Jürgen Heyde

Nora Lafi

Monica Rüthers

Magdalena Waligórska

Joachim Schlör

Alexis Hofmeister

Martin Kindermann

Mirjam Zadoff

Eszter Gantner

Diana I. Popescu

Wolfgang Kaschuba

Saskia Coenen Snyder

Ruth Leiserowitz

François Guesnet

Maria Cieśla

Frank Golczewski

Felix Heinert

Anne-Christin Saß

The unifying thread of the interdisciplinary volume Jewish and Non-Jewish Spaces in the Urban Context is the fact that Jewish spaces are almost always generated in relation to non-Jewish spaces; they determine and influence each other. This general phenomenon will be scrutinized and put to the test again and again in a varied collection of articles by international experienced researchers as well as junior scholars using various urban contexts and discourses as data. From the viewpoints of different temporal and regional research traditions and disciplines the contributors deal with the question of how Jewish and non-Jewish spaces are imagined, constructed, negotiated and intertwined. All examples and case studies together create a mosaic of possibilities for the construction of Jewish and non-Jewish spaces in different settings. The list of examined topics ranges from synagogues to ghettos, from urban neighborhoods to cafés and festivals, from art to literature. This diversity makes the volume a challenging effort of giving an overview of the current academic discussion in Europe and beyond. Although the majority of the contributions are focused on Central and Eastern Europe, a more general tendency becomes apparent in all articles: the negotiation of urban spaces seems to be a complex and ambivalent process in which a large number of participants are involved. In this regard, the volume would also like to contribute to trans-disciplinary urban studies and critical research on spatial relations.

Jewish and Non-Jewish Spaces in the Urban Context

Coenen Snyder considers what the architecture and construction of nineteenth-century European synagogues reveal about the social progress of modern European Jews. The process of claiming a Jewish space was a marker of acculturation but not full acceptance, she argues. The new edifices, even if spectacular, revealed the limits of Jewish integration.

Synagogues and Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-Century Europe

Building a Public Judaism

Saskia Coenen Snyder

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