Jewish?: A Visual Auto-Ethnoghraphy: On Collaborating Jewish Meaning.

Despite having been the most influential Jewish population in the world, seventy-eight years after the Shoah Jewish life in the Netherlands remains ambiguous. For Dutch Jews, especially those non- religious, a post-war memorialisation of genocide overwhelmingly determines what it means to be Jewish today. This Dutch post-war reality materializes in the omnipresence of Jewish death (monuments, memorials, and museums) and the absence of Jewish life (shops, bakeries, and restaurants) in Dutch public spaces which contributes to the invisibility of Jewish contemporary life, vitality and joy. This has led to a generational search for ways to reclaim, co-construct and make space for contemporary Dutch Jewish identity and life. This research is an expression of such a search, where it simultaneously explores and constructs a future-oriented rethinking of being and doing Jewish in a Dutch contemporary context. It does so by using ‘future-memory work’ as a methodological tool to explore what...Show moreDespite having been the most influential Jewish population in the world, seventy-eight years after the Shoah Jewish life in the Netherlands remains ambiguous. For Dutch Jews, especially those non- religious, a post-war memorialisation of genocide overwhelmingly determines what it means to be Jewish today. This Dutch post-war reality materializes in the omnipresence of Jewish death (monuments, memorials, and museums) and the absence of Jewish life (shops, bakeries, and restaurants) in Dutch public spaces which contributes to the invisibility of Jewish contemporary life, vitality and joy. This has led to a generational search for ways to reclaim, co-construct and make space for contemporary Dutch Jewish identity and life. This research is an expression of such a search, where it simultaneously explores and constructs a future-oriented rethinking of being and doing Jewish in a Dutch contemporary context. It does so by using ‘future-memory work’ as a methodological tool to explore what it could mean to be Jewish in the Netherlands today, making sense of a contemporary Jewish experience in relation to the past and the future. The study is an auto- ethnographic film project in which unaffiliated (not a member of a practising community) millennial Dutch Jews from Amsterdam, the Dutch city that had the largest Jewish population before the second world war, embark on a collaborative open-ended search for Jewish identity and community to learn about and beyond their families’ past.Show less

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Jewish? A Visual Auto-Ethnoghraphy: On Collaborating Jewish Meaning.