XXI Annual International Conference on Jewish Studies 2014

21^st Annual International Conference on Jewish Studies took place on 3^rd – 5^th of February 2014 in the hotel “Cosmos” in Moscow. The conference was organized by Center “Sefer” with financial support by “Joint”, Russian Jewish Congress, Euro-Asian Jewish Congress and Genesis Charity Foundation. During its long history annual conferences became the basic meeting place for the researchers and central scientific forum for Jewish Studies.

In the 21^st Conference took part around 200 researchers from Russia, CIS and Baltic countries, Israel, Germany, USA, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland and Great Britain.

The conference was opened with greetings by Chief Rabbi of Russia Berl Lazar, chairperson of Sefer’s academic board and general secretary of EAJK Mikhail Chlenov, director Genesis’s programs Marina Suslova, president of Holland charity foundation Ronald Naftali and others. Vice-president of Joint Ralf Goldman greeted the conference by video.

After the official opening prof. Moshe Rosman (Bar-Ilan University) gave a lecture “How Jewish is Jewish History?”, whose book has been just translated and published in Russian. After the lecture there was a discussion in which Mikhail Chlenov, Arkady Kovelman, Kay Schweigmann-Greve and Leonid Katsis took part.

2014 year is a year of 100^th Anniversary of Joint Committee so the first plenary section as well as separated sections were dedicated to this event.

The program included the following sections: Biblical Studies, Sacral Texts and Treligious Tradition, Jewish Thought, Jewish Culture, Jewish Languages, Jews and Surrounding Nations, Jews in Eastern Europe, Non-Ashkenazic Jewish Communities, Jewish Art, Jewish Literature, Jews in the Russian Empire, Jews in the USSR, Jews in 20th Century, Holocaust Studies, Israel Studies and others. Also on the conference took place the round table dedicated to the Sefer’s 20th anniversary. As usually there was also a ceremony of presenting the grants from Prof. Eugene Weiner’s Fellowships Award (this year the grants was presented to Alina Lisitsyna (MSU) and Natalya Kireeva (RSUH)). There was a big presentation of new books and editions on Jewish Studies, where performed different publishing houses from Russia, Ukraine and Israel as well as authors themselves.

The full program is available here.

Photos Album is here. 

Participant’s response:

– I wanted to write to thank you so much for the wonderful experience of attending our Sefer conference. It is not often that one is permitted to look back 20 years and see the birth, growth, and maturation of a beloved child--and that is what I saw. Allow me to tell you how proud I feel of all that you and our colleagues have done. The conference recalled to me on the deepest levels how important our work has been, and what it has meant to so many. Toda! Toda! 

Yonatan Porath, Jerusalem