How have Jews experienced their environments and how have they engaged with specific places? How do Jewish spaces emerge, how are they contested, performed and used? With these questions in mind, this anthology focuses on the production of Jewish space and 'lived Jewish spaces' and sheds light on their diversity, inter-connectedness and multi-dimensionality. By exploring historical and contemporary case studies from around the world, the essays collected here shift the temporal focus generally applied to Jewish civilization to a spatially oriented perspective. The reader encounters sites such as the gardens cultivated in the Ghettos during World War II, the Israeli development town of Netivot, Thornhill, an Orthodox suburb of Toronto, or new virtual sites of Jewish (Second) Life on the Internet, and learns about the Jewish landkentenish movement in Interwar Poland, the Jewish connection to the sea and the culinary landscapes of Russian Jews in New York. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, with a strong foothold in cultural history and cultural anthropology, this anthology introduces new methodological and conceptual approaches to the study of the spatial aspects of Jewish civilization.
Contents: Foreword; Introduction: Exploring Jewish space: an approach, Anna Lipphardt, Julia Brauch, and Alexandra Nocke. Part I Construction Sites: A hybrid place of belonging: constructing and siting the Sukkah, Miriam Lipis; 'Eruv' urbanism: towards an alternative 'Jewish architecture' in Germany, Manuel Herz; From state-imposed urban planning to Israeli diasporic place: the case of Netivot and the grave of Baba Sali, Haim Yacobi. Part II Jewish Quarters: Ghetto gardens: life in the midst of death, Kenneth Helphand; The Mellah of Fez: reflections on the spatial turn in Moroccan Jewish history, Susan Gilson Miller; Religious microspaces in a suburban environment: the orthodox Jews of Thornhill, Ontario, Etan Diamond; Altering alternatives: mapping Jewish subcultures in Budapest, Eszter Brigitta Gantner and Mátyás Kovács. Part III Cityscapes and Landscapes: Poland: A materialized settlement and a metaphysical landscape in legends of origin of Polish Jews, Haya Bar-Itzhak; A view of the sea: Jews and the maritime tradition, Gilbert Herbert; Desert and settlement: space metaphors and symbolic landscapes in the Yishuv and early Israeli culture, Yael Zerubavel; Jews and the big city: explorations of an urban state of mind, Joachim Schlör. Part IV Exploring and Mapping Jewish Space: Travel and local history as a national mission: Polish Jews and the Landkentenish movement of the 1920s and 1930s, Samuel Kassow; Taking distance: Israeli backpackers and their society, Erik Cohen; Tales of diaspora in the new fluid atlas of virtual place: the internet project 'The man who swam into history', Shelley Hornstein. Part V Enacted Spaces: Foodscapes: the culinary landscapes of Russian-Jewish New York, Eve Jochnowitz; The Buena Vista Baghdad Club: negotiating local, national, and global representations of Jewish Iraqi musicians in Israel, Galeet Dardashti; Mini Israel: the Israeli place between the global and the miniature, Michael Feige. Epilogue: Virtual Jewish Topography: the genesis of Jewish (second) life, Julian Voloj; Index.