On September 3 and 4, 2025, Prof. Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern of Northwestern University (Evanston, USA) visited the Belongings group and Dubnow Institute. During his two-day stay, he provided significant impulses for research and teaching in the field of Jewish history and culture.
On the first day, Prof. Petrovsky-Shtern led an intensive seminar with the doctoral students of the Belongings group. The focus was on Jewish Material Culture, which he explored in a multifaceted way both methodologically and thematically. In the seminar, he conveyed to the participants the importance of engaging with Jewish cultural history and tradition – that is, to take into account, beyond the concrete contexts of research, the various connotations and contexts of material objects in Jewish tradition in order to grasp their significance. In addition, he offered valuable insights into teaching the subject of Jewish Material Culture at the university level as well as into academic practices and research cultures at U.S. universities.
Photos: Julia Roos
On the second day, Prof. Petrovsky-Shtern gave a public lecture at the Dubnow Institute. Under the title A Man who was a Museum. Maximilian Goldstein and Jewish Material Culture of Gaclicia, he vividly described the life of the Jewish collector of Galician Judaica Max Goldstein as well as his collecting practices in the 1930s and 1940s. By interweaving biographical details with cultural-historical questions, he opened up new perspectives on the study of Jewish collecting and memory culture in Eastern Europe in his time.
With his visit, Prof. Petrovsky-Shtern made an important contribution to the IRTG’s international networking and enriched scholarly exchange with fresh impulses for research and discussion.