Virtual and Real-Life Spaces of Jewish Europe in the 21st Century

The first decades of the 21st century have presented numerous challenges for European Jewry: far-right movements and a rise of antisemitism, a global pandemic, and a war on European soil. At the same time, heritage sites commemorating the Jewish past and the use of digital platforms to create new forms of communication and cultural co-construction are growing. Using a variety of spaces - heritage sites, museums, digital practices, urban topography, and communal activities - as case studies, this collective volume analyses whether they might serve as a reminder that despite moments of crisis, Jewish life in Europe persists. The spatial analysis offered by the volume uses the concept of "virtuality" as a starting point, thereby engaging anew with spatial concepts laid out by scholars in the 1990s. Now, 30 years later, prompted by today's political, social, and cultural European landscape, as well as the increasing role of digitization, the authors discuss the meaning of "virtuality" and how it relates to notions of "authenticity" and "reality" in Jewish culture and in Jewish/non-Jewish relations. As such, the book provides a fresh take on and a new way forward for the conceptualizations and applications of "space", which together offer particularly useful avenues to access power relations, identity (re-)constructions, and performative aspects of the European Jewish experience.

Maja Hultman, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; Joachim Schlör, University of Southampton, United Kingdom.