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Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow

The Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow is one of the most interesting and largest Jewish festivals in the world. Leading artists from various fields of Jewish culture participate, for the most part from the United States, Israel and Europe. The Festival, held in Krakow's Kazimierz district, has become a place for Jews and non-Jews from all over the world to meet. Traditional and contemporary Jewish culture provides the basis for them to find common values. They do this through film, dance, theater, literature, the visual arts, lectures, meetings with writers, workshops and omnipresent music.

The Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow is a tribute to the almost 1000 years of the Jewish presence in Poland -- to Jewish history, culture and religion.

The Festival of Jewish culture in Krakow is a celebration of life. It is the triumph of life over death. But just as the prayer for the dead, kaddish, it is the commemoration of the death of millions of Jews from all over the world. And although the memory of their deaths is ever-present here, it is above all to life that this tribute is made. In this sense, the Festival is a special day of memory directed toward the past.

The Festival's events take place primarily in Kazimierz, the fourteenth century Jewish quarter in the heart of Christian Krakow. Kazimierz is part of the Festival's special nature as a place where Jewish thought came into its full. Kazimierz is the Book of Life written by centuries of joy, happiness, pain and death. Kazimierz is the crowning glory of all that is beautiful and profound in Jewish culture. Creating the Festival here and now, we become the heirs and the perpetuators of the golden tradition of Polish Jewry. Thanks to corporation with the Jewish Religious Community in Krakow, most of the concerts, shows, lectures and meetings take place in beautiful, meticulously restored synagogues and beit ha-midrash.

Every year, the Festival includes about one hundred events in which about two hundred artists from all over the world take part. The Festival brings together tens of thousands of people every year, from Poland and abroad. But the Festival is not just a collection of cultural events. It is a demanding and long-term process of psychological and cultural changes that take place in its participants thanks to their contact with living, authentic Jewish culture. It is particularly strong evidence that only culture and dialogue between cultures is able to preserve the value that is the most fragile and also one of the most valuable: peace-shalom.

The heart of the Festival are its creative workshops, which a manifestation of living Jewish tradition. For the most part, these focus on Hebrew calligraphy, paper cutting, Yiddish language, traditional folk dancing, Chasidic and Israeli dance, cantor singing, Chasidic singing, klezmology (i.e., instrumental workshops), activities for children, and Ashkenazi and Sephardic cuisine.

The Festival lasts nine days. During this time, Jewish life returns here. For the nine days and nights of this Jewish festival, music rings out through the synagogues, little lanes, in the streets and homes - from synagogal music to klezmer, Chasidic, folk, jazz, chamber, and even avant-garde. The Festival's culmination is the finale concert on Szeroka Street, write in the heart of Jewish Kazimierz. The nearly eight-hour-long concert by leading Jewish musicians attracts over 10,000 people from all over the world every year.

on the internet

The Festival website with actual program.
Photo: Bogdan Krezel.


The fourteenth Festival was during from the June 26 to July 4, 2004. The theme this year will be the cultural heritage of the Ashkenazi Jews of East and Central Europe.

The Festival traditionally began with the morning Sabbath prayer service on June 26, 2004, in the Temple synagogue, led by Benzion Miller and the Choir of Cantors from the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem. The inaugural concert was opening the artistic part of the program on June 27, 2004, featuring the Three Cantors from the Choir of Cantors from the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem. The Festival was concluding with the great finale concert shalom on Szeroka Street.

About 120 events was taking place over the course of the nine Festival days: concerts, lectures, exhibitions, workshops, theater performances, films and book promotions.

Concerts are an important part of the Festival. This year, the following cantors are among those who was singing:
Benzion Miller (USA), Itzhak Meir Helfgot (Israel) and Yaacov Motzen (Canada), the Choir of Cantors from the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem under the direction of Elli Jaffe, Erik Friedlander (USA), Michael Alpert (USA), Theodore Bikel (USA), David Krakauer's Klezmer Madness! (USA), Shura Lipovsky (Holland), Klezmatics (USA), Chava Alberstein (Israel), Bente Kahan (project with children singing in Yiddish from the Lauder Etz Chaim School in Wroclaw), Leopold Kozlowski (Krakow), Muzsikas and Marta Sebestyen (Hungary), and others.

Exhibitions was also being part of the fourteenth Festival, including graphics (In the Garden of Eden: Marc Chagall), Biblical scenes (Museum Czartoryskich, in cooperation with the National Museum in Krakow), photography (Traces of Memory, Chris Schwartz (UK), compositions inspired by the Song of Songs by Marta Golab (Krakow).

At the heart of the festival are its creative workshops. These are the teaching and manifestation of living Jewish tradition that allow one to better understand the language of Jewish culture. Every year sees increasing numbers of participants at the workshops, which means that activities must be repeated for different groups several times a day.

This year, the workshops was including:
- Yiddish language workshops (with instruction in Polish and English), led by Przemyslaw Piekarski and Julia Makosz (Krakow)
- Workshops for children, led by Ethel Szyc (Poland) and Monika Krajewska (Poland)
- Paper-cutting workshops, led by Anna Malecka-Beiersdorf (Krakow)
- Jewish dance workshops, led by Leon Blank (Sweden)
- Chasidic dance workshops, led by Michael Alpert and Jill Gellerman (USA)
- Chasidic singing workshops, led by Benzion Miller and Daniel Gildar (USA)
- Klezmology workshops, led by Alan Bern (USA)
- Hebrew calligraphy workshops, led by Ewa Gordon (Krakow)
- Jewish cuisine workshops, led by Bezalel and Malka Lappe and cooks from the Klezmer-Hois and Alef restaurants.

The festival is constantly expanding its educational programs, which in addition to lectures and workshops also include special events on the history of the Polish Jews, such as tours of the "Seven Synagogues", Kazimierz (in the footsteps of Majer Balaban, author of Historia Zydow w Krakowie i na Kazimierzu [History of the Jews in Krakow and Kazimierz]), cemeteries and the site of the former Krakow Ghetto.

The Festival, in addition to a series of lectures devoted to the writings of I. B. Singer, was also featuring a new series of lectures on the basics of Judaism, which will be designed to provide elementary information on Jewish holidays and traditions.

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Anielewicz Center

Auschwitz Jewish Center

Beit Warszawa

Brama Grodzka - Teatr NN

Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow

Foundation Momentum Iudaicum Lodzense

Galicia Museum

Hatikvah

Jewish Historical Institute

Museum of the History of Polish Jews

PAJA

Polish Center for Holocaust Research

Polish Council of Christians and Jews

Polish Jewish Students' Union

Polish Jews Forum

Prof. Moses Schorr Foundation

Tslil - Jewish choir

Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland

Viridarium

THE LARGEST JEWISH CEMENTERY IN EUROPE

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Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Wiejska 12a, 00-490 Warsaw tel. (48-22) 44 76 100, fax. (48-22) 44 76 152; www.iam.pl