Jewish Culture, etc., Festivals in 2012

Festival of the Jewish Book, Ferrara, Italy, 2011. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

As usual, I am trying to put together a list of as many as possible of the numerous Jewish festivals -- culture, film, dance, etc -- that take place each year around Europe.  I've already missed a few that have taken place this winter -- Please help me by sending me information!

The big culture festivals and other smaller events make good destinations around which to center a trip. Some, like the annual Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow, are huge events lasting a week or more, which draw thousands of people and offer scores or sometimes hundreds of performances, lectures, concerts, exhibits and the like. Other festivals are much less ambitious. Some are primarily workshops but also feature concerts. Many of the same artists perform at more than one festival.

 The list will be growing and growing -- and again,  I ask my readers to please send me information and links to upcoming events. Thanks!



ALL OVER EUROPE

Sept. 2, 2012 -- 13th European Day of Jewish Culture. This year's theme is Jewish Humor


AUSTRIA

April 19-May 23 -- Vienna --  Weanhean: Das Wienerliedfestival (Jewish music and performers are featured this year)


CROATIA

 August 28-Sept. 6 -- Pula -- Bejahad: the Jewish Cultural Scene


CZECH REPUBLIC

July 5-8 -- Boskovice -- UniJazz2012: 19th Festival for the Jewish Quarter

July 30-August 4 -- Trebic --  Trebic Jewish Festival held in one of the most extensive and best-preserved old Jewish quarters in Europe, part of the town's UNESCO-listed historic center.


GERMANY

April 9-15 -- Weimar -- Weimar Winter Edition

 June 3-16 -- Berlin & Potsdam -- 18th Jewish Film Festival


July 21-August 21 -- Weimar -- Yiddish Summer Weimar 


GREAT BRITAIN


June 24-July 1 -- Leeds -- 12th International Jewish Performing Arts Festival


HUNGARY


April 6-14 -- Budapest -- Quarter6Quarter7 Spring Festival, over Passover

July 20-22 -- Bank Lake -- Bankito Festival

November 10-18 -- Szombathely --  Jewish Festival Szombathely


ITALY

April 28-May 1 -- Ferrara -- Festival of the Jewish Book

July 29-August 5 -- Straits of Messina -- Horcynus Festival This year's focus is on Israel and Jewish culture.

September 2-8 -- Puglia Region -- Lech Lecha Festival

November 3-7 -- Rome -- Pitigliani Kolno'a Jewish & Israeli Film Festival

POLAND

April 17-21 -- Radom -- 4th annual "Meeting with Jewish Culture"

April 18-22 -- Warsaw -- New Jewish Music Festival

April 25-29 -- Warsaw -- Jewish Motifs International Film Festival

May 11-13 -- Oswiecim -- Oswiecim Life Festival

May 13-16 -- Warsaw -- Jewish Book Days 

June  2 -- Krakow -- 7@Nite - Night of the Synagogues

June 29-July 8 -- Krakow -- Jewish Culture Festival

August 10-12  -- Jelenia Gora -- Jewish Culture Festival

August 26-September 2 -- Warsaw -- Singer's Warsaw Festival

September 14-22 -- Lodz -- Festival of Four Cultures

October 4-7 -- Wlodawa -- Festival of Three Cultures



ROMANIA

April 27-May 3 -- Bucharest -- 2nd Bucharest Jewish Film Festival


RUSSIA

March 8, 2012 -- Moscow -- Yiddish Fest

SERBIA

June 20-24 -- Belgrade -- Ethno Fusion Fest: Many musics in the courtyard of the Belgrade Synagogue


SLOVAKIA

July 7-15 -- Kosice -- Mazal Tov -- 1st Jewish Culture Festival in Kosice

UKRAINE


Sept. 6-12 -- Drohobych -- Fifth Bruno Schulz Festival




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Jewish and "Jewish" Festivals......Shelly Salamensky's Take

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

My friend Shelley Salamensky muses on three Jewish -- or "Jewish" -- festivals: Krakow, Birobidzhan and Hervas, Spain, in the New York Review of Books blog.

The commercial aspects of Hervás’s festival—funded by the village’s chamber of commerce as a boon to local business—are hardly unique. Birobidzhan’s cultural renaissance, has, similarly, garnered it development grants from Moscow; while on the fringes of the Kraków festival, stands sell hook-nosed “Jew” figurines. Yet much more is at stake in both places than profit. In Kraków, with its rich, traumatic history, the festival is an attempt to confront the still relatively fresh loss of what was once the world’s largest Jewish population, as well as the question of Polish complicity with Nazis in the war, communist suppression of Holocaust history, and continuing European intolerance; it’s also a chance for Poles to reflect on their country’s future as a conservative, culturally monolithic nation in a changing, diversifying Europe. Birobizhan’s Jewish cultural revival appears primarily to enliven an isolated, poor, rather bleak place unremarkable but for its unique history. Despite some silliness and confusion, the more sober efforts to teach Yiddish and Jewish history ensure that important legacies are preserved. And perhaps even theme-park-style memorialization is more salutary than the more common case in places from which vital cultures have more or less vanished: sheer oblivion.

In Hervas, the evocation of a Jewish past is so perfunctory and historically fanciful as to border on the offensive. Stars of David adorn street signs, window grates, and even, for no clear reason, the church. There is a Judería Tavern and a Hotel Sinagoga: the former, on inspection, specializing in ham, the latter indistinguishable from a Holiday Inn. On arrival, I was amused by the kitsch; but by my last day, I felt vaguely sick. The empty symbolism cruelly underscored all that Europe has lost.

Hungary -- Bankito turns to civic action

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The annual Bankito alternative/youth Jewish culture festival on Bank lake north of Budapest takes place this week. And this year, besides music and arts, the program includes a big dose of social and civic activism -- in particular a program called "Volunticipate" forging links between Jewish and Roma (Gypsy) youth groups to help promote volunteerism and  minority pride and fight prejudice. And there are a number of workshops and discussion groups on topics relating to Jewish identity, studies, etc.

Poland -- Krakow's Night of the Living Synagogues

Long line waiting to get in to the Old Synagogue, around 1 a.m. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The "Night of the Synagogues" in Krakow last weekend -- June 4 -- was the last stop in my Hungary-Poland trip; I had spent the week in and around Sanok, in the far southeastern tip of the country, and I was torn between going on to Krakow for the synagogue night or returning to Budapest.

Krakow won out -- how could I resist? I have been watching the development of the city's Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, for more than 20 years -- from an empty slum to one of the liveliest spots in the city. I have watched (and written extensively about) the restoration of its synagogue buildings, and the Jewish and "virtually Jewish" tourism, retail, entertainment and educational infrastructure: cafes, restaurants, museums, culture centers, etc etc etc....

On the Night of the Synagogues, all seven of the historic synagogues in Kazimierz were open to the public from 10:30 p.m. until 2 a.m. And each one hosted cultural or educational programming. The event was sponsored by the Krakow Jewish Community Center, the Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish communal organization.

The night was a resounding success, and I feel privileged to have been there. More than 5000 people (maybe many more, as organizers had a hard time counting) made the rounds and visited the synagogues -- there were huge bottlenecks at doorways and a constant flow of people.

Crowds inside the Izaak synagogue, where there was an exhibition on Israel and an Israeli dance workshop. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The evening kicked off with an open-air Havadalah ceremony in the JCC courtyard, led by Krakow Rabbi Boas Pash, JCC director Jonathan Ornstein and the JDC's Karina Sokolowska from the JCC annex roof.

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Then, the crowds dispersed into the district -- a district that has many crowded bars, restaurants and cafes that remain open into the wee hours. I managed to get to all seven of the synagogues -- but I forgot that the Galicia Jewish Museum was also open, so I didn't make it there.

There are only a few hundred Jews living in Krakow, and the vast majority of synagogue-visitors were non-Jewish local Poles.

There was a long line to get into the gothic Old Synagogue, which has been a Jewish museum for the past half century. Here, a DJ playing an eclectic mix of Jewishy rock and other music was ensconced under the wrought iron grill of the Bimah while visitors looked at an exhibit on Krakow synagogues and other Jewish buildings that no longer serve their original function.

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

There were panel discussions in the Kupa synagogue on the role of women in Judaism and young people in today's Jewish experience in Poland -- every seat in the audience was full. The Popper Synagogue, now a culture center, hosted an arts workshop. And an Israeli rock band gave a (loud) concert in the Tempel -- the ornate 19th century synagogue that was restored in the 1990s thanks in part to the World Monuments Fund.

 The 16th century Remuh synagogue -- still the main Jewish place of worship in Krakow -- was also more or less standing room only. Here, Rabbi Pash gave a series of talks on the ABC's of Judaism. People had to sign up, as the space was limitied -- and I was told that ten times the number expected tried to attend. The overflow stood in the women's section, which originally was to have been closed.

Rabbi Boas Pash speaks to crowd in Remuh synagogue. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

There was also an exhibit in the High Synagogue -- and a multi-media presentation projected on the ceiling. It focused on contemporary Jewish life in Poland, highlighting the reborn and reemerging community, and particularly the young people who in Krakow have gravitated to the JCC and its activities.

Multi-media presentation in High Synagogue. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

All in all it was a terrific event -- and very gratifying to someone like me who remembers the bad old days! Mazel tov to those who planned it and took part!

Hungarian Yiddishe Mamma Mia

Yum. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I'm on the road -- this week in Poland, and last week in Budapest, where I came across (but didn't sample) this new restaurant in Gozsdu Udvar, the wonderful series of linked courtyards in the 7th District, between Kiraly and Dob streets, that was renovated recently with debatable results.....It's not clear if it's Italian Jewish (which I rather doubt), or comfort food with an attitude (which may be more like it.)

Gozsdu Udvar will be part of the scene of the Judafest festival on Sunday -- food, music, stands, etc in the old downtown Jewish quarter.

I'll miss this, as I'm heading to Krakow (from Sanok, in the far southeast tip of Poland, where I've been all week) in order to take in the "Night of the Synagogues" festival Saturday night, when all seven of the historic synagogues in the Kazimierz district will be open to the public, with lots of programming, until 2 a.m.

There's a lot to report from my trip -- but it will come in dribs and drabs... I haven't had much time (or a constant internet connection) to sort out photos and stories.

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Festivals -- At least 30 on my list of Jewish culture/arts/music etc festivals in Europe

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I just added a few more events, bringing the number on my list of this year's Jewish culture/music/film/books/arts etc festivals around Europe  to 30 -- and I know there are a lot more going on that I have not (yet) included. (Or which had already taken place before I got around to compiling the list...)

Everyone by now knows about the big Jewish culture festival in Krakow -- the oldest and largest festival, taking place at the end of June/beginning of July. But all around Europe you can find other varied events, big and small -- from the OyOyOy festival in northern Italy, to Bankito in Hungary to Yiddish Summer Weimar in Germany to UniJazz in the Czech Republic to the Life Festival at Oswiecim, Poland (the town where the Auschwitz camp is located), to Ethno Fusion in the courtyard of the synagogue in Belgrade.

The variety is great -- and so is the range of locations and festival focus. From book fairs highlighting local publishers to film festivals to klezmer and other Jewish music fests, to arts, to grand mash-ups, such as in Krakow, that feature a range of events, concerts, guided tours, targeted workshops and so on.

Locations range from big cities, to former (or present) Jewish quarters and neighborhoods, to villages to the countryside.

Italy -- Jewish Book Festival, Ferrara

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I spent Sunday afternoon at the big Festival of the Jewish Book in Italy. A beautiful, sunny spring day, lots of books (all in Italian, issued by Italian publishers), lots of people....

Sign for the Jewish book festival outside the cathedral. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

most of the action, including talks, "debates", food-tasting and schmoozing,

Schmoozing at the festival. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

took place in a graceful cloister in the historic city center near the castle,

An event at the book festival. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

but I took in several linked exhibitions, including one that displayed all the 52 entries (including the winner by the Bologna-based Studio Arco-Architettura) for the building design of the National Museum of Italian Jewish and the Shoah (MEIS) now in development, which will occupy the building of an old prison in Ferrara.

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

List of Jewish Culture, etc Festivals 2011

At the Budapest Jewish Summer Festival. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

As usual, I am trying to put together a list of as many as possible of the numerous Jewish festivals -- culture, film, dance, etc -- that take place each year around Europe. Please help me by sending me information!

The big culture festivals and other smaller events make good destinations around which to center a trip. Some, like the annual Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow, are huge events lasting a week or more, which draw thousands of people and offer scores or sometimes hundreds of performances, lectures, concerts, exhibits and the like. Other festivals are much less ambitious. Some are primarily workshops but also feature concerts. Many of the same artists perform at more than one festival.

 The list will be growing and growing -- and again,  I ask my readers to please send me information and links to upcoming events. Thanks!


ALL OVER EUROPE -- Sept. 4 -- 12th European Day of Jewish Culture. The theme this year is "Facing the Future."

AUSTRIA

April 3-7 -- Vienna -- Jewish Film Noir festival

Nov. 5-2- -- Vienna -- KlezMORE music festival


CZECH REPUBLIC

 April 28-May 1 --Mikulov -- Days of Jewish Culture

June 12-16 -- Terezin -- Defiant Requiem performances

July 7-10 -- Boskovice -- UniJazz/Boskovice Festival. The festival is focused on saving and restoring of local Jewish quarter.

July 25-30 -- Trebic --  Trebic Jewish Festival, held in one of the most extensive and best-preserved old Jewish quarters in Europe, part of the town's UNESCO-listed historic center.

July 25-26 -- Namest nad Oslavou -- Jewish music at Folk Holidays Festival

FRANCE

May 10-13 -- Saint-Gildas-des-Bois -- Festival MusiqueS Klezmer

June 14-30 -- Paris -- Festival of Jewish Cultures

July 2-10 -- Bréau (Gard) -- Le Yiddishland à la rencontre des Cévennes

GERMANY

March 11-13 -- Fuerth -- International Klezmer Festival

May  18-31   -- Berlin/Potsdam -- 17th Jewish Film Festival 

June 23-26 -- Berlin -- "Sounds no Walls" -- Jazz and Jewish Culture

July -- Weimar -- Yiddish Summer Weimar

Oct. 23-Nov. 6 -- Dresden -- 15th Yiddish Music and Theater Weeks

November 12-30 -- Munich -- 25th edition of Jewish Culture Days


HUNGARY

April 28-May 4 -- Budapest -- First Israeli Documentary Film Festival

June 5 -- Budapest -- Judafest

Aug. 4-7 -- Bank Lake -- Bankito Festival

Aug. 27-Sept. 5 -- Budapest -- Jewish Summer Festival 

ITALY

May 7-9 -- Ferrara -- Festival of the Jewish Book in Italy


June 2-3 -- Casale Monferrato -- Oy Oy Oy Festival


June 26-July 17 -- in val d'Aosta -- Centrad festival/workshops in Ashkenazic culture

Nov. 12-16 -- Rome -- Pitigliani Kolno'a Festival (music, film, etc)

Nov. 20-27 -- Venice -- Festival of Polish-Jewish Culture 

NETHERLANDS

October -- many venues around the country -- International Jewish Music Festival -- . See the web site for a calendar of Jewish music events.

POLAND

May 1-6 -- Czestochowa -- International Festival of Sacred Music


May 6, 7, 13 -- Opole -- Days of Jewish Music and Culture

May 14-22 -- Warsaw -- Otwarta-Twarda Jewish Festival

May 15-18 -- Warsaw -- 14th Jewish Book Days

May 29-June 3 --- Wroclaw -- 13th Simcha Jewish Culture Festival

June 1 -- Szydlow -- 9th Encounters with Jewish Culture

June 4 -- Krakow -- Night of the Synagogues

June 11-17 -- Oswiecim -- Oswiecim Life Festival (international music festival with Jewish content, held in the town where Auschwitz is located)

June 18-19 -- Chmielnik -- 9th Encounters with Jewish Culture

June 24-July 3 -- Krakow -- Festival of Jewish Culture

August 19-21 -- Lublin -- Shalom: Encounters with Jewish Culture

August 20-21 -- Lelow -- 9th Cholent and Ciulim festival

August 27-Sept. 4 -- Warsaw -- Singer's Warsaw Festival


ROMANIA

June 16-19 -- Bucharest -- Klezmer & More Festival

June 20-26 -- Bucharest -- First Bucharest Jewish Film Festival



SERBIA

June 12-21 -- Belgrade -- Ethno Fusion Fest (in courtyard of Belgrade synagogue)


SWITZERLAND

June 18-19 -- Geneva -- Friends of Jewish Music Festival

UKRAINE

July 24 -- L'viv -- L'vivKlezFest

France -- Festival (and stereotypes?)

 

Poster for Jazz 'n' Klezmer festival

► ◄

I've just posted a link to the 9th edition of the Jazz 'n' Klezmer festival in Paris, which takes place Nov. 21-Dec. 13, with some big names taking part -- David Krakauer, Balkan Beat Box, etc.

What I find interesting are the iconic stereotypes used in the poster (see above) -- a sexy Black woman to symbolize jazz and a (sort of sexy) beardless Hasid to symbolize klezmer.....

Article on upcoming Jewish cultural events

The The New York Jewish Week has a nice article by Hilary Larson previewing some upcoming Jewish culture festivals and other events in Europe. (You can see an expanding list of festivals in the sidebar of this blog).

throughout the chilly days of fall, cities across North-Central Europe host Jewish cultural festivals that go beyond mere street fairs to showcase finely curated klezmer, cinema and more.

As airfares drop and drab afternoons shorten, consider planning travel around these cultural events. A trip immersed in klezmer or Yiddish theater, say, will be more memorable than another tour of castles.
For aficionados of all things Yiddish, the 14th annual Week of Yiddish Music and Theater in Dresden, Germany, will take place from Oct. 17-31. Concerts, plays, lectures, and even Yiddish linguistics classes all explore the lingering influence of Yiddish in contemporary culture. The festival’s musical highlights include songs of the shtetl performed by a broad range of musical artists, from Yachad, a Russian-Ukrainian group, to Anakronic Okestra, which sets traditional klezmer tunes to hip-hop for an evening of dancing.

In addition to performances, the festival offers opportunities for visitors to engage with the local Jewish community, which is once again flourishing. Community Shabbat worship is held at Dresden’s award-winning New Synagogue; a guided tour of the synagogue is also on the program. There are also several café afternoons, when visitors can mingle over traditional German-Jewish cake with Dresden Jewish residents. (On that note, don’t be intimidated by the fact that lectures and discussions, as well as most festival websites, are in German: most urban Germans also speak English, music is universal, and Google’s Translate tool can help you figure out the website program schedules.)

European Day of Jewish Culture article

My latest article on JTA is a preview of the European Day of Jewish Culture -- this year Sept. 5 -- highlighting the way it has become a major event on the end-of-summer cultural calendar in Italy. There are 25,000 affiliated Jews in Italy, but Culture Day activities take place this year in 62 towns and cities around the country. And last year's events in Italy drew 62,000 visitors, the overwhelming majority non-Jewish. Culture Day gets lots of media attention and has the support of civic bodies and is under the patronage of Italy's president.

Tourists shop in a store in the former Jewish district that sells kosher wine, matzah, Jewish pastries and souvenirs. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)

Introducing non-Jewish Europeans to Jewish life

By Ruth Ellen Gruber · August 31, 2010

PITIGLIANO, Italy (JTA) -- In Italy, where there are only about 25,000 affiliated Jews in a population of 60 million, most Italians have never knowingly met a Jew. "It's unfortunate," said the Italian Jewish activist Sira Fatucci, "but in Italy Jews and the Jewish experience are often mostly known through the Holocaust."

Fatucci is the national coordinator in Italy for the annual European Day of Jewish Culture, an annual transborder celebration of Jewish traditions and creativity that takes place in more than 20 countries on the continent on the first Sunday of September -- this year, Sept. 5.

Synagogues, Jewish museums and even ritual baths and cemeteries are open to the public, and hundreds of seminars, exhibits, lectures, book fairs, art installations, concerts, performances and guided tours are offered.

The main goal is to educate the non-Jewish public about Jews and Judaism in order to demystify the Jewish world and combat anti-Jewish prejudice.

“What we are trying to do is to show the living part of Judaism -- to show life," Fatucci said. "What we want to do is to use culture as an antidote to ignorance and anti-Semitism.”

Some 700 people flock to Culture Day events each year in Pitigliano, a rust-colored hilltown in southern Tuscany that once had such a flourishing Jewish community that it was known as Little Jerusalem.

Click to read full story at jta

Poland -- Shabbat in Rymanow and other festivals

I have added some new festivals to the growing list of Jewish festivals in Europe. They include a Shabbat in Rymanow festival this coming weekend, August 12-14.

It is part religious observance and part culture festival, with concerts, lectures and even food and wine tastings.

PROGRAM

THURSDAY, AUGUST12, 2010

10.00-10.45 Workshops at the Jewish cemetery in Rymanow – Explanation of
function of cemetery and symbolism of headstones and graves. Remembrance of
famous Tzadikim from Rymanow.
11.00-11-45 Ecumenical prayers at the Jewish cemetery.
12.15-12.30 Remembering those who gave their lives to save the Jews of
Rymanow – Catholic cemetery in Rymanow.
12.30-15-00 POLIN film screening with the participation of the director Jolanta
Dylewska. Next, fragments of a pre-war film from Rymanow.
(at big hall, Jas Wedrowniczek – free entry)
16.00 – 18.00 Culinary workshops ( Jewish kitchen at the Rymanow Rynek )
This will be led by a daughter if a Rymanow native, Malka Sacham Doron.
There will also be an exhibit of traditional Jewish dishes.
16.00-17.30 Historic trail of Rymanow properties. A walking tour of the long gone
Rymanow with participation of former Jewish residents. It will be
conducted in English and Polish, starting in the parking lot at the Rynek.
19.00-21.00 Artistic performance "Musical Stories of Chassidim" A dramatic
musical spectacle, which retells the story of Menachem Mendle the great
Tzadik of Rymanow, with Chassidic dancing. Performed by Mendy Cahan from
Israel accompanied by Olga Mieleszczuk.
Big hall – Jaś Wędrowniczek
Tickets -- 10zl. for purchase in the hotel.
21.30 – Rymanow encounter with Hungarian wine – tasting of wine from the
Tokay district, with the participation of members from the Portius and
Krosno district.

FRIDAY, AUGUST13, 2010

10.00-11.00 workshop in Yiddish language and singing of Niggunim. Melodies
without words – Mendy Cahan and Olga Mieleszczuk.
Big hall – Jas Wiedrowniczek
12.00-13.45 March of Remembrance, from Rynek to Wróblik Szlachecki.
Tracing the final walk of the Rymanow ghetto,
Prayer of Kaddish in Wroblik.
Starts at Monument of Victims of Totalitarianism at the Rynek.
15.30-16.30 Monodram " We Also need a Miracle "
Big Hall – Jas Wedrowniczek, free entrance
19.00 – 19.30 Singing of Nigunim in front of Synagogue
19.40 – 21.00 Kabbalat Shabbat and greeting the Shabbat at the Synagogue,
Services will be conducted by Rymanow native Moshe Barth.
21.30 – Shabbat in Rymanow, Festive Shabbat dinner for all participants.
Hotel Bogmar in Rymanow

SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 2010

8.30-11.30 Prayers at the Synagogue
13 .30-15.00 Historic trail of Rymanow properties. A walking
tour of the long Rymanow with the participation of former Jewish residents.
It will be conducted in English and Polish, starting in the parking lot at
the Rynek.
19.30 – 20.30 Havdallah, saying goodbye to the Sabbath.

Hungary -- Bankito festival coming up

My latest article for JTA looks at Budapest's progressive Jewish music scene, as a sort of preview to this year's Bankito Jewish culture festival, held near Budapest August 5-8.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to get to Bankito -- I'm going to southern Italy with my father and brother to attend a conference on the art work that my mother carried out in a small Calabrian village in the 1970s and 1980s.

But the Bankito line-up looks good -- and fun.

Jewish fusion music key to Budapest’s ‘Jewstock’ festival

By Ruth Ellen Gruber · July 22, 2010

BUDAPEST (JTA) -- Flora Polnauer, 28, tilts back her head, half closes her eyes and hums a few bars of a song by her hip-hop/funk/reggae band HaGesher. The song is "Lecha Dodi," the Shabbat evening prayer -- sounded over a Yiddishized version of the Beatles song "Girl." It's just one of the many unconventional songs of the band, whose vocalists rap their own lyrics in Hebrew, Hungarian and English.

"It's modern Jewish music because it's influenced by Jewish things, but it's not the replaying of old Jewish songs," says Daniel Kardos, 34, a composer and guitarist who plays with Hagesher and several other bands. "I pick up many things and mix them."

Hagesher is one of about half a dozen bands in this city of European Jewish cool blending jazz, hip hop, rap and reggae with Israeli pop and traditional Jewish folk tunes and liturgy to form an eclectic urban sound.
"It's a big mix of contemporary Jewish musical identity," said vocalist Adam Schoenberger, the son of a rabbi. "All of us find Jewish culture very important. Hagesher is a platform for us to articulate musically our different musical interpretation of Jewish cultural heritage."

As the program director of the popular Siraly club, whose dimly lit basement stage is a regular venue for Hagesher and other groups, Schoenberger, 30, is a leader in Budapest's Jewish youth scene. He is also one of the organizers of Bankito, sometimes referred to as "Jewstock" -- a youth-oriented Jewish culture festival Aug. 5-8 on the shore of Bank Lake, north of Budapest.

Bankito includes concerts, exhibitions, performances, workshops, seminars and lectures, a poetry slam, sports events, movies, and Jewish and interfaith religious observances. A number of events at this year's festival will highlight Roma, or Gypsy culture, and focus also on social and civic issues such as the rights of the Roma and other ethnic minorities.

Music is a highlight of Bankito. Hagesher, the Daniel Kardos Quartet and other Jewish bands such as Nigun and Triton Electric Oktopus will perform. "We're at a fascinating moment in Jewish music: It's hip again," said Michigan's Jack Zaientz, who authors the Teruah Jewish music blog. "There's an amazing gang of musicians who are young, smart, urban and Jewish, and making their Jewish identities a core part of their music and stage identities."

Read full story at jta.org

Poland -- CNN on Jewish cultural and other revival

CNN has run a piece on Poland's rediscovery of its Jewish past I'm delighted that it mentioned the Jewish culture festival in Bialystok, as well as that in Krakow.
  

This phenomenon has, of course,  been going on for several decades already. By now, at least a score of Jewish culture festivals of one sort or another take place in Poland each year -- I've listed quite a few of them in the sidebar of this blog. Krakow's is the oldest and biggest; founded in 1988 it marked its 20th edition this year.

The success of the Krakow Festival  helped spark other Jewish festivals of various types around the country. In 2000, the a mapping of Jewish culture project by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research i London identified seven of them. In 2009, I counted more than 20, including at least two Jewish film festivals. Some were one-day affairs, others spanned a weekend or longer.

Some took place in towns with small Jewish communities, such as Wroclaw, Poznan and Gdansk. Others took place where no Jews live today. These included the sixth edition of a festival dedicated to the Yiddish author Shalom Asch, scheduled for early December in the central town of Kutno, the third edition of an annual Jewish culture festival in the village of Checiny, a Jewish theatre festival in Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski, the annual Jewish culture festival in Chmielnik, a Jewish culture festival in Bialystok, another in Szczekonciny, another in Przysucha, and so on. Festivals celebrating a diversity of cultures and religions, including Judaism, took place in Lodz, Wlodowa and Szczebrzeszyn.

‘I often joke that now the mayor of every small town feels obliged to make excuses [if] he/she has no Jewish Festival in his/her town,’ Anna Dodziuk, a psychotherapist who is also a Jewish activist and editor, told me. ‘To put it short: it is politically correct now to explore the Jewish history of the local communities, to commemorate Jews of a shtetl who perished in Holocaust, to celebrate somehow Jewish culture. So more and more Jews start to feel secure enough to be openly Jewish (or to be visible).’

Poland -- Festivals (not Krakow....)

 Synagogue in Chmielnik, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

By now, the Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow, which marks its 20th edition this year (June 26-July 4), is wellknown around the world. But Poland is host to many other Jewish culture festivals of one sort or another, which frequently take place in towns and villages where Jews no longer live. This month, for example, there are at least three: in Bialystok, Sejny and Chmielnik.

The Zahor: Color and Sound Jewish culture festival takes place June 13-15 in Bialystok. It features lectures, concerts and films.

Another edition of the annual Musicians' Raft  series of workshops/concerts/events on Yiddish culture, held in Sejny, near the Lithuanian border, June 13-19 and organized by the Borderland Foundation, a wonderful foundation dedicated to presenting and preserving minority cultures in Poland and elsewhere.

Young music bands from Central Europe, Israel, Turkey, Denmark, New York and Great Britain will to participate in the project: Steve Swell (NY), Mikołaj Trzaska (Gdańsk), Mark Sanders (London), Olie Brice (London), Raphael Rogiński (Warszawa), Paul Brody (Berlin), Gökçe Kilincer (London), Tahir Palali (London), Peter Ole Jørgensen (Kopenhagen) and Klezmer Band from Sejny. The meeting of experienced musicians, who refer to tradition, and young artists, who prefer the new sounds, will be really interesting. Rummy music experiments are expected! The seminars about the yiddish culture in Central-Eastern Europe are the integral part of the project. The seminars are set to lead by well-known scholars and attended by 15 students who would like to learn more about Jewish history.

June 18-20, the 8th annual "Meetings with Jewish Culture" takes place in the small villages of Szydlow and Chmielnik, in south-central Poland. No Jews live in either village, but both  boast huge historic former synagogues.

VIII MEETINGS WITH JEWISH CULTURE


SZYDŁOW – CHMIELNIK


18-20 JUNE 2010



Friday, 18 june 2010 – Szydlow



17:00 (5 p.m.) - Theatrical spectacle: “Chasidy Stories” by Jewish Theatre.


18:00 (6 p.m.) - Theatrical spectacle in execution of young people from Szydlow’s school.


19:00 (7 p.m.) - Open the exhibition called "I see faces, hear steps" made by Malgorzata Gladyszewska and the painting-sculpturing of the Plastic Arts Association in Kielce.


19:20 (7:20 p.m.) - The "Qartet Klezmer Trio" team from Krakow concert on the market.


20:35 (8:35 p.m.) – finish show.



19 – 20 JUNE 2010 – CHMIELNIK

Saturday, 19 june 2010 - the House of Culture in Chmielnik


17:00 (5 p.m.) – open the photo exhibition by Ryszard Biskup and drawing & graphic arts by Cezary Zdrojewski.


17:35 (5:35 p.m.) – premiere the videoclip of “Chmielnikers” band.


17:40 (5:40 p.m.) - dancing show inspired by the Jewish music made by children from the Elementary School in Chmielnik.


18:00 (6 p.m.) - Theatrical performance called "On the world borderland" made by Poem Theatre "In Radziwill" from Szydlowiec.


18:40 (6:40 p.m.) - Theatrical performance called "Jonash – The Prophet" made by Theatre Team "Bonteo" from Krakow.


19:15 (7:15 p.m.) - dancing show inspired by the Jewish music made by children from the Basic School in Chmielnik.


20:00 (8 p.m.) – “Jidisze Perl” – Jewish religious songs by Nina Stiller. Piano – Artur Jerzy Zielinski.


21:00 (p.m.) - finish show.


Sunday, 20 june 2010.


12:00 (12 noon) - The solemn holy mass in the Church in Chmielnik.


In the Synagogue in Chmielnik:


13:30 (1:30 p.m.) - Open the exhibition called "Jews from Chmielnik story" made by Leszek Wawrzyk.


13:45 (1:45 p.m.) – Performance called “This cities wasn’t there…” – singer Ewa Warta Smietana, recite Jerzy Trela.


15:00 – “Around Chopin music” – piano Krystyna Man-Szczepanczyk.


At the time: 13:00 - 20:00 at the Synagogue on the Sienkiewicza and Wspolna street will be the introductions of handicraft, Jewish food, plastic performances as well as the demonstrations of Jewish art of boiling, illumined the performance of klezmer team called the "Klezmafour".


On the Market:


16:00 (4 p.m.) – Shows by the children and youth:


- dancing show inspired by the Jewish music made by children from the Elementary School in Chmielnik.


- “Szmoncesy” - theatrical performance by children from Elementary and Basic School in Chmielnik.


16:15 (4:15 p.m.) – Jewish dance practice part 1 – by Ewa Gajo.


16:45 (4:45 p.m.) – The final of the Second Youth Jewish Songs Contest in Chmielnik.


17:30 (5:30 p.m.) – Band “Chmielnikers” concert.


18:15 (6:15 p.m.) – Results of the Second Youth Jewish Songs Contest in Chmielnik.


18:30 (6:30 p.m.) - dancing show inspired by the Jewish music made by girls from the Basic School in Chmielnik.


18:45 (6:45 p.m.) – Jewish dance practice part 2 – by Ewa Gajo.


20:00 (8 p.m.) – Leonard Cohen’s songs “The deep of the heart” by Pawel Orkisz & Band.


21:30 (9:30 p.m.) – finish show.

Romania/CZ -- Czech 9 Gates Festival in Bucharest

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This year, the annual (and of late traveling)   9 Gates Festival of Czech Jewish Culture is being hosted in Bucharest, Romania.

The schedule includes:

EXHIBITIONS

Neighbors who Disappeared
The project Neighbors Who Disappeared provides young people (12-21 years old) with an opportunity to search for neighbors who "disappeared" from their neighborhood - particularly during the Second World War. Students and children in the same schools children go to today, and what were the reasons for their sudden departure.

Tribute to the Child Holocaust Victims
The second stage of the project called A Tribute to the Child Holocaust Victims addresses again young people aged 12-21 and proposes tht they work independently on the stories of people who lived with their neighbours in a harmony until WWII and who were then mostly marked, restricte, persecuted, and finally liquidated. This projct’s topic, however is in the first place the life of the children and youngsters in the same community where children-participants live today.

FILM
Short Long Journey, Czech Republic, 2009, 82 min.
Director: Martin Hanzlicek
Producers: Fedor Gal, Jarmila Polakova
„About people, not only about Jews, about the evil in us, not only about the holocaust, about the present not only about the past“
In April 1945 Vojtech Gal was murdered on the way from Sachsenhausen to Schwerin. In April 2008 his son walked the same route in an attempt to find his father’s grave and leave a testimony. He was accompanied by friends, film makers and fellow pilgrims. They did not understand everything they came across. They could not comprehend some of the people with whom they talked. But it never occurred to them even for a moment that they were travelling without aim and meaning. They give harsh personal witness of their journey, anticipating neither agreement nor tolerance.

Diamonds of the Night, Cehoslovacia, 1964, 64 min.
Director: Jan Nemec
Screenplay: Arnost Lustig
Diamonds of the Night is set in Czechoslovakia during World War II. Two Jewish youths escape from a concentration camp-bound train. Captured by local peasants on a charge of stealing bread, the boys are sentenced to a firing squad. The men prepare to execute the boys, but simply laugh as they walk away instead of executing them. The ending is ambiguous: The men either actually spared the boys, or they could be walking into the afterlife.

MUSIC
Concert Naches
The Klezmer band NACHES interprets the traditional and the not so traditional folk music of the East European Jews. The band has taken part of many important Klezmer festivals, for example Klez- Fest in the UK.

For a full schedule click HERE

Jewish Quarterly -- Virtual Judaism, festivals and all

Even though I've never used the term "virtual Judaism," that's what the Jewish Quarterly in London titled my article that ran in December.  It deals with festivals and other cultural developments, mainly in Poland. Read the full article at the web site by clicking HERE (you have to register, but registration is free).

Virtual Judaism

December 21, 2009b
by Ruth Ellen Gruber

Representation is a moving target. Jewish culture is undergoing such changes that to pin it down to one representation is an illusion.
       Prof. Jonathan Webber, 1999

I’m a Jewish vegetarian atheist.
      Jonathan Ornstein, director, Jewish Community Center, Krakow, Poland, 2009


In the mid-1990s I began exploring a phenomenon that I described as ‘filling the Jewish space’ in Europe. Along with the efforts to revive Jewish communal life and reclaim and reassert Jewish identity in post-Holocaust, post-communist countries, I observed what I called a ‘Virtual Jewishness,’ or a ‘Virtual Jewish World,’ peopled by ‘Virtual Jews’ who create, perform, enact or engage with Jewish culture from an outsider perspective, often in the absence of local Jewish populations.

I wrote about non-Jewish klezmer bands, and Jewish museums and Jewish culture festivals organized by non-Jews for a primarily non-Jewish public. And I also described university Jewish studies programmes whose students were mostly Gentile, as well as the commercial exploitation of Jewish heritage, including the promotion of Jewish-themed tourism to synagogues, Jewish cemeteries and other sites of Jewish heritage where few if any Jews live today.

Although I discussed the ‘virtually Jewish’ phenomenon in a general European context, some of the most visible (and to some observers most troubling) manifestations were — and still are — observed in Poland, the historic heartland of Jewish life in Europe, where, as the scholar Jonathan Webber once noted, ‘the remarkable characteristic of anything to do with Jews…is its intensity.’ 

A project undertaken by the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) provided a vivid statistical illustration of this. Between May 2000 and April 2001, it attempted to ‘map’ Jewish cultural activities in four European countries with small Jewish communities. The countries chosen — Poland, Sweden, Italy and Belgium — have a total Jewish population of well under 100,000 and had very different Jewish histories both before World War II and during and after the Shoah. 

‘The results are simply astonishing, and as yet we have no idea what to make of them,’ Webber, who was an academic consultant on the project, reported in July 2001 at a conference in Budapest on Jewish identities in the post-communist era. ‘There is clearly no correlation between the considerable size of this cultural production and the percentage of Jews in a given total population of a particular country.’ It is almost, he added, as if ‘once one starts to have public Jewish culture, it simply continues to generate further events.’
Indeed, out of the four countries surveyed, Poland, with its tiny Jewish population (depending on how one defines ‘Jew,’ estimates vary from 3,000 to 20,000 or more in a total population of about 40 million), was by far the Jewish cultural champion, with 196 individual events and fully seven Jewish cultural festivals, including the annual Festival of Jewish culture in Krakow — the ‘largest and most important event’ recorded in the JPR survey.

The Festival — founded in 1988 by two young, non-Jewish intellectuals for a primarily non-Jewish public — takes place in Kazimierz, the historic Jewish quarter of Krakow, and nowhere, perhaps, has become more symbolic of the ‘virtually Jewish’ trends and the questions they raise than here.Centered on the most extensive surviving complex of Jewish built heritage in east-central Europe — synagogues, cemeteries, homes, marketplaces and other buildings and monuments, Kazimierz since the early 1990s has grown, and, indeed, been molded, into one of the major centers of Jewish tourism in Europe.

The post-communist development has seen the restoration of several synagogues and has brought new life and new business to what had long languished as the archetypical ‘Jewish ghost town.’ Even 15 years ago, much of Jewish Kazimierz was a derelict slum. At the same time this development has made the district one of the most prominent symbols of what has been called the marketing or ‘commodification’ of Jewish culture. The new Jewish-style cafes, boutiques, souvenir kitsch and constantly roving tour groups create an environment that has caused (and still causes) a deep sense of unease among some visitors, particularly as Krakow is only an hour’s drive from Auschwitz and often serves as a focal point for visits to the notorious death camp. 

Writing about Kazimierz in 2006, for example, in a review of Jan T. Gross’s 2006 book Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz, the American journalist Ruth Franklin scorned what she termed the ‘much ballyhooed renaissance of Jewish culture in Poland, complete with sold-out klezmer festivals and a popular brand of spirits called “Kosher Vodka.” She wrote: ‘Half a dozen Jewish-themed hotels welcome visitors to Kazimierz, with names like “Alef” and “Ester” and “Klezmer Hois”; the “Eden” sports mezuzahs on every door and advertises ‘the only mikveh bath in Poland,’ as if it were a Jacuzzi.’ She goes on, ‘This grim carnival of Holocaust tourism and Western capital is neither a sign nor a symptom of a greater change in Polish society. It is evidence only of the Polish national schizophrenia on the subject of Jews. It is lovely to restore old buildings and to cherish a culture that has perished. But the celebration of the Jews of Poland cannot substitute for a genuine confrontation with the manner of their disappearance: when, where and by whom. There is no indication that the consumers of ‘Kosher Vodka’ are interested in engaging in such a reckoning any time soon.’  

While it is hard to disagree with Franklin’s assertions, there is a bigger picture which she ignores. Poland does, indeed, have a certain schizophrenia towards its Jewish past but this schizophrenia has been demonstrated in loud and even lacerating public nationwide debates which is infinitely better, and ultimately more healthy, thatn the absolute denial and silence that existed until the 1980s. 

‘When I began working in Poland in 1990, it was almost completely taboo to tell your friends that you are Jewish,’ Poland’s American-born chief rabbi Michael Schudrich told me recently. ‘Today, it is just a normal thing to say to almost anybody here in Poland. What was taboo only 20 years ago, is today a curiosity or interesting or [indicates] respect — and for some [it is] of no consequence at all.’
Likewise, in July 2006, Michael Steinlauf, an American academic expert on Yiddish culture and Polish-Jewish relations and the author of the book Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust (1997), told me that to him, during the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, the Kazimierz district’s main square, Szeroka street, formed a symbolic ‘headquarters of the Diaspora’ thanks to the numerous cultural events and the many international Jewish artists, performers and fans who attended. I was speaking to him after he had enjoyed Friday night dinner with friends and family at one of the Szeroka street restaurants — a newly opened ‘mainstream’ restaurant, not one of the Jewish-style cafes. ‘We had a table for 11 and lit the candles,’ he told me. ‘The couple from the next table came over saying “Shalom Aleichem”. I’ve never done this anywhere else. It’s never been as easy to be a Jew than on Szeroka street the night before [the Festival’s outdoor final concert there].’

Krakow is home to several institutions promoting education on Jewish subjects. These include the Jewish studies centre at Jagiellonian University, founded in 1986, as well as the Jewish Culture Centre, established in 1993, as well as the Galicia Jewish Museum, founded by the late British photographer Chris Schwarz in 2004. The Jewish Culture Festival recently opened its own permanent culture and education centre called Cheder.
These institutions, which offer varied programs of lectures, classes, concerts and workshops, are generally run by non-Jews to serve the general public, including tourists. But all benefit from the input of Jewish scholars and Jewish religious and cultural figures.

The number of Jews in Krakow remains tiny — somewhere between 200 and 400 depending on whom you talk to. But the Jewish community has raised its own profile in recent years, in part thanks to the formation of a Jewish youth group, Czulent, in 2004 and also to the opening in 2008 of a modern Jewish Community Centre. (Mainly funded by World Jewish Relief and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the JCC project had a somewhat high profile from the outset. It came about, remarkably, at the urging of Prince Charles, who had visited Krakow in 2002 and was moved by the plight of the poor and aging Jews of the city. Charles himself returned to Krakow last year for its inauguration; wearing a kippah he helped affix a mezuzah to the door.)

The JCC director, Jonathan Ornstein, is a 39-year-old New Yorker who made aliyah and then moved to Krakow about seven years ago to teach Hebrew at the Jagiellonian University. Ornstein contradicts the stereotype of the traditional Jew as portrayed in the old paintings and photographs that fill books, decorate the local Jewish-style cafes or are caricatured in the wooden figurines for sale in souvenir shops and craft markets. Knowledgeable but iconoclastic, and an avowed ‘Jewish vegetarian atheist,’ he took part in an ‘atheist pride’ march in Krakow this year, carrying a sign reading ‘Thank God I’m an atheist.’ Not only that, he created a Facebook group called ‘I want the Beastie Boys to play the XX Jewish Cultural Festival in Krakow.’
Recently, I noted to Ornstein that that is increasingly little direct memory anymore in Poland of a time when the country was home to Europe’s largest Jewish population. For the student-age crowd that attends Jewish Culture Festival events or hangs out in the music pubs that have made Kazimierz the scene of trendy night life, what goes on today is what ‘Jewish’ means. Few of them can even remember a time before the Festival existed or before the district was a Jewish tourist attraction, with all the attendant commercialization.
He agreed. Kazimierz, Ornstein said, was to his mind not the ‘former’ but the ‘present’ Jewish quarter of Krakow.

‘Nobody alive today has a good memory of Kazimierz when it was better than it is now,’ he said. ‘There was the war, and then after the war it was derelict for decades. Now, it’s the hippest place in the city. The whole ‘former’ thing is based on history, not living memory.’
The success of the Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow helped spark other Jewish festivals of various types around the country. In 2000, the JPR Mapping project identified seven of them. Today, the number is much greater: in 2009, I counted more than 20, including at least two Jewish film festivals.
Some were one-day affairs, others spanned a weekend or longer. Some took place in towns with small Jewish communities, such as Wroclaw, Poznan and Gdansk. Others took place where no Jews live today. These included the sixth edition of a festival dedicated to the Yiddish author Shalom Asch, scheduled for early December in the central town of Kutno, the third edition of an annual Jewish culture festival in the village of Checiny, a Jewish theatre festival in Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski, the annual Jewish culture festival in Chmielnik, a Jewish culture festival in Bialystok, another in Szczekonciny, another in Przysucha, and so on. Festivals celebrating a diversity of cultures and religions, including Judaism, took place in Lodz, Wlodowa and Szczebrzeszyn.

‘I often joke that now the mayor of every small town feels obliged to make excuses [if] he/she has no Jewish Festival in his/her town,’ Anna Dodziuk, a psychotherapist who is also a Jewish activist and editor, told me. ‘To put it short: it is politically correct now to explore the Jewish history of the local communities, to commemorate Jews of a shtetl who perished in Holocaust, to celebrate somehow Jewish culture. So more and more Jews start to feel secure enough to be openly Jewish (or to be visible).’
In fact, some of the festivals had religious observance at their heart. One of these was a Shabbaton weekend held in October in Kielce. Most of Kielce’s 25,000 pre-war Jewish were killed in Treblinka, but the town is far better known for what happened after the war; it is infamous for the July 1946 pogrom that killed 42 Jews, an attack that formed the basis of Jan T. Gross’s book Fear.

The event brought prayers to the synagogue for the first time since the Holocaust — the building has been used as an archive for nearly 60 years. It also included lectures, workshops, exhibitions, concerts and film screenings. It was the latest in a series of Shabbaton programs in long-disused synagogues in Poland organized by Michael Traison, an observant Jewish America lawyer who has an office in Warsaw and has spent much of his time in Poland over the past 15 years.

Jews and Catholics took part in the event. ‘For the first time in my life I could celebrate the beginning of the Shabbat,’ a Catholic man wrote on the Shabbaton web site. ‘I could feel myself what I already knew theoretically, namely — what the Shabbat means for Jews who treat their faith seriously. Boi kala is also a challenge or a question on how I, a Christian man, treat my “shabbat” — Sunday. Thanks to Jews’ testimony of how they treat their holy day, I treat my one more seriously.’
The biggest Jewish Culture Festival outside Krakow was the sixth edition of the annual ‘Singer’s Warsaw’ festival in the Polish capital at the beginning of September. Singer’s Warsaw is sponsored by the secular Jewish Shalom organization. Shalom was founded in 1988 and is headed by the Yiddish singer Golda Tencer, now in her 60s, who for years was the star of Warsaw’s State Yiddish Theatre — her husband, Szymon Szurmiej, has been head of the Theatre since 1969.

The Shalom Foundation has sponsored events such as highschool essay competitions on Jewish topics, concerts, art exhibits, Jewish film festivals, a Jewish song competition, and the like. Outside of Poland, however, it is best known for the remarkable 1996 exhibition and book And I Still See Their Faces.This was a collection of more than 450 photographs of Polish Jews, ranging from formal studio portraits to faded snapshots of everyday life. They were culled from photographs sent in — mainly by non-Jewish Poles — from all over Poland. The number of photos sent in, about 8,000, more or less equals the number of self-identifying Jews living in Poland today.

The exhibit showed the broadest cross-section possible of Jews in pre-war Poland, orthodox and secular; assimilated and traditional. As such it turned somatic and other stereotypes (including that of Jews as victims) on their head. In the pictures, wrote Tencer in an introduction to the book, ‘the light falls on faces still free of terror and fear. We can see on them quiet reflection, the joy of family life, a smile that manifests belief in a friendly world.’

Paradoxically, much of this sensitivity is trumped by theatricality in the way that the Singer Festival is mounted.

The Festival’s stated aim, according to its web- site is ‘to reconstruct the prewar atmosphere here in order to present the annihilated world of the Polish Jews.’ Unlike in Krakow, where the entire Kazimierz district remains largest intact, almost all of downtown Warsaw, including the Jewish quarter and wartime Ghetto, was destroyed during the Second World War. The Singer festival takes place in and around one-block-long Prozna street, one of the only streets in Warsaw’s historic downtown Jewish district to have survived.
During the festival, the dilapidated street is turned into a sort of stage, with old photographs of Polish Jews affixed to windows or hung from wires attached to the buildings. I admit that I haven’t attended the Singer Festival, but — from afar — the costumed, Renaissance Faire-style ‘performing the Jew’ that is described on the festival’s web site (and shown in posted pictures) makes me rather more uneasy than do many of the other manifestations of public Jewish culture:

Along Próžna Street we create Jewish cafés, quaint shops and workshops. We construct an old bookstore and a newspaper office in which [Isaac Bashevis] Singer worked in New York before the war. Each year we make a wine bar and a bakery. Everyone can come inside, and have a look at collected odds and ends in use at the beginning of the twentieth-century. There are lots of souvenirs to be bought from street vendors and many home-made tidbits to be tasted. Many characteristic figures appear in the streets during the festival: Hasidics, merchants, painters, shoemakers, tailors, printers, blacksmiths, barrel organ players, entertainers, florists. All of them contributed to making Warsaw uniquely colorful. During the festival, just as in the past, one can hear klezmer music, chants from synagogues, as well as well-known traditional Jewish songs, in the heart of the Polish capital. The past reality is revived by many exhibitions and plays, artists’ installations, scientific sessions, and meetings with writers and Jewish artists. Yiddish culture returns through prewar films, song and dance workshops, paper cutting, ceramics as well as Hebrew calligraphy, lectures and discussion groups.

My use of the term ‘Virtual’ deliberately played on the cyberspace concept of virtual worlds and virtual communities exiting on the Internet. Even back then, these included many, many Jewish websites.
‘People can enter, move around and engage in cyberspace virtual worlds without physically leaving their desks or quitting their “real world” identities,’ I wrote in my 2002 book Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe:

Online, however, they can assume other identities, play other roles and be, or act as if they are, whoever they want. Like virtual worlds on the Internet, the various aspects of ‘Virtual Jewry’ are linked together and overlapping. One can approach them either passively, as a mere consumer, or ‘interactively,’ in a participatory manner, through, for example, performance and interpretation. They may be enriched by input from contemporary Jewish communal, intellectual, institutional, or religious sources, or they may be self-contained within totally non-Jewish contexts.

Virtually Jewish came out several years before the advent of social networking sites such as Facebook, and also well before what has been called a ‘Virtual Diaspora’ took root in the online world known as Second Life, where a ‘virtual synagogue’, Temple Beth Israel, was established there in 2006.
One year later, reported 2Life Magazine, Second Life’s Jewish community was ‘more diverse in age, religious affiliation and […] geographical origin than any community could be in the real world, and it also includes many religious seekers who use Second Life as a tool to explore their own roots, many of them with little to no Jewish educational background.’

Second Life Judaism, it said, was ‘a unique intercultural dialogue within various streams of Judaism, within various Diasporas and Israel, within various age groups and with Jews and non-Jews. Judaism in Second Life is a mélange of different identities, in which age, origin, gender, and even religious affiliation are unimportant. It is an experiment with an uncertain outcome, but with obvious potential for new and creative ways to explore culture, heritage and identity.’

The ‘virtual diaspora’ in Second Life is symptomatic of an even broader Jewish presence in cyberspace which has grown exponentially in the past decade and which now includes many websites, blogs and Facebook groups that originate in Poland — among Jews and ‘virtual Jews’ alike.
Among the most impressive and inclusive of these is the so-called ‘Virtual Shtetl,’ a web portal set up by the huge new Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which is under construction in Warsaw. Its aim is to be both an information portal as well as a sort of Jewish social networking site. 

‘The “Virtual Shtetl” is a museum without barriers, a consequent extension of the real Museum,’ the website says. ‘Its main objective is to provide a unique social forum for everyone interested in Polish-Jewish life.’
The website includes constantly expanding databases of historic and contemporary photographs and archival information about specific towns all around Poland, as well as blog-like, frequently updated news items and announcements of Jewish interest related to Poland. In October alone there were more than 60 items posted.
‘Currently, our portal is a source of information but, in the future, it will also include an interactive system by which Internet users will interact with each other,’ the site says, in phrases that echo my own description of interaction in the flesh and blood ‘virtual Jewish world.’

The Virtual Shtetl, it says, ‘will create a link between Polish-Jewish history and the contemporary, multi-cultural world.’

These ‘virtual’ links will enhance links that already exist, creating a sort of clearing house for many activities that already take place. Indeed, the past decade already the Krakow Jewish Festival has included a ceremony at which the Israeli ambassador honors non-Jewish Poles who preserve, conserve and promote Jewish culture and memory.

It is all part of a process of ‘normalisation’ Dodziuk said. ‘I’m sure it has its influence on a Jewish perception of the situation in Poland.’ For local populations in many places, she said, ‘These pre-war Jewish inhabitants have become “our people,” part of our local tradition.’ Earlier this year, she added, on a trip with an Israel friend through eastern and southeastern Poland, she met many people in small towns who now considered the Jewish history of these one-times shtetls part and parcel of their own local past and personal memories.
‘It is,’ she said, ‘obviously much more and much deeper than political correctness.’

List of Jewish festivals is growing

Just a reminder for readers to check the list in the sidebar -- of Jewish culture/arts/music/film, etc festivals coming up in Europe this spring/summer/fall.

So far, I have put nearly 30 festivals on the list.... with more, I'm sure, to come.

Click HERE to see the full list.

Jewish Culture/Music/Etc Festivals 2010

 Posters for last year's Quarter6Quarter7 Hanukkah festival in Budapest. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

                                                                                            

A number of Jewish culture festivals of all sorts take place around Europe in the spring and summer (and beyond). Some are dedicated just to music. Some to film. Others are much broader. As far as I know, there is no central web site where you can find information on all of them. I will begin to post information here on dates and venues. I ask my readers to please send me information to include!

The culture festivals and other smaller events make good destinations around which to center a trip. Some, like the annual Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow, are huge events lasting a week or more, which draw thousands of people and offer scores or sometimes hundreds of performances, lectures, concerts, exhibits and the like. Other festivals are much less ambitious. Some are primarily workshops but also feature concerts. Many of the same artists perform at more than one festival.

 The list will be growing and growing -- and again,  I ask my readers to please send me information and links to upcoming events. Thanks!


ALL OVER EUROPE -- 11th annual European Day of Jewish Culture. The first Sunday in September -- Sept. 5. Events take place in nearly 30 countries. The theme this year is Art and Judaism.

AUSTRIA

April 22-27 -- Vienna --  Stay Jewish! (Film Festival)

October 14-November 14 -- Vienna -- Yiddish Culture Autumn (web site under construction)

November 6 -  21 -- Vienna -- KlezMORE festival (this year's program is not up yet)

CROATIA

Aug. 23-31 -- Opatija -- Bejahad 2010


CZECH REPUBLIC

July 8-11 -- Boskovice -- Boskovice Festival. Mainly jazz, but also an emphasis on Jewish culture, given the importance of the well-preserved former Jewish quarter, cemetery and Jewish museum in the restored synagogue.

July 29-31 -- Trebic -- Seventh edition of the Trebic Jewish Culture Festival, held in the Czech Republic's most extensive preserved former Jewish quarter

FRANCE

April 9 - July 18 -- Paris -- Radical Jewish Culture exhibit (and concerts), Jewish Museum

June 13-28 -- Paris --  6th Festival of Jewish Cultures

July 5-9 -- Paris -- Klezmer Paris festival Lots of workshops from an all-star international team of  musicians and teachers.

November 6-13 -- Lyons -- International Jewish Music Festival 

Nov.21-Dec. 13 -- Paris -- Jazz'n'Klezmer festival, 9th edition.

GERMANY

March 5-14  -- Fürth -- Fürth International Klezmer Festival (12th edition)

July 3-August 2  -- Weimar -- Yiddish Summer Weimar

October 17-31 -- Dresden -- The 14th Yiddish Weeks Dresden

November 20-30 -- Munich -- The 24th Jewish Culture Days, Munich (devoted this year to Jewish Berlin)

HUNGARY

April 2-4 -- Budapest -- Mini-Israeli-Film-Festival, Kino cinema club

August 5-8  -- Bank Lake -- Bankito Festival

August 26-Sept. 6 -- Budapest -- Jewish Summer Festival


 ITALY

 March 11 -- Barletta --  Festival Musica Judaica 2009-2010

April 17-21 -- Ferrara -- Festival of the Jewish Book in Italy


April 23-May 23; Sept. 26-Oct. 31 -- Casale Monferrato -- OyOyOy Festival

October 9-13 -- Rome -- International Festival of Jewish Literature

October 23-27 -- Rome -- Kolno'a Israeli Film Festival

NETHERLANDS

April  18-25    -- Leeuwarden -- Yiddish Festival Leeuwarden (takes place every other year)

Oct. 28-31 -- Amsterdam -- International Jewish Music Festival

POLAND

April 9-11 -- Warsaw -- Festival of New Jewish Music

April 20-25 -- Warsaw -- Jewish Motifs International Film Festival

May 23-28 -- Wroclaw -- 12th Simcha Jewish Culture Festival (note -- other events take place May 5-9, with the gala re-opening of the newly restored White Stork Synagogue)

May 15-23 -- Warsaw -- "Otwardatwarda" festival

May 23-26 -- Warsaw --  13th Jewish Book Fair

 June 13-19 -- Sejny -- Musicians' Raft

June -14-16 -- Bialystok -- Zahor Festival of Jewish Culture

June 19-20 -- Chmielnik -- The Eighth "Meetings with Jewish Culture" festival

June 22-26 -- Piotrkow Trybunalski -- Days of Judaism

June 26-July 4 --Krakow -- Festival of Jewish Culture --20th Edition!

 July 13-17 -- Kazimierz Dolny -- Klezmer Music Festival

July 23-25 -- Poznan -- 4th Tzadik Jewish Culture Festival

August 11 -- Lublin -- Shalom. Meetings with Jewish Culture

August 12-14 -- Rymanow -- Shabbat in Rymanow

August 28-Sept. 5 -- Warsaw -- Singer's Warsaw Jewish Culture Festival

October 4-6 -- Slupsk -- Meetings with Jewish Culture 

ROMANIA

May 24-27 -- Timisoara -- Jewish Culture Days


May 26-29 -- Bucharest -- Czech Nine Gates Festival

June 19-22 -- Sighet -- Sighet Jewish Festival

September 2-5 -- Bucharest -- World of Yiddish Festival

RUSSIA

March 29-April 4 -- Moscow -- Yiddish Fest


SWITZERLAND

March 6-April 25 -- Geneva - Printemps Sefarade

U.K.

Feb. 27-March 7 -- London -- Jewish Book Week

June 21-24 -- London -- Cantors Convention

August 8-13 -- London -- KlezFest

Ukraine

July 25 -- L'viv -- LvivKlezFest

October 3-10 -- Kharkov -- Days of Jewish Culture