2024 AAJS Conference
‘Creation – Re-Creation’
Sydney Jewish Museum
11-12 February 2024
Conference Day 1
Keynote lecture 1 by Prof. Michael Cohen, Tulane University: American Jews and the (Re) Creation of Ethnic Economies
Panel 1, chaired by Lee-Anne Whitten: Holocaust Museums and Education
Dr. Donna-Lee Frieze, Assoc. Prof. Steven Cooke: Learning from the Past? Educational Efficiency in Holocaust Memorial Museums in Australia
Dr. Simon Holloway: The Secondary Uses of Primary Sources: Holocaust Artefacts in their Curatorial and Pedagogical Evolution
Dr. Anna Hirsh: A Reimagining of Perec Willenberg’s Częstochowa Synagogue Ceiling
Panel 2, chaired by Dr. Natalie F. Mylonas: Genesis Perspectives 1
Dr. Stephen Cook: Humour and Sarcasm in the Biblical Creation Stories
Dr. Deborah Hurn: The Role of Water in Israel’s (Re-)Creation in the Biblical Transjordan
Dr. Timothy Rafferty: Destruction and (pro)Creation: Sex as an Act of Re-Creation in the Book of Genesis
Panel 3, chaired by Assoc. Prof. François Soyer: The Re-Creation of Sephardic Identities
Prof. Mechtild Gilzmer: The Memory of North African Jews in the Diaspora
Prof. Seth Kunin: Crypto Judaism as a Process of Cultural Creation and Recreation
Rabbi Dr. Yehonatan Elazar-DeMota: Liminal Banilejos in the Diaspora in Search of Meaning and Understanding
Panel 4, chaired by Assoc. Prof. Jan Láníček: The Re(Creation) of Jewish Roots in Polish Lands
Dr. Artur Markowski: Who (Re)Created Jewish Pogroms in Russia? Examining the Paradigms in Research on Anti-Jewish Violence and Their Impact on Our Understanding of Antisemitism
Dr. Anna Michałowska-Mycielska: Creation and Re-Creation of the Image of Jewish Self-Government in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Rita Nash: Could the Jews Rebuild Life in Poland after World War II?
Panel 5, chaired by Dr. Kate Green: Cultural Creations: Film and Literature
Assoc. Prof. François Soyer: Collective Memory and Historical Amnesia: The ‘Ritual Murder’ Libel in Modern Spain
Dr. Basia Vucic: A (R)evolutionary Reading of Janusz Korczak
Dr. Adrian Michael Schober: Spielberg, Romanticism and The Fabelmans: A Super-Director’s Origin Story
Panel 6, chaired by Rabbi Dr. Benjamin Elton: Mediaeval and Early Modern Jewish History
Assistant Prof. Nuray Ocakli: A New Life for the Romaniote Jews of Kastoria in Istanbul: Physical Characteristics of Householder and Unmarried Men, Their Crafts, and Residential Quarters
Mark Ellison: Jews of the Silk Route: The Bukhari Experience of Re-Creation
Panel 7, chaired by Sarah Grandke: Australia and the Holocaust: Re-Creation of Memory
Prof. Emerita Suzanne Rutland: Recreating New Lives at the Edge of the Diaspora
Assoc. Prof. Avril Alba: Australian Holocaust Memory: Material Histories of Trauma: Evolving Objects of Memory
Dr. Anna Rosenbaum: Egon Erwin Kisch and Hanuš Burger, Creation and Recreation in Literature and Film
Panel 8, chaired by Dr. Anna Hirsh: Re-Creation Narratives
Viva Hammer: Jewish Women’s Fertility as Source of Creative Expression
Benjamin Wyatt: Jewishness in Motion: Creating Meaning in Melbourne’s Jewish Workplaces
Dr. Henry Lew: Patterson of Israel
Panel 9, chaired by Dr. Jonathan Kaplan: Creating Australian Jewish Stories
Dr. Anne Sarzin: Connecting and Transforming: Eva’s Lifelong Outreach Mission
Cohava Rubenstein Sturgess: The Re-Creation of Ruby Rich as a Transnational Jewish Australian Feminist
Prof. Kim Rubenstein: Sir Isaac Isaacs and Citizenship in Australia
Film Screening: Dreyfus Drei
Panel 10, chaired by Dr. Lynne Swarts: The Re-Creation of Trauma and Memory
Dr. Ella Dreyfus, Dr. Sylvia Griffin
Keynote Lecture 2 by Prof. Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College: From a Topic to a Field: How Jewish Studies Challenged the Academy and Recreated Itself
Evening Cocktail Reception
Conference Day 2
Panel 11, chaired by Prof. Emeritus Konrad Kwiet: Holocaust Reverberations
Prof. Zohar Segev: Diaspora Nationalism, Migration and Cultural Revival: American Jewry and the Challenge of European Jewish Diaspora in the Shadow of the Holocaust and the Cold War
Emily Ashdown: Complicating the Victims: Representations of Holocaust and Nazi Genocide Victims at Sites of Atrocity in Poland and Germany
Dr. Darren O’Brien: The Nazi Nurses of the Bełżec Extermination Camp
Panel 12, chaired by Dr. Anna Hirsh: Synagogues: Re-Creating Sacred Space
Rabbi Dr. Benjamin Elton: Creating and Re-Creating the Interior of The Great Synagogue
Dr. Jana Vytrhlik: Sydney’s Macquarie Street Synagogue: Re-Creation of Its Ideological Setting
Ruby Abrams: The Creation of the Synagogue
Panel 13, chaired by Dr. Jonathan Kaplan: Jewish History and Diverse Narratives
Rabbi Dr. Iris Yaniv: The Status of Women according to the Two Stories of Creation in Genesis and the Koran
Dr. Mateusz Majman: The Troubled Memory: The Tat Myth and Its Impact on the Ethnic Self-identification of the Mountain Jews
Dr. Jonnie Schnytzer: What World(s) Did God Create? On a Fierce Polemic among Medieval Kabbalists regarding Creation, Extinction and Human-Animal Relations
Panel 14, chaired by Assoc. Prof. Avril Alba: ‘Old Wine in New Bottles’: The Re-Creation of Antisemitism in 21st Century Australia
Prof. Emeritus Konrad Kwiet, Jasmine Beinart
Panel 15, chaired by Assoc. Prof. Jan Láníček: Post-War Re-Creations
Dr. Elana Broch and Julia Panter: Can a Stolperstein Help the Next Generation Stumble into the Past?
Dr. Kate Green: Cultural Re-creation: The Role of Theatre in Post-WWII DP Camps
Sarah Grandke: (Re)Creation of Memory: Jewish and Christian Displaced Persons as memory activists after World War II
Panel 16, chaired by Rabbi Dr. Yehonatan Elazar-DeMota: Genesis Perspectives 2
Dr. Natalie F. Mylonas: Creation and Emotion in Judaism: From Genesis to the Midrash and Beyond
Dovi Seldowitz: Eternal Grudge of the Moon: Rabbinic Dramatisation of Genesis and Artistic Consecration
Odile Ellison: BERESHIT: An artistic interpretation of the Creation Story
Panel 17, chaired by Dr. Lynne Swarts: The Re-Creation of Homeland
Dr. Carol Langley: The Zohar, the Zionist Travelogue, Their Creation and Re-Creation
Prof. Avner Holtzman: O, My Land, My Homeland: The Traumatic Encounter of Hebrew Poetry with the Land of Israel
Chuck Volpe: A Return to Jewishness
Panel 18, chaired by Prof. Emerita Suzanne Rutland: Re-Creating Landscapes in Diverse Geographical Settings – A Panel Discussion
Prof. Shaul Sapir, Dr. Racheline Barda, Dr. Shahar Burla
Closing remarks: Conference convenors Dr. Lynne Swarts and Dr. Jonathan Kaplan