The 24th annual Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków begins on June 27 and lasts until July 6. This year's Festival is centered around the following themes: ashkenaz, mizrah (Heb: "east"), dybbuk (Heb: "possessing spirit"), and kibbutz (Heb: "collective, gathering), which the Festival is exploring via hundreds of events, including concerts, lectures, art exhibits, and more! These four themes emphasize multiculturalism, Yiddishkeit, and Jewish imagery popular in contemporary Jewish cultural life. This year's festival also focuses on the theme of mi dor le dor (Heb: "from one generation to the next"), showcasing the younger generation of artists and performers.
Three young cantors, the next generation of chazan, are performing in the inaugural cantors' concert. Helena Czernek and Aleksander Prugar, founders of design team "Mi Polin," the first new Polish brand of Judaica, are turning the entirety of Kazimierz into a live gallery with an art installation. The Israeli-based Broken Fingaz Crew are creating a mural for the Festival, a tribute to one of the greatest Jewish artists of the Art Nouveau era in Poland, Maurycy Lilien. Maurycy Lilien (1874-1925), born in Drohobycz, was a student of Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków and one of the founders of the Bezalel School of Arts in Jerusalem, and is referred to as the first Zionist artist. The electrifying and internationally popular trio of sisters from Israel, A-WA, are performing, combining traditional Yemenite sound with contemporary sounds.
Executive Director of the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture, Shana Penn, is moderating a panel on the women who brought democracy to Poland, which includes the Deputy Speaker of Polish Parliament, Wanda Nowicka, among other activists and feminists. The panel also includes a discussion of Shana Penn's book, Solidarity’s Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland (University of Michigan Press, 2005), newly published as Sekret Solidarnośći by W.A.B. publisher in Warsaw, as well as a showing of a clip of the new film based on the book, "Solidarity According to Women" (directed by Marta Dzido). The Festival also includes the Taube Foundation Irena Sendler Memorial Award Ceremony, which takes place on July 4, and honors the 2014 award recipients, Małgorzata Niezabitowska and Tomasz Pietrasiewicz. For more about the awardees, click here. For more about the Jewish Culture Festival, click here. The Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture is proud to be the largest American patron of the Jewish Culture Festival, providing annual support since the beginning of the Foundation's Jewish Heritage Initiative in Poland in 2004.
