Queering Jewish Cultural Heritage in Europe

Jewish Transformations through Reparative Response and Creative Encounter

This project is led by 'Principal Investigator' PD Dr. Sacha Kagan (University of Hildesheim) and 'International Cooperation Partner' Prof. Dr. Miranda Crowdus (Concordia University, Montreal, Canada)

Part of the DFG-Priority Program 2357: Jewish Cultural Heritage (2022-2025)

 

The project considers the diversity of contemporary Jewish cultures in the context of hegemonic European societies, identifying the creation of Jewish Cultural Heritage as a process that is initiated and stimulated through Jewish encounters. Jewish positionalities are analyzed in their creative encounters with and queering responses to publicly constituted Jewish Cultural Heritage. The project focuses on the negotiations of queer Jews in these encounters and includes an array of Jewish positionalities from secular to orthodox - both modern orthodox and haredi - which arguably “queer” Jewish Cultural Heritage in own ways that are markedly different from its intended consumption for the general public. A particular emphasis is placed on the identity negotiations of queer Jews and their creation of their own Jewish Heritage through artistic creation and creative encounters. An emphasis is also placed on looking at the nuances of gender construction in traditional Jewish practice in contrast with hegemonic heteronormativity. Queering is deployed for cultural sustainability, exploring the art of living together as a queering creative & critical process beyond path dependencies of dominant norms, to unsettle certainties of good life and open up to possible other lives. 

The project’s queer critique will investigate normativities at two levels of the social construction of Heritage: 
(1) Queering the Public Construction of Jewish Cultural Heritage in the Public Sphere of European Societies, with attention to its possible marginalization and/or exclusion effects on contemporary Jewish communities. 
(2) Queering the dominant constructions of Jewish Cultural Heritage as Jewish Heritage within contemporary Jewish cultures, with attention to the possible marginalization and/or exclusion effects on queer individuals and groups whose cultural identities and practices conflict at least partly with dominant values and norms.

Specific (sensory-)ethnographic empirical attention will be placed on
(1) the moment of engagement or moment of encounter (i.e. the moment of some form of contact with Heritage - be it conceptual or sensory) as an indicator of negotiating cultural difference, and on
(2) cultural productions that may involve queering reparative (i.e. healing, disidentificatory & utopian-potentiality-ladden) processes. The project will seek ways in which the treatment and presentation of Jewish Cultural Heritage can be made more equitable while allowing for a gamut of Jewish and queer agencies, developing rubrics & prototypes towards pluralist convivial constructions of Cultural Heritage.

Queer-Jewish intersections constitute an important example revealing the diversity and complexity of Jewish creation of heritage. This research will open up new topics in Jewish Studies and contribute to investigating the complex relationship of the small Jewish minority in Europe today to politics, policy and conventions in the wider Public Sphere.

 

In 2023, which was the project’s first full calendar year, besides the ongoing empirical fieldwork ongoing in several European countries, and the integration of preliminary research insights in graduate seminars at University of Hildesheim, Leuphana University Lüneburg and Concordia University, the initial outputs included the following:

Public lectures and Conference Presentations:

  • 09.03.2023, Crowdus’ Keynote Speech “Hearing Religious Musicking as Intervention: Examples from the Quebecois Everyday”, at “Religion Performed”: Annual Graduate Interdisciplinary Conference, Concordia University.
  • 17.04.2023, Crowdus and Kagan’s lecture “Synergies in ‘Queering Jewish Cultural Heritage’: Scholars in Conversation”, part of the Lecture Series “(Inter)Connections” organized by the Collectif Judéité(s) in Canada – available online at https://youtu.be/RK6YIMdMj4A?si=7WKr1AYB1xgKiId6
  • 30.05.2023, Kagan, Book discussion with Alfonso Montuori, part of the “Creative Futures Author Series”, California Institute of Integral Studies (online) [linked to the book chapter listed below as “Kagan 2023”].
  • 05-07.06.2023, Crowdus and Kagan, contributions at the “Großes Forum” of SPP 2357, held at the University of Education Schwäbisch Gmünd.
  • 18.07.2023, Panel Session “Queering Jewish Studies and Jewish Cultural Heritage” convened by Kagan at the the EAJS (European Association of Jewish Studies) 12th Conference “Branching Out: Diversity of Jewish Studies” at Goethe-University Frankfurt, including presentations by Crowdus, Kagan, Jan Wilkens (University of Potsdam) and Sarah Ross (HMTM Hannover).
  • The release of a “data set” including different multimedia files such as samples of Torah cantillations, highlighting new ways of handling Jewish Cultural Heritage:  Crowdus, M., Proutskova, P. [primary author] et al. (2023) The VocalNotes Dataset, (2023, September 15). [Dataset]. Open Science Framework (OSF), available online at osf.io/z5xej (NB: A dataset is meant to contribute to open science by facilitating the conduction of further research by other academics).

Three publications linked to the initial theoretical and empirical research insights emerging from the project:

  • Crowdus, M. 2023. “Foreword” in The Moral Heritage: On the Sustainability of Jewish Musical Heritage in 21st Century Germany by Sarah M. Ross, Berlin: Peter Lang. 
  • Crowdus, M. 2023. “Closing remarks: Space and Time in the Music of Prayer”, in Le temps, supérieur à l’espace? En conversation avec le pape François et le Rabbi Abraham Heschel (Angelo Cardîta, ed.), Montreal : Presses de l’Université Laval.
  • Kagan, S. 2023. “Queer Convivial Futures”, in Routledge Handbook for Creative Futures (Gabrielle Donnelly and Alfonso Montuori, eds.), New York/London: Routledge.

 

In 2024 besides the ongoing empirical fieldwork in several European countries, and the integration of preliminary research insights in undergraduate and postgraduate seminars at Concordia University and Leuphana University Lüneburg, the interim outputs included the following:

Public lectures and Conference Presentations:

  • 16.02.2024     Crowdus: Keynote lecture at “Explorations on Decolonization and the Study of Religion" colloquium, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
  • 28.05.2024     Crowdus: “Sounding Judaism in Dead Spaces: Contesting Heritage through Aesthetic Reclamation and Reanimation” Canadian Society for Jewish Studies, York, Canada
  • 05.06.2024     Kagan: corporeally complexity-reflecting group workshop/game “Jewish Village Triangles: Reflecting on ‘Authorizations of Jewish Heritage’ through an embodied systems game workshop”, Annual Forum of the DFG SPP Jewish Cultural Heritage, Warsaw, Poland.
  • 17.06.2024         Crowdus: “Unsettling Pilgrimages: Canadian-Jewish Encounters with Jewish Cultural Heritage in Germany” Association for Canadian Jewish Studies, Montreal, Canada
  • 26.06.2024         Kagan: “Radicalizing Aesthetics of Complexity with Iridescence?” Guest Speaker opening the workshop on “Sustainability, Imagination and Aesthetics”, Institute of Advanced Studies and Institute for Sustainability, University of Surrey, Guildford, U.K.
  • 27.06.2024         Kagan: “A response-ability for radical complexity in artistic spaces of possibilities and/or potentiality”, Keynote Speaker (online), International Seminar “Modes of Production: Performing Arts and the Ecological Transition”, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies (CIS), University of Coimbra, Portugal
  • 8.7.2024             Crowdus: “Sounding Judaism in Dead Spaces: Contesting Heritage through Aesthetic Reclamation and Reanimation” on the panel “Jewish Minority Agency in the Public Sphere”, British and Irish Association for Jewish Studies, Bristol, U.K.
  • 15.12.2024         2 presentations: Crowdus, “Performing Destigmatization: Contesting Antisemitism and Polarized Narratives in the Public Sphere through Sonic and Musical Activism”; Kagan, “Queeridescent Jewish Archetypes in the Works of a Few Contemporary Artist”, within the Panel by Kathryn Huether, Miranda Crowdus and Sacha Kagan: “Antisemitism and Destigmatizing Counteractions in the Public Sphere: Affect, Power, and Performativity Post-October 7th, 2023”, Association for Jewish Studies 56th Annual Conference (online)

 

Four publications linked to the initial theoretical and empirical research insights emerging from the project (see also the publications listed in last year’s report):

  • Crowdus, M. 2024. “Jewish Music Pedagogies and Cultural Sustainability: Case Studies from Lower Saxony and Quebec”. Canadian Jewish Studies, 38, 56-84.
  • Crowdus, M. 2024. “Decolonial Affordances: Sounding and Listening Interventions in Higher Education” Arc: The Journal of the School of Religious Studies, 51, 76-120.
  • Crowdus, M. 2024. “Foreword”. In Sarah M. Ross, The Moral Heritage: On the Sustainability of Jewish Musical Heritage in 21st Century Germany. Berlin: Peter Lang.
  • Kagan, S. 2024 . “Lee Yeonsook’s Sustainable Place-Making”. In Yu Hyunju (Ed.), Running Stage. 2022-2023 작가조사연구비평. Artist Research Study Critique. Featured Artist: Lee Yeonsook 이연숙. Seoul: mwa press. (NB: Publication officially retro-dated by ARKO as: 2023)

 

Project-related outreach activities:

  • 16.05.2024: Crowdus: “Oud Therapy: Jewish Music, Representation, and Diversity Post-October 7th 2023”, Adath Jeshurun Synagogue, Louisville, KY, USA (academic talk and musical performance)
  • 04.06.2024: Crowdus: Keynote respondent “Synagogue Life and/as Cultural Heritage”, Annual Forum of the DFG SPP Jewish Cultural Heritage, Warsaw, Poland
  • 30.07.2024: Crowdus: “Making Musical Archives: Sounding Musical Archives” presented at Fellowship NEH Summer Institute – “Content Warning: Engaging Trauma and Controversy in Research Collections,” Indiana University Bloomington, USA
  • 03.11.2024: Crowdus: “Oud Therapy: Jewish Diversity and Representation” Musical workshop, Adath Israel Synagogue, Montreal, Canada

 

 

This project is financed by the German Research Foundation (DFG), project number 497299755.

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