Melawe Malłke

The Jewish Culture Festival is set to start in the southern city of Krakow. A burgeoning Jewish revival in the city is highlighted by the festival, which is now in its 19th edition.

John Beauchamp reports.

The Jewish Culture Festival is a cultural highlight in everybody's calendar in the southern city of Krakow. Ever since its inception in the 1990s, the festival has become one of the world's most authentic Jewish festivals. But the Krakow district of Kazimierz, where the festival takes place, has only recently become somewhere attractive enough to undertake such an event.

With such a Jewish festival happening in the old Jewish quarter of Kazimierz to the south of the Old Town, is the festival a return to the past and a romantic dream of what was then pre-war Krakow, with its vibrant Jewish population and culture? Perhaps not, this festival looks at contemporary Jewish culture.

The Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow is a nine-day affair and is packed with many events ranging from tours of old synagogues both in English and in Polish, as well as Yiddish and Hebrew language workshops. Dance sessions, academic meetings, calligraphy classes, everything to keep the discerning festival goer entertained...

The Jewish Culture Festival runs from June 27th until July 5th, and welcomes everyone from around the world to become part of the Jewish revival in Krakow and be a part of perhaps the biggest such festival in the world...

More information can be found at www.jewishfestival.pl.

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