News

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

The life stories of Madeleine Taradach and Clara Weil in the Girona programme of the 'European Days of Jewish Culture'

September 6th 2018

At 6 p.m. Dr. Joan Ferrer (University of Girona) will present the Judaica Library of Madeleine Taradach, which contains more than 800 references related to different topics: History of Israel, Bible, History of Jewish Women, Literature, Essay, Philosophy.... from all over the centuries.

At 6.30 p.m. Pablo Dreizik (University of Buenos Aires), researcher and professor of Ethics and History of Thought, will speak about the figure of the Argentine Jewish poet Clara Weil, in a lecture entitled: “Los claroscuros de la memoria. Intimidad, género y política de la diáspora judeo-italiana en la literatura de Clara Weil”.

Two consecutive events for two different but similar stories: two ways of living in feminine, two ways of expression through culture, and two stories of Diaspora and memory. Both sharp, interesting and surprising.

Both activities represent a further step in the work of research and dissemination of Jewish history and culture, which is the main work of the Nahmanides Institute for Jewish Studies and the Museum of Jewish History.

Madeleine Taradach was born in Paris in 1929. Her family, who was Jewish, was assassinated in Auschwitz and she grew up with a Catholic family. She converted to Christianity when she was grown-up and began his theology studies, which took her to Salamanca. In 1953, at the Cité Internationnale Universitaire de Paris, she met who would be his husband, Antoni Plasencia. With him, in Barcelona, he shared life and intellectual interests. In the 90s he re-established a close relationship with Judaism, a fact that, in his own words, "opened her heart." She compiled a magnificent library of Biblical, Semitic, Linguistic, Historical and Cultural themes. After her decease in 2016, her children fulfilled her will to donate the bibliographical collection at the Nahmanides Institute for Jewish Studies.

Clara Weil was born in Trieste in 1924, in a traditional Jewish family. By the end of December 1938, she and her family emigrated to Argentina, where she lived until she died in 1985. There, she published two books of tales: "Una cruz para el judío" and "Del amor y la condena". Her writings are the result of a laborious process to recall her Jewish background.