Yiddish Summer Weimar Will Highlight the Cultures of Israel

This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts.

This year the theme of the annual festival, Yiddish Summer Weimar, will be “The Other Israel: Seeing Unseen Diasporas.” Besides its usual programming the five-week celebration of Ashkenazi culture will also include a series of concerts and workshops dedicated to the various cultures of Israel and the interplay among them.

In one interesting synthesis, for instance, the famous Jaffa-based choir Voices of Peace, which includes both Jewish and Arab-Israeli girls, will perform a cycle of Yiddish children’s songs by Kadya Molodowsky together with the Weimar-based Schola Cantorum.

Another intercultural guest will be the newly formed Haifa-based Caravan Orchestra which also includes both Jewish and Arab Israelis. The Caravan Orchestra will work with a variety of European musicians from diverse backgrounds to create a concert program combining European, Arab, and Jewish musical traditions.

Among the other notable programs are a , a workshop with Mendy Cahan on badkhones, several levels of Yiddish classes, workshops on Klezmer music and Yiddish singing and a class with Yuri Vedenyapin on how to tell stories in Yiddish.

Yiddish Summer Weimar will begin on July 15th and continue until August 12th. For more information visit: http://yiddishsummer.eu