From 10 to 19 September 2004 the Lithuanian European Heritage Days have been devoted to Jewish Heritage.
Michel Thomas-Penette
Traduction en anglais : Nia Horne |
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european institute of cultural routes |
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| Michel Thomas-Penette |
| 30 August 2010 |
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| Why a Jewish Heritage Route? |
When we found ourselves, on the 11th of September 2004, at Žiežmariai, inside this wooden synagogue, whose sealed up windows still managed to allow light and rays of sunshine to filter in, and whilst the sound of the violin followed the memory of a community, which, between the last two world wars, had experienced hours of joy and communion within these fragile walls, it seemed to us that the question itself would not even come up.
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Professor Dominique Jarrassé confirmed: "Heritage itself does not exist, it is the product of our research and of the consensus which takes place in order to grant it this recognition. It is therefore of a precarious nature, which depends upon the great willingness of historians and key figures working in the field of heritage, just as it depends upon the public, (owners or society in general) who determine the success, or not, of this promotion of objects. It can only be born with adequate social demand. Nevertheless, the individual initiative is essential, as it sets in motion the process, which may or may not succeed."
In front of the synagogue, a line was set up, on which children’s drawings hung alongside photographs dating back more than 60 years. Yesterday’s child, today the guardian of this place of memory, is confronted with the smile of a time engulfed in drama, filled with the joys of life belonging to a new European generation.
In effect, heritage only exists in this passing on of evidence, from one time to another, within memory’s reach. With regards to Jewish heritage, the witness and the evidence are fragile, still all too often subject to negativity, as if the millions of persons who have disappeared did not suffice to illustrate the horror of the past.
From the banks of the Mediterranean, where over the centuries the Sephardi found themselves surrounded by a language and a culture, which allowed them to retain a force from the Iberian peninsula, before being sent in mass to Nazi camps, or camps belonging to Nazi allies, as far as Lithuania, where the German occupation and the "Einsatzgruppen" massacred, then deported, nearly ten percent of the population of a country where Yiddish constituted a strong identity, and where the Jewish communities were an essential element of the dynamic economy of the time, it is nevertheless the same words – beyond languages and dialects – which we must today employ when speaking of this heritage: fragility, abandonment, change of use, isolation....
Both Ladino and Yiddish are also part of our heritage, in Thessalonia as in Kaunas, and they help to bear witness in the fight against a permanent threat, a threat which is gradually wiping out a heritage, as it no longer belongs to anyone and as no-one continues to believe themselves to be responsible for it.
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The advocates of the European Jewish Heritage Route are certainly conscious of the debt which we all carry, with regards to a people which almost disappeared, but they are also guiding us towards a new form of understanding.
They wish to present us with an identity, which is turning towards its roots in order to reach a better understanding and therefore to explain to us what these roots were in history – and more so what they are today – shared by more than just the Jewish communities themselves.
"Jewish Heritage is an integral part of European history and culture. Jewish history and culture is largely rooted in Europe and is made up of a history full of migration, persecution and precariousness, but equally of human exchanges, humanism and an abundance of mutual enrichment. However, for a long time, the Jews of Europe were considered as worn-out "leftovers" of what was once an ancient tradition full of originality."
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The European Institute of Cultural Routes is happy, thanks to the mission entrusted to them by the Council of Europe, to have been able to accompany the initiative taken by the European Council of Jewish Communities, the B’nai B’rith Europe and the Red de Juderias, up until the European Day of Jewish Culture became a cultural route in itself, which openly allows us to see and understand a form of otherness to which we are indebted.
Should we underline the fact that having symbolically opened this route in Lithuania during the European Heritage Days has only given an even more remarkable resonance to an element of our common heritage?
The cultural diversity which we are trying to protect is within the scale of a sincere and authentic research of origins. It must take into consideration our multiple journeys.
In search of his family, Amin Maalouf admits: "I am from a tribe which has always been nomadic in a desert the size of the world. Our countries are the oases which we leave when the source dries up, our houses are tents dressed in stone, our nationalities are the affairs of dates or boats. We are only linked together through one another, across generations, across seas, across the Babel of languages, the murmuring of a name… ".
To construct and to travel along the Jewish heritage route is also, in a way, to ensure that the murmuring of the names of those who have disappeared rightly takes on a meaning there, where practically nobody remembers any more.
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