Emil Majuk, route manager of the Shtetl Routes, part of the European Routes of Jewish Heritage, certified by the Council of Europe, has had the honour of publishing an article on his work in promoting Jewish heritage in the journal Perspectives, the publication of the Association for Jewish Studies.

The Association for Jewish Studies is a learned society and professional organization whose mission is to advance research and teaching in Jewish Studies at colleges, universities, and other institutions of higher learning, and to foster greater understanding of Jewish Studies scholarship among the wider public.

By Delphine Yagüe, Route Manager of the Medieval Route of Rashi in Champagne.

CEJI (A Jewish contribution to an inclusive Europe) is a NGO born in Brussels in 1991 aimed to create an inclusive and democratic Europe. It raises educational and participative trainings against antisemitism, racism, islamophobia, xenophobia and so on.

From June 20th to 23rd, CEJI organized in Brussels a Training for Trainers in French, to teach each one of the 14 participants how to develop group activities and raise the audience awareness against antisemitism. This is the second edition of a programme recently held in Budapest, which another AEPJ member, Peninah Zilberman, was able to attend.

This specific training titled Confronting antisemitism is a dense programme, part of the European project NOA, Networks Overcoming Antisemitism.

The European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden, Paideia, organizes every summer a unique program in its field, the Paideia Project Incubator. A ten-day program for supporting the development of new initiatives for European Jewish life, including activism, culture and heritage. It offers lectures, workshops, peer review as well as individual tutoring time for each participant during the program. The first European program of its kind.

AEPJ director Victor Sorenssen, participated in 2017, where he was incubating the European Routes of Jewish Heritage. In fact, the AEPJ replicated the methodology of the Paideia Project Incubator under the programme of the AEPJ Routes Incubator, giving very good results in the field of Jewish heritage. In these years, several AEPJ representatives have participated in the Paideia programme, incubating Jewish culture and heritage projects, including Jewish heritage routes.

Since yesterday, the Galicia Museum in Krakow has been hosting “New realities of Jewish Heritage“, a conference marking the 10th anniversary of Jewish Heritage Europe. This event is organised by the Galicia Jewish Museum with the collaboration of the Taube Center for Jewish Life & Learning Foundation in Warsaw and Jewish Heritage Europe.

The AEPJ is present with its Secretary General, Assumpció Hosta, and its director, Victor Sorenssen. This meeting represents a unique opportunity to reflect on the state of development of Jewish heritage in Europe today. Over the course of two days, different sessions, presentations and round tables are taking place, exploring new project development strategies, the educational field in the field of Jewish heritage, as well as audience development and local engagement.

This weekend the cultural programme From the Novi Sad to Auschwitz- Novi Sad the European Capital of Remembrance took place in Serbia, organised by Terraforming, which also included the presentation and pre-launch of the European Days of Jewish Culture 2022, with the central theme “Renewal”.

This programme, framed by the fact that Novi Sad is the European Capital of Culture, was carried out in partnership with Centropa, the Novi Sad Cultural Centre, Galicia Jewish Museum, the Historical Archive of Novi Sad, the Jewish Museum of Greece, Jugend & KulturProjekt Dresden, the Matica Srpska Library in Novi Sad and the AEPJ.

Since Friday 17 June, numerous round tables, panels, exhibitions and discussions have been held exploring the role of remembrance, Jewish culture in Europe today, strategies to combat anti-Semitism and the future of remembrance.

The AEPJ General Assembly in Hanover, Germany, concluded on Sunday 12 June. From Thursday afternoon until Sunday noon, representatives of AEPJ member institutions shared a packed programme of activities and working sessions. These included study visits of the Jewish heritage of Hanover, workshops on sustainability and tourism, as well as a very touching visit to the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. On Sunday morning, the General Assembly meeting was held in a hybrid format, in person and online.

The Assembly programme was organised by Global Partnership Hannover, with the invaluable help of its CEO, Anke Biedenkapp, who served as a perfect host. We would like to thank Anke for all her work, both within the framework of the Assembly, as well as in the development of the Jewish Heritage Route in Lower Saxony.

The AEPJ General Assembly 2022 kicked off yesterday in Hannover, Germany. The various representatives of AEPJ member institutions will spend four days together in the capital of Lower Saxony, with a programme combining workshops, working meetings and study visits. Global Partnership Hannover acts as host of the Assembly, and is in fact the first German institution to be part of the Association. The plenary meeting of the Assembly will take place this Sunday morning.

Last night, at the State Museum of Lower Saxony, the welcome reception took place. The master of ceremonies was Anke Biedenkapp, CEO of Global Partnership Hannover. François Moyse, President of the AEPJ, Sylvia Löhrmann, Secretary General of Jüdisches Leben In Deutschland and Petra Rudszuck, Vicepresident of Hannover Region, spoke and addressed the event.

The AEPJ continues to participate in the ninth Training Academy on Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe, which is being held in the French city of Fontainebleau, home of the Cultural Route of the Impressionists. Today has been a very special day, as we have actively participated in the working group on international relations, presenting different actions that we have carried out with our European Routes of Jewish Heritage in collaboration with other Cultural Routes. We also gave a presentation of the Jewish History Tours project, in collaboration with Europeana, the European digital library, and Jewish Heritage Network. In the presentation we have shown the development of the project, the tours that are being developed by the members of the AEPJ, as well as the training seminars that have been carried out in the framework of the project.

The IX Training Academy of the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe just started in Fontainebleau, France, with the participation of 32 certified routes and 70 representatives from all over Europe, hosted by the Impressionism Routes.

In a scenario where heritage embraces the territory in an incomparable way, the meeting of representatives of the cultural routes certified by the Council of Europe has started. The programme of the Training Academy includes strategic meetings, presentations of good practices and round tables where the role of the routes in sustainable cultural tourism, the international relations of the routes and the development of cross-cutting cooperation of the routes are discussed.

The AEPJ is present and actively involved. Victor Sorenssen, AEPJ director and Pavel Katz, from Jewish Heritage Network have presented the European project Jewish History Tours, in collaboration with Europeana, the European Digital Library, as a good practice and a replicable model for other routes.