1. COST Action 1203:In Search of Transcultural Memory in Europe
Dov Winer
Scientific Manager, Judaica Europeana
MAKASH Advancing CMC Applications
The role of digital / online resources in the
Jewish Diaspora communities

2. *
* YIVO: The Power of Persuasion, Jewish Posters from Prewar Poland 1900-1939
http://www.yivoinstitute.org/exhibits/posterfr.htm

3. - Classical vs Modern Diasporas / Modern Diaspora Definition
- Early applications
Responsa (1967) Bulletin Board Systems Usenet
Mailing lists Early portals: Shamash V.Jerusalem Jewishnet
- Early events re Jewish Diaspora and the Internet
Diffusion of the Internet to Israel
Planning of the Global Jewish Network
Israel 2020 – Macro Scenarios for Israel & Jewish People
Jewish Peoplehood through Communication Technologies
- Jewish web based activities today
Institutional News, Radio, Videos Genealogy
Dating Services Jewish Studies and Online Jewish Education
Social Networks Francophone Jewish Diaspora
Memory and Cultural Heritage: Judaica Europeana
Outline

4. Classical Diaspora
- Abulafia (2011)…enclosed areas…where a certain amount of privilege
– self government, freedom to practice one’s religion, tax exemptions –
was countered by constraint – limitations on free movement and reliance
on capricious public authorities for protection.
- Amersfoort (2004)… part of a feudal political arangement in which
“outsiders” performed economic functions in trade and finance that were
forbidden to the “insiders” whose aristocratic status prohibited them from
engaging in such low ranking affairs as making money; the non-diasporic
majority was a peasantry tied to the land
- Classical diaspora people are endogamous, residentially and socially
segregated and confined to specific occupations and professions. They are
oriented to their fellow ethnics for trade and marriage relations and are, in
that sense, part of a diaspora network.

5. Modern Diasporas
Amersfoort (2004)
1. Distinction between immigrants who develop boundary maintenance
institutions thereby securing intergenerational continuity from those
assimilating. Populations with boundary-maintaining institutions are
ethnic groups.
2. Ethnic groups that successfully participate in central institutions of the
host country such as the labor market and educational system we
call established. Those who remain confined to the lowest rungs of
the social ladder form ethnic minorities.
3. Established ethnic groups that are institutionally engaged in politics
with regard to their home state or home territory are modern
diasporas. Ethnic groups that miss this attribute form ethnic cultural
subdivisions of the state population.

8. Early beginnings: computers, BBSs,
Usenet, Listservs

16. Early Online Events directly related to
the Internet and the Jewish Diaspora

18. Planning of an Internet based
Global Jewish Information
Network
Ministry of Communication
1990-1991
Before the opening of the
Internet for commercial
applications

21. Online Activities and Digital Resources
today

22. Institutional Sites

29. Dating

32. Genealogy

35. Social Networking

39. Jewish Study and Education

45. Museum of the Jewish People
http://www.bh.org.il

47. Cultural Heritage – Judaica Europeana

48. Jewish participation in urban life in Europe
Jewish cultural expressions in
European cities can be documented
through objects dispersed in many
collections: documents, books,
manuscripts, periodicals,
photographs, works of art, religious
artefacts, postcards, posters, audio-
recordings and films, as well as
buildings and cemeteries.
History of the Jews by Heinrich Graetz, Leipzig
1864. Copper engraving of Moses
Mendelssohn by A. and TH. Weger. Judaica
Collection, Goethe University Library

49. Why cities?
Jews are the longest-established
minority in Europe with Jewish
inscriptions in an urban context
dating back to the 3rd
Century BCE
in Greece.
Marble plaque, bearing the images of a
menorah, lulav and etrog. Found in 1977
by Prof. Homer Thompson near the
ancient synagogue in the Agora of Athens.
Probably part of the synagogue’s frieze,
3rd – 4th C.E. Jewish Museum of Greece

50. Jewish contribution to European cities
Urbanisation and occupational
specialisation has led to the
identification of Jews with
specific streets, neighbourhoods
and other urban phenomena.
The J-Street Project by Susan Heller.
Compton Verney Trust and the DAAD, Berlin,
2005. A book, installation and video produced
with the support of the European Association
for Jewish Culture.

51. Jews and the City
Prof. Steven Zipperstein points to the anti-urban bias of most of the Jewish
historiography and how this began to change at the end of the 20th century.
S. Zipperstein (1987),Jewish Historiography and the Modern City.
Jewish History vol 2, pp 77-88
“Modernization is about everyone becoming urban, mobile, literate, articulate,
intellectually intricate, physically fastidious, and occupationally flexible. It is about
learning how to cultivate people and symbols, not fields and herds. It is about pursuing
wealth for the sake of learning, learning for the sake of wealth, and both wealth and
learning for their own sake. It is about transforming peasants and princes into merchants
and priests, replacing inherited privilege with acquired prestige, and dismantling social
estates for the benefit of individuals, nuclear families, and book-reading tribes (nations).
Modernization, in other words, is about everyone becoming Jewish.”
Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.
For the first chapter: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7819.html

54. The Judaica Europeana project
The facts
• Co-funded by the eContentPlus program of the European Commission: initial budget framework of 3
Million Euro (~ 4 Million USD)
• First stage 2010-2012:
• Second stage 2012-14: continuity through a Memorandum of Understanding between partners and
participation in DM2E – a 3-year Digital Humanities Europeana project to begin in 2012.
The program
• Digitisation and aggregation of Jewish content for Europeana: 5 million objects
• Coordination of standards across institutions in order to synchronise the metadata with the
requirements of Europeana.
• Deployment of knowledge management tools: vocabularies, thesauri and ontologies for the indexing,
retrieval and re-use of the aggregated content.
• Dissemination activities to stimulate the use of digitised content in academic research; university-
based teaching; schools; museums and virtual exhibitions; conferences; cultural tourism; the arts
and multimedia.

55. Milestones on the way to Judaica Europeana
The future of Jewish Heritage in Europe:
an International Conference –
Prague 24-27 April 2004
developing Jewish networking infrastructures
EC projects: MinervaPlus | CALIMERA | MOSAICA
MICHAEL | ATHENA | LINKED HERITAGE
JAFI – Ministry of Science & Culture - NLI
JAFI | MiBAC | MLA Council UK |
EAJC | EPOCH/ Univ Firenze |
HaNadiv Foundation |
European Day of Jewish Culture:
ECJC, Bnai Brith, Juderias de Espana
Consultation on Digitisation of the Jewish
Cultural Heritage
10 December 2004 at the EC in Brussels
Cultural Diversity in Europe: a focus for
the consultation

56. The growing network
35 institutions in 16 cities:
museums, libraries and archives
Partners
• European Association of Jewish Culture, London
• Judaica Sammlung der Universitätsbibliothek
der Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main
• Alliance Israélite Universelle, Paris
• Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activity
(MiBAC), Rome
• Amitié, Centre for Research and Innovation,
Bologna
• British Library, London
• Hungarian Jewish Archives, Budapest
• Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw
• Jewish Museum of Greece, Athens
• Jewish Museum London
• National Technical University, Athens
Associate Partners
• Center Jewish History, New York
• National Library of Israel, Jerusalem
• Ministerio de Cultura, Madrid
• Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Amsterdam
• Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam
• Jewish Museum Berlin
• Jewish Museum, Frankfurt/Main
• Leopold Zunz Centrum, Halle-Wittenberg
• Lorand Collection, Augsburg University
• Paris Yiddish Center—Medem Library
• Sephardi Museum, Toledo
• Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem
• Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Institute, Duisberg
• Ben Uri Gallery – The London Jewish
Museum of Art

57. ~3,700,000
digital objects
DM2E – another 1,500,000
and many additional
expressions of interest

58. Judaica Europeana
Virtual Exhibitions

59. Virtual Exhibitions

60. Virtual Exhibitions
http://exhibitions.europeana.eu/exhibits/show/yiddish-theatre-en http://exhibitions.europeana.eu/exhibits/show/dada-to-surrealism-en

61. Virtual Exhibitions
http://www.culturaitalia.it/pico/speciali/stella_di_david_e_tricolore/index.html

62. Judaica Europeana
Digital Humanities

63. Supporting a Community of Knowledge
Jewish Enlightenment (HASKALA):
The Republic of Letters Project
Prof. Shmuel Feiner, Bar Ilan University
Prof. Zohar Shavit, University of Tel Aviv
Prof. Christoph Schulte, University of Potsdam
Researchers: Dr Chagit Cohen, Dr Natalie Goldberg, Dr William Hiscott, Dr
Tal Kogman, PhD Dr Stefan Litt.
• Investigated the secularization of the traditional book culture
• Established a detailed database about a thousand
books from the end of the 18th and early 19th century
• Texts in Hebrew, German. Database in SQL with a Visual
Basic interface supporting some 147 pre-defined queries

64. Slide from the presentation by PhD Dr Stefan Litt at the 8th EVA/Minerva Jerusalem Conference, November 2011
http://www.minervaisrael.org.il/2011/20111116_EvaMinerva_Haskala_StefanLitt.pdf

65. Controlled vocabularies: hubs
of Jewish Knowledge in the
Structured Web

66. Tasks for a common agenda on Jewish vocabularies
• Who? Names
• Disseminate the use of VIAF
• Seek to include periodical publications in VIAF
• RAMBI
• Long term common effort to achieve comprehensiveness
• Where? Places
• JewishGen and Yad Vashem gazetteers as linked data?
• Use Europeana guidelines to map places coordinates
• Registry of Jewish gazetteers / RDF/ community based Jewish gazetteer
service similar to GeoNames, Freebase, LinkedGeoData etc
• When? Periods
• Survey available vocabularies and seek to express them as Linked Data
• Institutional tools for in-depth probe on current periodisation practices
http://www.judaica-europeana.eu/docs/jewish_vocabularies_LOD.pdf

67. Who?

68. When?

69. When?

70. Jewish gazetteers Where?

71. http://www.judaica-europeana.eu/Search_Europeana_Collections_with_Judaic_categories.html

72. http://www.judaica-europeana.eu/Search_Europeana_Collections_in_Hebrew.html

73. Thank you for your attention!
www.judaica-europeana.eu
Dov Winer
Judaica Europeana Scientific Manager
dov.winer@gmail.com