Thursday, September 2
10.30 - The State Jewish TheaterOfficial opening of the Festival - Press conference12.00 - The State Jewish TheaterFrom the ”Green Tree” to Broadway - Conference – Moderator: Director Harry Eliad16.30 - The “Union” Cinema
The Yiddish Theater in Romania (Director Harry Eliad) Jewish Music in Theater productions (Eng. Adrian Cuperman) Why do we need a Yiddish theater? Director Andrei Munteanu) From Iași to New York (Director Radu Gabrea)“And they faded out like the wind…” – the story of the Barasheum Theater19.30 - The State Jewish Theater
Documentary - Presented by Director Radu Gabrea
The Fools of Helem by Moishe GershenzonFriday, September 3
The State Jewish Theater
10.00 – Jewish Community CenterThe Shtetl and its world - Conference – Moderator: Director Erwin Șimșensohn16.30 - The “Union” Cinema
The Shtetl culture in Romania (Prof. Dr. Liviu Rotman) The Jewish Bukovina (Dr. Emil Rennert – Austria Rediscovering Yiddishland in Romania (Dr. Simon Geissbühler, Switzerland) Chassidism and Hesychasm: landmarks, origins, connections (Dr. Madeea Axinciuc) The mural painting of Moldavian synagogues (Dr. Măriuca Stanciu)Itzic Manger19.00 - The Great Synagogue
Documentary – Presented by Director Radu GabreaKabbalat ShabbatSaturday, September 410.00 – Jewish Community Center16.00 – Jewish Community Center
Yiddishland - Conference – Moderator: Dr. Aurel Vainer
Yiddish language – past and present – from mammelushn to art (Dr. Harry Kuller) Yiddishland: culture and political identity in the Yiddish media at the end of the 19th century in Romania (Drd. Augusta Radosav – Cluj) The Yiddish language – a source of moral support during the Holocaust (Dr. Lya Benjamin) Memories about Yiddish, from a Shtetl (Dr. Aurel Vainer)Mammelushn - Conference – Moderator: Dr. Jose Blum19.00 - The State Jewish Theater
Translations into Romanian from the Yiddish classic literature (Dr. Camelia Crăciun) Peretz- a great Yiddish writer (Ghidu Brukmaier ) From La Fontaine to Eliezer Shteinberg (Writer Carol Feldman)One Man Show "Alein ist die Neshume rein" - “Alone, the heart is pure”21.00 - Green Hours 22 Club Jazz Café
Yaakov Bodo & Misha Blecharovitz - Yiddishpiel Theater - IsraelVienna Klezmer Band (Austria)Sunday, September 5 – ““The European Day of Jewish Culture”
11.00 - The Romanian Peasant MuseumVisiting the Great Synagogue from Bucharest – September 2,3,5, from 10.00 to 17.00 h.Hakeshet Klezmer Band (Romania) The Hora dance group (Romania) Mames Babegenush Klezmer Band (Denmark)17.30 - The Romanian Peasant MuseumMazel Tov Klezmer Band (Romania) Preβburger Klezmer Band (Slovakia)20.30 - Jewish Community CenterOne Woman Show
Yiddish Experience
Maia Morgenstern & Radu Captari
after an agreement between various religious denominations and permission from the Lebanese government, planning authorities and even Hezbollah. The project received the green light after political officials and community leaders became convinced it could show that Lebanon is an open country, tolerant of many faiths including Judaism. [...]Read full story by clicking RIGHT HERE
Renovations have included mending the gaping hole in the Moroccan-style synagogue's roof and repairing the chandeliers that once hung from it. The Torah ark and prayer benches will also be refurbished to their former states, having been seriously damaged in fighting between Muslim and Christian forces during the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war.
Several dozen Jews still living in Lebanon will fund the project to the tune of $200,000, along with others in the Diaspora. The project has also received a $150,000 grant from Solidere, a construction firm tasked with rebuilding central Beirut from the destruction of the civil war. The company is privately owned by the family of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister assassinated in 2005.
There are fascinating traces beyond the faint Yiddish letters on ghetto buildings. Starting with the Middle Ages, Jews arrived here. By the 1700s, their numbers and influence became significant. Before World War II, Jews made up more than a third of the city.
Then the whole country seemed to disappear for 50 years behind the Iron Curtain; it was the first to break away from the USSR, in 1990. By that time most of its Jews were already gone.
Some had made Aliya, like the Litvak families of Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. Shimon Peres lived 100 kilometers from Vilnius.
Before the war, there were a hundred synagogues and study houses.
Fifteen years ago Chabad opened its doors in an apartment house. The city has but one synagogue building: the Choral Synagogue in the heart of the ghetto. This Moorish-style edifice, with its blue letters in Hebrew, had a congregation with a progressive outlook when it was built in 1894. It allowed music, thus the name “choral.”
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.
The seminar was a part of a project called “Polish-Byelorussian summer school for culture animators. Transfer of experience concerning protection of Jewish heritage”, which is financed from a program “Przemiany w Regionie-RITA” launched by Fundacja Edukacji dla Demokracji (Education for Democracy Foundation). “Holocaust” Foundation from Mińsk and “Ośrodek Brama Grodzka-Teatr NN” (The "Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre” Centre) from Lublin were partners in the project’s implementation.
In Poland, Shabbatons for non-Jews to combat anti-Semitism
PIOTRKOW TRYBUNALSKI, Poland (JTA) -- Whenever I visit Poland, I'm struck by how the intensity of the Jewish presence dwarfs the tiny number of Jews who actually live in the country. Even with the resurgence of Jewish life since the fall of communism, organized Jewish communities exist in fewer than a dozen Polish cities, and only the Warsaw community numbers much more than a few hundred people.
Yet each year sees hundreds of Jewish-themed festivals, conferences, educational projects, commemorative activities, publications and other initiatives throughout the country.
"I often joke that the mayor of every small town now feels obliged to make excuses if he or she has no Jewish festival," said Anna Dodziuk, a Jewish activist in Warsaw. Dodziuk published a book this year on Poland's largest and most famous Jewish festival, the nine-day Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow, which has been going strong since 1988. "To put it in short," she said, "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."
The activities are meant to educate and memorialize, but they coincide with a Jewish presence that is glaringly visible in more negative contexts, too, and this is also part of the paradox.
Anti-Semitic graffiti is shockingly widespread. Spray-painted Stars of David hanging from gallows deface countless walls.
Much of this, however, likely has little to do with actual Jews. The ugly scrawls are the work of soccer fans who may have no idea what Judaism is but have adopted Jewish symbols as pejoratives with which to bash their opponents.
Meanwhile, figurines of Orthodox Jews clutching coins fill souvenir stalls in Warsaw, Krakow and some other cities. The imagery harks back to the stereotype of Jews as greedy moneylenders, but the figurines are marketed today as abstract good-luck talismans.
"When a member of the city council from a Polish town came to visit me in the States not long ago, he brought a present," said Michael Traison, an American Jewish lawyer who has offices in Chicago and Warsaw. "It was a painting of a Jew counting money, with a dollar bill stuck in its back. He obviously had no idea that the image could be offensive."
Trying to make sense out of the disparity is a cottage industry among scholars, educators, policymakers, communal leaders and ordinary citizens.
How do you balance an abstract evocation of Jews and Jewish life with the real thing? And how do you prevent stereotypes and skewed templates from dominating discourse?
Traison believes a sort of "public display of Judaism" can be useful.
Toward that end, over the past four years he has helped organize Shabbatons that have brought actual Jews and Jewish practice to half a dozen provincial towns where few or no Jews have lived since the Holocaust. Religious services are held in long-disused synagogues, and local officials and ordinary citizens are invited to join in for prayers, kosher meals and Shabbat study.
Traison says he has four main goals: remembrance; demonstrating that the Jewish people -- and Judaism -- are still alive; outreach to Poles; and enabling Jews and local Catholics to participate in a Jewish religious experience.
"This is all very important for young people in Poland, who often only know Jews through imagery and mythology," he said.
Stanislaw Krajewski, a Warsaw Jew who has attended several of the Shabbatons, agreed. "It doesn't just show pictures but is doing something that is really alive," he said. "It is such an innovation -- a way of bringing a sort of circulation of blood in these places."
A Catholic man who attended last year's Shabbaton in Kielce put it this way: "I could feel myself what I already knew theoretically, namely what the Shabbat means for Jews who treat their faith seriously.”
The song “Boi Kala” – “Come, Sabbath Queen” – “is also a challenge or a question on how I, a Christian man, treat my 'shabbat’ -- Sunday," the man said. "Thanks to Jews' testimony of how they treat their holy day, I treat my one more seriously."
Most of these elements were evident at the latest Shabbaton, which took place this summer in Piotrkow Trybunalski, a rundown industrial town in central Poland where city walls are scarred by anti-Semitic soccer graffiti but also bear commemorative plaques recalling the town's rich Jewish past.
The Shabbaton coincided with a city-sponsored Days of Judaism festival, and posters advertised the religious events along with lectures, exhibits and a klezmer concert. Piotrkow's mayor and other officials took part in a Holocaust commemoration ceremony, a kosher Shabbat dinner and an open-air Havdalah celebration in a public park near the center of town.
Schoolchildren staged a play based on a Holocaust story, and Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, led services in Piotrkow's former synagogue, which was defiled by the Nazis and then turned into the public library in the 1960s.
Most of the participants were Piotrkow Holocaust survivors and descendants from Israel, the United States and other countries. They included the former Israeli diplomat Naftali Lau-Lavie, who was called to the Torah that Shabbat to celebrate the 71st anniversary of his bar mitzvah. Lavie's father was Piotrkow's last chief rabbi, and his brother is Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, a former Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel and now the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv.
Many in the group had visited Piotrkow before. Some had sponsored commemorative projects such as placing plaques and cleaning up the Jewish cemetery. They came to honor the dead, relive memories and make a positive statement simply by walking the streets.
It was "surreal" to pray where both "fame and infamy reigned," said Irving Gomolin, a survivors' son from Mineola, N.Y., who was making his third trip to Piotrkow. But, he added, "It also helps send the message to the town that we have not forgotten, that the Jewish nation and Piotrkower Jews survive and remember and do not want to forget or have their past in this place forgotten."
