Connections 2021-2022 - Remembering the destruction, re-animating the Collective

***English will follow***

The Collectif Judéité(s), in collaboration with the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies, is launching its 2021-2022 Conference Cycle: Connections.

Miranda Crowdus, Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion and Culture at Concordia University opens the cycle with the conference "Remembering the Destruction, Re-animating the Collective: Romaniote Liturgical Music after the Holocaust".

The conference will be in English, followed by a bilingual question period (FR/ENG) and a discussion where we can learn more about the work of Professor Crowdus, as well as her role as the future director of the Institute of Canadian Jewish Studies at Concordia University.

Zoom link (no registration required): https://umontreal.zoom.us/j/89610316448...

*ABSTRACT*

This lecture explores my ongoing research on the musico-liturgical practices of Romaniote Jewish communities, past and present. As elsewhere in Eastern and Southern Europe, many Jewish communities in Greece were almost completely destroyed during the Holocaust, resulting in the virtual obliteration of many distinctive religious and cultural practices. Among these communities were the Romaniote Jews, an indigenous Judeo-Greek population distinct from the Sephardic Jews who arrived in Greece as a result of the Spanish Inquisition. Cultural losses included musical practices, which were largely transmitted orally. A handful of Romaniote leaders and practitioners continue their musico-liturgical traditions in Greece today, as well as in the United States and Israel. Over the past decade, an annual pilgrimage to Ioannina to attend a Romaniote Yom Kippur service has become a pivotal experience for Romaniote Jews and others, allowing them to remember and mourn the pre-Holocaust community. This process of “gathering the exiles” at the epicenter of Romanio religious and social significance generates a new Jewish collective based on Romaniote identity and history that includes the restoration of distinct musical practices through transformation and reinterpretation. This research not only concerns Romaniote specificity, but also examines more broadly how Jewish musical traditions evolve in time and space, which is – or should be – preserved. Of particular interest is exploring how this examination of musical transmission and transformation can enable the development of cultural sustainability practices potentially applicable to multiple contexts and conditions.

*BIOGRAPHY*

Miranda Crowdus is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religions and Cultures at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, where she will also direct the Institute of Canadian Jewish Studies. His research interests lie at the intersection of ethnomusicology and Jewish studies. She completed her PhD at City University London in 2016, focusing on cross-cultural encounters through grassroots music initiatives in South Tel Aviv, Israel. She is currently working on research on Jewish cultural heritage and cultural sustainability with a particular focus on intangible cultural heritage.