Queering Jewish Cultural Heritage in Europe

This book moves towards the development of more inclusive practices in the handling, management, and debate of Jewish cultural heritage in Europe. The volume presents dynamic explorations of current Jewish subjects across a range of positionalities. It uses diverse methodologies such as ethnographic and sociological fieldwork, research creation, and artistic response.

Deploying “queer” in relation to Jewish heritage in the double sense of “queering” as a critical and reparative process and of a “queer” spectrum of minority positionalities, this volume demonstrates their multifaceted and polydimensional resonances in the contemporary European context. The contributions offer in-depth explorations highlighting a diversity of marginalised Jewish positionalities and initiatives to develop inclusive, polyvalent, and ultimately iridescent approaches to Jewish heritage in Europe. It explores more inclusive conceptualisations and applications of cultural heritage and associated policies, shedding light on how Queer Jewish subjects make heritage as they create and recreate cultural and historical meanings across a wide spectrum of identity, belonging, and artistic engagement.

The book will appeal to scholars and students of queer studies, critical heritage studies, and Jewish studies, as well as to researchers in the fields of ethnomusicology, artistic research/research creation, and museum studies. Its insights will be valuable to civil society actors and thought leaders from queer Jewish communities, as well as to heritage professionals who wish to develop more nuanced and inclusive strategies to refine current approaches in their fields.

Sacha Kagan is a “Privatdozent” at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Leuphana University Lüneburg (Germany). Kagan’s research interests lie at the intersection of the sociology of the arts, sustainability research, queer studies, and transdisciplinarity. He was a research associate at the Center for World Music, University of Hildesheim (Germany), from 2022 to 2025 as the Principal Investigator of the DFG-funded research project “Queering Jewish Cultural Heritage in Europe”. Author of 80 publications and director of three documentary films, he previously edited the book Culture and Sustainable Development in the City (2023).

Miranda Crowdus is Associate Professor at the Department of Religions and Cultures at Concordia University, where she also holds the Research Chair in Canadian Jewish Studies. Crowdus’ research interests lie at the intersection of ethnomusicology and Jewish studies. She was a research associate at the European Centre for Jewish Music in Hanover, Germany, from 2016 to 2021. Her book Hip Hop in Urban Borderlands was published in 2019 and she has recently published interdisciplinary research at the intersections of Jewish studies, sound studies, music, and heritage in articles such as “Jewish Music Pedagogies and Cultural Sustainability: Case Studies from Lower Saxony and Quebec” (2023) and “ ‘Yellow Bar Mitzvah’: Mobilizations of Gangsta Rap as Futures Oriented, Agential Jewish Heritage in Germany” (2025).