Budapest Jewish summer festival celebrates its Bar Mitzvah

 Part of the festival in 2009. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Adam Lebor in Budapest writes a nice piece in the Economist online about the annual Budapest summer Jewish culture festival celebrating its 13th edition -- its bar mitzvah, so to speak.

The festival opened last night with a magnificent concert by the Boban Markovic Orchestra, the world's best known Serbian gypsy brass band ensemble, in the Great Synagogue on Dohany Street in downtown Pest. The synagogue, which holds 3,000 people, is the centre of Jewish life in Hungary. The synagogue was built in the mid-19th century in a neo-Moorish style and has been beautifully restored to its former glory. Playing to a packed house the orchestra kicked off with a rousing rendition of "Hava Nagila", probably the best known traditional Jewish song. The thumping Balkan beat soon had even dowager grandmas clapping along. The Boban Markovic Orchestra is the latest in a long line of renowned musicians to perform here: a century ago both Franz Liszt and Camille Saint-Saëns played the synagogue's organ.It was an interesting choice to open a Jewish cultural festival with a Serbian gypsy band. Partly because of their shared history of persecution, Jews and Roma often feel a kind of kinship. But despite the glorious life-affirming emotion of hearing "Hava Nagila" inside the synagogue, there was a poignant aspect to the concert, for this corner of Dohany street is a haunted place. The small Jewish cemetery behind the main hall houses the remains of perhaps 2,000 people who died of sickness and starvation during the winter of 1944-45 as the Hungarian Nazi Arrow Cross ran wild and the Red army steadily advanced, until the ghetto was finally liberated in January 1945.

On Monday, the festival features a presentation of Zsido Emlekhelyek, the Hungarian edition of my book Jewish Heritage Travel. I'm due to give an illustrated talk about Jewish heritage in Europe.

Paris -- Festival of Jewish Cultures

I just added a link in my annual list of Jewish culture festival  (see the sidebar of this blog)  to the 6th Festival of Jewish Cultures (Festival des Cultures Juives), which takes place in Paris June 13-28.

The program includes an international roster of music, art, theater, film and more in several locations around the city -- and particularly in the old Jewish neighborhood of the Marais. Most of the events are linked to Russia and Jewish culture there.

Le Festival des Cultures Juives propose 15 jours de manifestations culturelles éclectiques et originales (conférences, concerts, expositions, films, théâtres, visites) destinées à faire découvrir la richesse et la diversité de la culture juive de par le monde, dans un esprit d'ouverture, de dialogue et d'échanges.

Sa vocation est triple :

• Découverte d'une culture juive plurielle
• Mémoire et héritage d'un patrimoine qui a marqué les âges
• Ouverture et affirmation d'une culture juive ouverte sur la Cité

Un concept original

Un Festival au coeur du Marais

Le Festival des Cultures Juives se déroule tous les étés, au mois de juin dans le Marais, quartier emblématique de l'histoire de la communauté juive qui y a inscrit sa culture.

Une programmation éclectique et de qualité

La programmation est à la fois festive (concerts, représentations théâtrales, spectacles), ludique (expositions, ateliers, projection de films) et académique (conférences, tables-rondes).

Un festival ouvert à tous les publics

Le festival s'adresse à un large public, amateur ou connaisseur, ainsi qu'à tous les âges.

L'engagement de la Ville de Paris

Fort de son succès populaire, le Festival est inscrit au calendrier officiel de la Ville de Paris au même titre que « Paris plage » ou « Nuit blanche ».
Le Maire de Paris accueille chaque année la soirée d'ouverture du Festival à l'Hôtel de Ville.

Les partenaires : une collaboration originale

Depuis sa création, le Festival a réuni 80 partenaires institutionnels, associatifs, publics ou privés.

• Fonds Social Juif Unifié, porteur du projet
• Municipalités (Mairies des 3e et 4e arrondissements, Mairie de Paris)
• Ambassades (Israël, Pologne)
• Institutions et associations culturelles
• Hauts lieux culturels de la Capitale

Romania -- Jewish culture festival next week in Timisoara

Just found out about this Jewish Culture Festival, which takes place in Timisoara, Romania next week -- May 24-27.

It is co-sponsored by the local Jewish community as well as the French Cultural Institute and features the internationally known actress Maia Morgenstern (who played Mary in the controversial Mel Gibson movie "The Passion of the Christ.")

Timisoara is a beautiful city, and its Jewish community is one of the largest of Romania's communities outside Bucharest.

Permanent Jewish settlement dates from the mid-16th century, and the oldest tombstone in the  Jewish cemetery is that of a rabbi and surgeon named Azriel Asael, who died in 1636The city's three remaining synagogues include the imposing, Moorish style Citadel Synagogue, designed by the Viennese architect Carol Schuman. It was built in 1864 -- the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph attended a formal dedication ceremony in 1867 and has a monumental façade, with small side steeples and a rose window over the horseshoe-arched entry. The prolific Budapest synagogue architect Lipot Baumhorn designed the so-called Fabrik Synagogue, which was built for the Neolog community in 1899 on Coloniei street. The building was one of Baumhorn's most ornate synagogues, with fanciful domes and carving and a gorgeous interior featuring huge pipe organ beneath scalloped double arches surmounting the lavishly decorated Ark and bimah.When I last saw it, some years ago, it was abandoned and in sorry dilapidated state....

Jewish Festival -- In Northern Ireland

This is somewhat out of the geographical area I generally try to stay in -- but  a Jewish Culture Festival is being held  in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It's called "Jews Schmooze."

A series of talks, exhibitions and concerts will celebrate a vibrant culture. Records from the last census record just 400 members of the Jewish community in Northern Ireland. They may be small in number but they are determined to celebrate their identity.

Jews Schmooze co-ordinator Katy Radford said: "Since the 1800s, the Jewish community in the north has fed into cultural and educational vibrancy here establishing schools and theatres and sponsoring arts events.

"Jews Schmooze is an opportunity for the community to continue that work and its commitment to partnering with other communities to promote cultural diversity and deter racism and anti-semitism."

The programme was launched at the north Belfast synagogue on Tuesday by Belfast's lord mayor, Councillor Naomi Long. 

Read full article

This is what Northern Ireland's culture minister, Nelson McCausland,   had to say about it on his blog:

Wednesday, 14 October 2009

Yesterday I visited the Jewish synagogue in North Belfast for the launch of Jews Schmooze, a programme of talks, exhibitions and  concerts that is intended to celebrate Jewish culture.  The centre-piece will be the world premiere in the synagogue of a new production by the Kabosh theatre company.  It is entitled This Is What We Sang and it follows five Jewish family members during Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.

Today the Jewish community in Northern Ireland numbers around 400 people but it is a community with a long history and it has contributed much to life in Northern Ireland. 

Growing up in the north of the city I knew a number of Jewish young people who attended the Belfast Royal Academy when I was there.  At that time, back in the 1960s, the community was larger than it is today.

Over the years I have visited the synagogue a number of times and on one occasion I gave a talk on the life of one of the most notable members of the community, Sir Otto Jaffe.

I have a personal interest in the life of Otto Jaffe, who was Lord Mayor of Belfast on two occasions, in 1899 and 1904, and who was a Liberal Unionist.  He was a successful businessman and also a generous philanthropist.  The leading figure in the Jewish community of his day, he built the old synagogue in Annesley Street and also the Jaffe School on the Cliftonville Road.

The year 1904 was a good year for the Jewish community in Belfast with the opening of the synagogue and the honour of a Jewish Lord Mayor.  Unfortunately the experience of the Jewish community in Limerick in that year was rather different and a Redemptorist priest, Fr John Creagh, led an anti-semitic pogrom which drove many Jews out of the city.

Poland -- Tablet magazine on Krakow (mentioning Virtually Jewish)

Crowd gathers for the final concert. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Though I was in Krakow for the last few days of the Festival of Jewish Culture, I haven't (yet...) contributed to the annual crop of articles about it... but I was happy to see this nice mention of Virtually Jewish in the "Letter from Krakow" piece by Roger Bennett run in Tablet Magazine.

Krakow is a town in which the Holocaust is everywhere—thanks to the battery of brightly colored wagons, little bigger than golf carts, that litter the streets, energetically competing to lure visitors onto a series of niche tours they market via menus emblazoned on their sides. Trips to Auschwitz, “Kazimierz Ghetto,” and “Schindler’s Factory” are advertised alongside “Pope’s Krakow” and Wawel Castle as if they are all great days out for the whole family, despite the fact that while the last two are national jewels, the former are scars that stretch across the heart of the city. 65,000 Jews lived in Krakow before the war, amounting to 25 percent of the population. They now number a mere 200. Their absence hangs heavy, and if these tour carts were the sole custodians of their memory, they would surely soon be forgotten. But over the past 19 years, the Krakow Jewish Culture Festival has provided a critical public space for its audience to grapple with the stains of their history. This tangled phenomenon has been well-documented by the remarkable Ruth Ellen Gruber in her book Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe and our first encounter with it on this evening served to underline just how complex a task it can be.

Krakow -- It's That Time of Year Again.....

Exhibition during Festival in the High Synagogue, 2008. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

It's that time of year again, the run-up to the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, and articles are beginning to appear in newpapers and online....click here for one in the Jerusalem Post. According to the Festival's web site, the Festival recently took first place in a survey on what is Krakow's best product for tourists.

This year's festival has several points of interest that set it apart -- one will be the performance by the Other Europeans group of Yiddish and Gypsy (Lautari) musicians, part of a tour that is the culmination of this wonderful two-year project. The other is the selection of expanded day trips to shtetls in the Krakow area. Parts of the Festival will also be transmitted live on Internet.

I've attended most of the festivals in the past 20 years (it was founded in 1988) and have both taken part in them, giving talks or presentations of my books, and written about it in my books and in publications ranging from the International Herald Tribune to Polin, the scholarly annual on Polish-Jewish relations.

The article I wrote back in 1995 for the International Herald Tribune (now on the New York Times web site) still sums up much of the experience - what has changed is that Szeroka, the main square of the old Jewish quarter Kazimierz, is no longer very dilapidated, and that many more Jewish visitors now form part of the festival crowds.

On the rain-soaked main square of Krakow's dilapidated old Jewish quarter, thousands of Poles cheered, clapped, sang and danced well past midnight recently as klezmer bands playing traditional East European Jewish music and Israeli musicians sent their sounds blasting into the night.

The concert was the five-hour finale of the city's Fifth Festival of Jewish Culture — a festival that some have described as a "Jewish Woodstock."

Throughout the festival week, the old Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, and other parts of the city were the scene of concerts, theatrical performances, exhibitions, films, street happenings and workshops rooted in Jewish heritage.

Most of the performers and artists were Jews from the United States, Israel and Western Europe. But the overwhelming majority of the audience were non-Jewish Poles, joined by a handful of foreign Jewish tourists and members of the tiny local Jewish community.

Read full story

I'm not sure if I will get to Krakow for the festival this year....I've left it rather late to line up accommodation (as I thought I would have to be elsewhere at the time). But who knows. I have long regarded the festival week as the best party going -- and so many of my friends will be there....

Click HERE to see a video of my being interviewed during the Festival in 2007.

And remember -- the Krakow festival is just one (though the biggest and most venerable) of many Jewish festivals around Europe this summer -- see HERE for information and links to a score of them.

More Festivals

I just want to post a reminder that I keep updating the page noting Jewish culture and other festivals around Europe (and occasionally elsewhere) -- the link is in the sidebar of the blog. So far, I'm up to about 20!

I just added a link to the program of the Jewish Culture Days in Lodz, Poland, which runs from now until the end of June.

Poland -- Chmielnik Jewish Festival Program

Inside the Chmielnik synagogue, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I put information on this blog's Jewish Culture Festival page, but I don't post the schedules for all Jewish culture festivals I learn about. I thought I would point out the festival in Chmielnik, Poland, however. This year -- June 19-21 -- marks the seventh edition of the festival, which is organized by some enthusiastic local activists in the village of Chmielnik, not far from Krakow.

Before the Holocaust, some 10,000 of the town's then-12,000 residents were Jewish. Today, only 4,000 people live there -- none of them Jews. As the festival's organizer, the local historian Piotr Krawczyk, once put it succinctly: "No Jews here; no people."

Chmielnik synagogue, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

A large synagogue building, which is under sporadic restoration, dominates the town center and is the focus of the festival. It is a large masonry structure with barrel vaulting, originally built in the 1630s. The Nazis turned it into a warehouse, but the interior still retains traces of lovely decoration, including 18th century stucco work and frescoes of lions, geometric forms, and the signs of the zodiac. There are also two Jewish cemeteries -- one has been recently restored, with a monument to the destroyed Jewish community.

This year, the festival takes place in Chmielnik and also in Szydlow, another small village nearby where there is a massive, fortress-style synagogue.

Krawczyk is one of dozens -- scores? hundreds? -- of non-Jewish Poles who have made a mission of recovering and promoting awareness of a past that was destroyed by the Nazis during the Shoah and then suppressed under communism. He has written a book about local Jewish history and spearheaded efforts to restore the synagogue and broaden knowledge of local Jewish history -- which, as he and others have often noted, is actually the history of the town itself.

VII MEETINGS WITH JEWISH CULTURE IN CHMIELNIK

19 june 2009 – Szydlow
19-20-21 june 2009 – Chmielnik

Friday 19 june 2009 – Chmielnik

Time: 15:00 (3 pm)
Movie projection in the House of Culture in Chmielnik:
“PO-LIN. Memory scraps”. Director Jolanta Dylewska, music Michal Lorenc, narrator Piotr Fronczewski. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReAZir_l3zc)

Friday 19 june 2009 – Szydlow

Time: 17:00 (5:00 pm)
Open the exhibition of the painting-sculpturing of the Plastic Arts Association in Kielce.

Time: 17:45 (5:45 pm)
Official open the ceremony in the Synagogue.

Time: 18:00 (6:00 pm)
The “Chmielnikers” Team concert from Chmielnik in the Synagogue.

Time: 19:15 (7:15 pm)
Open of the Jewish exhibition in the Synagogue.

Time: 20:00 (8:00 pm)
Theatrical performance called “NIGHT – TURNO” made by Poem Theatre “In Radziwill” from Szydlowiec.

Time: 20:40 (8:40 pm)
Theatrical performance called “Shabbat Supper” made by school children from Szydlow.

Saturday 20 june 2009 – Chmielnik

Time: 17:00 (5:00 pm)
Meeting with the Leopold Kozlowski in the House of Culture in Chmielnik.

Time: 18:30 – 19:30 (6:30 – 7:30 pm)
On the Chmielnik’s Market – Jewish dance training with the dancing show made by the children of the Elementary School in Chmielnik.

Time: 19:30 (7:30 pm)
On the Chmielnik’s Market – Show of the Hola-Hola Cabaret.

Time: 20:30 (8:30 pm)
On the Chmielnik’s Market – dancing show inspired by the Jewish music made by girls from the Basic School in Chmielnik.

Time: 21:00 (9:00 pm)
On the Chmielnik’s Market – band “SHARENA” concert.

Sunday 21 june 2009 – Chmielnik

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

Time: 13:15 – 13:30 (1:15 – 1:30 pm)
At the Synagogue put the wreath and inflammation before board ever-burning fire commemorating Jews of Chmielnik.

Time: 13:30 – 16:00 (1:30 – 4:00 pm)
In the Synagogue:
- Open the exhibition called “I see faces, hear steps” made by Malgorzata Gladyszewska and Andrzej Peczalski.
- Theatrical performance made by Elementary and Basic School children from Chmielnik.
- The Slawa Przybylska recital, Jan Krzyzanowski recite, Janusz Tylman accompaniment.
Time: 16:00 (4:00 pm)
On the Chmielnik’s Market – dancing show inspired by the Jewish music made by girls from the Elementary School in Chmielnik.

Time: 16:15 – 17:00 (4:15– 5:00 pm)
Ending of the First Youth Jewish Songs Contest in Chmielnik.

Time: 17:00 – 17:30 (5:00– 5:30 pm)
On the Chmielnik’s Market – Dance practice part 1.

Time: 17:30 – 18:00 (5:30– 6:00 pm)
On the Chmielnik’s Market – children show from the Basic School in Wola Jachowa.



Time: 18:00 – 19:00 (6:00– 7:00 pm)
On the Chmielnik’s Market – Results of the First Youth Jewish Songs Contest in Chmielnik and the “Chmielnikers” Team concert.

Time: 19:00 – 20:00 (7:00– 8:00 pm)
On the Chmielnik’s Market – Dance practice part 1 and dancing show inspired by the Jewish music made by girls from the Basic School in Chmielnik.

Time: 20:30 – 22:00 (8:30– 10:00 pm)
On the Chmielnik’s Market – band “Klezmafour” concert.

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".