The conference "Traditional ritualism: the "old" and "new" in Slavic and Jewish Culture", December 7-9, 2011
We are pleased to report that on December 7-9, 2011 the fifteenth international conference "Traditional ritualism: the "old" and "new" in Slavic and Jewish Culture" as part of "Culture of Slavs and Jews" conference series was held at the Institute of Slavic Studies, RAS, Moscow . The conference was organized by Jewish-Slavonic Studies Center (“Sefer”) of the Institute of Slavic Studies in Moscow, with the support of the charity fund "Joint" and in collaboration with various scientific and public organizations interested in the dialogue of cultures.
The conference was opened with a presentation of the edition "Wisdom - Righteousness - Holiness in Slavic and Jewish Cultural Tradition" (the collection of last year's conference proceeding, the book is available for download here).
The conference was conducted in six consecutive sessions, which was chaired by A. Kovelman, M. Kaspina, E. Smorgunova, L. Katsis, A. Frost and Belova.
More than thirty brightest Russian and foreign scientists participated in the conference, with their reports covering various aspects of cultural customs and practices in the cultures of Slavs and Jews, their historical traditions and values, religious practices since the times of the Talmud to the present day. Thus, the place of traditional rituals in Slavic and Jewish traditions was discussed in the ethno-cultural, ethnolinguistic, folklore-ethnographic and 
comparative-typological aspects. The basic mechanisms of conservation and transformation of the ritual code (the language and imagery of ritual, ritualistika, ritual texts, etc.) were analyzed in different cultural areas.
The book of the conference proceedings is expected to be in print next year.
