Posted on 06/27/2006 10:55:33 AM PDT by lizol
A Polish-Jewish renaissance
By GREER FAY CASHMAN
The Krakow Festival of Jewish Culture has become so important that it is listed on Poland's national calendar of events and is even used as a marketing tool for tourism.
This year, the Yiddishpiel theater will be taking part in the 16th annual festival, touring Polish cities including Zamosc, Krakow and Bilgoraj, birthplace of Yiddishpiel founder Shmuel Atzmon.
Atzmon, who turns 77 this year, will celebrate his birthday on the theater troupe's Bilgoraj stop along with Israeli journalist Israel Zamir, son of Nobel Prize laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer. Zamir will also be turning 77 in the presence of Israel's Ambassador to Poland David Peleg, the first secretary of the US Embassy in Poland, members of the Sejm, the Polish parliament, prominent Bilgoraj personalities (Zamir's grandfather also lived in Bilgoraj) and Friends of Yiddishpiel, who are accompanying the tour.
Apart from performing Yehoshua Sobol's Gebirtig and Bashevis Singer's Last Love in Bilgoraj, the theater troupe will also participate in the second annual conference for the perpetuation of the legacy of Bashevis Singer, which is scheduled to open on July 1 in Bilgoraj.
In addition to its Bilgoraj dates, Gebirtig will run for four additional performances - two outdoor and two in closed auditoriums in Zamosc and Krakow. The latter will be part of the Krakow Festival of Jewish Culture which opens on July 1 and continues through to July 9.
INITIATED IN 1988, the festival has grown in scope and size, with more than a 100 events taking place in a period of just over a week. Performers and speakers from many parts of the globe, including Poland, America, Israel and Russia, will participate.
Though conceived and run primarily by non-Jews, the Festival has become one of the largest and most important events of its kind in the world, aiming to preserve and enhance the synthesis of Polish and Jewish cultures.
Prior to the Holocaust, Poland had the largest Jewish community in the diaspora. Now, according to the Polish Jewish Community Web site, there are 12 active Jewish communities in Poland, with the largest in Warsaw, plus some 40 foundations and institutions dedicated to perpetuating the Jewish history and culture of Poland.
In pre-war Warsaw, every third person was Jewish. It is unlikely that this ratio will ever exist again, but nonetheless the Jewish community is growing, partly because people who may not be halachically Jewish but are of Jewish descent choose to identify as Jews.
The Festival was the brainchild of Janusz Makuch who, as a teenager, heard from an old man about what Jewish life was once like in Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter of the city.
Makuch was so impressed with what he had learned that he wanted to share this knowledge with other Poles.
Kazimierz has since been restored to its former state, although most of the synagogues are now concert halls and museums and are not used for religious services. There are signs in Yiddish all over the place, and one of the features of the festival is a Yiddish cabaret.
There are also workshops on Yiddish language, Hassidic song and dance, Klezmer music, calligraphy and Jewish cooking.
Every Krakow Jewish Festival culminates with Shalom on ulica Szeroka - an open air concert in the main street of the Jewish Quarter, featuring dozens of performers from classic liturgical singers through to Yiddish nostalgia, Klezmer and more.
At the 15th festival, some 13,000 people sang and danced to the music in what could best be described as a semi-kosher Woodstock. The Festival receives wide television coverage both in Poland and around the world.
Ping
But....but.....Poles are anti-semites don'cha know? /sarcasm
Well, there are people, who'll maintain so no matter what Poles do.
Pass me the kosher kielbasa please? Any good bagels around here? Oyyyyyyy....
"The Krakow Festival of Jewish Culture has become so important that it is listed on Poland's national calendar of events and is even used as a marketing tool for tourism."
Errrr.....message to all you anti-semite EU nations.
Poland is looking better all the time.
FRmail me to be added or removed from this Judaic/pro-Israel/Russian Jewry ping list.
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
Some more good news.
When I first began going to Poland about a dozen years ago, I regularly stayed at (what was then) the Forum Hotel in the city center. Invariably there were large groups of teenagers from Israel passing through - evidence that Poland remains a magnet for Jews who recognize that Poland was for centuries a land of tolerance and refuge for their ancestors, and then the locus of the awful tragedy that befell them and their Christian neighbors.
C'mon, not that same old shi'ite again..
I'm glad to hear that modern Poland is a place where Jews
are welcome. I wouldn't say that the festival is the evidence of the Jewish renaissance in Poland. After all, Poland has fewer than 15,000 Jews now if I'm not mistaken, while in Pre WWII Poland there were 3,300,000 Jews or 10% of Polish population. Nevertheless, this delightful festival is a welcome sign that the majority of modern Poles view Jewish people and culture favorably.
It's in sharp contrast with the situation in "old Europe" which looks increasingly grim not only for Jews but for all freedom loving Europeans in general. The Islamic population growth in France, Britain, Netherlands and numerous other Western European countries created a dangerous environment for Jews. Other Europeans can't feel safe in Muslim enclaves either. I can't help but think that Islamization of "Old Europe" is the result indifference of the most Europeans toward Europe's Jews perishing in the Nazi Holocaust, the European hostility toward Israel and overall indifference toward the values that give Europe it's culture and civilization.
Indeed = this is what that region needs more of:
INITIATED IN 1988, the festival has grown in scope and size, with more than a 100 events taking place in a period of just over a week. Performers and speakers from many parts of the globe, including Poland, America, Israel and Russia, will participate.
Hrmmm. Pro-American, having a celebration of Jewish-Polish culture and some very good tax reforms...Maybe it's time I rethink my position on Poland.
;)
This thought will demand the consumption of many kosher kielbasas.
Although, for the record, I dislike klezmer music.
Here is an informative article on Klezmer music.
http://www.answers.com/Klezmer%20Music
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