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.

Ukraine -- Profile of Meylakh Sheykhet

 Meylakh Shekhet, Sam Gruber, and me in L'viv

I'm delighted to share this link to a profile in Canada's National Post  of my friend Meylakh Sheykhet in L'viv, who has devoted much of his life to identifying and preserving Jewish cemeteries and sites of WW2 mass execution.  Specifically, it describes one of Meylakh's current projects, an attempt, with Canadian aid, to restore the Jewish cemetery in Sambir, near L'viv.

Ever since he ventured into the Ukrainian countryside and saw the remnants of bulldozed Jewish cemeteries, and ever since he saw Holocaust mass graves that lie unkempt in the forests there, Meylakh Sheykhet has fought for the right to remember.

Over the past 20 years, Mr. Sheykhet has found and worked to restore more than 150 Jewish cemeteries in Ukraine and neighbouring Belarus, cemeteries that were destroyed or forgotten under Soviet rule.

With his greying beard and traditional Jewish dress, Mr. Sheykhet is known in Ukraine and beyond as the guardian of Jewish cemeteries. His voice is calm but impassioned as he speaks of his mission to preserve the history of a once-thriving Jewish community.

“When I witnessed the lost cemeteries for the first time, with their tombstones broken and bowed to the earth, I felt deeply connected,” said Mr. Sheykhet, who is in Toronto this weekend to address Ukrainian and Jewish audiences on his efforts. “I cannot explain it, but they called out for my protection.”

Among the villages assailed by the Nazis is the western Ukraine town of Sambir, which is home to Mr. Sheykhet’s latest quest: A centuries-old Jewish cemetery, where a Holocaust mass grave also lies.

On the first day of Passover in 1943, more than 1,200 Jews were shot and buried at the cemetery in Sambir, which was called Sambor when the town was part of Poland. Today, the cemetery — its tombstones destroyed in 1974 — doubles as a garbage dump and an overgrown pasture for cattle grazing.

Mark Freiman, president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, made his own pilgrimage to the cemetery in 2007, paying homage with his brother to their grandparents and aunts and uncles who perished there during the Holocaust.

“All of my instincts told me I had to undertake an effort to memorialize this place,” Mr. Freiman said from his Toronto home. “Seeing the place, touching the stones, and lighting a memorial candle in front of the mass grave made the history entirely real and entirely personal.”

Mr. Freiman’s partnership with Mr. Sheykhet began in the fall of last year, and has so far sparked the beginnings of a historic assessment of the site. Their work, sometimes lonely and with few allies, picks up where another Canadian’s efforts left off.

Read more by clicking here

Meylakh was on a speaking tour in Canada and several articles about him and his worked appeared. Click HERE   for a lengthy piece in Shalom Life.

He told Shalom Life that initially, he decided to take part in volunteer work to preserve the graves, while continuing his professional career.

“I meant (to just do it) for a while but it has happened for life,” said Meylakh who is also the director for Ukraine for the Union of Councils for the Jews in the Former Soviet Union. He added that he eventually realized it was not possible to do both and decided to focus on preserving Jewish cemeteries full time.

Meylakh has made it his mission over the last 10 years to protect and preserve as many Ukrainian Jewish cemeteries and mass graves as possible.

He explained that during Soviet times, the authorities denied the legitimacy and existence of Jewish cemeteries and mass graves, while using propaganda to accuse Jews for all sorts of crimes and turning the Star of David into an evil symbol. As he was familiar with this history of falsification, he felt that he could be useful in navigating the complex bureaucracy in Ukraine; during that early days after communism fell, Western visitors and dignitaries were getting the run around from the government which was giving them all sorts of excuses why it could not protect the cemeteries.

The cemeteries had even been removed from all maps and any mention of their existence was erased as if Jews never existed. Prominent Jews and rabbis who visited the country were even told that there were no laws on the book to protect cemeteries when the opposite was true.

“I made everything possible to show that they were mislaid and that the rule of law did exist for the burial sites and that the bureaucracy must follow it up and they have to respect the Jewish grave sites as required by international agreements and the rule of law of Ukraine,” he said.

So far, Meylakh has been involved in investigating more than 150 sites, producing documentation and physically protecting a third of those. However, he explained that there are literally thousands of such sites, currently in poor condition, that need to be protected.

“They need a lot of work, they need a lot of monetary investment and most important, they have to be reconstituted in a legal way because they have to be put back on city and town maps,” he said.

One would think after so many years of heroic dedication and hard work, the job would now be easier; sadly, today it is the exact opposite because of the short-sighted economic policies of the Ukrainian government.

 Read More by clicking HERE

Virtually Jewish available as ebook

I happened to look at the amazon.com page for Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe and was delighted to see that it is available as an e-book on Kindle. (Which now can also be read on other e-readers including IPhone and IPod Touch).

More on the YIVO online Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe

I posted a brief note about the online publication of the YIVO  Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe a few days ago.  I was too lazy (or, rather, pressed for time.....) to post most than a publication notice. But Bob Cohen has posted a very informative review, noting some of the highlights, on his Dumneazu blog -- worth reading.

The new YIVO site brings together contemporary leaders in Yiddish culture like Prof. Dovid Katz on the history of Yiddish, Judit Frigyesi on liturgical music, and even a section of Hungarian Jewish literature by János Kőbányai, editor of the Hungarian Jewish magazine Múlt és Jövő. The YIVO is a unique institution: founded in Vilnius in 1925 as the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut. YIVO preserves manuscripts, rare books, and diaries, and other Yiddish sources YIVO was initially proposed by Yiddish linguist and writer Nochum Shtif (1879–1933). He characterized his advocacy of Yiddish as "realistic" Jewish nationalism, contrasted to the "visionary" Hebraists and the "self-hating" assimilationists who adopted Russian or Polish.

Book -- New Book about Bialystok, Poland

 Monument to the destroyed main synagogue in Bialystok. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora, by Rebecca Kobrin, a new book about Bialystok and the Jews who both lived and left there, has been published by the University of Indiana Press. From the description, it sounds as if it shows how memories of "the old country" are connected with the reality of the New World.

The mass migration of East European Jews and their resettlement in cities throughout Europe, the United States, Argentina, the Middle East and Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries not only transformed the demographic and cultural centers of world Jewry, it also reshaped Jews' understanding and performance of their diasporic identities. Rebecca Kobrin's study of the dispersal of Jews from one city in Poland -- Bialystok -- demonstrates how the act of migration set in motion a wide range of transformations that led the migrants to imagine themselves as exiles not only from the mythic Land of Israel but most immediately from their east European homeland. Kobrin explores the organizations, institutions, newspapers, and philanthropies that the Bialystokers created around the world and that reshaped their perceptions of exile and diaspora.

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

YIVO Encylopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe is online!

The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe is online -- though the official launch is next week.

A fabulous resource!

The only resource of its kind, this encyclopedia provides the most complete picture of the history and culture of Jews in Eastern Europe from the beginnings of their settlement in the region to the present. This Web site makes accurate, reliable, scholarly information about East European Jewish life accessible to everyone.

 But oh, I can already feel that I'm going to be spending many hours on this site....