From April 21 to 23, the city of Kamianets-Podilskyi in Ukraine’s Khmelnytskyi region hosted the International Scientific Conference – Festival of Jewish Knowledge “East European Jewry: History, Culture, Traditions.”

You can watch the conference opening in Ukrainian here.

The goal of the conference was not only to give participants the chance to present their research but also to unite specialists from various fields of Jewish studies in Eastern Europe and create a community centered on this topic.

The program featured 70 presentations by researchers from Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, the United States, Israel, and Germany.

On the first day, three parallel sessions took place: “The Local Dimension of Jewish History,” “Jews of Eastern Europe in the Interwar Period,” and “Jews in the Narratives of Eastern and Central Europe.” Participants presented their research and shared the results of their work.

The second day continued with three more parallel sessions: “Jewish Heritage in Museum and Book Collections,” “Jewry in Ukrainian Lands in the 18th – Early 20th Century,” and an English-language online panel titled “Beyond Hasidism as a Men’s Club: Women as Leaders and Followers in Chabad Literature and History,” featuring scholars from Poland and the USA.

Panel: Beyond Hasidism as a Men’s Club

Chairperson: Katarzyna Taczyńska, Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw, Poland)

• Aleksandra Twardowska (Independent Scholar, PhD, Gdańsk, Poland) — A Tale from the Past: The Poetry of Jewish Women Writers in Early 20th Century Bosnia
• Eli Rubin (Chabad, PhD, Pittsburgh, USA) — More Than ‘A Khsidishe Yidene’: Rebbetzin Rivkah Schneersohn (1834–1914) as a Link in Chabad’s Chain of Dynastic Leadership
• Jadwiga Czeska-Kosiba (Wrocław House of Literature, Wrocław, Poland) — Reshimas Zikhroines of Chana Schneersohn: A Case Study of a Hasidic Woman’s Diary
• Wojciech Tworek (University of Wrocław, PhD, Wrocław, Poland) — The Politics of Girls’ Education: Between Chabad’s Ahot ha-Temimim and the Bais Yaakov Movement

On the third day, the conference moved beyond the city. Participants visited the villages of Smotrych and Zhvanets, home to the remains of former Jewish shtetls. The excursions were led by researchers Hanna Kivilsha and Eugene Levinzon.

Tamás Stark, President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ Subcommittee on the History of the Second World War (Hun-Ren Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute of History), attended the conference in Kamianets-Podilskyi in person. He specializes in Jewish history, particularly the Holocaust and the pre-Holocaust period in Hungary and East Central Europe.

He shared that the conference was especially meaningful to him, as he recently published a book about the first Hungarian deportation of Jews — its history and prehistory — which actually ended in Kamianets-Podilskyi.

“I am here because I wrote about Kamianets-Podilskyi. I studied the subject, and of course, Jewish history is part of my field.

But there are other reasons why I’m here. I realized that Hungarian scholars are very disconnected from Ukrainian scholars. Especially since the war began, I’ve been trying to build a bridge between them.

I believe it’s very important to strengthen the relationship between the Hungarian and Ukrainian nations—particularly between scholars and historians.

And finally, I am here to express my solidarity and the solidarity of many Hungarian scholars with Ukraine and its people during these truly heroic times,” Tamás Stark said.

The conference was co-organized by several institutions:

The Krymsky Institute of Oriental Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, a leading Ukrainian research institution in the field of Oriental Studies.

The International Interdisciplinary Certificate Program in Jewish Studies under the auspices of the Krymsky Institute of Oriental Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. This program focuses on the history and culture of Jews in Eastern Europe, with an emphasis on Ukraine.

The Kamianets-Podilskyi State Historical Museum-Reserve, recognized internationally as a world-class museum.

The State Archives of the Khmelnytskyi Region, which houses tens of thousands of important documents and oversees state policies related to archival affairs.

ESJF European Jewish Cemetery Initiative with the support of the German Foreign Office

The media partners for the conference are Diye-Slovo studio and EVREI TV.