Over the following week, Warsaw will celebrate its Jewish heritage with exhibitions, guided tours, workshops, concerts and much, much more, during the annual Singer’s Jewish Culture Festival, which sees its 21st iteration this year, starting on August 24.
Poland’s arguably best known Jewish culture festival, Szalom na Szerokiej (Shalom on Szeroka Street) has been held in Krakow since 1988. It is only apt that Warsaw should have its own festival. The city’s pre-World War II Jewish population amounted to 375 thousand people, one-third of the city’s inhabitants, making it the largest Jewish city in the world at that time second only to New York.
Named in honor of Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Polish-born Yiddish-language writer, the festival is, per the website of the organizer, the Shalom Foundation, “a celebration of music, theater, literature and visual arts.” The first festival, in 2004, was organized thanks to the efforts of, among others, Gołda Tencer, a Jewish-Polish actress, director, singer and long-time artistic director of Warsaw’s Jewish Theater.
As every year, the Festival, which began this Saturday and will last until Sunday, September 1, offers a wide array of events and activities spread across the city.
“This year, the Festival venues will again offer both grand and intimate concerts and recitals. There will be no want of theatrical performances, as well as minor theatrical formats for adults and children alike. The program’s perennials will include meetings around literature, music, history, film screenings, lectures, workshops, exhibitions, and city tours. The Festival’s venues will host artists from Poland, Austria, Germany, Serbia, Israel, the United States, Sweden and Italy,” Warsaw’s city hall reports on its website.
The pinnacle of the festival will be the concert at Warsaw’s Grand Theater - National Opera. Among the artists who have previously graced the Festival’s closing event with their performances were English violinist Nigel Kennedy, and Krakóow-based neo-klezmer band Kroke. This year, the final concert will see the performance of Ara Malikian, a Lebanese-born Spanish violinist of Armenian origin, a winner of many prestigious awards and distinctions, nominated for Latin Grammy Awards, and formerly the first violinist in the orchestra of the Royal Theater in Madrid.
Named in honor of Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Polish-born Yiddish-language writer, the festival is, per the website of the organizer, the Shalom Foundation, “a celebration of music, theater, literature and visual arts.” The first festival, in 2004, was organized thanks to the efforts of, among others, Gołda Tencer, a Jewish-Polish actress, director, singer and long-time artistic director of Warsaw’s Jewish Theater.
As every year, the Festival, which began this Saturday and will last until Sunday, September 1, offers a wide array of events and activities spread across the city.
“This year, the Festival venues will again offer both grand and intimate concerts and recitals. There will be no want of theatrical performances, as well as minor theatrical formats for adults and children alike. The program’s perennials will include meetings around literature, music, history, film screenings, lectures, workshops, exhibitions, and city tours. The Festival’s venues will host artists from Poland, Austria, Germany, Serbia, Israel, the United States, Sweden and Italy,” Warsaw’s city hall reports on its website.
The pinnacle of the festival will be the concert at Warsaw’s Grand Theater - National Opera. Among the artists who have previously graced the Festival’s closing event with their performances were English violinist Nigel Kennedy, and Krakóow-based neo-klezmer band Kroke. This year, the final concert will see the performance of Ara Malikian, a Lebanese-born Spanish violinist of Armenian origin, a winner of many prestigious awards and distinctions, nominated for Latin Grammy Awards, and formerly the first violinist in the orchestra of the Royal Theater in Madrid.
The festival, which celebrates both the Jewish heritage of Warsaw destroyed in the Holocaust, as well as the contemporary and vibrant culture of the Jewish people from Poland and abroad, will conclude with the somber A Lullaby for Memory musical performance, held in front of the memorial honoring the fighters of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, in the heart of the Warsaw’s former Jewish district and opposite of Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN.
The Festival’s full program is available in Polish and English on the Shalom Foundation’s website.
To learn more about the Singer’s Warsaw Jewish Festival and the larger place that Jewish heritage holds within the fabric of Polishness, watch TVP World’s interview with Dawid Szurmiej, one of the Festival’s organizers.
The Festival’s full program is available in Polish and English on the Shalom Foundation’s website.
To learn more about the Singer’s Warsaw Jewish Festival and the larger place that Jewish heritage holds within the fabric of Polishness, watch TVP World’s interview with Dawid Szurmiej, one of the Festival’s organizers.
The interview was originally aired on TVP World’s Pulse of Culture on August 23, 2024.
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