Project Details
Projekt
'Jewish Heritage Community Resilience': Interdependencies of cultural heritage and resilience in crises, wars and disasters
Subject Area
Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
Empirical Social Research
Protestant Theology
Empirical Social Research
Protestant Theology
Term
since 2025
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 557818998
The recent discourse in Critical Heritage Studies not only discusses cultural heritage as something worthy of protection and value, but also emphasizes that the debates about it arise in the first place when the heritage is threatened. Therefore, the project focusses on two aspects: 1) how Jewish cultural heritage – including the scientific destruction as part of the archaeological process – is preserved in the long term and 2) how Jewish cultural heritage in Israel and the diaspora can sustainably strengthen community resilience. Here, the sub-projects examine different aspects of Jewish cultural heritage and its role in shaping resilience. They have in common that they deal with the preservation, sustainability and protection of Jewish cultural heritage, considering resilience, both in the tangible and intangible sense. In each case, the significance of this heritage for cultural identity and the ability to cope with crises in Israeli society is analyzed. For the first time, the application combines perspectives from ethnomusicology, theology/archaeology and the sociology of disaster in order to analyze the respective significance of cultural heritage for cultural identity and the ability to cope with crises in Israeli society. The aim is to predict challenges and identify potentials that Jewish cultural heritage can develop for community resilience in Israel. This interdisciplinary research develops methods for digital preservation, analyzes the significance of cultural practices such as collective singing and integrates these findings into comprehensive disaster prevention strategies. The synergy of the sub-projects will generate new insights into the role of Jewish cultural heritage in crisis management and identity formation. The relevance of the project is underlined by the lack of knowledge about the concrete connections between Jewish cultural heritage, resilience, disaster protection and thus the future viability (sustainability) of Jewish communities.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
Subproject of
SPP 2357:
Jewish Cultural Heritage
Co-Investigators
Dr. Cordula Dittmer; Dr. Daniel F. Lorenz
