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Poland’s Jewish Festival Circuit Is Extensive

There were more than 40 events this year celebrating Jewish culture

by
Stephanie Butnick
August 29, 2014
Krakow, Poland. (Kaetana / Shutterstock.com)
Krakow, Poland. (Kaetana / Shutterstock.com)

You’ve probably heard of the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, a week-long event featuring workshops, panels, and concerts that’s been occurring annually since 1990. And perhaps you’ve even heard of the Warsaw Jewish Film Festival, or Oswiecim’s Life Festival, which Eric Clapton headlined this year. But have you heard of the Silesian Jewish Festival, or the Following IB Singer festival in Lublin, or the Festival of Three Cultures in Zduńska Wola? How about the Festival of Klezmer Music and Tradition in Kazimierz Dolny or the Baltic Days of Jewish Culture in Gdańsk?

There’s a lot going on in Poland these days, and now there’s an exhaustive list of every annual event having to do with Jewish culture (or music, or film, or books…). From Wroclaw and Poznan, Bialystok and Lódz, local organizations this past year put together events big and small—44 of them, to be exact—that paint a dynamic, curious, engaged picture of modern Poland.

The list was assembled by Agnieszka Gis, a volunteer at the JCC in Krakow and an intern at the Taube Foundation in San Francisco this summer, and features dates and contact information for each of the events, as well as how long they’ve been occurring. Jewish Heritage Europe published the list, which you can view in full here.

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.