, Princeton University

Individual Presentations

• “Ghetto Matters: Modern Jewish Spaces in the Light of the Venice Ghetto” - Murray Baumgarten, University of California, Santa Cruz

• Cities of Jewish Memory: “Multidirectional Memory” and Monumental Spaces in 20th AND 2lst Century Argentina AND Peru” - Katharine Gillian Trostel, University of California, Santa Cruz

• “Dreaming Presently: Modern Re-presentations of Contested Histories in Motti Mizrachi’s HERZL MEETS THE EMPEROR WILHELM II GATES OF MIKVE ISRAEL Sculpture” - Amanda Kaye Sharick, University of California, Riverside

Respondent

• Todd Presner, University of California, Los Angeles