According to the call the “[t]he prize is intended for doctoral candidates, postdoctoral researchers, and scholars working toward their habilitation whose research makes an outstanding contribution to the identification, cataloguing, editing, and analysis of premodern Jewish primary sources.”
Application Deadline: 31 October 2026
Preface to the Holiday of Rosh Hashana. Rothschild Mahzor (Italian, 1490). Ink, watercolor, powdered gold and silver leaf on parchment. Courtesy of The Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary, New York.
Municipal Museum Trier, Simeonstraße 60 (adjacent to the Porta Nigra), 11 October, 2026 to 4 April, 2027, Tue-Sun 10am-5pm
The exhibition “Jewish Life in the Middle Ages” at the Municipal Museum Trier and under academic direction of Viola Skiba (Museum), Andreas Lehnertz, and Christoph Cluse (University of Trier), recounts the history of the Jewish community in Trier and its still visible traces in the city such as the historic Jewish quarter with its “Judenpforte” (Jewish Gate). Trier’s Jewish community flourished from at least the 11th century onwards under the protection of the Archbishop and served as a nexus between the Rhine region (including the ShUM cities of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz) and the regions of present-day France.
Since 2023, Erfurt’s medieval Jewish heritage has been a UNESCO World Heritage site. As part of the sustainable “Developing World Heritage” project, archaeological excavations led by the State Office for Monument Preservation and Archaeology began earlier this week in the town hall parking lot. An accessible information container—serving as a “World Heritage showcase”—invites visitors to observe the excavations and learn more about the site’s history.
According to Jewish Heritage Europe, there is serious damage in Venice’s medieval Jewish cemetery due to a storm.
Read the article in Times of Israel online about the Old Synagogue of Erfurt Germany, the oldest surviving synagogue in the world.
This book examines the question of Jewish identity in and around Egypt in the Middle Ages based on an analysis of cases where community boundaries were crossed by means of conversion. The book discusses many cases of Jews who converted to other religions, mainly to Islam, and of non-Jewish enslaved men and women who were owned by Jewish masters and mistresses, whose manumission was in fact their conversion, thus giving them an entry ticket into the Jewish community in which they lived.
We are pleased to announce the launch of the digital Atlas In-italja. This ambitious platform is the outcome of two and a half years of intensive collaboration among historians, art historians, and scholars of Jewish studies from the Universities of Rome Sapienza, Pisa, Bologna, and Milan. In-italja is an innovative digital humanities project that documents, illustrates, and dynamically narrates the history of Jewish mobility in Italy, as well as the complex interrelations between Jews and Christians from the Middle Ages to 1938.
At its core lies a rich and extensive corpus: the Atlas catalogues and describes more than 20,000 items, including archival documents, books, and images, making it a substantial new resource for research and teaching. The project adopts a spatial approach that moves across multiple fields (political, economic, and cultural history, as well as gender and family history) offering a multilayered and, we hope, genuinely innovative perspective on the history of Jewish communities in the Italian peninsula and the wider Mediterranean.
All data are available in Linked Open Data (LOD) format. The platform features intuitive search functions (by place, chronological span, and names), along with a series of thematic pathways designed to guide users through key topics and connections. The Atlas is further enriched by two accompanying podcasts (in Italian), which expand its narrative and interpretive reach. We warmly invite colleagues, researchers, and all those interested to explore In-italja and to share their feedback.
Following the discovery of the medieval synagogue foundations in Rothenburg in the summer of 2025 (which was also reported here), a non-invasive ground survey was conducted, revealing the full layout of the synagogue, including the frauschul.
Clicke here for the newest press release (in German) by the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments.
© Grafik: Roland Linck (BLfD), Drohnenfoto: Stadt Rothenburg.
