Choral Synagogue of Vilnius

14 October 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  3 minutes

© Kontis Šatūnas

© Kontis Šatūnas

The Choral Synagogue of Vilnius in Lithuania is the only synagogue in Vilnius that is still in use. The other synagogues were destroyed partly during World War II, when Lithuania was occupied by Nazi Germany, and partly by the Soviet authorities after the war.   read more…

Routes of El legado andalusi/Al-Andalus

4 October 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Architecture, EU blog post series, European Union, Bon voyage, Living, Working, Building, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  10 minutes

© Morningstar1814/cc-by-sa-3.0

© Morningstar1814/cc-by-sa-3.0

In the 8th century, the Iberian Peninsula saw the arrival of Arabs and Berbers who mixed with the Roman-Visigoth inhabitants, engendering what was known as Al-Andalus. This successful medieval Muslim civilisation extended, at its peak, to most of what is today Spain and Portugal, until its downfall in the late 15th century (Reconquista). Today, the importance of Al-Andalus to Western Europe is all too often underestimated, or attempts are made to downplay the effect of this medieval “multicultural” approach on the development of Europe. It was the numerous innovations that the Muslims brought with them (enriched with knowledge from ancient Egypt and ancient China) that gave Europe an unexpected boost in development, both in the sciences and of course in the culinary field. Try depriving Europeans of their morning coffee and you’ll find yourself dealing with an ill-tempered continent. While science and the fine arts were already being established in Al-Andalus, we northern Europeans were still on the move as “uneducated and inhospitable woodworms”. This slowly changed with the spread of knowledge from Al-Andalus to the north. At the same time, one cannot understand today’s Andalusia and its appeal without knowing the impact of Al-Andalus.   read more…

European Day of Jewish Culture

1 September 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, EU blog post series, European Union Reading Time:  8 minutes

EDJC 2019

EDJC 2019

The European Day of Jewish Culture is an event celebrated in several countries in Europe. The aim of this day is to organize activities related to Jewish culture and expose them to the public, with the intention that it would reveal the cultural and historical heritage of the Jewish people. The activities are coordinated by the European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture (AEPJ), the European Council of Jewish Communities, B’nai B’rith Europe and the Network of Jewish Quarters in Spain.   read more…

Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest

28 June 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  9 minutes

© Thaler/cc-by-sa-3.0

© Thaler/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Dohány Street Synagogue, also known as the Great Synagogue or Tabakgasse Synagogue, is a historical building in Erzsébetváros, the 7th district of Budapest, Hungary. It is the largest synagogue in Europe, seating 3,000 people and is a centre of Neolog Judaism. The synagogue was built between 1854 and 1859 in the Moorish Revival style, with the decoration based chiefly on Islamic models from North Africa and medieval Spain (the Alhambra). The synagogue’s Viennese architect, Ludwig Förster, believed that no distinctively Jewish architecture could be identified, and thus chose “architectural forms that have been used by oriental ethnic groups that are related to the Israelite people, and in particular the Arabs”. The interior design is partly by Frigyes Feszl.   read more…

92Y on the Upper East Side of Manhattan

1 June 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, House of the Month, Museums, Exhibitions, New York City, Opera Houses, Theaters, Libraries Reading Time:  10 minutes

Theresa l. Kaufmann Auditorium © Yair Haklai/cc-by-sa-3.0

Theresa l. Kaufmann Auditorium © Yair Haklai/cc-by-sa-3.0

92nd Street Y (92Y) is a cultural and community center located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, at the corner of East 92nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Its full name is 92nd Street Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Association (YM-YWHA). It is not part of the YMCA. Founded in 1874 as the Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA) by German-Jewish professionals and businessmen, 92nd Street Y has grown into an organization guided by Jewish principles but serving people of all races and faiths. The YMHA founded in 1889 The Educational Alliance, together with the Aguilar Free Library, and the Hebrew Institute.   read more…

Jewish life in the historic center of Berlin, around the Oranienburger Straße, Rosenthaler Straße and the Scheunenviertel

12 April 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Berlin, Museums, Exhibitions, Opera Houses, Theaters, Libraries, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks Reading Time:  43 minutes

Oranienburger Straße and New Synagogue © Rohieb/cc-by-sa-3.0

Oranienburger Straße and New Synagogue © Rohieb/cc-by-sa-3.0

Oranienburger Straße is a street in central Berlin. It is located in the borough of Mitte, north of the River Spree, and runs south-east from Friedrichstraße to Hackescher Markt.   read more…

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin

27 January 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Berlin, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  15 minutes

© Orator/cc-by-sa-4.0

© Orator/cc-by-sa-4.0

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (German: Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas), also known as the Holocaust Memorial (German: Holocaust-Mahnmal), is a memorial in Berlin to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, designed by architect Peter Eisenman and engineer Buro Happold. It consists of a 19,000-square-metre (200,000 sq ft) site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or “stelae“, arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The stelae are 2.38 metres (7 ft 10 in) long, 0.95 metres (3 ft 1 in) wide and vary in height from 0.2 to 4.7 metres (7.9 in to 15 ft 5.0 in). They are organized in rows, 54 of them going north–south, and 87 heading east–west at right angles but set slightly askew. An attached underground “Place of Information” (German: Ort der Information) holds the names of approximately 3 million Jewish Holocaust victims, obtained from the Israeli museum Yad Vashem. Building began on April 1, 2003, and was finished on December 15, 2004. It was inaugurated on May 10, 2005, sixty years after the end of World War II, and opened to the public two days later. It is located one block south of the Brandenburg Gate, in the Mitte neighborhood. The cost of construction was approximately 25 million.   read more…

Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire

19 December 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks Reading Time:  15 minutes

© GavinJA/cc-by-sa-3.0

© GavinJA/cc-by-sa-3.0

Waddesdon Manor is a country house in the village of Waddesdon, in Buckinghamshire, England. It is located in the Aylesbury Vale, 6.6 miles (10.6 km) west of Aylesbury. The Grade I listed house was built in the Neo-Renaissance style of a French château between 1874 and 1889 for Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild (1839–1898) as a weekend residence for grand entertaining and as a setting for his collection. The last member of the Rothschild family to own Waddesdon was James de Rothschild (1878–1957). He bequeathed the house and its contents to the National Trust. It is now managed by the Rothschild Foundation chaired by Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild. It is one of the National Trust’s most visited properties, with over 467,000 visitors annually. Waddesdon Manor won Visit England‘s Large Visitor Attraction of the Year category in 2017.   read more…

Theme Week East Jerusalem – The Western or Buraq Wall

7 November 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Union for the Mediterranean Reading Time:  14 minutes

Men's and women's prayer area © Daniel Case/cc-by-sa-3.0

Men’s and women’s prayer area © Daniel Case/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Western Wall, Wailing Wall, or Kotel, known in Islam as the Buraq Wall, is an ancient limestone wall in the Old City of East Jerusalem. It is a relatively small segment of a far longer ancient retaining wall, known also in its entirety as the “Western Wall”. The wall was originally erected as part of the expansion of the Second Temple begun by Herod the Great, which resulted in the encasement of the natural, steep hill known to Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount, with the Dome of the Rock/Qubbat As-Sakhrah and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in a large rectangular structure topped by a huge flat platform, thus creating more space for the Temple itself and its auxiliary buildings. For Muslims, it is the site where the Islamic Prophet Muhammad tied his steed, al-Buraq, on his night journey to Jerusalem before ascending to paradise, and constitutes the Western border of al-Haram al-Sharif.   read more…

Return to TopReturn to Top