Cultual Memory

This research purpose is to map the many philantropic as well as social and religious organizations which operated within Italian Jewish Ghettos during 17 th Century. In fact, during Early modern period different types of confraternities and academies flourished in Jewish ghettos. A huge quantity of literature and diverse sources, part still manuscript and some as printed matter, was produced by these organizations. As consequence, this research intends to focus on two very different cities as case study, Venice and Rome, for tracing the networks of many sort of activities which engaged the Jewish population. They all had a central role in Jewish culture and social development of the Early modern period and contributed enormously to the spreading of popular doctrines and literature. They also sponsored the publication of devotional manuals in Hebrew for the use of these devotional in Mantua, Venice, Florence and elsewhere. A mapping of these organizations active among Jews in Italy during this period has never been done, partly because the difference between the various types of societies, academies and brotherhoods is not always clear. This research should deal with two different cities representing two very diverse situations. The purpose is to map the many organizations which operated inside these Jewish ghettos during 17 th Century and their social life, their background as well as their tasks, and the role they played. It is important to underline, that fraternities of those cities in particular left some interesting registers and archive documents still manuscripts, for example the Register of Venitian Shomerim la-boker and the Roman Register of Ghemilut Hasadim. The analysis of this kind of many documents, as well as the comparison between two different realities, should be able to shed light on many aspects of inner Jewish life, such as: nonconformist attitude toward religion, use of leisure time, economic stratification, attitude toward poor and poverty, and so on. ESSENTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

This article argues that Su Friedrich's 1984 film The Ties That Bind employs what were at the time atypical forms and techniques to push the limits of the traditional historical documentary. Its aesthetic experimentation helps to redefine the idea of historical representation in film, and does so mainly by treating evidence as both partial (in both senses of the word) and contingent, offering a radical challenge to normative history and destabilizing the notion of history as authority. Unlike conventional documentaries, the film marks its own limitations: its inability to provide stable answers or eternal certainties. Questioning her mother's spoken memories, and commenting on them, Friedrich forces a rupture in the 'evidence' of history and establishes a place in which to 'speak' herself. By including the past that her mother is talking about on the sound track, as well as the present on the image track (such as images of her mother's life in the early 1980s, images of intertitles etched into the film emulsion revealing the questions Friedrich asked her mother and her reactions to the things her mother said, as well as images of the filmmaker's visits to historical sites), Friedrich brings the present into the past, and demonstrates how history is, to quote Walter Benjamin, 'time filled with the presence of the now'.

La tombe de Rachel, monument se trouvant à la porte de Bethlehem, est considérée dès le 4è siècle comme le lieu de sépulture de Rachel, figure biblique importante. Ce lieu important à la fois pour le Judaïsme, l’Islam et le Christianisme a une histoire tumultueuse, histoire parsemée de moments d’accalmies et de conflits au sujet du droit d’accès à cette tombe et de divergences sur l’appartenance de cette tombe.
À qui « appartient » cette tombe et pour qui est-elle importante ? Comment est considéré le regard de l’ « autre » envers ce lieu de culte partagé ? Nous allons examiner la perception de l’ « autre » musulman et chrétien dans le journal et les cahiers de Shlomo Freiman, le gardien juif ashkénaze de la tombe de Rachel entre les années 1918 et 1948. Nous allons voir comment il perçoit le lien éprouvé par des musulmans et des chrétiens envers ce lieu et comment se constitue dans cette époque le rapport à tombe.
L’histoire de cette tombe est aussi l’histoire d’un lieu tiraillé entre deux approches : entre tenir compte de la perception d’autrui qui devient un allier d’un amour commun, et nier l’autrui ce qui accroit les éléments qui fabriquent un ennemi…

In this paper I discuss history and memory from a theoretical and philosophical point of view and the non-fiction and fiction aspects of historical representation. I use Edgar Reitz' monumental work Heimat 1-3 (and his recent film Die Andere Heimat) as example of a very different transformative historical narrative. In terms of narrative construction and aesthetic form the Heimat-project challenges the dominant forms of historical fiction. By combining personal memory, everyday life and collective memory and a more indirect way of representing factual history Reitz wants to transform our look at German history.