"Jewish Diaspora, European Paths" An exhibition by the National Library of Israel at The Museum of Jewish History in Girona
FROM JANUARY 28 TO NOVEMBER 4 2018
On Sunday, January 28, 2018, the exhibition "Jewish Diaspora, European Paths" was inaugurated in the Museum of Jewish History in Girona, produced by the National Library of Israel and promoted by our institution. The inauguration coincided with the commemoration of the International Day of the Holocaust Memorial and the Prevention of Crimes against Humanity. The exhibition will be visitable until November.
About the exhibition
Jewish people have been, from ancient times, travelling people on a constant journey provoked by intolerance and adverse historical facts. In their long dispersion, they have been related to the cultures and nations in which they have been immersed. They have contributed their immense culture and their millennial tradition contributing to the forging of history and the current world society. The exhibition emphasizes the different stages of diaspora of the Jewish People and explains the characteristics and the most important moments.
The exhibition focus on Jewish personalities such as the artist Marc Chagall, the writer Franz Kafka or the German merchant Glückel of Hameln, a Jewish businesswoman and diarist, whose account of life provides scholars with an intimate picture of German Jewish communal life in the late-17th-early 18th century Jewish ghetto.
Sílvia Planas, director of the Museum of Jewish History, emphasize two of the documents from the exhibition: a lithograph by Marc Chagall entitled "Les amoureux du coq", and an Atlas dated in 1595 that represents the dispersion of the 12 tribes of Israel.
The exhibition is complemented with parallel activities such as a conference series titled "The Jewish contribution to the idea of Europe", which is organized jointly with the Ferrater Mora Chair. Next Thursday, Febraury 15, Teresa Forcades will talked about "Europa: l'opressió per la funció i la necessitat d'arrelament", after Joaquim Nadal opened the cycle recently.
A theatrical performance has also been programmed (June 12) led by George Steiner, which is a bit the lighthouse of this set of activities. An academic day will close these parallel activities.
The history of the Jewish people is lost in the origins of the sedentary process in the Middle East. It appears in biblical episodes like the migration to Egypt, the process of enslavement at the hands of the Pharaoh, or the war declared against them by the Romans, who at the beginning of the Christian era destroyed Jerusalem and triggered the beginning of the diaspora all over the mediterranea. "The Jews of Girona were Catalans" says Planas, and recalls that these were also expelled in 1492.
