Today’s discoveries in Jewish memory
Day after day, the findings of our documentary watch.
Every night, Zakhor’s documentary watch scans archives, press and scholarly publications about the Jewish world in thirteen languages. Its verified, sourced findings are recorded here day after day.
Tuesday, September 15, 2026
- Memory
Paris: Ceremony of Remembrance of the Shoah marked by the theme of transmission, with the testimony of Yvette Lévy
The Ceremony of Remembrance in memory of those deported and victims of the Shoah was held on Sunday, September 6, 2026 at 10 a.m. at the Grande Synagogue de la Victoire in Paris (9th arrondissement), in the presence of representatives of the State, religious institutions and official organizations, with live broadcast on France Télévisions. Placed this year under the theme of transmission, the ceremony emphasized the role of children and grandchildren of the deported as custodians of family and collective memory, as the last direct witnesses of the Shoah are disappearing. On this occasion, Yvette Lévy, deported at age 17 and one of the rare survivors of convoy no. 77, delivered her testimony at age 98, stating: "Although we were alive, we were living in hell." This testimony, relayed in particular by the website of the French government (info.gouv.fr), illustrates the urgency of recording the words of the last direct survivors of the Shoah.
- CommunitiesTo be confirmed
Nuremberg: restoration of the Art Nouveau funeral hall at the Jewish cemetery
The Deutsche Stiftung Denkmalschutz (German Foundation for Monument Protection) announced on 8 September 2026 the allocation of 64,480 euros, from designated donations, to the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Nürnberg (Nuremberg Jewish Community) for the restoration of the funeral hall (Aussegnungshalle) of its Jewish cemetery. Built between 1908 and 1910 by architect Emil Hecht in the Art Nouveau style (Jugendstil), on a cemetery founded from 1905 onwards, this hall preserves historical wall paintings by Art Nouveau artist Friedrich Adler, as well as original flooring, windows and doors that remain largely intact. The funded work concerns documentary investigation and preparatory treatment testing to prepare more thorough restoration of the wall paintings. A presentation ceremony, led by the foundation's Munich conservator, Dr Andrea Kluxen, is scheduled for 15 September 2026 in Nuremberg. This heritage initiative is part of the ongoing effort to safeguard German Jewish funeral heritage, often weakened by age and neglect.
- CommunitiesTo be confirmed
Dresden: Jewish Community Reopens its New Synagogue after Three and a Half Years of Renovation
The Jewish Community of Dresden reopened its New Synagogue (Neue Synagoge und Gemeindezentrum am Hasenberg) on September 14, 2026, following more than three and a half years of work that began in January 2023. The renovation, prompted by recommendations from the Saxon Criminal Police Office, addressed structural safety, fire protection, and workplace safety. The reopening was marked by a ceremony followed by a commemorative concert, and coincides with the centenary of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Saxony. The article notes that this reopening comes in a context of concern about the rise of antisemitism in Europe. The source provides neither the cost of the work nor precise figures for community membership.
- Communities
Vienna: Reopening of the Stadttempel, the only Viennese synagogue to survive Kristallnacht
After approximately ten and a half months of renovation work, the Stadttempel in Vienna — Austria's largest synagogue and the only Viennese synagogue to survive Kristallnacht in November 1938 — reopened its doors on 10 September 2026, marking its bicentennial. The renovation, financed equally at 10.5 million euros by the federal state, the City of Vienna, and private donations, addressed fire safety, accessibility, energy efficiency, and the restoration of heritage elements, including the Budapest marble floor beneath the bima. A ceremony brought together approximately 450 community members, with a procession carrying a new Torah scroll from the Judenplatz to the restored synagogue, followed by the affixing of mezuzot. Oskar Deutsch, president of the Jewish Community of Vienna (IKG), stated: "We are home again." An official state ceremony, broadcast live on ORF III, is scheduled for 16 September 2026 with representatives of the Austrian Republic in attendance. This event marks a significant milestone for a community whose historic place of worship remains a symbol of Jewish continuity in Vienna since 1826.
- ArchivesTo be confirmed
GeoSefarad: A geolocation project of the Jewish quarters of ancient Sefarad exceeds 300 documented sites
The GeoSefarad project, led by Dr José Gregorio Lepervanche Valencia as part of the Tarbut Sefarad initiative, continues its interactive mapping (via ArcGIS StoryMaps and Google Maps) of juderías (Jewish quarters), cemeteries, monuments, synagogues and expulsion ports of ancient Sefarad in the Iberian Peninsula. A post published on 19 August 2026 updates the project's progress, now extended from the sole geolocation of juderías to the search for former synagogues and Judeo-Christian sites. The inventory now exceeds 300 Jewish quarters documented in the Iberian Peninsula. The project combines geographic information tools and genealogy to document traces of families that maintained their identity through the centuries, continuing the annual Tarbut Sefarad meetings held in various Spanish localities (Sagonte, Híjar…). This cumulative resource, regularly updated, may be of interest to Sephardic genealogy and the history of communities in Spain and Portugal.
- ManuscriptsTo be confirmed
Tel Aviv: A rare medieval Sephardic Torah scroll (13th-14th centuries) exhibited at the ANU Museum
The ANU Museum — Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv presents in its permanent exhibition rare parchment leaves from one of the oldest known Sephardic Torah scrolls, dated to the end of the 13th or beginning of the 14th century in medieval Spain — one of only five such exemplars preserved to this day. These leaves, covering chapters 28 to 33 of Genesis, bear "unusual letters" (calligraphic forms and decorative signs with interpretative, spiritual and mystical value), a scribal tradition now extinct. They offer rare testimony to the manner in which Torah scrolls were written in Spain before the expulsion of 1492 following the Spanish Inquisition. Corrections and later repairs visible on the parchment attest to its continuous use within Jewish communities over several generations. The leaves are loaned to the museum by the Feld Family Collection. The article announcing this presentation was published on June 2, 2026.
- CommunitiesTo be confirmed
Tata (Hungary): completion of renovation of the fence of the Jewish cemetery, over 700 years old
The municipality of Tata (Hungary) announced on 11 September 2026 the completion of the third and final phase of reconstruction of the fence of the city's Jewish cemetery, carried out by the company Tatai Városgazda Nonprofit Kft. since the end of April 2026. The work involved the demolition of the old fence, removal of roots, deep pile foundations, and reinforced concrete masonry covered with naturally-hewn stone, reusing old materials recovered alongside new stones. The craftsmen Gyula Kukorica (stone cutter) and József Járóka are named for this work. The cemetery, over 700 years old, preserves the majority of 18th-century funerary monuments still visible in Hungary, including the country's oldest tombstone (mid-18th century) still in its original location. Zakhor.ai had already documented another aspect of the preservation of this same cemetery (reinauguration of ceramic tombstones of the Fischer family, 12 August 2026); this entry concerns a separate project, that of the fence, carried out on the same site.
Monday, September 14, 2026
- Archaeology
Fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls Deemed Blank Reveal Hidden Text
Researchers from the University of Manchester announced in early September 2026 that they had detected previously invisible text on fragments of Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts long considered blank. Using multispectral imaging techniques, the team revealed letters and words on pieces of parchment held in the university's collections, from scrolls discovered at Qumran. The discovery could make it possible to restore passages of biblical or sectarian texts hitherto lost. The announcement was reported by several scientific and mainstream media outlets in early September 2026, including ScienceAlert, Sci.News and the Times of Israel. The researchers plan to publish a detailed analysis of the recovered texts.
- Archaeology
Israel Antiquities Authority launches national archaeological database of 4 million records
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) put online in early September 2026 a national archaeological database gathering approximately 4 million records from excavations conducted across the territory for over a century. The digital platform provides access to excavation reports, photographs and surveys that were previously scattered in the institution's archives. The IAA presents this project as the largest archaeological digitization effort ever undertaken in the country. The database covers sites from all periods, from prehistory to the Ottoman period, including numerous sites of interest for ancient and medieval Jewish history. Access is open to researchers and the general public via an online portal. The launch was covered by several Israeli media outlets in early September 2026, including JNS, Ynetnews and the Times of Israel.
- Communities
The Rákospalota Synagogue in Budapest to Reopen on September 17, 2026 After Restoration
The synagogue in the Rákospalota district of Budapest is to reopen on September 17, 2026 following reconstruction work conducted by EMIH (Union of Hungarian Jewish Communities). The reopening ceremony is to bring together descendants of the former Jewish community of the district as well as a choir, according to announcements relayed by Neokohn, Népszava, Zsido.com and Zsidoprogramok.hu in early September 2026. This event follows the appointment announced in mid-August 2026 of a couple of rabbis to lead the local community. The Rákospalota Synagogue had experienced a marked decline in its community activity during the twentieth century before this revival led by EMIH.
- Archaeology
A study of fingerprints on Jerusalem bullae illuminates ancient Judean administration
A team of researchers published a study analyzing fingerprints left on bullae (clay seals) discovered in Jerusalem, dating from the First Temple period. Examination of the fingerprints makes it possible to estimate the age and sex of the scribes and officials who handled these administrative documents approximately 2,600 years ago. The results suggest the participation of women and young people in the administration of the kingdom of Judah, nuancing the image of an exclusively male and adult bureaucracy. The study was reported by the Jerusalem Post, La Brújula Verde and Yahoo News in early September 2026. The bullae had been unearthed during previous excavations conducted in Jerusalem.
- Communities
The Prinsessegracht Synagogue in The Hague Celebrates a Double Jubilee in 2026
The Jewish community of The Hague celebrates a double jubilee in 2026 centered on the Prinsessegracht Synagogue, combining an anniversary linked to the building and another to the community life that takes place there. The organization Joods Erfgoed Den Haag (Jewish Heritage of The Hague) detailed the program of celebrations, reported by the local newspaper Dagblad070. The Municipal Archives of The Hague (Haags Gemeentearchief) and the Boekhandel Douwes bookstore also mentioned the event, which combines lectures, exhibitions and a retrospective on the history of this synagogue in the capital of the Netherlands. The Prinsessegracht Synagogue remains an active place of worship for the Jewish community of The Hague.
- Archaeology
The Cave of Letters excavations (1960-1961): the archaeological foundation of Yigaël Yadin's book on Bar Kokhba
Yigaël Yadin's book published in 1971 documents the excavations he directed in 1960 and 1961 in the caves of Naḥal Ḥever, in the Judean desert, with logistical support from Tsahal and the approval of David Ben Gourion. During the first campaign (March 1960), the team discovered human remains wrapped in textiles dated to approximately 135 CE — among the oldest known textile remains from the Roman period — as well as coins from the Bar Kokhba revolt bearing the inscriptions "Shim'on" and "for the freedom of Jerusalem", bronze vessels and incense shovels with defaced Roman iconography. In an unexplored crevice of the same cave, fifteen letters — mainly in Aramaic and Hebrew, two in Greek — were found in a leather bag, addressed chiefly to Bar Kokhba's lieutenants, Yehonathan and Massabala, at Ein Gedi, shedding light on the administrative organization of the short-lived insurgent state. The second campaign (1961) uncovered, in another crevasse, the archives of Babatha: thirty-five legal documents dated from 94 to 132 CE, belonging to a female landowner (marriage contract, deed of property over a palm grove with water rights, guardianship petition for her son, recognition of debt). This corpus was the subject of scholarly publication in three volumes in the "Judean Desert Studies" series (1963, 1989, 2002), under the references "P.Yadin" or "5/6Ḥev", with the later participation of scholars such as Naphtali Lewis, Jonas Greenfield and Hannah Cotton; the documents are now held at the Shrine of the Book of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Recent research continues to re-examine this corpus: multispectral photography has made it possible to read passages previously illegible, and ongoing scholarly work proposes a micro-historical reinterpretation of certain documents, such as a reinterpretation of document P. Yadin 27 (19 August 132) as a draft receipt rather than as a final receipt.
Sunday, September 13, 2026
- Publication
"Hungarian Jewry and Their Ways with Paprika" — an article in the Jewish Quarterly Review marks the journal's transition to full open access
Article published in the winter 2026 issue of the Jewish Quarterly Review (JQR 116.1, University of Pennsylvania Press / Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies), the first issue under the journal's new full open access regime, announced for all one hundred thirty-six years of its archives beginning with this issue. The article examines culinary culture — the use of paprika — as a marker of Jewish integration into modern Hungary, combining social history and food history.
- Restitution
Germany opens new arbitration court for cultural property looted by the Nazis, with filing deadline set for September 15, 2026
The new Court of Arbitration for Nazi-looted Cultural Property, which replaces the former German Advisory Commission, began its work on December 1, 2025 in Berlin. It resolves disputes over the restitution of objects — including numerous Judaica items — taken from owners persecuted under the Nazi regime, particularly from Jewish owners. A system of "standing offer" allows claimants to unilaterally trigger arbitration if a public institution refuses restitution, after a mandatory twenty-month period of bilateral negotiation. Thirty-six arbiters are available, under an executive committee comprising former European Court of Human Rights judge Elisabeth Steiner and former German constitutional judge Peter Müller. The deadline for filing claims is set for September 15, 2026.
- Restitution
The Frankfurt University Library Returns Books to the City's Jewish Community for the First Time
Goethe University Frankfurt announced in 2026 the first-ever restitution of books identified as Nazi plunder (NS-Raubgut) to the Jewish community of Frankfurt. Since 2020, the Johann Christian Senckenberg university library has systematically examined its collections with support from the Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste (German Center for Lost Cultural Property). The original legitimate owners—from a prominent Jewish family in Frankfurt—were able to be identified through a handwritten dedication, an individual ex-libris, and stamps. The Jewish community of Frankfurt welcomed this gesture as recognition of the injustice inflicted on Frankfurt's Jews.
- PublicationTo be confirmed
Wojciech Tworek, "The Polish Exile: Chabad Hasidism in the Interwar Years" — forthcoming monograph (McGill-Queen's University Press)
Academic monograph announced for October 6, 2026 by McGill-Queen's University Press (396 pages), based on multilingual archival sources, tracing how the Chabad-Lubavitch movement redefined itself in exile in Poland during the interwar years — theological teaching, institutional structuring and ritual practices that shaped contemporary Hasidic orthodoxy. Noted by the European Association for Jewish Studies among the publisher's new releases.
- ArchaeologyTo be confirmed
An inscribed bowl 2,700 years old uncovered near the Gihon spring in the City of David
On 22 March 2026, archaeologists Joe Uziel and Nahshon Zenton of the Israel Antiquities Authority announced the discovery, during excavations conducted near the Gihon spring in the City of David in Jerusalem, of a ceramic bowl sherd bearing a partially preserved paleo-Hebrew inscription. The inscription, carved onto the rim of the bowl before firing and not after breakage, reads approximately "…riyahou son of Benaya," a theophoric name associated with a patronym. The object is dated to the 8th-7th century before the common era, that is the period between the reign of King Hezekiah and the destruction of Jerusalem under Zedekiah. The archaeologists note a possible biblical parallel with Zekhariahou son of Benaya, mentioned in the second book of Chronicles (20:14), while noting that the missing letters preclude any certain identification. The exact function of the bowl remains uncertain: it could have contained an offering bearing the name of the donor or recipient.
- Communities
Spain: Supreme Court to set criteria for applying the Sephardic nationality law, ten years after its adoption
On 3 June 2026, the first civil chamber of the Spanish Supreme Court admitted a cassation appeal concerning the application of law 12/2015, which allows descendants of Jews expelled from Spain by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492 to obtain Spanish nationality without prior legal residence. The appeal was filed by an applicant of Sephardic origin whose request had been rejected at lower court despite, according to him, meeting the required conditions; the Court deemed the case of "cassation interest", opening the way to uniform clarification of the criteria for assessing the "special link with Spain" required by the law, after years of divergent case law between courts. According to official statistics from the Ministry of Justice as of end March 2026, 89,078 applications had been filed under this law since its entry into force, of which 81,222 had already been processed: 73,017 nationalities granted, 7,344 rejections, and 7,856 cases still pending; the largest volumes came from Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina and Israel. Spanish press summarized, on 15 July 2026, the scope of the Supreme Court's decision by stating that it "opens the door" to a review of how this historical reparation law, in force for over ten years, is applied to the some 73,000 descendants already naturalized.
- Communities
Panama: the Kol Shearith Israel Congregation celebrates its 150 years, oldest organized Jewish community in the country
The Kol Shearith Israel Congregation, founded on May 14, 1876 in Panama by Sephardic Jewish families from the Caribbean (notably from Curaçao and Jamaica), celebrated in 2026 the hundred fiftieth anniversary of its founding. It is the oldest organized Jewish community in Central America, twenty-five years older than the founding of the Republic of Panama itself, and some of its members took part in the country's independence in 1903. The main commemoration ceremony was held on May 7, 2026, preceded in March by a distinction awarded to the congregation by the Consejo Central Comunitario Hebreo de Panama for its 150 years. The event brought together the president of the National Assembly of Panama, Jorge Luis Herrera, the chancellor (minister of Foreign Affairs) Javier Martínez-Acha, the mayor of Panama City Mayer Mizrachi Matalon, the ambassador of Israel to Panama Mattanya Cohen, and the archbishop of Panama, Mgr José Domingo Ulloa. The commemorative program for 2026 includes notably the publication of a book of traditional and contemporary recipes of the community, as well as the inauguration of the expansion of the community center with new educational and spiritual spaces. The congregation, originally established to ensure funeral rites according to Jewish tradition, is today presented by Panamanian authorities as a reference for coexistence, religious plurality and contribution to national development.
- Memory
Neshama: the Shoah Memorial launches a European network of young memory ambassadors
The Shoah Memorial launched at the beginning of 2026, with the support of the European Commission, the Neshama programme, a Network of Young European Ambassadors for the Memory of the Shoah. For its first edition, the programme brings together young people from five countries — France, Germany, Croatia, Greece and Poland — called upon to become active relays for transmitting the history of the Shoah and Jewish life in Europe. The initiative is supported by a consortium of eight partner institutions, including memorial sites and ministries from the participating countries, coordinated by the Shoah Memorial. The first meeting was held from 25 to 28 January 2026 in Paris, Drancy and Bobigny: the young ambassadors presented the history of the Shoah in their country, followed guided tours on Jewish life in Paris, participated in European exchanges on the resistance of Jewish women during the Shoah, and collected testimony from survivor Arlette Testyler. This programme aims to ensure the lasting memory of the Shoah by relying on the active commitment of young generations, as the last direct witnesses disappear.
- Memory
OSE launches research project and appeal for testimonies on the reception in France of Jewish children from North Africa and Egypt
The Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) announced on 20 May 2026 the launch of a new research project devoted to a little-known chapter of its own history: the reception and support in France of Jewish children from North Africa and Egypt between 1945 and 1980. According to the association itself, this aspect of OSE's work had never been the subject of genuine scientific research. To shed light on it, OSE is launching an appeal for testimonies from former beneficiaries of this support and their descendants, in the form of filmed interviews intended to constitute a video archive, in order to preserve a fragile and still poorly documented memory. The appeal has been relayed by the CRIF (Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France) as well as by the community portal Morial, which invite those concerned to contact the association directly. This initiative is part of a broader movement to collect oral history on the exile of Jews from Arab countries, an aspect that has long remained on the margins of established narratives on the Shoah and Jewish migrations of the twentieth century.
- Manuscripts
The Library of Congress Completes Digitization of 270 Hebrew Manuscripts from the Tenth to Twentieth Centuries
On September 11, 2025, the Library of Congress in Washington celebrated, at the "From Scroll to Screen" event, the completion of a digitization project spanning approximately two years covering 270 manuscripts in Hebrew script. Funded by a grant from the David Berg Foundation, the corpus spans the tenth to twentieth centuries and brings together texts in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian and Yiddish: prayer books, rabbinic responsa, poetry, Jewish magic and folk medicine, Jewish law. A first batch of 230 manuscripts had already been made available online in August 2023; the project is now entirely complete and the entire corpus is freely accessible in the institution's digital collection "Hebraic Manuscripts". This is one of the largest collections of Hebrew manuscripts from a non-Israeli national library to be made fully accessible online.
- ArchivesTo be confirmed
Hamburg: A Digital Site Virtually Unites Dispersed Archives of Jewish Communities
On 19 May 2026, on the occasion of its 60th anniversary, the Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden (IGdJ) inaugurated, in the atrium of the Hamburg State Library (Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Carl von Ossietzky), the site "Jewish Congregation Archives Hamburg" (jewish-hamburg-archive.net). This portal accompanies two digitisation projects conducted in parallel by the Hamburg State Archives (StaHH) and the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP) in Jerusalem, which each hold part of the collections from the former Jewish communities of Hamburg (collection "522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden"), dispersed between the two institutions since the Shoah. A chronological timeline traces the history of these community archives from 1936 to the present day, and the site outlines the perspectives that would be opened by a complete virtual consolidation of the two collections. These documents, concerning the daily and administrative life of the Jewish congregations of Hamburg, are now catalogued to be made available to researchers, educational institutions and the general public.
- Communities
Brazilian Amazon: Cametá and Mocajuba celebrate 200 years of Jewish presence and reopen the Sinagoga dos Hebraicos
On May 1, 2025, the city of Mocajuba, in the northeast of the state of Pará, celebrated the reopening of the Sinagoga dos Hebraicos, also called Beit Shalom ("House of Peace"), marking two hundred years of Jewish presence in the Brazilian Amazon. The synagogue had been founded between 1824 and 1825 in the neighboring city of Cametá, a few months after the promulgation of the Imperial Constitution of 1824 which guaranteed freedom of worship in Brazil. The community, formed of Jews originating from Morocco, had then reached more than 5,000 people and had extended to the neighboring localities of Baião and Mocajuba as well as to islands in the Tocantins river, making Cametá one of the most significant centers of Brazilian Judaism in the nineteenth century. The new building was rebuilt by the Bnei HaKehilah ("Children of the Community"), descendants of this ancient Hebrew community of Cametá and Mocajuba, who have been working since 2010 to recover the history, culture and identity of what the local press calls the "Caboclo Jews of the Amazon", and to encourage a return to religious practice among the inhabitants of the region whose ancestors dispersed throughout the world. This reconstruction and reopening of a specific place of worship is distinct from a separate museum exhibition on the same subject, already noted elsewhere.
- Memory
The Czech Parliament will pay collective tribute to the country's 129 Righteous Among the Nations for the first time
For the first time in its history, the Parliament of the Czech Republic will pay tribute to 129 Czech citizens recognized by Yad Vashem as "Righteous Among the Nations" for risking their lives to save Jews during the Shoah. The ceremony is scheduled for November 9, 2026, a date marking the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht. The initiative was announced following a visit to Prague by Shannon Seban, director of European affairs at the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), an organization that worked with Czech partners to establish this collective tribute. Seban described the ceremony as a "call to courage" at a time when antisemitism is rising again in Europe. Among the 129 Czech Righteous is notably Antonín Kalina, who saved hundreds of Jewish children at Buchenwald concentration camp. This would be the first time the Czech Parliament officially honors collectively all of its Righteous, rather than through separate individual ceremonies.
Saturday, September 12, 2026
- Archaeology
A Second Temple necropolis with engraved menorahs discovered near Hebron
On September 7, 2026, the discovery of two decorated funeral caves was announced in a village located west of Hebron. Researcher Meïr Rotter, a specialist in the heritage of the Land of Israel, examined the site after construction work carried out by a local resident revealed its entrances. The first cave, with a rounded vault, contains funerary niches of the kokh type carved in fine limestone, larger than average for the period; the second, equally decorated, contains a lower chamber with three funerary spaces equipped with stone pillows, a sign of high-ranking deceased. On a wall of the inner chamber are engraved two types of seven-branched menorahs, apparently added during a later reuse of the site rather than at its creation. Archaeologists date the initial use of the caves to the Herodian period through the end of the Second Temple era (approximately 37 BCE to 70 CE), with burials continuing until the Bar Kokhba revolt (132-135). The site is currently under the supervision of the Staff Officer in charge of archaeology — the competent authority in Judea-Samaria — and remains closed to the public for reasons of security and structural deterioration.
- Restitution
An Argentine court orders the restitution of a painting looted by the Nazis to the heir of Jacques Goudstikker
On September 4, 2026, Argentine federal judge Santiago Inchausti approved an agreement ordering the restitution of the painting "Portrait of a Lady" (now attributed to Giacomo Ceruti, known as "Il Pitocchetto", 18th century) to Marei von Saher, daughter-in-law and sole heir of Dutch Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker. The work, missing since 1945, is among the 1,241 paintings looted from Goudstikker following the German occupation of the Netherlands and his family's flight in 1940. It was found in August 2025 thanks to a photograph taken in a real estate listing for a house in Mar del Plata, belonging to Patricia Kadgien — daughter of former SS financier Friedrich Kadgien — and her husband Juan Carlos Cortegoso, prosecuted criminally for aggravated receiving of stolen goods. The September 4 agreement provides that the couple renounce all rights to the work, valued at approximately 250,000 euros, and pay 4.8 million Argentine pesos to local hospitals, in exchange for suspension of proceedings. According to the Goudstikker family's lawyers, this is the first case in which Argentine justice has recovered and restituted a painting looted by the Nazis through criminal proceedings, and not through an agreement with a state or museum. The heir mentioned the possibility of lending the work to the Holocaust Museum of Buenos Aires.
- Restitution
Theft of two Renoirs in Cagnes-sur-Mer: one of the missing paintings was subject to a restitution request from the heirs of a Jewish art dealer who died at Auschwitz
In the night of 8 September 2026, four paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir were stolen from the Renoir museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer; two were found abandoned in the museum's garden, but "Madame Colonna Romano" and "Jeune femme au puits" (1886) remain missing. Yet the latter painting was, even before the theft, the subject of a restitution request: the heirs of the Parisian Jewish art dealer Jadwiga Zak, who died at Auschwitz, had submitted a petition to the French government approximately one year earlier to claim the return of the work to their family. The painting had been looted during the Occupation by the black market purchasing organization "Otto", before passing through Bavaria; recovered after the war by the French State, it was on loan deposit at the Renoir museum. The restitution request by the Zak heirs was still under examination at the time of the theft, with no decision having been rendered. The theft revives attention on this spoliation case that remained pending.
- Memory
The 85th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre coincides with two other commemorations in September 2026
September 29-30, 2026 will mark 85 years since the Babi Yar massacre, when nearly 34,000 Jews from Kiev were shot by the Nazis and their auxiliaries on September 29-30, 1941. The Russian-language press highlights the coincidence in September 2026 of three memorial dates: the 85th anniversary of the massacre, the 65th anniversary of the publication of Evgueni Evtouchenko's poem "Babi Yar" (September 19) and the 120th anniversary of the birth of Dmitri Shostakovitch (September 25), whose Symphony No. 13 was inspired by this poem. Commemorative ceremonies are planned, notably in Denver (United States) on September 30, where the Mizel Museum is organizing a ceremony and a concert-tribute to the victims.
- Memory
Death of Rachel Rabin-Yaakov, sister of Yitzhak Rabin and co-founder of kibbutz Manara
Rachel Rabin-Yaakov, younger and only sister of assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, died on 11 September 2026 at the age of 101. Born in Tel-Aviv in 1925, daughter of Nehemia Rabin and Rosa Cohen, she joined the Ha-Noar Ha-Oved youth movement in 1942 before participating, at 18 years old, in the founding of kibbutz Manara on the Lebanese border. A long-time educator and figure in the kibbutz movement, she maintained throughout her life a close relationship with her brother, formed in childhood. Her death was widely reported by the Russian-language Israeli press.
- Memory
Switzerland publishes a 200-page federal intelligence file on Josef Mengele
The intelligence service of the Swiss Confederation made public, on 10-11 September 2026, a 200-page file devoted to Nazi physician Josef Mengele, nicknamed "the Angel of Death" for his experiments at Auschwitz. The file includes police reports, entry bans and arrest warrants against him, as well as investigations into people suspected of having provided him refuge — suggesting that Mengele entered Switzerland under false identities while being sought internationally. Swiss authorities wanted to keep these documents sealed until 2071, but historian Gérard Wettstein prevailed before the Federal Administrative Court for their online publication, with certain passages remaining redacted to protect sources and personal data of third parties.
- Memory
Death of Alexandre Sharovsky, People's Artist of Azerbaijan and longtime president of the Community of European Jews of Baku
Alexandre Sharovsky, actor and theatre director, People's Artist of Azerbaijan and artistic director of the Baku State Russian Drama Theatre, died on 9 September 2026 at the age of 78. Born on 10 February 1948 in Baku, he began his theatre career in 1967 and directed this theatre for more than thirty years, creating more than fifty productions there. Beyond his artistic career, he long presided over the Community of European Jews of Baku. His death was announced by the Ministry of Culture of Azerbaijan and widely reported, notably by the Russian-language Jewish portal STMEGI.
Friday, September 11, 2026
- Memory
First Hungarian institutional exhibition dedicated to pre-war Orthodox Jewish world
The Holocaust Memorial Center (HDKE) in Budapest inaugurated in 2024, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Hungarian Shoah, the exhibition "A Tóra fényénél" ("In the Light of the Torah — Plural Orthodox Jewish Worlds before the Catastrophe"), presented at the synagogue on Páva Street and described by its organizers as the first independent and national exhibition dedicated to Orthodox Judaism in Hungary. The institution launched a public call at the end of 2023 and beginning of 2024 for the donation or loan of objects, documents and family photographs, in order to document Orthodox communal life in the Carpathian Basin before the destruction. The exhibition was then adapted in a traveling version: its formal inauguration in Kyiv, at the Vernadsky Ukrainian National Library, took place on January 27, 2026, on the occasion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This initiative documents for the first time in an institutional and systematic manner a long-marginalized aspect of Hungarian Jewish memory before the war, that of Orthodoxy in the Carpathian Basin.
Tuesday, September 8, 2026
- Archaeology
A Magnetic Authentication Method Could Unmask Judean Antiquities Forgeries
A team led by Yoav Vaknin, with Jeffrey Gee and Lisa Tauxe (Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego) and Brendan Cych (University of Liverpool), published in early September 2026 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) an authentication method for ancient ceramics based on archaeomagnetism. The technique measures the viscous remanent magnetization (VRM) of a pottery shard by heating it progressively from 50°C: modern ceramics lose this magnetization between 50 and 70°C, whereas genuinely ancient pottery (more than one thousand years old) loses it only above 112°C. As an initial application, the team tested three disputed objects seized by the antiquities looting unit of the Israeli Antiquities Authority on the black market — a juglet, a zoomorphic vessel and an oil lamp presented as dating from the Iron Age, Judean period — and found them consistent with ancient authenticity. The method could notably help authenticate inscribed objects (seals, ostraca) and combat the fabrication of fake "biblical" artifacts circulating on the antiquities market.
- RestitutionTo be confirmed
Utrecht: Jewish community attempts to buy back its former Art Deco Great Synagogue
The Jewish community of Utrecht is running a campaign to buy back from a church the Great Synagogue on Springweg street, an Art Deco building from 1926 designed by Jewish architect Harry Elte — who died at Terezín in 1944 — and sold in 1981 due to lack of worshippers. The community is also seeking to have the building classified as a national monument in order to facilitate its financing. The effort, reported in early September 2026, is ongoing and has not yet been concluded.
- RestitutionTo be confirmed
Romania: the Seini synagogue in Transylvania restored as a Museum of Jews of Transylvania
Restoration work on the Seini synagogue in northwestern Romania was completed in mid-May 2026. The project, worth 2.4 million euros, transforms the complex—long abandoned—into a Museum of Jews of Transylvania, concert hall and cultural space. The synagogue, built in 1904, served a Jewish community present in Seini since the late eighteenth century; the city was an important centre of Jewish printing in the first half of the twentieth century. The Jewish population of Seini, approximately 615 people, was deported to Auschwitz in 1944.
- Publication
"Hungarian Holocaust Revisited": A Collective Volume Reviews Recent Discoveries in Hungarian Research
De Gruyter Brill published in June 2026, in its "Holocaust Studies and Antisemitism" collection, the collective volume "Hungarian Holocaust Revisited: New Discoveries and Insights" (370 pages, in English), edited by Dóra Pataricza (Országos Rabbiképző – Zsidó Egyetem, Budapest), Borbála Klacsmann (ELTE) and Péter Buchmüller (Central European University). The work presents to the international public the recent advances in Hungarian research on the Shoah, with emphasis on contemporary approaches: gender studies, microhistory, memory and trauma. A public presentation of the volume is planned for autumn 2026.
- Memory
Paris: A conference on Glückel of Hameln brings together a descendant of the seventeenth-century memoirist
As part of the European Days of Jewish Culture and Heritage 2026 (theme "Love"), the House of Yiddish Culture — Medem Library, in Paris, received Michel Gaspard on September 17, 2026, a descendant of Glikl bas Judah Leib, known as Glückel of Hameln, a Jewish businesswoman of the seventeenth century whose memoirs, written in Yiddish from 1690 onwards, rank among the very first Jewish European female autobiographical texts. The meeting focused on this figure of mother, wife and businesswoman who moved through the Ashkenazi communities of northern Germany.
- Memory
New York: The Museum of Jewish Heritage Exhibits the Clandestine Archives of the Warsaw Ghetto (Oyneg Shabes)
The Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York opens on September 18, 2026, until February 14, 2027, an exhibition devoted to the clandestine Oyneg Shabes archives of the Warsaw ghetto, eighty years after the discovery of the first buried cache in 1946. The exhibition, co-organized with the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, traces the secret work conducted between 1940 and 1943 by historian Emanuel Ringelblum and a clandestine group of scholars, educators, journalists and young activists, who gathered nearly 35,000 documents — testimonies, diaries, letters, clandestine newspapers, works by children. It presents original artifacts, including one of the burial containers, as well as reproductions, maps and images from the post-war excavation film. The importation of the objects was subject to an official determination published in the American Federal Register on June 16, 2026.
- MemoryTo be confirmed
An In geveb/Fortunoff Fellowship Focuses on Yiddish Oral Memory of Survivors Settled in Bolivia and Argentina
The online journal of Yiddish studies In geveb and the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies (Yale University) announced in 2026 their cohort of fellows tasked with exploiting Yiddish-language materials among the approximately 12,000 hours of audiovisual testimonies of survivors held by the archive. Fellow Joanna Spyra is developing an educational guide based on oral testimonies in Yiddish from survivors born in Poland, native speakers of Yiddish, who rebuilt their lives in places initially unknown to them — notably in Bolivia and Argentina — a still poorly documented aspect of the post-war South American Ashkenazi diaspora.
- Genealogy
A Y-DNA study of 288 men refutes the hypothesis of widespread Berber Judaization in Morocco
The article "Patrilineal Genetic Ancestry of Moroccan Jews", signed by Raquel Levy-Toledano, Wim Penninx, Michael Waas, Goran Runfeldt, Michael Sager, Paul Maier and Adam Brown, was published in late May 2026 in the peer-reviewed journal Genealogy (MDPI, vol. 10, no. 2), as part of the Avotaynu DNA Project (Genetic Census of the Jewish People). The study analyzes the patrilineal origins (Y chromosome) of 288 men of genealogically verified Moroccan Jewish descent, identifying 111 distinct founder lineages. Main result: approximately 71% of the founder lineages (80% of individuals) are linked to haplogroups common in the Middle East, 11% of lineages are of Iberian origin — reflecting sustained exchanges between Morocco and the Iberian Peninsula — and only 4.5% of founder lineages are of indigenous North African origin. The authors present this result as the first systematic evidence contradicting the old hypothesis of large-scale Berber Judaization. The study was reported by the Cercle de Généalogie Juive.
- Memory
A Holocaust Memorial Erected at Eleftheria Square in Xanthi, 79 Years After the Deportation
On February 20, 2022, a commemorative monument was inaugurated at Eleftheria Square in Xanthi, at the initiative of the Central Council of Jewish Communities of Greece, in cooperation with the municipality and the Cultural and Development Centre of Thrace. It pays tribute to the 526 members of the Jewish community of Xanthi exterminated at the Treblinka camp in March 1943 under Bulgarian occupation. The monument consists of a cubic rock placed at the end of a symbolic railway line installed in a small park: steps lead to an aisle of granite slabs framed by two rails laid on beds of 526 stones, one for each victim, symbolizing the path to the extermination camp. A metal menorah adorns the face of the rock, beneath which plaques in four languages are affixed — Greek, Hebrew, Ladino and English.
- Communities
Azemmour and Israeli city of Kiryat Yam seal first Morocco-Israel twinning (2023)
In February 2023, two Israeli travel agencies were preparing a large-scale pilgrimage to Azemmour for the following May, centered on the tomb of Rabbi Abraham Moul Niss — also venerated by the city's Muslims under the name of Sidi Brahim — traditionally celebrated at Lag Baomer. According to the Moroccan press, the previous pilgrimage organized in Azemmour dated back to 1960, representing more than six decades of interruption. A few days before this announcement, around fifty Jewish tourists from Canada and the United States had come to pay their respects at the saint's tomb. In the same movement, the city of Azemmour and the Israeli coastal city of Kiryat Yam, north of Haifa, sealed what is presented as the first official twinning between a Moroccan municipality and an Israeli municipality, announced by the president of Azemmour municipality, Zakaria Semlali. Azemmour, a former free city of the 15th century that then counted 2,500 Jews among 20,000 inhabitants, had obtained by charter of 14 June 1514 privileges granted by Portuguese authorities to its Jewish community, notably the fixing of its annual tax — the city having welcomed Jewish refugees driven from Portugal as early as 1496.
- Memory
The Vidin Synagogue in Bulgaria, restored as a cultural center dedicated to painter Jules Pascin (2023)
Jules Pascin (Julius Mordecai Pincas, 1885-1930) was born in Vidin, a Bulgarian city on the Danube, and not in Pleven as is sometimes read: his Sephardic family, prosperous in the grain trade, lived there before settling in Bucharest in 1892. It is the Vidin synagogue, which had fallen into disuse and was then restored, that reopened on September 4, 2023 as a museum and cultural center dedicated to Pascin, under the name "Jules Pascin Cultural Centre". None of the sources consulted — neither Britannica, nor the Jewish Virtual Library, nor the Ben Uri Gallery, nor Commentary magazine — mention any connection between Pascin and Pleven, two distinct Bulgarian cities: Pleven in the north-central part of the country, Vidin on the Danube to the west. This clarification concerns a possible confusion of location present on the existing page of the site devoted to the Jews of Pleven, which associates the painter with that city.
- Memory
In Tondano, Indonesia's small Jewish community opens Southeast Asia's first Holocaust museum
Founded in 2003 by Rabbi Yaakov Baruch, the Sephardic congregation Sha'ar Hashamayim ("the Gate of Heaven") in Tondano, a town of 68,000 inhabitants on the island of Sulawesi in a predominantly Christian region, brings together a community of approximately twenty Jews — which became, following the demolition of the Surabaya synagogue in 2013, the only active Jewish place of worship still operating in Indonesia. On January 27, 2022, the day of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the synagogue inaugurated within its walls the first permanent museum dedicated to the Holocaust in Southeast Asia, in the presence of German Ambassador to Indonesia Ina Lepel. This photographic exhibition provoked hostility from local Muslim groups who called for its closure, before Indonesian authorities confirmed its continuation — an episode hailed by several observers as a successful test of religious tolerance in the world's largest Muslim-majority country.
Monday, September 7, 2026
- Restitution
The Musée d'Orsay opens a permanent gallery dedicated to works looted by the Nazis with no heirs found
The Musée d'Orsay inaugurated in early May 2026 a new permanent gallery (level 0, room 10b) entitled "Who do these works belong to?", dedicated to works known as MNR (Musées nationaux récupération) — paintings brought back from Germany and Austria at the end of the Second World War and entrusted to national museums in the early 1950s, for lack of an identified heir. The museum holds 225, of which 13 are displayed in this gallery and 8 are declared "certainly looted". It is the first exhibition of its kind in France where paintings are hung so that the visitor can read their verso — stamps, labels, inventory marks tracing the work's journey from its original private interior to Nazi hands. The museum has moreover established its first research unit dedicated to searching for heirs, under the responsibility of François Blanchetière, chief curator in charge of provenance, looting and restitution issues. In nearly fifty years, the Musée d'Orsay has restituted around fifteen works to entitled parties.
- Archaeology
A new epigraphic reading connects a copper ring from Herodion to Pontius Pilate's administration in Judea
A study published on 2 September 2026 in the peer-reviewed journal Palestine Exploration Quarterly, authored by Catherine Bonesho, professor of ancient Jewish studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), proposes a new interpretation of the Greek inscription ΠΙΛΑΤΟ engraved on a copper ring unearthed during excavations at Herodion, the fortress-palace built by Herod the Great in the Judean desert. The ring, extracted from the excavations in the 1960s, remained in storage for more than fifty years before being described in 2018 by Israeli researchers, who saw in it a connection with Pontius Pilate, Roman prefect of Judea from 26 to 36 of the Common Era. A 2023 study had challenged this connection, reading in the inscription two words unrelated to the prefect. Bonesho argues that ΠΙΛΑΤΟ transcribes in Greek letters the Latin PILATO ("for Pilate"), the engraver having confused, through approximate knowledge of Latin, the Greek omicron and omega to render the long Latin "o". The modest material of the ring (copper alloy, not gold) and the engraved vessel motif suggest that it did not belong to Pilate himself but to a subordinate in his administration in Judea, charged with sealing documents in his name. The find illuminates the daily functioning of Roman power over the Jewish population of Judea under the very mandate of the prefect associated with the trial of Jesus in the Gospels.
- Memory
The Drancy Memorial of the Shoah prepares an exhibition on the Jews of the north-east Paris suburbs (1890-1960)
The Drancy Memorial of the Shoah announces the preparation of an exhibition titled "The Jews of the North-East Paris Suburbs, 1890–1960. Journeys, Solidarities, Persecutions and Resilience", scheduled from 18 November 2026 to 30 June 2027, followed by a travelling version intended for schools from 2027 onwards. Under the scientific direction of historian Zoé Grumberg (Sciences Po) and heritage historian Benoît Pouvreau (Cultural Heritage Service of Seine-Saint-Denis), the exhibition will trace how Jewish families settled in these communes participated in the social, economic and cultural construction of the suburbs, through migrations, industrialisation, Holocaust persecutions, post-war reconstruction and the arrival of Jews from North Africa. The Memorial has launched a public appeal for the collection of photographs, personal objects, diaries and professional documents relating to daily life before 1960, through its collections officer Éléonore Ward.
- MemoryTo be confirmed
The Jewish Museum Berlin celebrates its 25th anniversary with an exhibition on twelve artistic projects
On the occasion of its 25th anniversary, the Jewish Museum Berlin — designed by architect Daniel Libeskind — opens on 4 September 2026 the exhibition "The Opposite of Now: Artistic Paths to a Different Present" (until 10 January 2027), which brings together twelve artistic projects inviting visitors to imagine paths for social transformation. In parallel, the exhibition "Between the Lines: Daniel Libeskind and the Jewish Museum Berlin" (8 May – 1 November 2026, free admission) examines the architecture of the building and the founding history of the museum. The anniversary programme also includes a series of free concerts ("Zukunftsmusik"), meetings with specialists, seven family Sundays from June to December, and a summer celebration of the museum's 25th anniversary on 23 August 2026.
- Communities
Moscow: the Choral Synagogue celebrates its 120th anniversary and organizes its first "Museum Night"
The Choral Synagogue of Moscow, officially opened for worship on June 1, 1906 after nearly twenty years of construction (foundation stone in 1887, dome completed in 1888, reopening made possible by the manifesto of religious freedom of 1905), celebrates in 2026 its one hundred and twentieth anniversary. For the first time in its history, the establishment organized its own "Museum Night" on June 18, 2026 from midnight to three in the morning: visitors, divided into groups of a maximum of thirty people on thirty-minute time slots, were able to tour four spaces devoted to the history of the building, its daily functioning, Jewish traditions and the history of the Jews of Moscow, notably around the eruv. Entry was free for those under fourteen years of age. The one hundred and twentieth anniversary calendar also included a chess tournament between Jewish communities and schools.
- Publication
An international colloquium in Paris marks the centenary of Raul Hilberg's birth
An international colloquium titled "Raul Hilberg, a Historian and his Century — Writing the History of the Holocaust Then and Now" will be held in Paris from 8 to 10 November 2026, organized jointly by the History and historiography of the Shoah group of the Centre de recherches historiques (EHESS-CNRS), the German Historical Institute in Paris, the Mémorial de la Shoah and the Centre d'histoire de Sciences Po. It marks the centenary of the birth of historian Raul Hilberg (1926), author of "The Destruction of the European Jews", a foundational work in Shoah historiography. The organizing committee brings together Florent Brayard, Jürgen Finger, Julie Maeck and Agnieszka Wierzcholska; the call for papers focused on three areas: Hilberg's professional trajectory, the production of knowledge in his foundational work, and the reception of his research in Shoah and genocide historiography.
- Publication
A Book Traces a Century of the YIVO Institute, from Vilna to New York
Historian Kalman Weiser (Silber Family Chair in Modern Judaism, York University, Toronto) publishes "Yiddish Scholarship Comes to America: The YIVO Institute at 100" (Wayne State University Press, September 24, 2026, 356 pages, 17 illustrations). The work traces the history of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, founded in 1925 in Vilna as a worldwide organization for preserving East European Jewish culture, and focuses on the pivotal period 1940-1970, when the institute relocated to New York during the war while maintaining its founding motto "of the people, for the people, with the people". The book draws on extensive archival research and oral testimonies to show how YIVO adapted to American society and dominant Jewish culture. Weiser is also the author of "Jewish People, Yiddish Nation", which won the Canadian Jewish Book Award.
- Communities
Brunswick: The Israel Jacobson Network celebrates its tenth anniversary in honour of the founder of Reform Judaism
The Israel Jacobson Netzwerk für jüdische Kultur und Geschichte e.V., an association founded in April 2016 in the Brunswick region (Lower Saxony), celebrates its tenth anniversary on 17 September 2026 with a festive evening at the Städtisches Museum in Brunswick, entitled "Israel Jacobson und das deutsche Judentum". The event pays tribute to Israel Jacobson (1768-1828), banker and rabbi of Brunswick, Enlightenment thinker and pioneer of modern Reform Judaism: he founded the first interdenominational school, the Jacobson-Schule, and had the Jacobstempel built in Seesen, considered the first Reform synagogue in the world. Since 2016 the association has brought together regional institutions, scientific structures and individuals around research into and transmission of the history and culture of the Jews of the Brunswick region. The evening combines speeches, music and readings to connect this intellectual heritage to current questions of Jewish identity.
- MemoryTo be confirmed
The Jewish Museum of New York presents medieval treasures from St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague
The Jewish Museum of New York opens on September 18, 2026 the exhibition "Sacred Splendor: Jewish Ritual Art and Christian Treasures from St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague," running until February 7, 2027. It presents over 160 objects exploring the material expressions of devotion and sacred space in medieval and modern Jewish and Christian communities of Central Europe, including exceptional reliquaries from the St. Vitus Cathedral treasury — the largest presentation of this type outside Europe — alongside Jewish liturgical objects (Torah ornaments, illuminated manuscripts, ceremonial vessels) most of which have never been shown in the United States. One of the highlights is the presentation of medieval Jewish treasures buried in the late 1340s, at the time of anti-Jewish violence linked to the Black Death. Four contemporary artists, including Edmund de Waal, offer works in response to these themes.
- RestitutionTo be confirmed
A report documents Hungarian Jewish collections looted and held in around twenty state museums
American attorney Jonathan H. Schwartz, co-founder of the Holocaust Art Recovery Initiative, has published an evidence report establishing that the Hungarian state institutionally participated in the collection, cataloging and transfer of artworks looted from Jewish families to national museums during the Shoah. The report is based on digitized government and museum documents, including the 180 reels of microfilm preserved by historian Randolph L. Braham at the Zekelman Holocaust Center and made available online with the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO). More than twenty institutions are named, including the Hungarian National Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Budapest, the Déri Museum, the Janus Pannonius Museum and the Kiscelli Museum. Explicitly cited are the collection of Baron Ferenc Hatvany (paintings by Munkácsy, Gauguin, Cranach, Utrillo, transferred in 1944) and that of Baron Mór Lipót Herzog (El Greco, Cranach, Courbet, Gauguin, Munkácsy), whose systematic seizure was allegedly coordinated by Dénes Csánky, head of the museum department of the ministry. The report links these elements to the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Simon v. Hungary (2022) and to the 2025 amendment of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act, which would open new avenues of recourse to heirs. Published initially on July 9, 2025 in the Hungarian magazine Szombat Online, it also compiles documents found by survivor Clara Garbon-Radnóti.
- MemoryTo be confirmed
Death of Felix Garfunkel, Czernowitz survivor who became a doctor in Ohio
Dr. Felix Garfunkel, a Holocaust survivor born in Czernowitz (then in Romania), died on September 6, 2026, at the age of 95 in the Dayton, Ohio area. He had survived the Soviet and then Nazi invasions of his native city, internment in ghettos and concentration camps, as well as a death march — he notably escaped from the Skazinets camp thanks to peasants who had cut the barbed wire. After medical training in Ecuador, he founded and directed the radiology department of Greene Memorial Hospital in Xenia for twenty-seven years, before finishing his career at the VA in Dayton, from which he retired in 2010. He published his memoirs, "From Czernowitz: A Life in Three Continents" (2015), and his video testimony was recorded by Wright State University (1981) and then by Spielberg's Shoah Visual History Foundation (1993). His wife Erika, herself a survivor, died in 2020; his daughter, Rabbi Janice Garfunkel, died in 2013. His funeral took place on September 9, 2026 at the chapel of Beth Jacob cemetery in Dayton.
- Archives
Bnei Brak: The 40th Anniversary of the Steipler's Death and an Audio Collection at the National Library of Israel
Yaakov Israël Kanievsky, known as "the Steipler", who died on the night of Saturday, 23 Av 5745 (1985) following a funeral that gathered approximately 200,000 people in Bnei Brak, had his 40th anniversary of death (23 Av 5785, 2025) commemorated in the haredi press. The National Library of Israel preserves in its collections an ethnographic sound recording catalogued of the hespedim (funeral eulogies) delivered at his death, among the identified speakers being rabbis Makhlouf Pchima, Eliyahou Rafael and Yaakov Yitzchak Glinsky (1920-2014), referenced under the call number NNL_MUSIC_AL990002471450205171.
- Memory
The Sarajevo Haggadah at the center of a political controversy (August 2025)
On August 6, 2025, the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, custodian of the Sarajevo Haggadah — an illuminated Hebrew manuscript from the 14th century, on permanent display since 2002 and inscribed in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2017 — announced that it would direct revenues from ticket sales and book sales to "aid to Palestine", describing Israeli actions in Gaza as "systematic terror" and "genocide". The American Jewish Committee responded by recalling that the Haggadah, a symbol of Jewish resilience that survived the Inquisition, exile, and the Shoah, must not be politicized; Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, suggested that a patron could acquire it to restore its dignity. The Jewish community of Bosnia and Herzegovina today numbers approximately 1000 people.
- Restitution
The American-Libyan cultural property dispute over the assets of the Jewish community of Tripoli
A bilateral agreement between the United States and Libya on cultural property, signed in 2017 and revised on 9 July 2018, prohibits the importation into the United States of Libyan objects predating 1911—including, according to several Jewish organizations, religious and heritage objects from the expelled Jewish community (Torah scrolls, religious objects, gravestones). During a hearing on 26 July 2022 before the Cultural Property Advisory Committee of the U.S. State Department, Rabbi Eric Fusfield (B'nai B'rith International) testified alongside representatives of JIMENA, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the ADL, the World Jewish Congress and direct witnesses to the exodus (Pnina Meghnagi Solomon, Raphael Luzon, David Gerbi). The point of contention: the 2018 revised version replaced the explicit terms "Jewish"/"Hebrew" with the generic term "Ottoman," which according to the complainants dilutes the specificity of the spoliation suffered during the Tripoli pogrom of 1945 (more than 140 deaths) and widespread confiscations under Gaddafi beginning in 1969.
- Publication
Georgia and Diaspora: Three Academic Publications in 2025 on Georgian Jews
A 2025 thematic issue of the peer-reviewed journal Central Asian Survey (Taylor & Francis) is devoted to Jews of the Caucasus and Central Asia, with three articles relevant to the Georgian Jewish community. Yulia Oreshina (Georgian American University, Tbilissi), "Georgian Jews and Georgian non-Jews: Soviet experience through the prism of nostalgia", vol. 44, no. 2 (2025), p. 281-293, published online on 3 March 2025, draws on oral history interviews conducted in Israel and Georgia, with Georgian Jews and non-Jewish Georgians, to re-examine Soviet narratives about this minority: mutual aid in the parallel economy and religious practices, struggle for the right to emigrate, and contacts maintained between Jewish and non-Jewish families after alya. The same issue publishes "Jews of the Caucasus: multiple entanglements and migration routes" and "Jews and their neighbours in Central Asia and Caucasus in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries".
Sunday, September 6, 2026
- Communities
Sagunto celebrates the seventh edition of its "Sephardic September", themed around love
From 12 to 27 September 2026, the city of Sagunto (Sagunt/Morvedre, province of Valencia, Spain) is organizing the seventh edition of "Septiembre Sefardí", a cultural programme dedicated to the memory of its medieval Jewish community, expelled in 1492. The theme chosen for 2026, "Amor" (love), aims to evoke the attachment transmitted from generation to generation to the land, roots and Sephardic memory. The programme includes guided visits to the Grau Vell, the ancient Roman port of the city, on 12, 19 and 26 September, nocturnal visits to the former Jewish quarter on 12, 18, 19 and 25 September, a family treasure hunt on 27 September, as well as a free mobile game called "El secreto del Rabino", available throughout the month. The event is organized by the Sagunto tourism office with the support of the Red de Juderías de España (Network of Jewish quarters in Spain, also called Paths of Sephardim), of which the city is a historical member. Sagunto, known by its medieval name of Morvedre at the time when its Jewish community lived there, thus continues an annual programme begun seven years ago to make this aspect of its history known.
- Restitution
A painting looted by the Nazis, found at the home of a fugitive's daughter, returned to the Goudstikker heir in Argentina
A federal court in Buenos Aires validated, on 4 September 2026, the order by judge Santiago Inchausti returning to Marei von Saher — sole surviving heir of Dutch Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker — a "Portrait of a Lady" long attributed to Baroque Italian painter Giuseppe Vittore Ghislandi, before an examination ordered by the court, conducted by the National Academy of Fine Arts of Argentina, reassigned it to Giacomo Antonio Melchiorre Ceruti, an 18th-century Italian painter. The painting was part of the collection sold under duress by Goudstikker to Nazi authorities after the invasion of the Netherlands in 1940; it was found concealed in the residence of Patricia Kadgien, daughter of fugitive high-ranking Nazi official Friedrich Kadgien, and her husband Juan Carlos Cortegoso, initially located through a simple real estate listing. Charged in 2025 with aggravated receiving of stolen goods, the couple reached an agreement ending criminal proceedings by renouncing any rights to the work. Federal prosecutor Carlos Martinez confirmed that the painting, in good condition, remains for now in the custody of the Argentine Supreme Court, pending its actual transfer. Marei von Saher's lawyer, Guillermo Brady, indicated that the family wishes to display the work in Buenos Aires for at least one year, with discussions underway with several museums. This judicial outcome closes one of the most publicized Nazi looting cases recently discovered in South America.
- Restitution
A Flemish painting at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston claimed in litigation related to the Koenigs-Goudstikker collection
The Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston has held in reserve since 1946 a small five-inch painting titled "Landscape with Burning City," attributed to sixteenth-century Flemish painter Herri Met De Bles. The work was part of a collection assembled in the 1920s by Dutch financier Franz Koenigs, pledged in 1931 to the Amsterdam Jewish bank Lisser & Rosenkranz, then sold under duress in 1940 through Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker to Nazi authorities; it subsequently entered Hermann Göring's collection at Carinhall, before being intercepted and lost at the Liberation in 1945. The MFA itself noted provenance problems shortly after its acquisition in 1946. According to the Boston Globe, descendants of shareholders of Lisser & Rosenkranz bank, who have legally reconstituted the institution, are now claiming restitution of the painting and have submitted petitions to the MFA, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Dutch government, and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. The Boston museum has for the moment adopted a wait-and-see approach. The American press presented this matter, revealed in mid-August 2026, as one of the most significant disputes still open regarding art lost during the Second World War, in the context of recent developments in American legislation on statutes of limitations regarding restitution.
Saturday, September 5, 2026
- Memory
In the Netherlands, the Winterswijk synagogue tells Jewish marriage through seven family narratives
The Winterswijk synagogue, in Achterhoek (Netherlands), is celebrating its 137th anniversary by hosting from August 11, 2026 to September 27, 2026 the exhibition "Het Joodse huwelijk — zeven Winterswijkse verhalen" (Jewish Marriage — seven Winterswijk stories). Installed in the recently enlarged women's gallery of the building, the exhibition traces the practice of Jewish marriage through seven individual narratives of families from this small town in eastern Netherlands. Guided visits and expanded opening hours accompanied the programme during the summer, before the planned closing deadline at the end of September. Winterswijk, whose rural Jewish community is distinct from the better-documented centre of Twente and Enschede, thus benefits from a moment highlighting its own local memory.
- Archaeology
In Spain, the medieval Jewish necropolis of Lucena, the best preserved in Europe, opens its doors for Sephardic September
As part of the municipal programme "Septiembre Sefardí 2026" (1 September - 2 October), which is part of the 27th European Day of Jewish Culture (37 participating countries, theme "Love"), the city of Lucena, in Andalusia, opened on 5 September 2026 its medieval Jewish necropolis for an audio-guided visit entitled "Ritual funerario en Sefarad". The site, which extends over more than 3,700 m² and dates from the early Middle Ages, is presented by local authorities and the Network of Jewish Quarters of Spain as the largest excavated Jewish necropolis and the best preserved in Europe. A guided route also connected the Castillo del Moral, the necropolis and the historic Santiago district. The town hall also budgeted for 2026 the drafting of the technical project for a future visitor reception centre on the site.
- Genealogy
The Jewish Heritage Alliance Launches Global Digital Platform for Genealogy of Converso Descendants
The Jewish Heritage Alliance, an organization led by Michael Steinberger and active for more than a decade in Sephardic heritage, announced on August 25, 2026 the construction of an integrated digital platform intended for Bnei Anusim and converso descendants throughout the world. The initiative, named "Converso Online Community Initiative," combines historical resources, genealogical tools assisted by artificial intelligence and a global community space, with the ambition of bringing together archives and databases currently dispersed. Brazil is explicitly cited as hosting one of the largest populations of converso descendants; the Iberian Peninsula, the southwest of the United States and the Caribbean are also targeted. The announcement is published by San Diego Jewish World and confirmed by the organization's institutional page.
- Memory
Mainz inaugurates the first visitor center for the ShUM heritage sites, built above the medieval Jewish cemetery of the Judensand
On September 6, 2026, the city of Mainz inaugurates the "Sali-Levi-Haus", the first visitor center dedicated to the ShUM sites (Speyer, Worms, Mainz), three medieval Rhineland Jewish communities inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage in 2021. The building is constructed above the Judensand, the city's former medieval Jewish cemetery. The opening, at 1 p.m., includes guided tours of the exhibition and the cemetery itself, workshops and a presentation of the three ShUM cities via the traveling device "SchUMobil"; an opening week extends until September 11, 2026. The inauguration is part of celebrations of the fifth anniversary of the UNESCO inscription, launched on July 26, 2026 in Speyer. The Jewish cemeteries of Worms (Heiliger Sand) and Mainz will be closed to the public during the Tishrei holidays, from September 11 to October 2, 2026.
- Archives
The Zentralarchiv in Heidelberg changes leadership and prepares digitization of its holdings prior to 1945
Dr Jens Hoppe, a historian who came from the Claims Conference in Frankfurt where he worked for more than twenty years, has directed since summer 2025 the Zentralarchiv zur Erforschung der Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, in Heidelberg — the reference collection on Jewish communities in Germany since 1945, containing approximately two thousand linear meters of archives, housed for nearly five years in a former tobacco factory near the city railway station. He succeeds Ittai Joseph Tamari. In a lengthy interview published on 19 August 2026 by the Jüdische Allgemeine, he details conservation measures already underway — light protection of storage areas, quarantine of incoming boxes, silverfish traps — and announces a digitization project for paper holdings beginning in 2027, with priority given to documents prior to 1945, representing an extension of the collection's current scope toward older archives. The technical platform envisaged is DIMAG, a system of the Landesarchiv Bade-Wurtemberg. Jens Hoppe's appointment is independently confirmed by the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien in Heidelberg and by the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland.
- RestitutionTo be confirmed
In Melbourne, two volumes from the Wiesbaden Judaica collection, shipped in 1951, resurface in a family
In January 1951, the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction had shipped from Wiesbaden ten crates containing 1,328 Judaic books "without heirs" — confiscated by the Nazis and impossible to return to identified owners — via Paris and Antwerp to Melbourne, where they arrived in August 1951. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies stored them at Mount Scopus College, founded two years earlier. During a renovation in the 1990s, a teacher at the school, Janet Feldman, took home two volumes from the shipment without knowing their origin: a Mishna (Seder Nashim) printed in Amsterdam in 1766, and a Pessa'h mahzor in German printed in Berlin in 1880 by the Louis Gerschel publishing house, bearing the college library stamp. Following Janet Feldman's death in 2020, the two books passed to her daughter Kayla Feldman, who had them authenticated: their interior markings correspond to the lists of previous owners kept by the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction. The investigation, published on August 20, 2026 by The Jewish Independent (Australia), prompted reactions from readers indicating they may possess other volumes from the same shipment.
Friday, September 4, 2026
- CommunitiesTo be confirmed
In Nigeria, a donation restores sight to an elder of the Beth Ha'arachman Jewish community
An article published on 19 August 2026 on the African Jewish Voices website, an editorial platform run by the American NGO Kulanu, reports that an elderly member of the Jewish community of Beth Ha'arachman, in Akwa Ibom State, south-east Nigeria, regained his sight thanks to a medical operation funded by a donation. The man, referred to in the article as "Elder Abashal" and in his sixties, had suffered from severe visual impairment for several months. The account is part of a series of solidarity actions (tikkoun olam) documented by Kulanu around this community, already known for the recent renovation of the roof of its neighbouring synagogue, B'nai Yeshurun. Neither the donor nor the medical establishment is identified by name in the account.
- Archaeology
Restoration of the Choral Synagogue in Samara, Russia, receives approval from heritage authorities
The restoration project for the Choral Synagogue (khoralnaïa) in Samara, at 49 Sadovaïa Street, received approval from state expertise on August 31, 2026, according to the regional register of cultural heritage protection of Samara region; the information was relayed on September 1, 2026 by several local news outlets. The building, constructed between 1903 and 1909 for the Jewish community of Samara according to plans by architect Z. V. Kleinerman in a so-called "Moorish" style, is among the oldest monuments of synagogal architecture in the Volga region. The project, for which the Jewish community of Samara is itself the client, provides for a "restoration with adaptation to contemporary use" without alteration to the structural characteristics of the listed building. No completion date for the work has been communicated at this time.
- ArchaeologyTo be confirmed
A gold coin bearing the effigy of Ptolemaic queen Berenice II unearthed in the City of David in Jerusalem
A very rare gold coin, a quarter stater of pure gold at 99.3%, bearing the effigy of Ptolemaic queen Berenice II (246-221 BCE), was discovered by the Israel Antiquities Authority during excavations at the Givati parking lot, in the City of David, Jerusalem. About twenty examples of this type of coin are recorded worldwide, essentially from the antiquities trade; this would be the first to be unearthed in a controlled archaeological excavation stratigraphic context. The coin was presented to the public in early September 2026, on the occasion of the annual archaeological research congress "Ir David" in Jerusalem, organized by the Ir David Foundation and the Israel Antiquities Authority.
- Archaeology
A Paleo-Hebrew seal from the end of the First Temple discovered near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem
During excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Ir David Foundation near the southern wall of the Temple Mount, in the Davidson archaeological garden in Jerusalem, a black stone seal approximately 2,700 years old was uncovered. The inscription, engraved in Paleo-Hebrew script, bears the name "Yeho'ezer son of Hoshayahou" and is accompanied by the representation of a winged genius of Assyrian influence. Archaeologists see in it a sign of an asserted Judean identity despite an iconographic motif borrowed from Mesopotamian art of the period. The Israel Antiquities Authority presents this piece as one of the finest seals ever uncovered in excavations of ancient Jerusalem. The seal was revealed to the public on September 4, 2026, on the occasion of the annual archaeological research congress "Ir David," organized jointly by the Ir David Foundation and the Israel Antiquities Authority.
- Restitution
A Kandinsky Restituted to the Lewenstein Heirs Goes to Auction at Christie's for Over 30 Million Dollars
The announcement was made on September 1, 2026: "Das Bunte Leben" ("La Vie colorée", 1907) by Vassily Kandinsky, restituted in 2023 by the Bayerische Landesbank to the heirs of the Dutch Jewish couple Emanuel Albert and Hedwig Lewenstein-Weyermann following the opinion of the German advisory commission on looted art (Beratende Kommission), will be put up for sale at Christie's in London on October 14, 2026, with an estimate exceeding 30 million dollars. The work had been entrusted for safekeeping to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam by the Lewenstein children before their flight in the face of Nazi occupation; their property was confiscated and dispersed in 1940, the painting being sold at auction to collector Salomon B. Slijper. Acquired in 1972 by the Bayerische Landesbank, it had been lent for over fifty years to the Lenbachhaus in Munich before its restitution. The public sale, which makes the file accessible in detail for the first time, constitutes the new development of this month of September — the restitution decision itself dated from 2023.
- PublicationTo be confirmed
The Jewish Quarterly Review publishes its summer 2026 issue, devoted notably to female correspondence from the Cairo Geniza
The Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, which edits the Jewish Quarterly Review, published online on August 19, 2026 the summer issue of the journal (volume 116, no. 3). It includes notably an article by Oded Zinger on female correspondence preserved in the Cairo Geniza and the agency of women as it emerges there, as well as a study by Hannah Davidson on Nahmanide's permissive position concerning medical interactions between Jewish physicians and Christian patients, contextualized by medieval Catalan medicine. The table of contents also includes articles on narratives of the afterlife in the Babylonian Talmud (Yuval Fraenkel), diagrams of the Tree of Porphyry in medieval Hebrew manuscripts (Sivan Gottlieb), Hasidic narratives of bodily exposure of the tsadik (Chen Mandel-Edrei and Leore Sachs-Shmueli), and a Maimonidean counter-critique of Hegelian objections to Jewish law (Dylan Shaul).
- ArchivesTo be confirmed
An autograph letter by Rabbi Yehuda Leib Tsirelson, dated 1913, sold at auction
An autograph letter signed by Rabbi Yehuda Leib Tsirelson, dated 7 Shevat (1913) and written in Kishinev on letterhead, was sold on September 12, 2022 by Kestenbaum & Company in Brooklyn. A one-page document in Hebrew, it addresses congratulations and blessings to Rabbi Moshe Nahum Yerushalminski (1855-1916), then rabbi of Kielce, on the occasion of his son Shimon David's wedding. This document attests to the personal epistolary relations that Tsirelson, then young rabbi of Kishinev, maintained with the Polish rabbinical world fifteen years before his election as chief rabbi of all Bessarabia in 1918.
- Publication
An unpublished collection of essays by Jean Améry on antisemitism published in France in May 2025
Les Belles Lettres publishing house (collection "Le goût des idées") published on 7 May 2025 an unpublished collection in French entitled Le nouvel antisémitisme, bringing together essays by Jean Améry written between 1967 and 1978, translated from German and English by Dominique Tassel and Élie Tassel. The work is prefaced by sociologist Eva Illouz and American academic Alvin H. Rosenfeld, with an afterword by Irène Heidelberger-Leonard, the leading editor of Améry's complete works at Klett-Cotta. These texts, which remained largely unknown to French-speaking readers, address Améry's existential attachment to Israel and what he analysed as antisemitism disguising itself as anti-Zionism within post-war European left-wing circles.
- Communities
A new Chief Rabbi of Moldova enthroned in Chișinău, 85 years after Tsirelson's death
On August 12, 2026, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Axelrod (Chabad) was enthroned as Chief Rabbi of Moldova during a ceremony held at the historic Glazers' Synagogue in Chișinău, in the presence of the Chief Rabbi of Israel Kalman Ber and chief rabbis from several countries. Elected on May 3, 2026 by the rabbinical council of the community, he succeeds Rabbi Zalman Abelsky, sent in 1990 by the Rabbi of Lubavitch to rebuild Moldovan Jewish life after the fall of the USSR and died in 2014 — the position having remained vacant for twelve years. Several articles devoted to the event explicitly recall the historical continuity of the office with Yehuda Leib Tsirelson, Chief Rabbi of Bessarabia from 1908, builder of a complete Jewish school system and deputy to the Romanian parliament. One factual clarification emerges from this coverage: Tsirelson died on July 6, 1941 (11 Tammouz 5701) in a German air bombardment of Kishinev, that is eleven days before the Germano-Romanian occupation of the city and the mass massacre that followed — his death thus precedes the pogrom proper, with which it must not be confused.
- MemoryTo be confirmed
Kehila Kedosha Janina: The Synagogues of Greece Reconstructed in Virtual Reality in New York
The Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue and Museum, the only Romaniote synagogue in the Western Hemisphere (Lower East Side, New York), presents an exhibition titled "The Synagogues of Greece: Making the Invisible Visible through Architecture, Technology, and Storytelling". It is the result of thirty years of architectural documentation conducted by architect Elias Messinas, complemented by the digitization of surveys from the 1960s carried out by architect Shemtov Samuel, and presents the architectural traditions of Greek synagogues through digital models and virtual reality tools providing access to synagogues that have disappeared today. The same venue hosts a "Romaniote American Oral History Project", led by Theo Canter, gathering dozens of interviews organized around six themes — cultural adaptation, language, cuisine, Passover, community gatherings, religious life — documenting over a century of Romaniote presence in America. The Romaniotes, Greek-speaking Jews of the former Byzantine Empire bearing their own rite (Minhag Romania), notably originated from Ioannina, the historical center of this community.
- Memory
Gailingen: A Staged Reading of Heinz Heilbronn's Diary for the 80th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz
On January 27, 2025, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the association Verein für jüdische Geschichte Gailingen, the municipality of Gailingen and the Jüdisches Museum Gailingen, in partnership with the theatre group of the Hegau-Gymnasium in Singen, presented a staged reading of the private diaries of Heinz Heilbronn (1920-1972). Born in Gailingen in a physician's family, Heilbronn was the last Jewish student allowed to sit for his baccalauréat at the Hegau-Gymnasium, in March 1938, despite persecutions already underway since 1933 — a Stolperstein at the entrance of the school today commemorates his path. In his diary, he became the chronicler of the persecution of the Jews of Gailingen; after his baccalauréat, he emigrated to Switzerland, was subjected to forced labour in a Swiss camp (1942-1945), joined his family in Kenya after the war, then settled in Palestine, where he died in 1972. Gailingen was, in the mid-19th century, the most important rural Jewish community in the Grand Duchy of Baden (Landjudentum).
- Restitution
The historic Coming Street cemetery in Charleston opens to the public on June 14, 2026
The congregation Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (KKBE), which celebrated in 2024 the 275th anniversary of organized Jewish communal life in Charleston, founded in 1749, has announced the free public opening of its historic Coming Street cemetery on Sunday, June 14, 2026. Established in the eighteenth century, this cemetery is the oldest Jewish cemetery still in use in the American South and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places; it received the Carolopolis Award from the Preservation Society of Charleston in 2023. It contains the graves of merchants, poets, veterans of several American wars, and the entrepreneur who introduced gas lighting to Charleston. KKBE and the Historic Coming Street Cemetery Restoration Committee are conducting ongoing restoration work on the tombstones and boundary walls. This opening concerns the Jewish community of Charleston, South Carolina.
- Archaeology
The fortified ditch separating the upper city and lower city in Jebusite Jerusalem, uncovered at the Givati parking lot
In July 2024, the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel-Aviv University announced the discovery of a massive fortified ditch in the City of David, resolving an archaeological question open for 150 years. The ditch, measuring at least 9 meters deep and 30 meters wide, separated the upper city — likely location of the Temple and royal palace — from the lower city. The discovery was made during excavations at the Givati parking lot, the longest archaeological excavation currently underway in Israel, begun in 2007 and directed by Doron Ben-Ami and Yana Tchekhanovets (Israel Antiquities Authority) in collaboration with Yuval Gadot (Tel-Aviv University); archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon had identified part of this structure in the 1960s but had mistakenly interpreted it as a natural valley. The results were published in the institutional journal of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Hadashot Arkheologiyot. The precise chronological interpretation of the ditch is the subject of ongoing scientific debate: Professor Amihai Mazar has suggested that it could correspond to a Jebusite fortification predating the David period rather than a work from the Israelite period — a point that remains a documented academic controversy, not a settled fact. This structure complements the fortifications already known around the Gihon spring, dated to the Middle Bronze Age (circa 1800-1700 BCE) by excavations by Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron.
Thursday, September 3, 2026
- Manuscripts
An attic in Tamási yields Hebrew prayer books of a vanished community after seventy-five years
In Tamási, in the Hungarian county of Tolna, a fifty-five-year-old building contractor, László Borbély, discovered in the attic of his house a leather suitcase sealed for approximately seventy-five years, containing fifteen prayer books and Bibles in Hebrew — some pages bearing traces of burn marks, a sign that they had already been saved from a fire. The house stands on a street where a synagogue once stood, today marked by a commemorative plaque; the Jewish community of Tamási numbered four hundred eleven members in 1900, one hundred eighty-seven in 1941, and two hundred ten at the time of the 1944 ghetto. Several works bear name inscriptions and family stamps. László Borbély donated the collection to the Hungarian-Israeli friendship association Max Nordau of Bonyhád, whose president Beáta Hetesi had a display case arranged in the historic former synagogue of Bonyhád to exhibit the recovered books. This discovery echoes a previous instance where a Bible from Bonyhád had already been returned to descendants living in New York, which now prompts the association to actively search for heirs of the families named in the works. It presents this work — preserving, exhibiting, researching, returning — as an obligation it describes as sacred.
- Restitution
The Czech National Library exhibits Hebrew books looted by the Nazis and prepares their restitution to Budapest
The Czech National Library opened on August 4, 2026, at the Klementinum Gallery in Prague, the exhibition "Ze stínů ke světlu" (From Shadow to Light), devoted to the fate of approximately seven hundred Hebrew books confiscated by the Nazis between 1930 and 1943 from Jewish communities and institutions across Europe, discovered about ten years ago in crates at the Klementinum. Free and visible until October 4, 2026, the exhibition presents several dozen of these volumes; historians have been able to identify the original owners for nearly half of the titles, tracing collections from Munich, Vienna, the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest and the Jewish community of Olomouc, as well as works printed in Warsaw, Berlin, Lvov, Vilnius, Cracow, London and Algiers. The rarest piece presented is a Mishneh Torah by Maimonides printed in Venice in the mid-sixteenth century, whose original owner remains unidentified. The National Library plans to return several works to existing institutions, in particular to the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest, which had nearly three thousand volumes confiscated during the war.
- Communities
Porto, the Algarve and Cascais celebrate European Day of Jewish Culture together
On Sunday 6 September 2026, on the occasion of European Day of Jewish Culture, announced on 2 September, the Jewish Community of Porto organised a free programme open to the public, expecting approximately five thousand visitors. Its president, Gabriel Senderowicz, indicated to the Lusa agency that the Jewish Community of the Algarve could present an art exhibition for the first time on this occasion, as the Cascais community already does. The Porto programme included three screenings at the Jewish Museum, the presentation of the book "À Mesa em Sefarad" with Sephardic gastronomy tasting, a concert by the Mekor Haim choir in Ladino, Hebrew and Yiddish, testimony from Chaja Lassmann, Auschwitz survivor, a historical lecture at the German College, as well as free visits to the Kadoorie Mekor Haim synagogue—presented as the largest in the Iberian Peninsula—, the Holocaust museum, an art gallery and the Rosh Pinah library, which holds approximately ten thousand volumes. Celebrated in Porto since 2022, this event illustrates the progressive structuring of a network of small Portuguese Sephardic communities—Porto, Algarve, Cascais—around a shared heritage moment.
- Communities
Camp Sarah: Nigeria's Jewish summer camp holds its fourth edition in Abuja
Camp Sarah, the summer camp for Jewish children in Nigeria — a community that is essentially Igbo — held its fourth edition at the Tikvat Yisrael synagogue in Kubwa, in the suburbs of Abuja. The session ended on 30 August 2026, as attested by the latest post on the camp's official blog, a collective testimony from the Counselors in Training at the closing assembly. This edition brought together approximately eighty children aged five to sixteen and twenty staff members, including counselors from Nigeria, Uganda and the United States. Founded in 2023 by American expatriate Debbie Isser and Moshe Hezekiah Nwafor, the camp offers Torah study, Israeli songs adapted to Nigerian instruments and practical workshops — soap-making, candle-making. Nigeria has more than a hundred synagogues but no resident rabbi, and Camp Sarah aims to train a future generation of community leaders, with a project to expand towards the eastern part of the country.
- CommunitiesTo be confirmed
A new roof for B'nai Yeshurun synagogue in south-east Nigeria
The B'nai Yeshurun community in Ikot Akpa Ekang, in the Uruan area of Akwa Ibom State (south-east Nigeria), has completed the first phase of a permanent roofing project, after more than four years without definitive coverage. The project, led by the community's founder, Abimelech, and its president, Daniel Ephraim, was partly financed by the international NGO Kulanu and coordinated with the Akwa Ibom chapter of the Judaism Fellowship Initiative—an organisation founded in 2011 to bring together Igbo synagogues—presided over by Rishon Ben Avraham. Only half of the building is covered at this stage; the second phase of the work remains to be financed.
Wednesday, September 2, 2026
- Memory
Enschede: 85th anniversary of the Twente roundup, commemoration at the synagogue
On Thursday, 10 September 2026 at 1 p.m., the annual commemoration of the "Twente roundup" (Twentse razzia) will take place at the synagogue in Enschede, the Netherlands. The event marks the 85th anniversary of this roundup on 13 and 14 September 1941, carried out by the German occupier in retaliation for an act of sabotage: 105 Jewish men were arrested throughout the Twente region (66 in Enschede, 10 in Hengelo, 10 in Almelo, and in several other localities), then deported on 16 September 1941 to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, where they were all murdered within four months. Among the scheduled speakers are Bert Oude Engberink, chairman of the organizing committee, historian Gerben Post, author of a work on Dutch prisoners at Mauthausen, chief rabbi of the Netherlands Binyomin Jacobs, and Austrian opera singer Daniel Johannsen. Students from the Prinseschool, which has adopted the monument erected in front of the synagogue, will read the names of the victims. The Twente roundup is also noted by historians for having given early warning to the local Jewish community: through the resistance network of pastor Leendert Overduin, it contributed to a survival rate of 53 per cent in Enschede, substantially higher than the Dutch average.
- Memory
Sydney Jewish Museum: appeal for object donations for an exhibition on Jewish food culture
The Sydney Jewish Museum, currently closed to the public for major expansion (reopening scheduled for late 2026), is preparing a permanent exhibition titled "B'teavon: Jewish Food" dedicated to Jewish food culture and ritual objects of family meals. The museum is launching a public appeal for donations of domestic memory objects: dining chairs, challah boards and covers, kiddush cups, serving dishes, Shabbat candelabras. The initiative aims to materially document the transmission of household practices rather than institutional history alone. Donation submissions close on 30 September 2026.
- Memory
Góra Kalwaria (Ger), cradle of Ger Hasidism: inauguration of the "Macewa Pamięci" monument in 2024
On May 15, 2024 at noon, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) inaugurated in Góra Kalwaria the monument "Macewa Pamięci" (Stone of Memory) commemorating more than 3,500 Jews from the town and surrounding areas — cradle of the Hasidic dynasty of Ger (Gur), founded in 1859 by Yitzhak Meir Alter — murdered between 1940 and 1943. The Germans had created a ghetto in 1940 confined to four streets (famine, diseases, overcrowding); starting in February 1941, approximately 3,000 people were deported to the Warsaw ghetto while 300 sick people were executed on site. The ceremony brought together the director of the IPN's Education Bureau, a rabbi, a priest, the mayor of the town and representatives of the Warsaw Ghetto Museum. The Jewish cemetery of the town (founded in 1802, where three admorim of Ger are buried) also benefited from preservation work: 66 tombstones looted by the Nazis to build a Soviet prisoner camp, found in 2016 during road work, were returned to form a lapidarium.
- Memory
Troyes: the site "Rachi of Troyes, a European place of memory" candidate and then laureate of the European Heritage Label (2025)
On 28 March 2025, Culture Minister Rachida Dati announced the submission to the European Commission of the candidacy "Rachi of Troyes, a European place of memory" for the European Heritage Label — the only French candidacy selected for this cycle, then confirmed as laureate by the European jury among the sites labelled "European Heritage 2025". The dossier, carried by a Public Interest Grouping (State, Grand Est Region, Aube department, City of Troyes, Central Consistory), brings together six sites: the former medieval Jewish quarter of Troyes, the Rachi European University Institute, the Rachi House, and three murals from the "Rachi Route" in Dampierre, Ramerupt and Lhuître. The press release emphasizes that Rachi's manuscripts (11th century) are preserved in fifteen European countries. In parallel, the Rachi Institute of Troyes organized an exhibition "10 centuries of Judaism" in July 2024 and was to welcome in September 2025 a group of Israeli researchers specializing in medieval history, halakha and linguistics.
- Archaeology
The Scuola Canton of Venice, Ashkenazi synagogue from 1531, completes its restoration
The restoration project of the Museum of the Ghetto of Venice, which encompasses three historic synagogues (Scuola Italiana, Scuola Grande Tedesca, Scuola Canton), was progressing according to a timeline announced at approximately 18 months after May 2024, according to David Landau, project manager, interviewed by Italian Jewish media Mosaico-CEM. Unlike the other two, the Scuola Canton — founded in 1531-1532, of Ashkenazi rite, known for its wooden bimah topped with a small dome — did not require major restoration, having already been restored by the World Monuments Fund; the planned work on it is minor (hangings, cleaning of decorative elements, compliance upgrades, accessibility elevator). The museum remains open to the public (2025-2026 season: from 5 November 2025 to 10 April 2026), the Scuola Canton remaining active for worship during the cold months and visitable via guided tours of the Museo Ebraico for the rest of the year.
Tuesday, September 1, 2026
- ArchaeologyTo be confirmed
North Macedonia: the ESJF identifies four Jewish cemeteries during its 2026 Balkan campaign
As part of a joint campaign by the ESJF (European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative) and the United States Commission for the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad (USCPAHA), funded by the latter and launched in April 2026 in nine countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans, the ESJF's lead surveyor, Ian Galevskii, completed a field survey in North Macedonia on 26 August 2026. Of eleven sites identified by historical sources as possible locations of Jewish burial grounds, four Jewish cemeteries were formally identified. The ESJF notes that these results will be further verified by its team and by local historians, and that additional research could make it possible to locate other destroyed cemeteries. The mission benefited from the support of the Holocaust Memorial Center for the Jews of Macedonia and the local Jewish community.
- Publication
The Russian Journal Judaic-Slavic Journal publishes its issue 13-14, devoted to Jewish communities of Eastern Europe
The Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Sefer Center published, on 30 June 2026, issue 1-2(13-14) (year 2025) of the Judaic-Slavic Journal. This issue includes notably an article by Margarita Kojenevskaïa on the Jews of Glouboko (Belarus) in the post-war period, a study by Marina Guekht on the self-identification of Jews in Latvia between 1950 and 1980, an oral history dossier on the Shoah bringing together contributions by Anna Kirziouk, Ekaterina Zakrevskaïa and Sergueï Belianine, field notes by Olga Belova on the ethnographic "discovery" of Belarus (2012-2016), a study by Svetlana Amosova on ethnographic expeditions among the Jews of the Caucasus mountains, as well as an article by Joseph Brener and Vladimir Journavlev on the Jewish settlement project in Birobidjan and antisemitism (1927-1937).
- Communities
An exhibition of the Jewish Museum of São Paulo traces two centuries of Judeo-Moroccan immigration to the Amazon
The travelling exhibition "Judeus na Amazônia" ("Jews in the Amazon"), produced by the Jewish Museum of São Paulo after two years of research, arrived on 29 August 2026 in Manaus, where it is on display until 6 December 2026 at the Instituto Cultural Brasil–Estados Unidos, with free admission. Bringing together more than two hundred works, videos, documents and photographs arranged in twelve thematic sections, it traces the immigration of Moroccan Jewish families—originally from Tangier, Tétouan, Fes and Marrakech—to Brazilian Amazonia between 1810 and 1930, settling in Manaus, Belém, Gurupá or Cametá. Researcher Samuel Benchimol (1923-2002) holds a central place in it. Among the displayed pieces are a ketuba from 1946, a twentieth-century hanukkiah and a silver Torah ornament from 1952. The curatorial team brings together Aldrin Moura de Figueiredo, Ilana Feldman, Renato Athias and Mariana Lorenzi, curator of this stage.
- Communities
Buenos Aires: Thirteenth Edition of the "Rosh Hashaná Urbano" Public Festival
The community organization Limud BA organized, on Saturday, August 30, 2026 (with a postponement planned for September 6 in case of rain), the thirteenth edition of "Rosh Hashaná Urbano", a free festival open to all audiences, at Seeber Square, at the corner of Libertador and Sarmiento avenues in Buenos Aires, to mark the entry into the year 5787 of the Hebrew calendar. The program included seventeen food stands serving traditional Jewish cuisine, nine conferences and workshops, approximately twenty craft stands and five musical performances. The president of Limud BA, Cynthia Cuculiansky, presented the event, which requires no community affiliation to participate, as the fruit of thirteen years of public transmission of Jewish traditions in Buenos Aires.
- ArchaeologyTo be confirmed
Slovenia: ESJF completes aerial surveys of fifteen Jewish cemeteries, including that of Nova Gorica
The ESJF (European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative) completed on 9 August 2026 its drone surveys of fifteen Slovenian Jewish cemeteries, as part of the same 2026-2027 Balkan and Baltic campaign financed by the American Commission for the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad. This survey followed a first ground phase, covering seventeen sites, begun shortly after the completion, a few days earlier, of the documentation of all known Jewish cemeteries in Kosovo by the same team. According to the ESJF's preliminary assessment, two of the Slovenian sites could lend themselves to future protective fencing work. The organisation highlights the Jewish cemetery of Nova Gorica, near the Italian border, whose tombstones present a distinctive form attributed to Italian architectural influence on the region.
- Memory
Death in Tel Aviv of Rabbi Yitzchak Alfasi, historian of Hasidism and preserver of the memory of destroyed communities
Rabbi Dr Yitzchak Alfasi died on Thursday, August 27, 2026 in Tel Aviv, at the age of 96. Born on the night of Yom Kippur 1929 in Tel Aviv in a Hasidic family from Gour, trained at the yeshiva in Hebron and holder of a doctorate from Bar-Ilan University on Hasidism and the Jewish national awakening, he devoted more than seventy years to documenting the history of Hasidic dynasties in Eastern Europe — Gour, Habad, Breslev, Ruzhin, Vijnitz notably. Author of more than ninety works, including his Encyclopedia of Hasidism which became a reference work, he devoted decades above all to collecting from elderly survivors and their descendants the memories of thousands of Hasidic communities annihilated during the Shoah, in order to set down in writing their names and histories before they disappeared. He received the Rabbi Kook Prize for religious literature in 2004.
- ArchaeologyTo be confirmed
Bosnia and Herzegovina: first results of the ESJF survey, Jewish burials confirmed at 32 of 38 sites visited
On June 12, 2026, the ESJF (European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative) published the first quantified results of its field survey in Bosnia and Herzegovina, begun on June 3, 2026 by principal surveyor Ian Galevskii as part of the joint ESJF-USCPAHA (US Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad) campaign covering nine countries in the Balkans and the Baltic. Of the 38 locations visited, the presence of Jewish burials was confirmed at 32 sites.
- Restitution
The United States Removes the Expiration Date from Its Law on the Restitution of Works Looted by the Nazis
The American president signed on April 13, 2026 the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act of 2025 (Public Law 119-81), adopted unanimously by the Senate in December 2025 and then by the House of Representatives in March 2026. The text permanently removes the deadline that was to cause the previous law to expire on January 1, 2027, and explicitly restricts the use of procedural defense means — notably the statute of limitations for negligence ("laches") — which had often allowed claims for restitution of works looted during the Shoah to fail. The Simon Wiesenthal Center was part of the broad coalition of organizations that supported this legislation. More than one hundred thousand works looted during the Nazi period remain to this day unrestituted to their legitimate owners or their heirs.
- ArchaeologyTo be confirmed
Bulgaria: First country completed in ESJF-USCPAHA campaign to survey Jewish cemeteries in the Balkans and Baltic
The ESJF (European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative) announced on 4 May 2026 that it had completed the survey of all known Jewish cemeteries in Bulgaria, where its lead surveyor, Ian Galevskii, visited 40 sites in total. This survey is part of a contract signed on 14 April 2026 between the United States Commission for the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad (USCPAHA) and the ESJF, covering nine countries in Central Europe, the Balkans and the Baltic region (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Estonia, Kosovo, Latvia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Slovenia). The ESJF notes that Bulgaria is the first country in this joint programme whose field survey has been entirely completed, with work continuing in the eight other countries.
- Memory
Greece's Holocaust Museum announces its opening in Thessaloniki for 2026
The Greece Holocaust Museum, under construction since late 2024 on the former site of Thessaloniki's railway station — from which nearly fifty thousand Greek Jews were deported to Auschwitz in 1943 — is to open to the public in 2026, though no precise date has yet been announced. The octagonal eight-storey building, designed by a team of German, Israeli and Greek architects, will house permanent and temporary exhibitions, archives and educational programmes. Its financing, close to thirty million dollars, comes from the German government, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the municipality of Thessaloniki and private donors. David Saltiel, president of the Jewish community of Thessaloniki, presented the museum as needing to be "the voice of all those who were loaded onto the trains and never returned."
- ArchaeologyTo be confirmed
Latvia: ESJF launches drone surveys, four Jewish cemeteries already documented
The ESJF (European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative) announced on 23 June 2026 the beginning of its drone surveys in Latvia, entrusted to local surveyor Jevgenijs Luhņevs, who has already documented the Jewish cemeteries of Jelgava, Jūrmala, the new cemetery of Riga and Tukums. This stage is part of the Baltic component of the joint ESJF-USCPAHA campaign (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Estonia, Kosovo, Latvia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Slovenia), and was followed on 4 August 2026 by an online seminar devoted to documenting Jewish heritage in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, with the participation of Dr Serafima Velkovich.
- ArchaeologyTo be confirmed
Serbia: EJCI completes protective fencing of the Jewish cemetery of Čurug in Voivodina
The EJCI (European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative) announced on 27 August 2026 the completion of protective fencing work at the Jewish cemetery of Čurug in Voivodina (Serbia), whose Jewish presence could date back to the early nineteenth century. This site is part of the 129 Jewish burials recorded in the region during the complete survey of Serbia published by the EJCI on 25 June 2026, based on fieldwork conducted from July to November 2025 and presented by the organization as the most comprehensive resource available on the country's Jewish cemeteries.
Monday, August 31, 2026
- MemoryTo be confirmed
The Memorial of Jewish Refugees in Shanghai Awarded for Its Cultural Programme "Navigating Together, Sharing the Future"
The Memorial of Jewish Refugees in Shanghai (museum of the former Ohel Moshe synagogue) has had its "humanist walk" programme entitled "Navigating Together, Sharing the Future" (风雨同舟 共享未来) distinguished as "Excellent Work" (优秀作品) at the fifth Shanghai Red Cultural Creativity Competition, according to an announcement published on 3 August 2026 on the memorial's website. This programme combines an in-depth museum visit with a walking exploration of the surrounding historic district, the former area where Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Europe were confined between 1938 and 1941. It aims to raise awareness of Shanghai's protective role towards these refugees and mutual aid between communities in times of crisis. Public walking sessions were scheduled for 8 and 23 August 2026, during the summer holidays, with an invitation to register for future editions.
- Communities
The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene announces its 111th season, with a Yiddish "Fiddler on the Roof" in Los Angeles
On August 13, 2026, the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene (NYTF, founded in 1915 on the Lower East Side of New York) announced its 111th season, running from September 2026 to June 2027. The season opens on September 17, 2026 with the annual free concert "New York Sings Yiddish" at SummerStage, Central Park. This is followed by "Di Yam Gazlonim!", a Yiddish adaptation of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance" by Al Grand and Allen Lewis Rickman, on October 25, 2026 at Symphony Space; a staged reading of the "Dybbuk" at the Center for Jewish History; a "Soul to Soul" concert at the First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem in January 2027; and most notably a revival of "Fiddler on the Roof" in Yiddish from February 13 to March 14, 2027 at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, featuring original actors Steven Skybell and Jackie Hoffman, directed by Joel Grey. Artistic direction continues to be assured by Zalmen Mlotek, artistic director of the company since 2001.
- Memory
Opening of the Holocaust Education Centre for the Jewish Community of Perth (August 2026)
The Holocaust Education Centre, developed by the Holocaust Institute of Western Australia for the Jewish community of Perth, officially opens on 27 August 2026 at the JHub Maccabi Community Centre in Yokine. The Government of Western Australia is funding the interior design of the centre (exhibitions, installations, lighting, graphics) to the amount of 1.8 million Australian dollars. In January 2025, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced an additional federal grant of 2 million dollars over four years for the Institute's educational programmes and operations. The centre offers exhibitions, multimedia content and survivor testimonies for the education of students, teachers and the general public — the most significant institutional development for Perth's small Jewish community in recent years.
- Memory
The 80th anniversary of the rescue of the Jews of Zante marked by a scientific symposium
A two-day scientific symposium, "The Holocaust on the Island of the Righteous," takes place beginning February 1, 2024 in Zante, for the 80th anniversary of the rescue of the island's Jewish community by mayor Loukas Karrer and metropolitan Chrysostomos, who refused in 1943-1944 to hand over to German occupation authorities the list of 275 Jews on the island, hiding them instead in rural villages. The program includes a lecture on the Jews of Zante from the 15th to 20th century, the screening of the film "Life will smile," as well as a visit to the Jewish cemetery and the former synagogue, destroyed by the 1953 earthquake, today the site of a monument to the two Righteous Among the Nations distinguished by Yad Vashem in 1978. The community of Zante remains, to this day, the only Jewish community under German occupation in Europe to have suffered no deportations.
- Communities
The SchUM Cultural Days 2026 in Speyer, Worms and Mainz
The city of Speyer, in partnership with the SchUM cities of Worms and Mainz (association SchUM-Städte e.V.), is organizing the SchUM-Kulturtage (SchUM Cultural Days) in autumn 2026, as part of the UNESCO World Heritage label obtained in 2021 for the Judenhof in Speyer, the synagogue quarter of Worms and the ancient Jewish cemeteries of Worms and Mainz. The programme includes readings, theatre, concerts and kosher cooking workshops, as well as presentations on contemporary self-understanding in Judaism. The Judenhof in Speyer has housed the SchPIRA museum since 2010, which presents the archaeological remains of the three pillars of medieval communal life: a Romanesque synagogue, a monumental mikveh dated to around 1120 (the oldest preserved in Europe) and a cemetery.
- Memory
Reopening of the Rhodes Jewish Museum and commemorations in November 2025
The Rhodes Jewish Museum, entirely renovated and adjoining the Kahal Shalom synagogue (built around 1577, the oldest active synagogue in Greece), reopens its doors with a new exhibition on November 9, 2025. The Jewish Community of Rhodes and the Greek General Secretariat for Religious Affairs are organizing three days of events on this occasion marking the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism: screening of the documentary "ZEW. The Worlds that Meet", presentation of Michael Frank's book "One Hundred Saturdays" in tribute to survivor Stella Levi, and an educational seminar on the local history of the community. As a reminder, the 1,615 Jews of Rhodes and 94 of Kos were arrested on July 23, 1944 and deported the following day to Auschwitz, the last convoy of Greek Jews to the camps; only approximately 150 survived.
Sunday, August 30, 2026
- MemoryTo be confirmed
Death of Jerry Moses, Former Jewish Refugee from the Shanghai Ghetto
Jerry Moses, born in Germany in 1934, was among the approximately twenty thousand Jewish refugees who found shelter in Shanghai during the Second World War, in the Hongkou district. He died in the United States on 29 July 2026, at the age of 92. His death was announced on 30 July 2026 by the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Memorial (上海犹太难民纪念馆), an institution located around the former Ohel Moshe synagogue and which documents the reception of this community by the city between 1938 and 1945. The museum regularly publishes individual notices about the last direct witnesses of the Shanghai exile, as well as accounts from their descendants who came to consult its archives — a collection that Zakhor's watch has already explored several times in recent weeks.
- Publication
A scholarly compilation published in Jerusalem for the 70th anniversary of Hebraist Semion Iakerson
A collective work (Festschrift) entitled "Scientia fata libellorum" ("Knowing the fate of books") was published in 2026 in Jerusalem for the seventieth birthday of Semion Mordoukhovitch Iakerson, Russian orientalist and Hebraist, recognized specialist in medieval Hebrew manuscripts and Hebrew incunabula. The volume, of 420 illustrated pages, brings together scholarly contributions written in his honor by his students and colleagues, assembled by Elena Iouzbachian, Semion Parijski, Alina Lissitsyna and Ekaterina Belkina. Iakerson, one of the world's leading specialists in the history of ancient Hebrew books, is affiliated with the Oriental Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg. The publication was announced on August 6, 2026 by the community media Jewish News of St. Petersburg, under the title "Знающему судьбы книг" ("To he who knows the fate of books").
- Memory
Attempted arson attack on the Beit Yaakov synagogue in Skopje, April 12, 2026
During the night of April 12, 2026, an attempted arson attack targeted the building of the Jewish Community of North Macedonia and the Beit Yaakov synagogue in Skopje — the only active synagogue in the country, reopened in March 2000 in the premises of the Jewish Community. The perpetrators of the attack have not been identified to date. The event was unanimously condemned by the leaders of the country's main religious communities at a joint conference: Archbishop Stefan for the Macedonian Orthodox Church, Bishop Kiro Stojanov for the Catholic Church, Reis ul-Ulema Shaqir Fetahu for the Islamic Religious Community, Reverend Marjan Dimov for the Evangelical-Methodist Church, and Pepo Levi, president of the Jewish Community of North Macedonia. Pepo Levi described the event as an "excess that had not occurred since 1943," referring to the deportations of nearly all Jews of Macedonia (98 % of the population, or 7,144 persons) to the Treblinka extermination camp that year. He emphasized that "no synagogue had ever been burned" in Macedonia. The Commission for Relations with Religious Communities described the attack as a "blow to peace, stability and coexistence."
- Restitution
Rediscovery of the tombs of three famous rabbis at the Castile cemetery of Tétouan (2023)
In 2023, Rabbi Joseph Israel, originally from Tétouan and resident in Casablanca, led a team that rediscovered, during a visit for Purim, the location of the tombs of three famous rabbis at the Jewish cemetery of Tétouan (the Cementerio de Castilla): Jacob Ben Malca, who arrived in Tétouan from Fès in 1734, Hasday Almosino, and Jacob Marrache, a Kabbalist scholar. These tombs had been lost for more than six decades; their location rested on a community tradition of prayer during major Jewish holidays. The restoration campaign is led by Adafina, a British Sephardi genealogy organization based in London, whose president is Jacob Marrache, descendant of the homonymous Kabbalist rabbi. The cemetery, founded in the late 15th century on land given by a Jewish woman from Algeria named Kalilia to welcome the Sephardi community exiled from Castile, extends over approximately fifteen hectares — the largest in Morocco — and contains approximately ten thousand tombs, of which only fifteen hundred bear a readable inscription. A fundraising goal of approximately 11,000 dollars has been set for clearing the site and opening up pathways around the tombs.
- Communities
New exhibition "Stolz und Vorurteil. Juden im Blick" at the Centrum Judaicum of the Neue Synagoge Berlin (2026)
The Centrum Judaicum, a foundation attached to the Neue Synagoge Berlin, opens on 24 August 2026 a new exhibition titled "Stolz und Vorurteil. Juden im Blick" ("Pride and Prejudice. The gaze upon Jews"). The exhibition examines the stereotypes, distortions and antisemitism that shape the public image of Jews, particularly since the attacks of 7 October 2023, and questions in particular how generative artificial intelligence represents Jews and whether a single image can reflect the diversity of contemporary Jewish realities. It examines the visual representation of Jews on social media, in cinema and in public space, including Hollywood constructions and on TikTok. Filmmaker Nico Beyer presents short films described as "portraits" and "miniatures of contemporary Jewish life in Europe", accompanied by a sound installation. A second exhibition, "Forms of Alignment", devoted to artistic forms of relation, opens the same day.
- Communities
Museum Night 2025 Honors the Jewish Heritage of Oradea
On May 17, 2025, from 7 p.m. to midnight, the Foundation for the Protection of Historical Monuments of Bihor County (Oradea Heritage) opened all of its sites to the public during "Museum Night," themed around Debussy's "Moonlight." The Aachavas Rheim synagogue, now the Museum of the History of Jews of Oradea, offered guided tours of its permanent exhibitions: the memorial corner dedicated to Éva Heyman, the memorial room of the Mózes family, and the Sonnenfeld family collection. An exhibition of old postcards and photographs titled "Oradea 1900," drawn from the collection of Constantin Liviu Demeter, was presented there. The Sion neologue synagogue hosted the Art Nouveau Choir of the Oradea Philharmonic and the Or Neurim Jewish dance troupe. The previous edition of the event had attracted more than 11,200 visitors across all Oradea Heritage sites.
- Archaeology
End of excavations at the Great Synagogue of Vilnius and disagreement over the site's future
Israeli archaeologist Jon Seligman, who has directed the excavations at the Great Synagogue of Vilnius since 2015, completed in July 2026 the full clearance of the seventeenth-century floor and bimah. The excavations uncovered a Passover plate, a gefilte fish dish, a plaque engraved with the Ten Commandments, and seat plaques bearing the names of donors. This stage has revived a public disagreement over the site's future: the president of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Faina Kukliansky, proposes a community centre with a YIVO exhibition and Jewish study activities, while rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky (Chabad) argues for a living religious centre dedicated to study and prayer, and scholar Dovid Katz advocates for the reconstruction of the synagogue or the preservation of the remains as a place of Orthodox pilgrimage. Anna Avidan proposes a cultural centre open to non-Jews.
- Communities
RindertanzKulturFestival 2026: two days dedicated to the history and culture of Jews in Trier
On 28 and 29 August 2026, the city of Trier organized the RindertanzKulturFestival on Rindertanzplatz, near the Judengasse (medieval Jewish quarter), a free event devoted to Jewish music, gastronomy, history and culture, organized by Trier Tourismus und Marketing GmbH. The programme included a 45-minute guided tour, "Spuren, Schicksale, Stadtgeschichten", connecting the commemorative monument on Rindertanzplatz to the Judengasse and evoking both medieval Jewish life and the persecutions suffered by the community. The municipal museum Simeonstift offered a creative workshop "MyJcon" on Jewish identity, as well as the exhibitions "Tatort des Holocaust" and "(Un-)gerechtes Trier". Musical groups from the local Jewish community performed alongside international artists, including Sababa5 (Tel-Aviv) and the Amsterdam Klezmer Band.
- Communities
Ukraine Prepares Security for Rosh Hashanah 2026 Pilgrimage in Uman Amid War
Ukrainian authorities have detailed their preparations for the massive arrival of Hasidic pilgrims in Uman (Cherkasy region) on the occasion of Rosh Hashanah, celebrated from September 11 to 13, 2026, with the influx beginning as early as September 6. Acting National Police Chief Maksym Tsoutskiridzé announced an inter-institutional operation taking into account threats from drones and missiles: reinforced checkpoints, special surveillance points, fire prevention measures at gathering sites. Authorities warned that any violation of migration rules would expose pilgrims to a ban on future entry into Ukrainian territory. This pilgrimage is thus taking place for another consecutive year despite the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war.
- Publication
First Complete English Translation of the Tikkounei ha-Zohar, Based on the Constantinople Edition of 1740
Margalya Press announces the publication, between September and November 2026, of the first complete and annotated English translation of the Tikkounei ha-Zohar (Sefer HaTikkunim), a major kabbalistic text comprising seventy commentaries on the first word of the Torah. Produced by translator David Solomon after fifteen years of work, the bilingual Aramaic-English edition in seven volumes is based on the printed Constantinople (Qushta) edition of 1740, considered by many scholars to be the reference edition. The complete text is presented in poetic form, with annotations including biblical, talmudic and midrashic sources. Professor Daniel Abrams (Bar-Ilan University) described this edition as a "monumental achievement". The initial print run is limited to 500 copies; two volumes are already available online in the Sefaria library. No complete English translation of this text existed previously, unlike the Zohar itself, which is available in several English editions.
- Archaeology
Vilnius Opens Exhibition on a Decade of Great Synagogue Excavations
The Museum of Lithuanian Jewish Culture and Identity (a branch of the Vilna Gaon State Museum), in Vilnius, inaugurated on 19 May 2026 the exhibition "Unearthing the Great Synagogue of Vilna", presented until 27 December 2026. It retraces a decade of archaeological excavations (2011-2021) conducted on the site of the Great Synagogue of Vilnius, destroyed during the Shoah and then razed during the Soviet era. Nearly 5,000 artefacts dated from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries were unearthed there: fragments of the bimah, architectural elements, coins, floors decorated with floral and geometric motifs. The exhibition combines these discoveries, works of art and historical fragments preserved from the vanished building.
- Archaeology
The portal of the former Livorno synagogue, rediscovered in 2022, will be reconstructed at Piazza Benamozegh
The Jewish Community of Livorno and the Foundation for Jewish Cultural Heritage in Italy (FBCEI) announced on 21 February 2025 a project to reconstruct the entrance portal of the former Livorno synagogue, destroyed by Allied bombing and then demolished after the Second World War. The remains of the portal — columns, capitals and architrave, measuring more than 6.5 metres high by 5.5 metres wide — had been rediscovered in 2022 beneath brambles, in the garden of the oratory on via Marini. The architect Renzo Funaro, vice-president of the FBCEI and head of the project, recalled that Rabbi Elia Benamozegh passed daily beneath this portal. Approved by the Superintendence of Pisa, the project plans to erect the restored portal in front of the entrance to the present synagogue, at Piazza Benamozegh, at an estimated cost of approximately 360,000 euros.
- Memory
Major Fire at Haditch Habad Complex, at the Tomb of the Founder of Habad Hasidism
During the night of July 25-26, 2026, a fire devastated the reception complex "Rabbeinou HaGadol," located near the tomb of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, founder of the Habad Hasidic movement, in Haditch (Poltava region, Ukraine). The fire destroyed the main synagogue, the kitchen, and the reception hall of the complex; damage is estimated at several million dollars. The exact cause remains undetermined, investigators examining notably the hypothesis of an electrical short circuit. No casualties were reported. Rabbi Shneur Zalman Deitsch, Habad emissary on site, announced his intention to rebuild the site. Developed since the early 1990s at the initiative of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, the complex welcomed approximately 10,000 visitors per year and constituted the second most visited Jewish pilgrimage site in Ukraine, after the tomb of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov in Uman.
Saturday, August 29, 2026
- MemoryTo be confirmed
The Yiddish immersion camp Yidish-Vokh celebrates its fiftieth anniversary in New York State
Yidish-Vokh, the sole annual linguistic immersion retreat conducted entirely in Yiddish, took place from August 14 to 20, 2026 at the Berkshire Hills Eisenberg Camp in Copake, New York. Organized since its inception by Yugntruf – Youth for Yiddish, this edition marks the fiftieth anniversary of the event, founded in 1976 by linguist Mordkhe Schaechter, who had brought together advanced students from the Uriel Weinreich summer program for a first stay conducted entirely in Yiddish. The retreat now brings together up to one hundred seventy participants of all ages and all degrees of observance, from around the world, for a week where only Yiddish is spoken: classes, lectures, workshops, evening gatherings and klezmer dances. Yugntruf, the founder of the retreat, was itself created in 1964 by young Yiddish speakers, including historian David Roskies.
- MemoryTo be confirmed
A Seventy-Seven-Year-Old American Finds His Mother's Name on the Wall of Names at the Shanghai Memorial
The Shanghai Jewish Refugees Memorial published on August 8, 2026 an account of the visit of David Haldane, seventy-seven years old, resident of the Philippines, who came to document the history of his mother Adela Bauer, born in Germany in 1915 and a refugee in Shanghai in 1939. The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 had interrupted her plans to leave; proceedings resumed only in 1945, and Adela Bauer finally left Shanghai for the United States on August 10, 1947, where she married American sailor Herbert Haldane, whose son was David. He recounted his emotion upon finding, on the memorial's wall of names, that of his mother alongside those of her childhood friends.
- ManuscriptsTo be confirmed
The Taylor-Schechter Cairo Genizah collection at Cambridge, Bibliographical Society choice for August
The British Bibliographical Society has designated the Taylor-Schechter collection of the Cairo Genizah, held at Cambridge University Library, as its "Council's Choice" for August 2026. The selection was made by Richard Linenthal, former president of the society. Assembled at the end of the nineteenth century by scholar Solomon Schechter with the financial support of Charles Taylor, Master of St John's College, the collection comes from the Ben Ezra synagogue in Old Cairo and comprises approximately two hundred thousand manuscript fragments acquired in 1896 and 1897. Presented as the largest collection of medieval Jewish manuscripts in the world, it continues to yield regular discoveries, including autograph fragments attributed to Maimonides and documents from eleventh-century Cairo daily life.
- CommunitiesTo be confirmed
In Baghdad, the historic Torah Quarter, cradle of the Jewish community, threatened with collapse
An investigation published on 24 July 2026 by the Iraqi news agency Shafaq News describes the advanced state of dilapidation of the "Mahallat al-Tawra" (Torah Quarter), located in the Qanbar Ali sector, near al-Sadriya, in the heart of Baghdad. This quarter with traditional Baghdad architecture was populated mainly by Jewish families in the 1920s and 1930s, until the beginning of their exodus in the 1940s. Weakened by humidity, bad weather and decades of neglect, the buildings now threaten to collapse and endanger the safety of residents. A municipal campaign to restore the historic quarters of Baghdad, underway for several years, has scarcely touched this quarter despite its heritage value. The article, reprinted in English by the media Hatha Alyoum under the name "Al-Turat Quarter", relays the appeal of residents and heritage experts to the authorities, in the broader context of the threat to the remaining heritage of the Iraqi Jewish community, estimated at around fifty sites — synagogues and cemeteries — mainly in Baghdad and Hilla.
- PublicationTo be confirmed
A letter from the Genizah sheds light on the marital troubles of a Jewish physician in twelfth-century Egypt, arbitrated by Maimonides
The journal Al-Masaq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean (Taylor & Francis) published in 2026 the article "Narrating Masculine Failure: The Marital Woes of a Twelfth-Century Jewish Physician in Egypt", devoted to a rare autobiographical letter in Judeo-Arabic preserved in the Cairo Genizah. The physician, settled in rural Egypt, connects his repeated professional failures to the torments of his conjugal life: after the death of a first wife deemed virtuous, he remarries into the Ibn Sabra family, a marriage that deteriorates until the legal intervention of Moses Maimonides. Following the approach to Genizah documents developed by historian Miriam Frenkel, the article reads this letter as an exercise in masculine identity recomposition rather than as a simple factual account.
- ArchivesTo be confirmed
An Australian descendant returns to the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Memorial the birth certificate of his father
On 12 August 2026, Marc Fischl, who came from Australia with his family, handed over to the director of the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Memorial the original birth certificate from 1948, issued by the Shanghai municipal government to his father Frank Otto Fischl, born in the city that year. Frank had visited the memorial more than ten years earlier with his wife and expressed the wish to donate it; his son accomplished this after his death. The document is part of a documented family history: Frank's mother, Elfy Kitty Priefer, had fled Europe in January 1939 and reached Shanghai on 22 February following; she had married Heinz Fischl on 23 March 1947 in Shanghai, before the family left for Australia in 1948. The director of the memorial gave Marc Fischl a donation certificate and announced the forthcoming exhibition of the document.
- MemoryTo be confirmed
A Michigan American retraces her father's role at the Shanghai Memorial as a policeman and then Joint coordinator in aid to Jewish refugees
The Shanghai Jewish Refugees Memorial published on August 5, 2026 an account of the visit, on June 4 preceding, of Karen Feder, from Michigan (United States), who came to document the journey of her father Morris Feder. Born on March 28, 1917 in Czechoslovakia, Morris Feder had arrived in Shanghai in 1938; enlisted in 1940 in the International Concession police, he became after 1945 coordinator for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, helping thousands of refugees obtain visas and places on ships before leaving Shanghai himself in September 1947. Karen Feder presented to the memorial her father's professional certificates, letters of recommendation from the UNRRA, the Joint and the American consulate, as well as his memoirs written in 1998.
- ManuscriptsTo be confirmed
An unpublished fragment from the Cairo Genizah reveals a commentary by Saadia Gaon copied on the back of a judicial document
The "Fragment of the Month" for June 2026 of the Genizah Research Unit at the University of Cambridge, written by Yehuda Seewald, presents a new fragment from the Cairo Genizah (reference T-S 13J3.6, twenty-five by sixteen centimeters) bearing a commentary by Saadia Gaon on the paracha Behoukotaï. The text was copied by Rabbi Zakkay the Judge on the verso of a judicial document, according to the common practice of document reuse in the Genizah. The article identifies the attribution of the commentary and situates the copyist within the judicial context of his community. This fragment is distinct from the one already known on the paraphrase of the Kitab al-Amanat wal-I'tiqadat by the same author: it is a different work.
- Communities
The Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies holds its 36th annual conference in October 2026
The Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies (SCJS), the leading international scholarly organization on Iberian crypto-Jews and particularly those of New Mexico, held its 35th annual conference "Identities and Experiences: Navigating the Crypto-Jewish Journey" from August 10-12, 2025 in Los Angeles. Its 36th annual conference is scheduled for October 25, 2026, entirely by videoconference, open to regional, national and international proposals. The Institute for Tolerance Studies in Santa Fe (New Mexico) is among the supporters of these conferences.
- Archaeology
The MiQua in Cologne, Future Museum of the Medieval Jewish Quarter, Under Construction on Rathausplatz
The MiQua (LVR-Jüdisches Museum im Archäologischen Quartier Köln), supported by the Landschaftsverband Rheinland, will present the medieval Jewish quarter of Cologne (mikvé, synagogue) as well as the Roman praetorium, on an excavation site of 6,000 m² directly beneath Rathausplatz. A waterproofing ceremony took place on 23 May 2025; work in the praetorium zone began at the end of 2025, with completion scheduled for October 2026, building handover to the museum planned for the end of 2028, and public opening mid-2029. A lararium (Roman domestic altar) from the 2nd century was discovered in 2025 during construction work. In the meantime, the MiQua:forum already offers weekly lectures and visits.
Friday, August 28, 2026
- Genealogy
Boros — Lajos Boros (1947-2024), pioneer of Hungarian radio and documentalist of Jewish cemeteries in Hungary
The surname Boros ("wine" in Hungarian) was adopted through Magyarization by numerous Jewish families from 1867 onwards. Lajos Boros (12 April 1947, Budapest – 8 August 2024), nicknamed "Lali Király", was a pioneer of Hungarian commercial radio: pop editor-in-chief at Hungaroton (1985-1990), presenter at Danubius Rádió (1989-1997), then host of the morning programme "Bumeráng" on Sláger Rádió (1999-2009) and Neo FM/Music FM (2010-2012). Decorated with the Knight's Cross of the Hungarian Republic in 2007. His death was announced by the Federation of Jewish Communities in Hungary (Mazsihisz), which revealed a little-known but lasting work documenting Jewish cemeteries in Hungary: he created and ran the website oroklet.hu, enabling searches for the deceased and helping hundreds of people in their genealogical research — website visitors in fact addressed him directly on his forum to thank him for the database, which he managed and corrected himself.
- CommunitiesTo be confirmed
The Samaritan Passover in 2026 brought forward under threat of regional conflict
According to a report published by the Atlanta Jewish Times, the ceremony of the Samaritan Paschal sacrifice on Mount Gerizim (overlooking Nablus), initially scheduled for April 30, 2026, was reportedly moved forward by three weeks to April 10, 2026 to take advantage of a brief ceasefire during an episode of regional conflict involving Iran and Israel. 28 sheep were reportedly sacrificed, "one per clan," during a ceremony conducted by the Samaritan high priest Aabed-El ben Tsedaka ben Yitzhaq, aged 91 and 133rd of his priestly lineage. The Samaritan community (Shomronim) is said to number approximately 925 people today worldwide, divided almost equally between Holon (suburb of Tel Aviv) and the village of Kiryat Luza on Mount Gerizim — a notable demographic recovery since the historical low of 141-146 individuals in 1917-1919. ⚠️ This date change could only be confirmed by this single news article, despite targeted searches in Israeli press; it remains to be confirmed.
Thursday, August 27, 2026
- Archaeology
A Second Temple mikvé, sealed by the ashes of 70, uncovered beneath the Western Wall plaza
The Israel Antiquities Authority and the Western Wall Heritage Foundation announced on December 29, 2025 the discovery of a ritual bath (mikvé) from the late Second Temple period, uncovered beneath the Kotel plaza in Jerusalem. The basin, hewn from rock, measures approximately 3.05 m long, 1.35 m wide and 1.85 m high, with four access steps. It was found sealed under a thick destruction layer dated to the year 70, containing ash, pottery sherds and stone vessels — direct traces of the Roman fire at the Temple. Researchers estimate that it served both the residents of the quarter and pilgrims ascending to the Temple. The discovery offers a rare snapshot of Jewish daily life in Jerusalem just before the Roman siege.
- Archaeology
A Byzantine synagogue from 1,500 years ago excavated in the Yehoudiya nature reserve on the Golan
A team from the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa, in partnership with Kinneret Academic College and the Israeli Nature and Parks Authority, has uncovered the remains of a synagogue dated to approximately 1,500 years ago in an abandoned village in the Yehoudiya nature reserve on the Golan plateau. The discovery began after an unusual concentration of column drums and decorated stones was noticed along a path. The basilical structure measures approximately 13 m wide by at least 17 m long, with two rows of columns, benches along the walls and a south wall pierced by three openings facing Jerusalem. The discovery was announced in October 2025; the region now has some twenty identified ancient synagogues, testifying to a continuous Jewish presence from the Hasmonean period until the beginning of the Islamic period.
- Archaeology
The oldest known synagogue on Russian territory uncovered at Phanagoria, on the Taman Peninsula
The Phanagoria archaeological expedition of the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, directed by Vladimir Kuznetsov, uncovered at Phanagoria (Taman Peninsula, Black Sea) a synagogue building of approximately 120 to 130 m², divided into two rooms of more than 60 m² each. The oldest layer is dated to the 1st century of the common era; the building was destroyed by a major fire, probably in the 6th century. Fragments of Greek inscriptions, including one completely preserved, menorahs — including a type unknown elsewhere — as well as 58 bronze coins were found in the ruins. The 2024 excavations showed that the synagogue belonged to a genuine Jewish quarter comprising a cellar, houses and public buildings; dozens of tombstones from a Jewish necropolis were also identified. The Institute of Archaeology designated this discovery as the most important of 2023.
- Archaeology
In Belarus, the enclosure of the baroque synagogue of Izabelin cleared by archaeologists
Archaeologists from the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus uncovered, in the village of Izabelin (Volkovysk district), a line of stone foundations bordering the road in the center of the village, identified as the enclosure of the courtyard of the local synagogue. Earlier excavations had already revealed the foundations of the "Kleine Shul" (small synagogue), built in the 1780s. Among the objects collected are geometric patterned tiles from a seventeenth-century stove and a glass seal from an eighteenth-century gin bottle, marked "LOND(O)N", probably a counterfeit, testifying to the village's active trade. The discovery was reported in April 2026; restoration of the eighteenth-century baroque synagogue is underway, with a museum project planned on site.
- ManuscriptsTo be confirmed
A letter from an anonymous North African merchant planning a journey to India in 1103, identified in the Cairo Genizah
In April 2026, researchers Caitlin Buckley, Mohammed Salih Cholakkalakath and Jesse Noily, with editing and translation by Alan Elbaum and Marina Rustow for the Princeton Geniza Project, published a study of a fragment from the Genizah catalogued T-S 12.392: a letter in Judeo-Arabic, with biblical quotations in Hebrew, written by a North African Jewish merchant, dated 24 Heshvan 4864 (28 October 1103). On a sheet of paper 9 by 18 cm bearing 24 lines on the recto and 17 on the verso, it describes a planned journey to the west coast of India, with detailed complaints about the difficulties of the journey. This fragment is distinct from the already known one documenting the business affairs of the merchant Avraham Ibn Yijū in India: different catalogue number, author and content.
- Communities
The great consistorial synagogue of Metz reopens after two years of restoration
The great consistorial synagogue of Metz (Moselle), constructed between 1848 and 1850 in Neo-Romanesque style, reopened its doors on 26 October 2025 after two years of work. Approximately 600 people attended the ceremony. During the Occupation, the building had been converted into a logistics depot by the Wehrmacht; it remained damaged and neglected after the Liberation. The restoration, funded by the French State and the city of Metz for an amount of approximately 2.3 million euros, covered the façades, interior walls, the Ark of the Covenant and the nave. The building, classified as a historic monument, can accommodate approximately 800 worshippers and serves a local Jewish community estimated at 2000 people. Open house events took place on 2 November 2025.
- ManuscriptsTo be confirmed
A Judeo-Arabic legal pamphlet with hybrid vocalization, unique of its kind, identified at Cambridge
In May 2026, researcher Neri Ariel (Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, Cambridge) published the study of a fragment from the Cairo Genizah catalogued ENA 4189.3-4 (two consecutive folios). It is a concise legal pamphlet in Judeo-Arabic devoted to the laws of testimony: oaths, personal status, the drafting of divorce documents, and an enumeration of thirty categories of disqualified witnesses, before addressing usury and commercial fraud. Its particularity, presented as exceptionally rare in Judeo-Arabic legal manuscripts, is a system of hybrid vocalization mixing Tiberian, Babylonian and Arabic diacritical marks, with ligatures imitating Arabic conventions. Palaeographic analysis dates the fragment to the tenth to eleventh centuries, in Egypt or Palestine. A possible attribution to Samuel b. Hofni is mentioned but remains unconfirmed.
- Archives
The Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York opens public access to 10,000 digitised objects from its collection
The Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust (New York) announced on 21 January 2026 the launch of "Collections Online", a new digital portal providing free and permanent public access to its permanent collection. The portal offers more than 10,000 objects — artefacts, photographs and ephemera — presenting a portrait of Jewish life before, during and after the Shoah. This launch concludes several years of digitisation and cataloguing of the museum's permanent collection, financially supported by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference). The opening was scheduled ahead of the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, 27 January.
- Genealogy
A Patrilineal DNA Study Sheds Light on the Origins of Moroccan Jews
A genetic genealogy study published in May 2026 in the peer-reviewed journal Genealogy (MDPI, open access) analyzes patrilineal ancestry, via the Y chromosome, of 288 men of genealogically verified Moroccan Jewish descent, brought together through the Avotaynu DNA project. The study identifies 111 distinct founding lineages. Approximately 71% of founding lineages and 80% of individuals are linked to haplogroups common in the Middle East. Only 4.5% of founding lineages are of indigenous North African origin, while 11% are of Iberian origin, reflecting sustained demographic exchanges between Morocco and the Iberian Peninsula over several centuries. The dates of divergence between Moroccan and Ashkenazi or Sephardic subclades cluster between the 5th and 8th centuries of the Common Era. According to its authors, the study provides the first systematic full-resolution Y chromosome evidence against the old hypothesis of large-scale "Berber judaization".
- Restitution
Bavaria Returns a Painting by Lesser Ury to the Heirs of Jewish Banker Curt Goldschmidt
The Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (Bavarian State Galleries) announced on 1 April 2026 the restitution of the painting "Interior with Children (the Siblings)" (1883) by Jewish painter Lesser Ury to the heirs of Curt Goldschmidt, a Jewish banker and collector despoiled under Nazism. The work was in Goldschmidt's possession by 1921 at the latest. Forced to abandon his business and his apartment, Goldschmidt saw his possessions auctioned off in 1935; the painting reappeared in 1940 at the Lempertz auction house in Cologne, marked with a star indicating its provenance from a "non-Aryan collection". Bavaria acquired it in 1972 through the Neumeister gallery in Munich. The restitution benefits Goldschmidt's grandchildren and great-grandchildren, residing in France, the United Kingdom and the United States. This is the institution's fifth restitution in one year, bringing the total to 29 works restituted.
- GenealogyTo be confirmed
A study reconstructs the ancestry of Judeoconverso families who took refuge in Tijoco, in the Canary Islands
A study dated 12 July 2026, conducted by José Antonio González Marrero (University Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of La Laguna) and researcher Carmen Rosa Escobar Suárez, reconstructs the ancestry of Judeoconverso families who fled the Inquisition to settle in Tijoco (municipality of Adeje, Tenerife, Canary Islands). The method relies on notarial protocols, wills and declarations preserved in the Archive of the Inquisition of El Museo Canario (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria). The study follows in particular the families Castro, Sánchez Falcón, Benítez and Cospedal, between Tijoco, La Laguna, Garachico, Lepe and Jaén. Key documented dates: 1505, first land grant to Juan Benítez; 1528-1529, massive inquisitorial declarations; 1549, marriage dowry contract; 1572, will of Antonio de Castro.
- Communities
Aleppo: temporary reopening of a synagogue and Jewish school closed for thirty years
On 11 December 2025, a synagogue and Jewish school in the al-Jamiliyya neighbourhood of Aleppo (Syria), closed for approximately three decades, were visited and reopened for a religious and cultural event. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which released a video of the event, reports the presence of two rabbis from Israel. The event took place under enhanced security measures by Syrian General Security forces. Visitors also inspected a second ancient synagogue near Bab al-Nasr, in the same neighbourhood. This visit is part of a series of unprecedented Israeli activities in Syria since the fall of the Assad regime, and aims notably to begin an inventory of Syrian Jewish community property.
- Communities
Syria: First organization dedicated to Jewish heritage legally registered since Assad's fall
In December 2025, Syrian authorities granted a legal license to the "Foundation for the Jewish Heritage of Syria," described by several media outlets as the first organization dedicated to preserving Jewish heritage officially registered in Syria since the formation of the interim government in Damascus. Its stated mission is to document properties confiscated from the Syrian Jewish community under the former regime and to work toward their restitution, as well as the restoration of remaining built heritage. According to the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, Moaz Mustafa, "dozens of houses" formerly belonging to Jewish families have already been catalogued. This license is distinct from the restoration project of Damascus's main Jewish cemetery, funded by the Mosaic Foundation, which began separately in 2026.
- GenealogyTo be confirmed
The IAJGS holds its first virtual summit on artificial intelligence and Jewish genealogy
The International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) announced on 14 April 2026 the holding, on 26 April 2026, of its very first "AI for Jewish Genealogy Virtual Summit", a free online event. The program presented several tools: the "Hebrew Headstone Helper", an artificial intelligence for deciphering Hebrew inscriptions on tombstones; "Mame Loshn Maven", a handwriting recognition model for Yiddish; the projects of the LDVDF AI Lab, which train recognition models for historical documents in Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, Polish, Arabic and Ladino; and the "Documentation of Jewish Records Worldwide" (DoJR) project, which aims to catalogue every existing document concerning Jewish persons — a pilot cited as having processed 686,000 pages in one month, identifying 116,000 individuals.
- Genealogy
The IGRA publishes its summer 2026 release: eight new genealogical databases, approximately 40,000 records
On 28 July 2026, the Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA) published its database release for summer 2026: more than 39,946 new records, a large portion accompanied by images. Eight databases are new, including patient files from Bikur Holim hospital in Jerusalem (1910-1914), deportees from Egypt (1940-1948, 378 records with photographs), immigrants from the S.S. Guiné departing from Lisbon, Cadiz and Tangier in 1944 (451 refugees), and the "Prisoners of Zion" from 1948 to 1956 (224 names, originating from Iraq, Egypt and Eastern Europe). Six existing databases were also updated, including the register of British subjects (1838-1908, +5,601 records). The IGRA's "All Israel Database" collection exceeded 4,040,574 records as of 26 July 2026.
- GenealogyTo be confirmed
JewishGen: Ukraine Research Division Adds More Than 100,000 Records
The official JewishGen blog published in April 2026 a post announcing the addition of 100,032 records by its Ukraine research division, which systematically indexes civil registration records and census lists held in Ukrainian state archives for the country's Jewish communities. The dated title and figure were confirmed by two independent searches; the detailed body of the article (towns and types of records covered) could not be consulted, as the site is rendered in client-side JavaScript.
Wednesday, August 26, 2026
- Restitution
Ukraine: Europe's Last Wooden Synagogue Transferred to Uzhhorod Open-Air Museum
In late March 2026, a project began to dismantle and transfer the wooden synagogue from the village of Velykyi Komyty (Berehove district, Transcarpathia), built in the mid-nineteenth century and never rebuilt since, to the open-air museum (skansen) in Uzhhorod. Presented as the only wooden synagogue preserved in its original form on a European scale, it had served as a warehouse during the Soviet era and was severely deteriorating. The General Consulate of Hungary in Uzhhorod is fully financing the restoration operation. It will become the seventeenth architectural object in the museum's exhibition and could once again host events for the local Jewish community.
- Manuscripts
The Vienna Rothschild Mahzor, looted in 1938, restituted and then sold for 6.4 million dollars at Sotheby's
This mahzor — an illustrated prayer book — from the 15th century, completed in 1415 by the scribe Moses son of Menahem, belonged to the collection of the Rothschild family in Vienna. Confiscated during the looting of the Rothschild palace following the Anschluss of March 1938, it had been sent to the Austrian National Library without being identified as looted property for decades. In 2023, the Austrian government recognized its illicit origin and initiated its restitution to the Rothschild heirs, completed in November 2025. The manuscript was put up for auction at Sotheby's on 5 February 2026, estimated between 4 and 6 million euros, and sold for 6.4 million dollars. It belongs to a very restricted corpus of illuminated Hebrew prayer books from medieval Europe, of which fewer than twenty copies survive today.
- ArchaeologyTo be confirmed
Huqoq (Galilee): A New Mosaic with Aramaic Inscription Uncovered in the Ancient Synagogue
During the summer 2026 excavation campaign, the team led by Jodi Magness (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and Dennis Mizzi (University of Malta) uncovered a new mosaic panel approximately 1600 years old in the 4th-5th century synagogue of Huqoq, an ancient Jewish village in Lower Galilee near Migdal. The panel bears a Hebrew inscription framed by a crown as well as an Aramaic inscription listing names of donors or craftsmen, accompanied by the formula "may they be remembered for good". The site had already yielded the earliest known representations of the biblical heroines Deborah and Yael. The project entered a new phase of research in July 2026.
- ArchivesTo be confirmed
Netherlands: Post-war Judicial Purge Archive (CABR) Accessible in Eleven New Regional Centers
Since February 2026, the digitized version of the Centraal Archief Bijzondere Rechtspleging (CABR), the Dutch central archive of post-war judicial purge, has been available for consultation in eleven additional regional archive centers as well as at the NIOD institute, in addition to access already opened previously. This voluminous collection contains not only files on collaboration suspects, but also information on Jewish victims and resistants, useful for genealogical and historical research. The complete digitization of the CABR is to continue until 2027. At the same time, the so-called "Jokos" files, relating to compensation payments for domestic property plundered from deported Jewish families, are being digitized, with access to remain restricted until the end of 2026.
- CommunitiesTo be confirmed
Washington: Capital Jewish Museum celebrates 150 years of historic Adas Israel synagogue
The Capital Jewish Museum in Washington opened in June 2026 the permanent exhibition "America250 at the Capital Jewish Museum," which coincides the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence with the 150th anniversary of the dedication, in 1876, of the first synagogue built specifically for this purpose in Washington — that of the Adas Israel congregation, dedicated in the presence of President Ulysses S. Grant. The historic building, relocated in 2019 to its current location, now houses a permanent installation tracing one hundred fifty years of history, the Mordecai Bible and other ancient Jewish objects, as well as displays documenting Jewish patriotic engagement during the three centennials of 1876, 1926 and 1976, and a community time capsule intended to be opened in 2076.
- GenealogyTo be confirmed
Portugal Ends Nationality Regime for Descendants of Sephardic Jews
Law No. 1/2026, published in the Portuguese Official Journal on 18 May 2026, revoked the legal provision that established the special regime of Portuguese nationality for descendants of Portuguese Sephardic Jews. It is no longer possible to file new applications for Portuguese nationality based solely on documented Sephardic ancestry. This regime, in force since 2015, was based on genealogical evidence — documents, family traditions, connection to a historic Sephardic community — examined notably through Inquisition archives held at the Torre do Tombo. The end of the scheme does not close these archives, which remain accessible online, but ends the institutional incentive that had brought thousands of Sephardic genealogical applications over the past ten years.
- CommunitiesTo be confirmed
Brazil: A Jewish Tourist Route Proposed for the Former Agricultural Colonies of Baron de Hirsch in Rio Grande do Sul
On December 9, 2025, the Regional Affairs Commission of the Brazilian Senate approved bill PL 4.319/2024, which would establish a "Rota Turística Judaica" of national interest in the municipalities of Quatro Irmãos, Jacutinga and Erebango, on the site of former agricultural colonies founded in the early twentieth century by the Jewish Colonization Association of Baron Maurice de Hirsch to resettle Jewish families fleeing persecution in the Russian Empire. The text then passed to examination by the Chamber of Deputies; its final adoption has not been confirmed to date. On March 21, 2026, on the occasion of National Jewish Immigration Day, the square at Erebango railway station was named "Largo Maurício Sirotsky Sobrinho," in tribute to the founder of the RBS media group, born in 1925 in this colony, which had up to 5000 inhabitants around 1960.
- Archaeology
Vilnius: the bimah and women's gallery of the Great Synagogue uncovered after seventy years
Under the auspices of the Israel Antiquities Authority, a sixth excavation campaign conducted since 2011 at the Shulhoyf site in Vilnius enabled, in late August 2026, the complete exposure of the great bimah of the Great Synagogue of Vilna, as well as sections of the main prayer hall and the gallery reserved for women. Archaeologists uncovered colored terrazzo floors, plaques of named seats—some bearing the names of women from the gallery, others linked to a charitable society of the community—and a metal plaque engraved with the Ten Commandments. The building, closely associated with the Gaon of Vilna, Rabbi Eliyahou ben Shlomo Zalman, had been destroyed by Nazi Germany and later razed by Soviet post-war authorities. These are the most significant discoveries since the launch of the Shulhoyf excavations in 2011.
- Restitution
Netherlands: Looted Jewish Art "Orphaned" from NK Collection Entrusted to Jewish Community
An advisory commission chaired by Lodewijk Asscher recommended, in an opinion delivered on 22 April 2026, that "orphaned" looted Jewish artworks from the NK collection — assets of the Dutch state resulting from post-war restitutions never claimed by rightful owners — be transferred to an independent foundation linked to the Joods Museum in Amsterdam. Dutch Culture Minister Rianne Letschert adopted this recommendation. The government allocated 400,000 euros per year for conservation, exhibition and continued provenance research, as well as 500,000 euros in 2026 and then one million euros per year from 2027 to 2031 for provenance research in Dutch museum collections, according to an announcement of 3 June 2026. The NK collection comprised more than 3,300 objects in 2026; they remain available for any subsequent individual restitution claims by rightful owners.
- Archives
France Opens "Spolivres," Public Database of Looted Books in Libraries
On April 8, 2026, the Mission for Research and Restitution of Spoliated Cultural Property (M2RS) of the French Ministry of Culture launched online "Spolivres," a public database cataloging books plundered in France during the Second World War, largely from Jewish owners. Of approximately 150,000 volumes subject to spoliation, nearly 15,000 works have already been indexed, of which 1,222 bear exploitable clues—stamps, ex-libris, dedications, annotations, old call numbers, addresses—likely to guide searches for rightful heirs. The cataloged books come from approximately 150 institutions, among which the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Sainte-Geneviève library, the INHA, the BULAC, the BIS, the Forney library, and the Lyon municipal library.
- RestitutionTo be confirmed
Crimea: Restoration of the Ner-Tomid Synagogue in Simferopol continues
On August 7, 2026, the leadership of the Jewish community of Simferopol visited the restoration site of the Ner-Tomid Synagogue in Crimea. According to the report published by the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, work is progressing according to the planned schedule and aims to preserve the authentic historical appearance of the building, with a view to its reopening as a spiritual center for the local community.
- CommunitiesTo be confirmed
Kaifeng: the house-museum of a Jewish descendant destroyed, symbol of the erasure of community memory
An article published on 14 April 2026 in Made in China Journal traces the gradual erasure of Jewish memory in Kaifeng under Chinese policy of "sinification" of religious minorities. It documents the case of Ester Guo, a 45-year-old Jewish descendant of Kaifeng, who operated a private museum in her ancestral home from 2008 to 2017. In May 2025, this house-museum was destroyed — "probably by a relative," according to Guo's own testimony. In March 2026, the ruined house had still not been rebuilt, local zoning regulations prohibiting its restoration. The article is part of a body of documentation from several years on the police closure of Kaifeng's Jewish study centre, run by the Israeli NGO Shavei Israel, and the removal of commemorative signage placed by local authorities in the 2000s-2010s.
- GenealogyTo be confirmed
The Sirotsky-Birmann family, from Soroca (Bessarabia) to the Jewish agricultural colonies of Rio Grande do Sul
On the occasion of the inauguration on 21 March 2026 of a square in Erebango (Rio Grande do Sul) named in his honour, several Brazilian media outlets republished the genealogy of Maurício Sirotsky Sobrinho, founder of the RBS media group (Rede Brasil Sul). His parents, José Sirotsky and Rebeca (Rita) Birmann Sirotsky, were Russian Jewish immigrants from the village of Soroca in Bessarabia — today in Moldova — who fled persecution under the reign of Nicholas II. The family first settled at Fazenda Quatro Irmãos, a Jewish agricultural colony founded by the Jewish Colonization Association, before moving to Erebango and then Passo Fundo. Maurício, born in 1925, was the third of five children.
Tuesday, August 25, 2026
- Communities
Siófok (Hungary): The synagogue on the shores of Lake Balaton celebrates forty years
The modern synagogue of Siófok, on Lake Balaton, was consecrated on 16 June 1986, replacing the former synagogue from 1874 that was destroyed after the Second World War. The community celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the building at the end of May 2026, with a traditional Shabbaton weekend followed, on 31 May, by a commemorative ceremony and the planting of an olive tree in the synagogue garden. Renovations carried out in recent years covered windows and doors, roofing, facade, fencing, as well as the interior (painting, lighting, kosher kitchen), financed by grants and donations, notably via the Mazsihisz. Since the death of Rabbi Domán István, it is Miksa Winkler who coordinates the activities of the small community, with no resident rabbi currently in post.
- Communities
Budapest: the orthodox synagogue on Dessewffy Street reopens as CTeen Synagogue
The synagogue on Dessewffy Street, built in 1870 in Terézváros (6th district of Budapest), the only remaining orthodox place of worship in the neighbourhood, is to reopen on 6 September 2026 under the name "CTeen Synagogue", the result of cooperation between the Autonomous Jewish Community of Orthodox Hungary (MAOIH), the owner of the building, and the EMIH (Unified Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities). Rabbi Eli Nógrádi will lead this emerging community. The opening, planned as a musical event, will welcome the Zorger cantorial choir specially coming from Israel. This reopening is part of "Zsinagógák Hete" (Synagogue Week), organised by the EMIH from 30 August to 17 September 2026, which begins with the Cholent Festival (Sóletfesztivál) on 30 August and also includes, on 17 September, the reopening of the synagogue in Rákospalota.
- CommunitiesTo be confirmed
Ibrány (Hungary): a commemorative plaque for a Jewish community that disappeared in 1944
On 28 April 2026, a ceremony was organised in Ibrány, in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county, at the joint initiative of the Mazsihisz and the municipality. A Holocaust commemorative plaque was inaugurated near the former post office building, at the location of the former synagogue, followed by a ceremony at the Jewish cemetery on Óvoda street. The Jewish community of Ibrány numbered approximately 350 people at the end of the 19th century; in May 1944, some 250 of them were deported to the Nyíregyháza ghetto and then to Auschwitz, and the community never recovered after the war. Mayor Imre Trencsényi, Mazsihisz president András Grósz and Chief Rabbi Tamás Verő — whose great-grandmother was from Ibrány — spoke at the ceremony.
- Archaeology
A burial cave from the Second Temple period discovered by chance in East Jerusalem
On August 24, 2026, Israeli border guards (Yassam unit) intervening in the Ras al-Amud neighborhood in Silwan (East Jerusalem) as part of an operation related to a violent confrontation between two rival families that left three dead the previous weekend, discovered an ancient burial cave beneath a residential building. The police immediately alerted the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), whose teams went to the site for an initial examination. According to the IAA's preliminary findings, the burials date from the Second Temple period (516 before the common era to 70 of the common era). Other archaeological remains were found in the cave and on the site. Police forces and the Antiquities Authority are continuing to secure the area and examine the findings in close coordination.
- Communities
A century-old Jewish cemetery in Jabalpur vandalized by a land grabber, proceedings still ongoing
The Jewish cemetery of Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh, India), allotted approximately a century ago by the British government near the cremation pyre of Ranitaal, is the sole Jewish cemetery in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh — the local community, once 200 families strong, now numbers only 4 families. Daniel Ibrahim, a resident of the Civil Lines district of Jabalpur, observed the deterioration of the enclosure wall, the disappearance of the gate, and the desecration of graves of three generations of his family; he filed a complaint at the Lordganj police station and with the Subdivisional Magistrate in 2021, naming Lakhan Kewat, occupant of the neighbouring land, as responsible. The SDM court ordered the return of the land to the Jewish community on 14 April 2025. Kewat nevertheless disrupted a Jewish religious ceremony on 5 January 2026, then petitioned the High Court on 3 June 2026; the case remains pending.
- Communities
Budapest: monuments to Jewish soldiers and forced laborers restored in Kozma Street cemetery
On January 29, 2026, two restored monuments were unveiled in the military section of the Jewish cemetery on Kozma Street in Budapest, during a ceremony jointly organized by the Hungarian Ministry of Defense and the Federation of Jewish Religious Communities of Hungary (Mazsihisz). The first monument honors more than ten thousand Hungarian Jewish soldiers who died in combat during the First World War. The second, a concrete sarcophagus, commemorates workers in the forced labor service ("munkaszolgálat"), Jewish citizens deprived of military rights, who died during the Second World War. Defense Minister Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky and Mazsihisz president Andor (András) Grósz spoke at the ceremony. The total cost of the work came to 22 million forints, of which 13 million was allocated for future maintenance of the forced laborers' section, following a cooperation agreement signed in September 2025 between the ministry and Mazsihisz.
- Archives
In Saxony-Anhalt, a photogrammetric survey documents the seventy-eight Jewish cemeteries in the region
Since the beginning of 2026, the Museum Synagogue Gröbzig (Museum Synagoge Gröbzig) has been coordinating a complete digital survey of Jewish cemeteries in Saxony-Anhalt — approximately 8,000 tombstones to document, of which 2,200 in Magdeburg, 1,300 in Dessau-Roßlau and 800 in Halle. The project, with a budget close to 200,000 euros, is led by Judaicist Anett Gottschalk, director of the museum, with media technician Philipp Grundmann, who carries out drone photography and 3D modelling of each stone. The Volksstimme reported on 18 August 2026 the progress of work on the oldest Jewish cemetery in Halberstadt, at the location Roter Strumpf, where teams are clearing graves overgrown with vegetation before their documentation. The regional project is part of the national academic programme "Steinerne Zeugen digital", led by the Academy of Sciences of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Steinheim Institute, University of Duisburg-Essen, and University of Bamberg), which aims to catalogue 33,600 tombstones and more than 19,000 inscriptions across 35 cemeteries on a German scale.
- Manuscripts
The BnF and the Alliance israélite universelle seal a digitization partnership
On April 16, 2026, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Alliance israélite universelle and the association Vaincre la Haine signed a tripartite agreement concerning the progressive digitization of heritage collections held by the AIU library. This library, founded in the nineteenth century, holds approximately 165,000 volumes and 1,500,000 archival documents, one of the most important Jewish collections in the world. Digitized documents will be integrated into Gallica, the BnF's digital library, in free and open access. The agreement aims to make accessible historical archives that have remained uncatalogued until now, while preserving fragile documents. No precise digitization timeline or quantified volume of documents involved has been communicated at this stage.
- Restitution
The monumental portal of the former synagogue of Livorno rediscovered and soon to be reconstructed
The former synagogue of Livorno, inaugurated in the seventeenth century and considered one of the most beautiful in Europe, was destroyed by bombing during the Second World War; a modernist synagogue was inaugurated in its place in 1962. In 2022, remains of the monumental portal of the former synagogue—columns, capitals, architrave, measuring 6.5 metres high by 5 metres wide—were rediscovered beneath vegetation in the garden of the oratory on Via Marini, including a panel bearing the attachment holes of the inscription "This is the house of God and this is the gate of heaven". In February 2025, the Italian Foundation for Jewish Cultural Heritage and the Jewish Community of Livorno announced a project to reconstruct the portal in front of the entrance to the current synagogue, Piazza Benamozegh, at an estimated cost of 360,000 euros, subject to authorization by the Superintendence and the Ministry.
- Memory
The "Little Book of Names": one thousand six hundred and eighty children of the Płock ghetto identified
The Polish foundation Nobiscum, through research by historian and genealogist Gabriela Nowak-Dąbrowska in the collections of the State Archives of Płock, established in 2023 the names and forenames of 1,680 Jewish children interned in the Płock ghetto, which existed from September 1940 to early March 1941. This work resulted in the publication of the "Little Book of Names" (Mała Księga Imion); these 1,680 names were read publicly on 1 March, during the commemoration of the eighty-second anniversary of the liquidation of the ghetto, at the Jewish cemetery in Płock. These children died of hunger and disease in the ghetto, in the transit camp of Działdowo, in the Warsaw ghetto, at Treblinka and at Auschwitz.
Monday, August 24, 2026
- CommunitiesTo be confirmed
Baltimore: A Permanent Exhibition Marks the Bicentennial of Maryland's "Jew Bill"
The Jewish Museum of Maryland in Baltimore inaugurated on April 15, 2026 a permanent exhibition titled "Jews of Maryland at the Crossroads of Identity". It takes as its starting point the "Jew Bill" of 1826, a law that authorized Jews of Maryland to hold elective office, nearly four decades before the abolition of slavery in the State. The year 2026 marks both the bicentennial of this law and the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. The exhibition brings together artifacts, archival documents and films tracing the history of Jewish communities in Maryland since the nineteenth century, in urban neighborhoods, small towns and communities of the Eastern Shore, addressing immigration, assimilation, antisemitism and civic participation. The collections come notably from the American Jewish Historical Society, Johns Hopkins University, the Library of Congress, the National Archives and the Smithsonian. The museum also announced the acquisition of a rare artifact related to the Jew Bill on this occasion.
- Restitution
Poland Returns 91 Looted Jewish Ritual Objects to Greece
On 4 March 2026 in Warsaw, Poland officially returned to Greece 91 Jewish ritual and ceremonial objects stolen in 1941 by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg during the plundering of Greek Jewish synagogues, cemeteries and cultural institutions. The collection comprises seventeen pairs of rimonim (Torah scroll ornaments), nine rimonim or additional fragments, forty-six pieces of liturgical textiles and a pair of pendants. Transferred during the war to depots in south-west Poland, these objects were found after 1945 at Bożków castle, then entrusted in 1951 by the Polish Ministry of Culture to the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, where they remained until this restitution. The Greek Minister of Culture attended the handover ceremony. This is the first time Poland has returned historical cultural property at the request of a foreign country, pursuant to its restitution law. The World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) facilitated the operation.
- Communities
Melilla joins the Network of Juderías of Spain as sole "living Jewry"
On 12 December 2025, the 68th general assembly of the Network of Juderías of Spain (Caminos de Sefarad) approved the admission of six new member cities — Seville, Calatayud, Melilla, Uncastillo, Llerena and Valence de Alcántara — effective 1 January 2026. Melilla stands out as the sole city in the network to possess a "living Jewry", that is, an active practising Jewish community and not merely historical heritage. This entry comes in the year of the network's thirtieth anniversary, founded in 1995. The incorporation was formally presented at the FITUR tourism fair in Madrid in January 2026 by Melilla's culture councillor, Fadela Mohatar. The network announced it will no longer accept new applications for at least four years, permanently closing this admission cycle.
- ArchivesTo be confirmed
An artificial intelligence platform makes the Iraqi Jewish Archive searchable and translated into English
David Breslauer, a chemical engineer from Oakland, California whose family fled Baghdad in 1950, has developed an artificial intelligence platform called "Voices from the Archive," accessible at judeoiraq.org. It processes, categorizes and translates into English thousands of pages from the Iraqi Jewish Archive (IJA) — the collection discovered in 2003 by the American military in the flooded basement of an Iraqi intelligence building in Baghdad, since preserved and digitized by the U.S. National Archives. Previously largely inaccessible to the public due to lack of translation and indexing, the collection includes school documents, religious texts, legal documents, personal letters, photographs and community archives spanning several centuries through the 1970s. The platform now makes them searchable in full text, with translation generated by AI. The physical holdings of the IJA remain preserved in the United States; this project concerns only digital access. Its online launch was reported by California community press in late March 2026.
- Archives
A Frankfurt-an-der-Oder Museum Acquires a Rare Copy of the Printed Work of Joseph Issachar Baer Götz (1680)
In April 2025, the Städtisches Museum Viadrina of Frankfurt-an-der-Oder (Germany) acquired, from a specialized bookseller in Luxembourg, a very rare copy of a Hebrew work by Joseph Issachar Baer ben Elhanan Götz, printed in 1680 in Frankfurt-an-der-Oder by Johann Christoph Bekmann, presented by the museum as one of the earliest witnesses to the city's Hebrew printing. The acquisition was financed by the Kurt and Hildegard Löwenstein/Losten Foundation, dedicated to the preservation of Jewish heritage east of the Oder and the Lusatian Neisse. This date (1680), this printer (Bekmann), and this city (Frankfurt-an-der-Oder) correspond to the Arba' Ḥarashim, a collection of Kabbalistic discourses and biblical commentary already known through existing biography, but the material existence and museum preservation of this particular copy constitute new information. Two independent institutional communications, the museum and the city of Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, report the same fact.
- Memory
A Syrian-American Jewish delegation returns to Damascus after 33 years of absence
On 18 February 2025, a delegation of Syrian-American Jews, organized by the Syrian Emergency Task Force and authorized by the Syrian transitional government following the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, traveled to Damascus — the first organized visit of this kind in thirty-three years. It was led by Rabbi Yosef (Joseph) Hamra, former head of the Jewish community of Syria, accompanied by his son Henry Hamra; both had left Syria in 1992. The delegation visited the Jobar synagogue, largely destroyed, the Al-Franj and Al-Raki synagogues, as well as the Maimonides Jewish school in the Bab Sharqi quarter of old Damascus. The community held its first collective prayer in decades in the Al-Franj synagogue, which still preserves Torah scrolls unlike the other sites visited, which have been stripped of their ritual objects.
- Memory
The roundup of 4 March 1943 and the deportation of the Jews of Xanthi to Treblinka
On the night of 4 March 1943, Bulgarian occupation authorities arrested the Jews of Xanthi, approximately 526 to 550 people according to sources, as part of a coordinated German-Bulgarian operation targeting all Jews in western Thrace and eastern Macedonia then occupied by Bulgaria. Together with the Jews of Komotini, totalling 1,500 people for the two cities, they were transferred to the transit camp at Dupnica from 7 March onwards, where five of them died and were buried in the Jewish cemetery of the town. The convoy then proceeded by rail to Lom on 18 and 19 March, then travelled down the Danube by boat to Vienna, then Katowice, before arriving at the Treblinka extermination camp, where almost all the deportees were immediately killed. The community thus lost 99% of its population. Its synagogue, partly sold in 1963, was demolished in 1995; the cemetery was restored by volunteers in 2015, and a Holocaust memorial was erected in Eleftheria Square in 2022.
- Archaeology
The remains of the ancient Kingdom of Saba inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List
On 25 January 2023, at the 45th session of the World Heritage Committee, UNESCO inscribed the "Landmarks of the Ancient Kingdom of Saba, Marib" on the World Heritage List, and simultaneously on the List of World Heritage in Danger due to the civil war in Yemen. The serial property comprises seven sites: the ancient city of Marib, the temple of Awam, the temple of Barran, the north and south banks of the Marib dam, the Jufaynah dam and the ancient city of Sirwah. These remains, monumental temples, ramparts, inscriptions mentioning the moon god Almaqah, date from the first millennium before the Common Era until the arrival of Islam around 630. The kingdom controlled a major share of the incense route connecting South Arabia to the Mediterranean, the Near East and India, the same commercial wealth (gold, incense, spices) that biblical and classical sources associate with the Sabeans, notably during the visit of the Queen of Saba to Solomon.
- Restitution
Syria authorizes a Jewish heritage organization for the first time
On December 10, 2025, the Syrian transitional government granted an official license to the "Jewish Heritage in Syria Foundation" (JHS), the first organization of its kind in the country's history. Its registration was carried out by Hind Kabawat, the first woman appointed to the cabinet of the Syrian transitional government. Founded by members of the Syrian Jewish diaspora and chaired by Henry Hamra, the JHS is tasked with cataloguing Jewish property confiscated under the former regime, monitoring its restitution, and protecting and restoring the synagogues and Jewish holy sites of Syria, including the Al-Franj and Al-Raki synagogues in Damascus, to reopen them to visits. The license allows the foundation to operate officially in Syria, open an office, and organize regular visits by Jewish delegations.
- Memory
The "+FRANKLIN" exhibition tells the story of the plaque defaced in tribute to Rosalind Franklin
From 21 September 2024 to 31 May 2026, the Whipple Museum of the History of Science at the University of Cambridge presents the exhibition "+FRANKLIN: Rosalind Franklin and DNA". It displays the blue plaque removed from the pub The Eagle in Cambridge, which originally commemorated the announcement of the discovery of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick without mentioning Rosalind Franklin. This plaque was subject to repeated acts of protest: it bears the added inscription "+Franklin", to denounce this omission. A new plaque recognizing Franklin's contribution has since been unveiled by Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. The exhibition, free and accessible from age twelve, thus documents the memorial controversy surrounding the belated recognition of Franklin's role in the discovery of the structure of DNA.
- Memory
A U.S. Navy Replenishment Oiler Named in Honor of Joshua L. Goldberg
On January 16, 2025, U.S. Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro announced that the future John Lewis-class replenishment oiler T-AO 215 would be named USNS Joshua L. Goldberg, in tribute to the first rabbi to volunteer for naval service during World War II and the first to be promoted to captain — the first U.S. Navy ship named after a Jewish chaplain. On November 11, 2025, General Dynamics NASSCO received a contract worth 1.7 billion dollars to build this ship as well as a second one, also named after a chaplain. A "Goldberg Award" is moreover presented in his honor to chaplains who have distinguished themselves in providing religious service to sailors.
Sunday, August 23, 2026
- CommunitiesTo be confirmed
Nigeria launches candidacy for the World Zionist Congress
The Judaism Fellowship Initiative (JFI), which brings together the largest number of synagogues and practicing believers in Nigeria (more than 6,000 people, concentrated in Lagos, Abuja and Anambra State), launched a formal process in mid-August 2026 to obtain a seat at the World Zionist Congress. Its president, Arthur Regis, is to present the Nigerian case to the offices of the World Zionist Organization in Jerusalem during Sukkot 2026. The initiative follows Uganda, which became in January 2026 the second African nation admitted to the WZO after South Africa: the Zionist Movement of Uganda (ZIMU) was officially launched in June 2026 in Mukono, at the end of eight years of efforts begun in 2018, and participated in the 39th World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem.
- ArchaeologyTo be confirmed
The Temple Mount Sifting Project publishes 3D reconstruction of Second Temple floors
On August 5, 2026, the Temple Mount Sifting Project — an Israeli program for systematic sifting of debris illegally extracted from the esplanade of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem — published new 3D digital reconstructions of opus sectile floors (geometric pavings of imported marble and colored stones) from the courtyards of the Second Temple during the Herodian period. This work is based on thousands of paving fragments collected since the sifting began, and enables for the first time an overall visualization of the original patterns. The project presented its ongoing research at the 50th Israeli Archaeological Congress, notably a study on the evolution of the ground level of the eastern esplanade of the Temple Mount since the Middle Ages.
- Communities
Savannah (Georgia): The Third Oldest Jewish Congregation in America Displays Its Origins for the 250th Anniversary of the United States
Congregation Mickve Israel in Savannah, Georgia, the third oldest Jewish congregation in the United States (founded in 1733) and holder of the oldest Torah preserved on American soil, opened on May 4, 2026 the exhibition "Forging Our Sacred Liberty: The Declaration of Independence and Religious Freedom in Savannah, 1733-1790". Presented until January 2027 as part of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (America 250), it traces how the young colony of Georgia offered a refuge to Jews and other religious minorities persecuted in Europe. It particularly highlights the letter addressed in 1790 by George Washington to the congregation, in response to a letter from its president at that time, Levi Sheftall, acknowledging the freedom of worship guaranteed by the new nation. A local video report covered the exhibition in early July 2026.
Saturday, August 22, 2026
- Memory
Szeged: Death of Salamon István, family physician and Holocaust survivor committed to community memory
Salamon István died on 24 July 2026 in Szeged (Hungary), at the age of 86. Born on 29 May 1940 in that city, he had been deported at age four with his family to Strasshof camp in 1944; his father, sent to forced labour, never returned. He began his medical career in 1964 in the internal medicine department of Hódmezővásárhely hospital, before practicing for more than half a century as a family physician in the Újszeged district, treating several generations from the same family lineages of patients. He was also vice-president and then elected official of the Jewish community of Szeged (Szegedi Zsidó Hitközség), and participated each year in the Shoah commemorations organized at the city's brickyard, the gathering place for Jews before their deportation in 1944. His funeral, at the end of July 2026, was widely covered by the Hungarian community press.
- Communities
Recife: centenary of the Sinagoga Israelita do Recife, in the Boa Vista neighbourhood
The Synagoga Israelita do Recife, known as "Synagoga da Boa Vista", celebrated in 2026 the centenary of its foundation, which took place on 20 July 1926 at 29 Martins Júnior Street, in the Boa Vista neighbourhood, in Recife (Pernambuco, Brazil). Founded by Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe who arrived during the second major wave of migration to Pernambuco, it originally bore the name Shil Sholem Ocnitzer, in honour of one of its founders, before adopting its current name in 1987. The community dates back further: at the beginning of the twentieth century, only four families lived in Boa Vista, gathered around Avrum Ishie Vainer in a makeshift synagogue, the Sinagoga Sukuron. Those same years saw the birth of the Colégio Israelita (1918), the Clube Hebraico (today Centro Israelita de Pernambuco) and the Barro cemetery (1927). The centenary ceremony was presided over by Guilherme Zaicaner, in the presence notably of Jacques Ribemboim, of Boris Berenstein, president of the Federação Israelita de Pernambuco, and of actor Germano Haiut.
- Communities
Maputo: centenary of the Honen Dalim synagogue, Mozambique's only Jewish place of worship
On 11 June 2026, the Honen Dalim congregation in Maputo celebrated the centenary of the official inauguration of its building, which took place on 29 August 1926, in the presence of around a hundred people including Mozambican president Daniel Chapo, who signed the guest book, German ambassador Ronald Münch and the president of the Islamic Council of Mozambique, Sheikh Aminudin. The Jewish community of Lourenço Marques, the former name of Maputo, dates back to 1899, with the arrival of refugees fleeing the Boer War from the Transvaal; it formally organized in 1906 under the name Honen Dalim ("he who helps the poor"). After independence in 1975, the Marxist regime expropriated places of worship: the building served as a warehouse for the Red Cross during the civil war (1977-1992), and the organized community almost disappeared between 1945 and 1992. A Greek businessman preserved the building in 1989; religious freedom returned in 1990, and the couple Larry and Diane Herman revived community life from 1999 onwards, with legal recognition in 2010 and renovation completed in 2015. Services are held today in Hebrew, English and Portuguese.
- Memory
South African Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft Publishes Second Work on Jewish Cemeteries in Southern Africa
On 30 July 2026, the SA Jewish Report published an article on Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, nicknamed "The Travelling Rabbi" following a SABC documentary broadcast in 1993, on the occasion of the publication of his second work, The Travelling Rabbi – Journeys Continued, fourteen years after his first book published in 2012. For decades, Silberhaft has travelled through sub-Saharan Africa to preserve the cemeteries of dispersed and disappeared Jewish communities, asserting that a cemetery attests that a Jewish community lived, worked and contributed to a place. He also documents the archival heritage of these communities, notably in Bulawayo (Zimbabwe), where a library at the Vulindlela Orphanage Care Centre bears his name. The new book revisits the narratives of the first work in light of fourteen additional years of fieldwork.
- Communities
Tunisia: national census of synagogues and churches launches their restoration
The Tunisian Ministry of Cultural Affairs announced on 7 August 2026 the launch of a national census of abandoned Christian and Jewish religious buildings, in order to clarify their legal status, assess their condition and plan restoration and cultural reuse work. The statement cites the Ghriba synagogue in Djerba, inscribed in 2023 on the UNESCO world heritage list alongside historic mosques and churches on the island, as an example of the country's cultural and religious stratification. Three churches (Sfax, Gabès, Sainte-Croix de Tunis) serve as precedents for the scheme. The stated objective is to strengthen the maintenance and monitoring of these sites, considered as an integral part of national memory and witnesses to Tunisian religious pluralism.
- Memory
The Schocken Department Store in Zwickau Reopens After Restoration (September 2025)
The former Schocken department store in Zwickau (Saxony), closed for years, officially reopened in September 2025 after major heritage restoration work. The project, carried out since May 2022 by GP Papenburg Hochbau (Halle) at a cost of approximately 33 million euros, benefited from federal, regional and municipal funding, with particular attention paid to the preservation of the façades on the Hauptstraße and Marienplatz as well as the distinctive external staircase of the building.
Friday, August 21, 2026
- Memory
Death of Salomón "Lalo" Wainberg, radio voice of the Jewish community of Córdoba
Journalist and radio broadcaster Salomón "Lalo" Wainberg died on August 15, 2026 in Córdoba (Argentina) from complications of severe head trauma caused by a city bus that struck him on a pedestrian crossing in the city center the day before. Approximately 70 years old, he had hosted for more than thirty years, alongside Ana Nélida "Lita" Sued, the Sunday program "Kol Hashalom — La Voz de la Paz" on station LV2 Córdoba. The program had become a reference space for Jewish culture, history and current events, as well as for the defense of human rights and the fight against antisemitism. His death aroused strong emotion in the Jewish community of Córdoba and in local journalistic circles, with several regional media outlets paying tribute to his role as a keeper of memory. He died at the city's emergency hospital the day after the accident.
- Genealogy
City University of New York digitizes approximately 14 kilometers of archives on New York Jewish life
The Times of Israel published on August 10, 2026 an article on the archival project conducted by the City University of New York (CUNY), which brings together 26 campuses across the five boroughs of New York. Approximately 14 linear kilometers of documents and nearly 60,000 additional items — films, diskettes, video cassettes — concern New York Jewish life: student publications, testimonies of Holocaust survivors, documentaries on the Hasidic world, Yiddish humor collections, memorabilia related to boxing. The project, directed by archivist Natalie Milbrodt with Colleen Bradley-Sanders, director of archives at Brooklyn College, is supported by a two-million-dollar grant from the Mellon Foundation obtained in 2023 for three years. More than 70,000 items are to be digitized and made accessible on a unified database, with public access planned for 2027. CUNY confirms the funding on its own institutional website.
- Publication
The Jewish Quarterly Review publishes an article on Maimonides' negative theology
The Jewish Quarterly Review went online on 28 May 2026 with its issue 116.2 (spring 2026). It contains an article by Tanja Werthmann of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which draws on late antique Eastern Syriac philosophy and theology, and their reception in Islamic lands, to illuminate Maimonides' via negativa — the article argues that the philosopher elevates silence to a spiritual practice. The same issue includes an article by Yosi Yisraeli placing the Sefer ha-Ikkarim of Joseph Albo, written around 1420, in the context of polemics with Christianity of his time, as well as articles on the historiography of Semitic languages, female cantors in early twentieth-century American Jewish culture, and the language of a novel about a Jewish family in the waning Ottoman Empire. The announcement is relayed by the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, an institutional partner of the journal.
- Communities
The wooden synagogue of Magyarkomját, in Transcarpathia, rebuilt at the Ungvár museum
A rare wooden synagogue from Magyarkomját (Velykyi Komiat), in Ukrainian Transcarpathia, has been entirely dismantled and transported to the Transcarpathian Ethnographic and Popular Architecture Museum in Ungvár (Uzhhorod), where it will be reconstructed and restored. The building, considered unique in Europe for having preserved its original state without major modification, is to regain both a museum and religious function there. The project is directed by Budapest rabbi György Szabó, with the participation of Hungarian and Ukrainian specialists; the general consul of Hungary in Uzhhorod, József Bacskai, has been working for several years on the preservation of the building. The ceremony for laying the foundation stone of the reconstruction took place on 15 April 2026. The stated objective is to make the place usable again for Rosh Hashanah in September 2026.
- Publication
The journal Aschkenas publishes its issue on medieval iconography of the damned Jews in open access
The journal Aschkenas. Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kultur der Juden, published by De Gruyter Brill, has put online its issue 36 (2026), fascicle 1, entirely in open access. The fascicle includes notably an article by Markus J. Wenninger entitled "Wie kamen die Juden unter die Verdammten?" ("How did the Jews end up among the damned?"), devoted to the theological foundations of early medieval ecclesiastical representations depicting Jews in hell. The journal, published twice yearly, normally publishes essays, editions of sources, research reports and reviews of recent works; it is one of the reference German-language journals for the history and culture of Ashkenazi Jews.
- Memory
Historian David Abulafia, specialist in medieval Mediterranean, died on 24 January 2026
David Abulafia, British historian born 12 December 1949 in Twickenham, died on 24 January 2026 in Cambridge, aged 76; his funeral took place on 30 January 2026 at the West Chapel of Huntingdon Road Cemetery, followed by a reception at Gonville and Caius College. Fellow of this college since 1974, he was professor of Mediterranean history at Cambridge from 2000 to 2017 and then professor emeritus, and headed the Faculty of History from 2003 to 2005. His last major work, The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans (2019), received the Wolfson History Prize and the Mountbatten Award; The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean (2011) had earned him the British Academy Medal in 2013. Elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2010 and member of the Academia Europaea, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2023. Late in his career, he co-founded the collective History Reclaimed, engaged in debates on the writing of contemporary history. Married in 1979 to historian Anna Sapir Abulafia, specialist in medieval Judeo-Christian relations, he leaves two daughters, Rosa and Bianca.
Thursday, August 20, 2026
- ManuscriptsTo be confirmed
An autograph letter from 1731 by the Ramhal sold for 392,700 dollars reveals the Jewish Theological Seminary's discreet sale of its collection
On February 18, 2026, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency revealed that an autograph letter by Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, the Ramhal, Padua 1707–1746 or 1747, had been sold for three hundred ninety-two thousand seven hundred dollars by the Genazym auction house. The letter, dated 1731 and addressed to his teacher, runs across two handwritten pages and develops a close discussion of mystical concepts, the author mentioning other writings then in progress. It belonged to a Ramhal collection of several hundred pages that the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America had disposed of en bloc during a financial crisis, about ten years ago; these sales were private and the institution never published details of them. The JTS argued that the documents had been digitized and judged to be of limited research interest. Specialist David Sclar, author of a thesis on Luzzatto, contests this reading and speaks of a back-door disposal for practically nothing, while other scholars object that digitization replaces neither the scholarly value nor the cultural value of the original manuscripts. The episode bears directly on the lineage: first-hand documentation on the 1727-1735 affair—revelations of the maggid, letters from Yekutiel Gordon of Vilna, intervention by Moses Hagiz of Altona-Hamburg with the rabbis of Venice in 1730—rests on this type of correspondence. Caveat: the second article read very probably relays the first rather than constituting an independent attestation, and the contradiction on digitization, mentioned by a third inaccessible source, is not resolved.
Wednesday, August 19, 2026
- Other
Haim Sabato awarded the 2026 Presidential Medal of Excellence
On July 28, 2026, Israeli President Isaac Herzog announced that rabbi and writer Haim Sabato was among eleven recipients of the 2026 Presidential Medal of Honor, for his contribution to Torah, education and literature. Sabato, born in Cairo in 1952, has directed the yeshivat hesder Birkat Moshe in Maalé Adoumim since its founding. The distinction notably recognizes his works Teim Kavanot and Bo HaRuah, in addition to his novels already awarded the Sapir Prize, the Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew-language authors and the Yitzhak Sadeh Prize for military literature. Among the ten other recipients in the same class are notably jurist Uriel Reichman and ornithologist Yossi Leshem.
- Archaeology
First archaeological evidence of Khazar presence in Crimea: eighth-century burial mounds near Simferopol (2024)
Excavations conducted in 2021 near Simferopol in Crimea during reconnaissance work for a road bypass uncovered eighth-century burial mounds containing weapons, horse harnesses and rectangular stone funeral structures, comparable to Turkish constructions previously known only in Mongolia. The announcement was made public on March 25, 2024 by Vadim Maïko, director of the Institute of Archaeology of Crimea at the Russian Academy of Sciences, who describes it as the first archaeological proof of the existence of a Khazaria in Crimea. The objects found present direct analogies with known Khazar burials from the Lower Don and the Volga-Don interfluve, confirming on the ground a presence that written sources had suggested without material evidence until now.
Tuesday, August 18, 2026
- Publication
Halberstadt: A Colloquium on Provenance Research for 176 Jewish Objects Suspected of Being Looted in Saxony-Anhalt
The Berend Lehmann Museum for Jewish History and Culture in Halberstadt (Saxony-Anhalt, Germany) is organizing a scholarly colloquium on 31 August and 1 September 2026 entitled "Provenienz jüdischer Objekte erforschen und vermitteln" ("Researching and Communicating the Provenance of Jewish Objects"). The event is part of a research project launched in January 2026 by the museum, devoted to examining over one year the biographies of one hundred seventy-six objects suspected of having been sold, extorted or abandoned under coercion by the Nazi regime in the Saxony-Anhalt region. The program includes short presentations, methodological workshops and a format for networking between provenance researchers and professionals from museums, collections and archives. The announcement was relayed by the academic portal H-Soz-Kult, a reference platform for historical sciences in the German-speaking world, as well as by the specialized portal Art Market Studies in the form of a call for participation. This project is part of the broader provenance research movement conducted by German cultural institutions on property looted as a result of Nazi persecution.
Monday, August 17, 2026
- CommunitiesTo be confirmed
The Pine Street Shul of Johannesburg celebrates its first service in its new building
On Sunday 2 August 2026, the Pine Street Shul congregation of Johannesburg held its first Minha and Maariv services in its new building, still under construction, as a symbolic gesture of dedication of the place. The community, led by Rabbi Motti Hadar and Rebbetzin Temmi Hadar, had conducted a fundraising campaign called "Raise the Future" targeting 7 million rands in 36 hours, ultimately exceeded with over 10 million rands collected. The Chief Rabbi of South Africa, Warren Goldstein, highlighted on this occasion the lack of seats in Johannesburg's synagogues. The new building is adjacent to the Satyagraha House, the former property of Hermann Kallenbach where Mahatma Gandhi resided for a time.
- MemoryTo be confirmed
In Cape Town, the Minyan Yosef of Herzlia celebrates a century of continuous existence
Founded on 18 June 1926 by Joseph Homa, then principal of Cape Town Talmud Torah, the Minyan Yosef — a prayer group intended to train students to lead Sabbath services — reaches in 2026 a century of continuous existence. Created at the United Hebrew Schools of Hope Street, it admitted girls from 1945 under the impetus of Zalman Avin, first principal of Herzlia High School, before moving to Highlands in 1958. Rabbi Ephraïm Mirvis, today Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, was its president in 1973. According to an article in the SA Jewish Report published on 9 July 2026, none of the earliest members are still living; the centenary celebrations are scheduled for 27 August 2026.
- Memory
At the São Paulo Jewish Museum, the exhibition "Burle Marx: plantas em movimento" reads the landscape designer through his Jewish lineage
The Jewish Museum of São Paulo (MUJ) presented from April 30 to August 2, 2026 the exhibition "Burle Marx: plantas em movimento", devoted to Brazilian landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx, under the curatorship of Daniel Jablonski. The exhibition highlights the artist's German-Jewish paternal ancestry — his father was a Jewish immigrant who came from Germany — as a lens for reading his work, articulated around the themes of migration, crossing and identity continuity. An article in Folha de S.Paulo, published on July 20, 2026 in its Ilustrada supplement, reports the parallel established by curators Guilherme Wisnik and Isabela Ono between the mixture of indigenous and exotic species practiced by Burle Marx, without hierarchy, and the experience of the Jewish diaspora. The official catalogue of the exhibition was launched on July 18, 2026 in the presence of the curators, according to the Confederação Israelita do Brasil (CONIB). The exhibition brought together drawings, paintings and archival documents, including those of the gardens of the Walther Moreira Salles residence in Rio de Janeiro (1950s) and the Aterro do Flamengo.
- CommunitiesTo be confirmed
In Johannesburg, the Mina Lopato Nursery School celebrates its sixty-five years
Founded by Isaac Lopato in memory of his late wife Mina — the foundation stone having been laid in 1961 — this Jewish nursery school in Johannesburg, today inspired by Reggio pedagogical methods and open to families from all backgrounds, commemorated its sixty-fifth anniversary at a gathering held on 6 August 2026, bringing together former pupils, parents and staff. The school, initially housed at the Emmarentia Shul, moved around 2016 to the Greenside Shul. Director Marissa Koffler testified, according to the SA Jewish Report of 13 August 2026, to the flood of messages and donations received. The celebration marked the launch of the "Mina Lopato Alumni Foundation", intended to maintain ties with former pupils.
- Communities
Milan opens the 2026 European Day of Jewish Culture with an unprecedented Barbara Nahmad exhibition
The 27th edition of the European Day of Jewish Culture (Giornata Europea della Cultura Ebraica) will take place throughout Italy on Sunday, September 6, 2026, on the theme of love in Jewish tradition. In Milan, the opening is scheduled for 10 a.m. at the central synagogue on Via Guastalla, with institutional greetings, followed at 10:30 a.m. by a discussion entitled "Il Dio dell'amore e il Dio di giustizia" then, at 11:30 a.m., by a meeting around the Book of Ruth. The afternoon continues at the Teatro Franco Parenti: at 3 p.m., presentation of the exhibition "Eden, infinite love" by artist Barbara Nahmad, then at 5 p.m. an event around the Dybbuk entitled "Perturbamento e passione". The information, published by Mosaico, the official website of the Comunità Ebraica di Milano, is confirmed by the dedicated page of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI), the national umbrella organization.
- Communities
The Romaniot synagogue Kahal Kadosh Yavanim of Trikala has been restored and solemnly reinaugurated on October 16, 2022
The Kahal Kadosh Yavanim synagogue of Trikala (Thessaly, Greece), built between 1925 and 1930 and the sole survivor of the city's three pre-war synagogues, underwent restoration completed in October 2021 followed by a solemn three-day reinauguration on October 16, 2022. The ceremony brought together notably Noam Katz, ambassador of Israel to Greece, who emphasized that the building symbolizes the presence and history of the Jewish people in Greece for several hundred years. Funding was provided by the German government (via the German consulate in Thessaloniki), the Central Council of Jewish Communities of Greece, and donations from Greek Jewish communities and the diaspora; Jacob Venuzio, president of the Jewish community of Trikala, supervised the project, and David Saltiel, president of the Central Council (KISE), directed fundraising. The restoration added a museum and library dedicated to the history of the Jewish community of Trikala. Before the Second World War, approximately 500 Jews lived in Trikala; only a few dozen reside there today, out of the approximately 87% of Jews in Greece exterminated during the Shoah.
- Publication
Thirty-four Years Later, Richard Thaler Republishes "The Winner's Curse" with Alex Imas
"The Winner's Curse: Paradoxes and Anomalies of Economic Life" was published in 1992 by Richard H. Thaler at Free Press (New York), a collection of his columns on anomalies in economic behavior that helped establish behavioral economics. Thaler, an American economist, received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2017 for his work in this field. A fully revised edition, co-written with economist Alex O. Imas and titled "The Winner's Curse: Behavioral Economics Anomalies, Then and Now," is scheduled to be published by Simon & Schuster on July 14, 2026: each chapter revisits an "anomaly" from the original 1992 book and evaluates how subsequent research has confirmed, refined, or surpassed it. Excerpts were published by Fortune (October 21, 2025) and the book was the subject of an in-depth article on ProMarket (November 1, 2025).
- Memory
Jewish Cemeteries in Perth (Western Australia) Threatened by a Concession Renewal Program
Perth is home to several Jewish cemeteries testifying to community presence since the nineteenth century, including that of East Perth and the Orthodox Jewish section of Fremantle Cemetery, established in 1867 and comprising 28 concessions, partially reconstituted after 1899 by the relocation of eleven remaining tombstones. It notably preserves the grave of Elias Solomon, the first Jewish elected representative from Fremantle to the Australian Federal Parliament. An article dated 8 March 2024 reveals that Fremantle Cemetery is designated as the second site, after Karrakatta, to enter the "Cemetery Renewal" program of the Metropolitan Cemeteries Board of the State of Western Australia, which plans the removal of tombstones, borders and concession numbers within a period of 5 to 10 years in order to reuse the plots. The Jewish Historical and Genealogical Society of Western Australia also maintains archives and a genealogical and historical research library on the community.
- Manuscripts
"Studio e preghiera": The Oldest Books of the Jewish Community of Rome on Display at the Tempio Maggiore
On the occasion of European Day of Jewish Culture (GECE) 2025, Sunday, September 14, 2025, the Jewish Community of Rome, in partnership with its Historical Archives (ASCER), inaugurated the exhibition "Studio e preghiera. I libri più antichi della Comunità Ebraica di Roma", presented at the Tempio Maggiore and the Tempio Spagnolo. Free guided tours, in Italian and English, were offered every hour, conducted by researcher Emma Abate, alongside Giacomo Moscati (cultural advisor of the Community) and Claudio Procaccia (director of the department of cultural assets and activities). The exhibition displayed sacred texts and rare works preserved for centuries by Europe's oldest Jewish community.
Sunday, August 16, 2026
- Archives
The Jewish Community of Thessalonike launches Iossipos, a digital repository of Greek Jewish memory
The Jewish Community of Thessalonike launched "Ιώσηπος" (Iossipos), a digital archives repository covering more than three millennia of Jewish presence in Greece, bringing together Romaniote, Sephardic and Ashkenazi traditions. The project was presented in Thessalonike on January 23, 2026, then in a second public presentation at the Athens Concert Hall on March 30, 2026, before being made freely accessible online on March 31, 2026. Co-financed by the European Union as part of the Greek digital transformation programme (ESPA/NSRF 2021-2027, for approximately 4 million euros), the repository brings together more than 212,000 unique documents and approximately 2,000,000 digital files: vital records, oral testimonies, photographs and archival sources. It aims to reconstitute collections dispersed following the Thessalonike fire of 1917, spoliations during Nazi occupation, and the postwar dispersal of Greek communities across Europe, Israel, Russia and the United States.
- Memory
Death of Julio Schlosser, former president of the DAIA and figure of the Argentine Jewish community
Julio Schlosser, former president of the Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas (DAIA) from 2012 to 2015, died in early August 2026 at the age of 66. Before presiding over the DAIA, he had been secretary general of the AMIA and had presided over the Bnei Akiva Argentina movement. His presidency of the DAIA was marked by a constant demand for justice regarding the attack on the AMIA of July 18, 1994, and by calls for clarification on the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who was investigating that attack. He actively opposed the Memorandum of Understanding concluded with Iran by the government of Cristina Kirchner. His death prompted numerous tributes from Argentine Jewish organizations and the political establishment, who hailed a major institutional figure in the defense of the Argentine Jewish community.
- Communities
The Dominican Republic finances the renovation of the Jewish museum in Sosúa
On January 16, 2026, the Minister of the Presidency of the Dominican Republic, José Ignacio Paliza, announced a comprehensive enhancement project for the Jewish museum in Sosúa, presenting an initial payment of 25 million Dominican pesos out of a planned total of 50 million, divided into two installments. The project covers the renovation of the museum's exhibition spaces and the adjoining synagogue, in the historic El Batey neighborhood. The site commemorates the arrival in 1941 of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Europe, welcomed by the Dominican Republic under agreements resulting from the Évian conference of 1938. The Dominican government presents this project as making the site a national and international cultural, educational and tourist reference.
- PublicationTo be confirmed
The Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies Holds Its Annual Congress on Crypto-Jews of the Early American South
The Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies will organize its 36th annual congress on October 25, 2026, entirely by videoconference, on the theme "Sephardic and Crypto-Jews in the Early South," devoted to Sephardic Jews and crypto-Jews of the American South in the early period. The Stanley M. Hordes Distinguished Scholar Lecture will be given by Dr. Roger L. Martinez-Dávila, professor of history at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, under the title "Crypto-Judaism: The Southern Atlantic Jewish Experience." The call for papers, open to any discipline, period and geographical area related to crypto-Judaism, is published on the learned society's website, with registrations opening from September 2026.
- GenealogyTo be confirmed
JewishGen adds more than 100,000 Jewish civil registry records from Ukraine (1851-1917)
On August 10, 2026, the Ukrainian division of JewishGen (JewishGen Ukraine Research Division) announced the addition of 100,247 civil registry records covering the period 1851-1917 to its online genealogical database. These birth, marriage, divorce and death certificates, as well as censuses, come from Jewish communities in fifteen Ukrainian localities, including Vinnytsia, Odessa, Jitomir, Fastov and Vasilkov. This release follows a regular monthly pace: the previous month, on July 10, 2026, the division had already added 131,728 records for the period 1870-1920 concerning other localities. These transcriptions make accessible, city by city, records held by Ukrainian state archives, notably the National Center for Historical Archives of Kyiv. Several of the localities concerned, including Vinnytsia and Odessa, are already documented as places on zakhor.ai.
- Communities
A "Jewish Court" opens at the Savaria Historical Carnival in Szombathely (Hungary)
On August 13, 2026, a "Jewish Court" (Zsidó Udvar) opened its doors in the courtyard of the Jewish Cultural House of Szombathely, on the occasion of the XXVth Savaria Historical Carnival, one of the largest costumed festivals in Central Europe. For three days, this thematic pavilion presented the culture, traditions and values of the local Jewish community, through music, discussions, exhibitions and gastronomy, including a screening of the Hungarian film "Lefkovicsék gyászolnak". Created in 2013 at the initiative of András Kulhay, this Jewish Court appears each year among the thematic spaces of the carnival, alongside the People's Court and the Carnival Theater.
- Publication
Roya Hakakian honored with the Pomegranate Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature
On June 8, 2025, Iranian-American writer Roya Hakakian received the "Pomegranate Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature" at the opening ceremony of the 27th New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, at El Museo del Barrio in New York. This distinction, awarded by the American Sephardi Federation, honors her body of work: her memoirs "Journey from the Land of No" (2004), her investigation "Assassins of the Turquoise Palace" (2011) on the Mykonos attack in Berlin, and "A Beginner's Guide to America" (2021). Hakakian, born in Tehran in 1966 and a refugee to the United States in 1985, began with Persian poetry with the collection "For the Sake of Water" (1993), which had already earned her the Latifeh Yarshater Prize from the Association for Iranian Studies in 2006. The ceremony honored four recipients, with trophies sculpted by artist Oded Halhamy, born in Baghdad.
- Restitution
Restitution of the "Di Gara," sixteenth-century Hebrew manuscript plundered by the Nazis, to the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest
The "Di Gara," an edition printed in Venice at the end of the sixteenth century by Giovanni di Gara (Five Books of Moses and Haftarot), belonged to Italian rabbi Lelio Della Torre (died in 1871) and was acquired around 1877 by the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest. Plundered by Nazi forces during the occupation of Budapest in 1944, the work disappeared for nearly 80 years. It resurfaced in March 2023 on the AbeBooks website, listed for sale at 19,000 dollars; Hungarian authorities then alerted the United States Department of Homeland Security, which seized it in April 2023 in New York (Cultural Property and Antiquities unit). A federal judge signed the confiscation order in October 2024. A restitution ceremony was held at the Hungarian consulate in New York, with the manuscript returning to the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest, which plans its conservation and an exhibition on its history.
- Archives
Launch of a digital archive dedicated to the spoliation of Hungarian Jews (1944-1945)
The Zekelman Holocaust Center and the World Jewish Restitution Organization placed online on 19 February 2025 a new site (hfilms.holocaustcenter.org) bringing together 180 reels of digitized microfilm, comprising more than 160,000 views, documenting the persecution, deportation and especially the spoliation of Jewish property in Hungary during the Shoah — names of victims, lists of confiscated property, beneficiaries of the plunder. Reel 144C documents in detail the Herzog collection, an important pre-war art collection (works by El Greco, Lucas Cranach the Elder) seized and still partially held by Hungarian institutions. The project, partly translated by survivor Clara Garbon-Radnoti, was financed by the German foundation "Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft" and the German federal Ministry of Finance.