The 21st "Singer's Warsaw" Jewish Culture Festival will begin on Saturday and run until September 1, providing numerous opportunities to explore and celebrate Jewish culture and traditions.
The annual event, which takes its name from Nobel Prize-winning Polish-Jewish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, will see a more than weeklong feast of music concerts, film screenings, exhibitions and culinary workshops.
Among the highlights of the festival this year is an opening cantorial concert at Warsaw’s Nożyk Synagogue, featuring performers including Jewish American singer Yaakov "Yanky" Lemmer.
A host of international musicians are expected to entertain audiences, among them Italian saxophonist Gianluca Lusi, Iranian-Israeli singer Liraz, and award-winning Lebanese-born Spanish-Armenian violinist Ara Malikian.
The Warsaw-based Shalom Foundation, which is the main organizer of the annual event, said on its website that the "Singer's Warsaw Festival is a meeting place for all those for whom the world of Yiddish is an important element of Polish-Jewish heritage."
Festival attractions also include debates, activities for children, meetings with writers, artists and historians, and plays performed by actors from Warsaw’s Jewish Theatre.
Gołda Tencer, the founder and artistic director of the festival, has said the event is “a bridge connecting tradition and modernity.”
The festival is held in various venues around the Polish capital every year, but primarily in the part of the city that was once the hub of Warsaw's Jewish community.
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Source: IAR, PAP, um.warszawa.pl, kultura.um.warszawa.pl
Click on the player icon above to listen to a report by Radio Poland's Agnieszka Bielawska.