The 37th AAJS Conference, 16-17 February (Sunday-Monday) 2025 at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum
SANCTUARY
Full details at http://www.aajs.org.au/next-conference/
Sanctuaries are complex entities: they provide shelter from forces without and they also need to be continually protected and defended from within. Jews are saved (or not saved) by sanctuaries to the same degree that sanctuaries are saved (or not saved) by Jews. At the end of the 19th century, Asher Zvi Ginsberg – writing as “Ahad Ha’am” – noted this conundrum with his reflection on the Sabbath as a sanctuary, which has protected Jews to a greater degree than it was itself protected by them.
The Jewish experience has been one of finding and losing sanctuaries in equal measure. We welcome papers that will address the complexities of sanctuary, be it in space or in time, religious, cultural, and secular and also historical sanctuaries and fictitious sanctuaries in art, music, literature, theatre and dance. What are the ways in which these sanctuaries manifest themselves? How might they be present in their absence? And how has their nature informed Jewish culture and identity?
Full details at http://www.aajs.org.au/next-conference/