Introduction: Jewish cultural heritage, space and mobility in Spain, Portugal and North Africa

Abstract

A traditional definition of cultural heritage, tangible and intangible, includes all assets that have a symbolic cultural value: from historic towns, buildings, cultural landscapes and cultural objects to intangible manifestations that usually fall into the category of folklore and ‘popular culture’. They are a unique set of cultural manifestations created under particular social, cultural, and economic circumstances, which are impossible to recreate truly. The speed with which the world is changing places heritage at a risk of being lost through physical destruction or loss of knowledge. National and international organisations have sought to establish a formal system of identifying a sample of that heritage and conserving it for the future. As it cannot include everything, determining the best or most representative samples or things to preserve is not always a politically or ideologically neutral decision (Messenger and Smith, 2010,Waterton 2012). The UNESCO and the Council of Europe have been very active in the area of cultural heritage. Among the issues of interest for these organisations in the broad field of culture are cultural identity and the recognition of minorities (Richards 1996). Since the 1990s, studies on ‘place’ and ‘space’ have contributed to rethinking the concept of heritage (Brauch, Lipphardt, Nocke 2008). If the concept of ‘heritage’ refers to the past, the concept of ‘space’ refers to the dynamic relationships that occur – alongside many other areas – around heritage, its use, interpretation, (re)creation of identities, and construction of social relationships (Breglia 2006). That is, not as something stable and fixed but as something symbolic and fluid (Gromova and Voigt, 2015). As Diana Pinto pointed out, in the mid-1990s, when she coined the concept of ‘Jewish space’, cultural heritage and other Jewish cultural spaces in Europe would inevitably come from the hand not only of Jews but often of non-Jews (Pinto 1996). The transformation in tourist products of old Jewish neighbourhoods in Europe is one such example for a form of coconstruction of memories and, even, identities (Eszter 2014). As Joan and Jean Comaroff have argued, ethnicity and cultural heritage have become a commodity, a market product (of those in the margins, the exoticised ‘others’) to be consumed (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2009). This raises crucial questions about who’s heritage and identity are distinguished for preservation, by whom, why, and how.