I-Core In The Study of Modern Jewish Culture
We view the geography of culture as a means of “mapping” where and how certain modes of creativity and their traditions became rooted, or – in many cases – when and how they became uprooted and then were transported to new contexts and transformed. We take cognizance of the multi-layered meanings of “place” in the human imagination and communal memory. We are mindful of the duality of meaning in the Hebrew term makom, which hints at a transcendental plane as well as the mundane one. The turn to spatial and geographic concerns in the study of the Humanities can be fruitfully and imaginatively applied to the Jewish case and that, in turn, can enrich Humanistic discourse from our particular angle of vision. The idea of “place” anchors our project in a feasible, structured research agenda, relating to the overall question: how do realia of particular places influence behavior, consciousness, beliefs, and creativity?
