On December 12, 2023, the seminar for the Izmir Jewish Heritage Project took place in the Turkish city of Izmir, where the results obtained and the development of the project from 2020 were presented. This seminar was part of the European-funded project, aiming to develop a new platform of civil society organizations led by İzmir Jewish Community Foundation to sustain the Jewish Heritage within the cultural wealth of İzmir, Turkiye.

In these two years, the project facilitated the establishment of a new platform strengthening Izmir Jewish Community Foundation’s networks and likewise promoted strategic collaboration between Izmir Jewish Community Foundation and other similar civil society organizations in the EU and in Turkiye. This collaboration involved participating in decision-making processes, such as developing city plans of İzmir, and preserving cultural heritage.

Wednesday afternoon kicked off the 2023 European Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism in Dortmund, Germany. The event is organised by the Combat Antisemitism Movement, in partnership with the city of Dortmund. AEPJ, for the first time, is a partner in this event, which this year has focused on fostering cultural diversity. Representing AEPJ were François Moyse, President; Uri Bar Ner, Board member; Victor Sorenssen, Director; and Luca Baraldi, consultant.

This highly-anticipated event brought together municipal leaders from more than 60 cities and 20 countries to address the concerning rise in antisemitism in Europe, particularly following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th.

Distinguished mayors and other high-level municipal representatives from a broad array of cities, including Paris, Odessa, Tallinn, Tirana, and many others, joined the event.

The conference “European Cultural Projects; Heritage at the service of citizenship“, organised by the Spanish Ministry of Culture, was held yesterday at the Casa del Mediterraneo in Alicante, Spain. Within the framework of the Spanish Presidency of the EU, the aim of this meeting was to inform the new heads of cultural heritage of the Spanish regions about the different cultural projects that are being developed in Spain within the European framework. The programme focused on three main axes on which European cultural action hinges: the European heritage label, the Faro Convention and the Council of Europe’s Cultural Routes.

In this framework, Victor Sorenssen, director of the AEPJ, presented the work that we carry out from our network with the European Routes of Jewish Heritage, focusing on the role of the route as a channel for cultural dialogue, also presenting culture and heritage as vehicles to combat antisemitism and hate speech.

📌𝑺𝒂𝒍𝒛𝒃𝒖𝒓𝒈 – 𝑵𝒆𝒙𝒕 𝑹𝒐𝒖𝒕𝒆𝒔 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒋𝒆𝒄𝒕

The Kick of Meeting of the NEXT Routes project, funded by the Erasmus+ programme and organised by European Mozart Ways, was held yesterday in Salzburg. As a following up action after the successful Fab Route project experience, AEPJ is teaming up with La Rotta dei Fenici – Itinerario Culturale del Consiglio d’Europa, leader of the project, ATRIUM – Architecture of the Totalitarian regimes of the XX Century in Europe’s Urban Memory route, The Routes of the Olive Tree, and the Iron Age Danube Route, in cooperation with the Breda University of Applied Sciences and Mobile Idea, to carry on with the development of strategic innovative tools for the Cultural Routes.

The project addresses the key challenges for the future of the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe by focusing on the development of digital gamification tools for the Routes and providing the training of its operators in order to ensure its scalability.

From 9 to 11 November, the international congress to reflect on “Heritage, a shared responsibility” is being held in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

One of the panels of the congress is organised by Hispania Nostra with the collaboration of the OEI, Organisation of Ibero-American States, presented by Raphael Callou, Director General of Culture of the OEI, and moderated by Natalia Armijos, specialist in Cooperation in Ibero-America, and with the participation of Assumpció Hosta, Secretary General of AEPJ, together with Maria Gabriela Santibañez, President of ICOMOS Argentina, and Adrià Terol, cultural manager of the Cemeteries Route.

The debate revolved around the European cultural routes as a source of cultural and economic development of the territories and their repercussion on civil society.

From the AEPJ, the European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture and Heritage, we express our deep concern over recent acts of vandalism targeting historic Jewish heritage sites. The incidents occurred at locations associated with the European Routes of Jewish Heritage that bear no direct connection to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine.

In the first case, the historic synagogue of Etz Hayim, in Izmir, Türkiye, and in the second, the medieval synagogue and Jewish quarter of Besalú, in Spain, became the victims of deliberate acts of vandalism. The perpetrators defaced these invaluable cultural treasures with graffiti that falsely linked them to the conflict between Hamas and Israel, often displaying a disturbingly antisemitic character.