Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores religious, secular and in-between spaces based on ethnographic research with a revived synagogue and its community and on consideration of other case studies. Such study may set the stage to develop perspectives of space as emerging beyond the division between secular-religious.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based on ethnographic research with a synagogue whose building was restored against all the odds in the 1990's in Greece. This ancient site whose worshippers were annihilated in WWII, has gradually emerged to become a diverse heritage site with a new community formed by self-identified as religious, secular, spiritual etc. members. While an active synagogue, it is also a memory and commemoration place, a touristic site, a cultural and research centre. It represents, thus, an archaeological monument which continues to live as active urban space of multiple temporalities and resignifications. As Smith (2003) underscores, the tension between action (activities) and material representation (places) is an important element of heritage which can also be a process of dissent and contestation. Taking as starting point an alternative approach to space as always becoming, constituted through interactions, based upon the existence of plurality, 'a product of relations-between' (Massey 2005), this paper explores how the synagogue's revival has challenged current ideas of boundaries and boundaries permeability between the religious and the secular. As Asad (2003) has shown the secular "is not a simple break" from the religious, or "an essence that excludes the sacred". Practices emerged at this synagogue extend beyond its physical space into the everyday communal and personal lives. According to Ammerman's (2014) study of "lived religion" as expressed in the everyday life embodied and enacted forms of spirituality, hybrid types of spiritual narratives occur. This paper argues for the existence of such in-between both secular and religious spaces.