9 November 2024, 10pm at Espace Rachi – Guy de Rothschild
As part of the 2024 edition of the Jazz’N’Klezmer Festival, the festival is welcoming the Canadian ensemble Oktopus, one of Quebec’s leading world music groups, to France for the first time. Klezmer isn’t just about travelling from East to West, and jazz isn’t just about travelling from America to Europe. This astonishing world music combines interpretations of the klezmer repertoire, jazz and Balkan music, tinged with an accent of classical music, a long way off in time. With Gabriel Paquin-Buki on clarinet, composition and arrangements, Matthieu Bourget on bass trombone, Noémie Caron-Marcotte on flute, Madeleine Doyon on tenor trombone, Maxime Philippe on drums and percussion, Francis Pigeon on trumpet, Laetitia Francoz Lévesque on violin and Guillaume Martineau on piano,
FESTIVAL JAZZ ‘N’ KLEZMER – Oktopus – FESTIVAL JAZZ ‘N’ KLEZMER (jazznklezmer.fr)
11 November 2024, 5pm at the Angers synagogue
As part of the 2024 edition of the Jazz’N’Klezmer Festival, the Pletzl Bandit is once again taking audiences on a journey through its klezmer universe, with a surprising new approach after so many years of sharing its enthusiasm on stages across France and Europe. The band is made up of Gheorghe Ciumasu on accordion, Charles Rappoport on violin, Samuel Maquin on clarinet and Henry Kisiel on double bass.
FESTIVAL JAZZ ‘N’ KLEZMER – Pletzl Bandit à Angers – FESTIVAL JAZZ ‘N’ KLEZMER (jazznklezmer.fr)
16 October 2024, at 2pm, at the Shoah Memorial
This workshop offers an opportunity to discover the lives of several Righteous in Europe, whose heroism was often discreet and whose recognition was sometimes too discreet by local authorities. More often than not, the men and women who risked their lives in defiance of the Nazi regime and their local auxiliaries felt they had a duty of human fraternity. At a time when the last survivors of the Shoah and the last Righteous are leaving us, this workshop and the many events organised on this theme by the Memorial are helping to do justice to their courage among new generations, which is particularly important in these threatening times.
Mémorial de la Shoah | Boutique en ligne (memorialdelashoah.org)
From 7 to 10 November 2024 at the Maison de la culture yiddish
A wide-ranging programme is planned for the ‘Lithuania in France 2024’ season. Films, lectures, workshops, tastings of traditional dishes, shabes-tish and a seminar will all combine Yiddish and Lithuania in a variety of ways. Among the many events: a screening of the film The Secrets of Vilna’s Great Synagogue, a comic strip workshop by Miglė Anušauskaitė, a lecture on Yiddish writers from Kaunas, a lecture on Yiddish singer Nehama Lifshitz, a lecture and tasting of culinary specialities…
Le yiddish et la Lituanie : week-end de découverte – programme.yiddish.paris
From 26 September 2024 to 26 January 2025 at the mahJ
Sometimes funny, sometimes frightening, sometimes a mixture of both, the dybbuk is haunted by Jewish literary and cinematographic inspirations. This wandering soul who takes possession of a living being originated in the old Yiddish theatre, appearing in Shlomo An-ski’s play ‘Between Two Worlds’, and has been travelling ever since, without a passport or any notion of time or the challenges of history, as shown for example in Romain Gary’s The Dance of Genghis Cohn. Curated by Samuel Blumenfeld and Pascale Samuel, with the collaboration of Dorota Sniezek, the mahJ presents around a hundred works from painting, music, film and literature, each in its own way provoking this teasing soul.
Le Dibbouk. Fantôme du monde disparu | Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme (mahj.org)
From 29 September 2024 at JEM Beaugrenelle
In 2007 Marc-Alain Ouaknin co-founded the Targoum Project, a project for a new translation of the Hebrew Bible (translation and commentary), which in 2017 became the Institut Targoum-IRETS (Institut de Recherches et d’Études sur la Traduction des Textes Sacrés), in partnership with the JEM Cultural Centre and the Moses Mendelssohn Foundation. JEM offers a series of ten meetings from September to June to share this passion for translating biblical texts.
Atelier Targoum – Judaïsme En Mouvement (judaismeenmouvement.org)
21 October 2024, 8pm at the JEM Copernic Synagogue
The Copernic synagogue’s liturgical choir, directed by Didier Seutin, performs the main pieces from the liturgy of the major feasts of the year in an Ashkenazi version. A journey back in time, to the present and the past rediscovered by these communities forced to flee to the West throughout the 20th century, with a few words and music recalling the towns and shtetls of yesteryear by way of reunion for the exiles.
La synagogue de Copernic – Judaïsme En Mouvement (judaismeenmouvement.org)
Until 6 October 2024 at Galerie Saphir
An invitation to travel, to voyages, from land to sea, through a body of work nourished by Venezuelan references, Amerindian symbols and other almost unsuspected Sephardic and European influences. Born into a Sephardic family that fled to the Dutch West Indies during the Inquisition, Exposition Olle Curiel travels back in time and across borders, in search of a dialogue between influences and identities that have been wounded and are healing with his brushstrokes.
Elisabeth OLLE CURIEL | 19 September – 6 October 2024 – Overview | GALERIE SAPHIR
15 October 2024, 8pm at the Medem Centre
This lecture by Sylvie Drumlewicz-Lidgi looks at the little-studied subject of the impact of the Shoah in the part of Poland occupied by Soviet troops following their pact with the Nazi regime to divide the country between the two dictatorships. The difficult conditions of survival during the war for these Polish Jews, who were spared the fate of other Jews under German domination, will be addressed.
Réfugiés et déportés en URSS-Avec Sylvie Lidgi – Centre Medem (centre-medem.org)
15 October 2024, 7pm
In a long hunt that takes him to South America before returning to the United States, an FBI agent finds a former leading figure of the Nazi regime, hiding in an American village under a new name and a new respectability. This 1946 film was directed by the great Orson Welles, who also played the Nazi. The FBI agent is played by the great Edward G. Robinson, a famous pre-war film noir actor who was one of the few to dare, with Warner’s help, to denounce the Nazi regime before the United States entered the war, in the face of ongoing censorship by the US State Department.
Projection du film : “Le Criminel” – Mémorial de Caen (memorial-caen.fr)
20 October from 2pm
In the presence of journalist Didier Epelbaum and historian Renée Poznanski, journalist Edouardo Castillo will lead a discussion on the period 1944-1947, which saw the closure of the Drancy camp following the Liberation of France. He recalled the zealous massacres carried out by the camp’s administrators before the arrival of the Allies, and the flight of its commandant, who took 51 Jewish hostages with him on 17 August 1944. A second meeting with historian Olivier Lalieu and historian Annette Wieviorka will look at the construction of the memory of the Drancy camp, driven by associations and institutions.
10 October 2024, 5pm to 10pm
The splendour of botanical diversity, the colours of the flowers and how they welcome visitors at night in this astonishing experience of this Boulogne landmark. Crossing emotions and continents, represented from garden to garden.
Nocturne – Musée Albert Kahn (hauts-de-seine.fr)
3 November 2024 at the Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation de l’Isère
This tour, offered every first Sunday of the month, allows participants to discover how the Second World War affected the département of Isère. The tour takes a chronological look at how history developed and the impact it had on the people who lived there. It then looks at how the Resistance was organised in the département and its impact on the war. The exhibition then looks at the repression of the population and the words of the Shoah, before concluding with the Liberation of Isère.
Visite classique grand public (isere.fr)
26 September 2024 at 7pm at the Institut Universitaire Rachi
This lecture, in the form of a dialogue between Gérard Rabinovitch, vice-president of the Institut Universitaire Rachi, and Samuel Blumenfeld, film critic at Le Monde newspaper, will address this contemporary and difficult subject, the misuse of the term ‘Resistance’. The Army of Shadows is a reference to Joseph Kessel’s book adapted for the cinema by Jean-Pierre Melville, two Resistance fighters who wished to pay tribute to their fellow soldiers who had the courage to risk their lives for France and its values, aware of the weight of this word and those who embodied it.
Conférences – Institut Universitaire Européen Rachi (institut-rachi-troyes.fr)
At the Musée Judéo-Alsacien Bouxwiller
Art Deco and its daring artistic adventures inspired the brothers Norbert and Moritz Max Neiger to create costume jewellery for this brand new market, in response to the post-First World War desire for more sobriety than the expensive jewellery that had previously been paraded. The exhibition tells the story of these designers from the Czech town of Gablonz, whose work helped to put the town on the map of the European jewellery industry. This was before they were forced to flee during the annexation of the Sudetenland, their family being murdered in Poland in 1941.
Evénements 2024 | construction (museejudeoalsacien.fr)
1 September 2024 in Anderlecht
The year is starting again, but the notes and the enthusiasm that accompany them are still present. A music of distant and uncertain times, klezmer is reappearing in the four corners of the world to re-enchant us. The Jewish Culture House offers you an introduction to klezmer music, with sessions of nigunim, work on scores, a study of style, personal work and the accompaniment of traditional dances.
KlezJam – La Maison de la Culture Juive
15 September 2024 from 10am at the Beth Yaacov Great Synagogue and the Geneva Liberal Jewish Community (GIL)
A wide range of activities will be on offer throughout the day. Starting with a guided tour of Beth Yaacov by historian Jean Plançon, followed by a tasting of traditional Shabbat dishes. The day continues at the GIL with a visit by Rabbi Emeritus François Garaï. There will also be a talk by Nathan Alfred on ‘The Jewish family: myths and stereotypes’. And to round things off with some music, at 5pm Noga, in a trio with Patrick Bebey and Arnaud Laprêt, will be singing Shabbat melodies.
Until 30 September 2024 at the Jewish Museum Prague
In this year marking 100 years since the death of Franz Kafka, the museum is devoting an exhibition to Israeli artist and typographer Oded Ezer. The exhibition features a parody of a documentary based on Kafka’s character, Gregor Samsa. It plays between ambitions and realities, the lost texts of the fictional author and the preserved texts of the author behind the character…
Exhibition: Oded Ezer: The Samsa Enigma | Židovské muzeum v Praze (jewishmuseum.cz)
Until 16 September 2024 at the Polin Museum
Proof that an artistic calling, a hidden or repressed vocation, can emerge late in life, Helena Berlewi began painting in 1952, at the age of 79. And she didn’t stop until her death at the age of 103. This Polish-Jewish survivor of the Shoah took the artist’s name of Hel Enri. Sitting at home, watching the snow fall and wondering what to do, the sight of yellow mimosas in the vase on her table gave her the idea to pick up some paintbrushes. The flowers became part of her work, going beyond their form and tending towards abstraction. Her work has been shown in some thirty exhibitions around the world.
“Bio-faktura.” The Paintings of Hel Enri | Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN w Warszawie
An English photographer, Chris Schwarz is best known in Krakow as the founder and first director of the Galicia Jewish Museum. In the early 1990s, he travelled to Poland in search of traces of Polish Jewish cultural heritage and captured them in images. These works, which retrace the contemporary and tragic history of Polish Jews, became the core of the permanent exhibition at the museum. The photos in this special exhibition illustrate the work he carried out a decade earlier, when he was covering the political upheavals.
From 1 October to 1 November 2024 at the Rembrandt Museum
Rembrandt’s tradition was to surround himself with pupils, sharing the creative process with them, sometimes as many as four or five at a time. Nearly 400 years later, the Rembrandtian tradition is perpetuated by the museum, which welcomes two artists who move in with their brushes to create works inspired by the master.
Rembrandt Open Studio 2024 – Rembrandthuis
The Jewish year is marked by a number of events that celebrate or commemorate religious and historical moments. They help us to better understand the contours of Jewish identity. This exhibition presents the different festivals and their particular character. It uses sounds, images, objects and stories.
The Jewish Year (jodiskmuseumoslo.no)
At the National Museum of Resistance and Human Rights
Inaugurated in 1956, the museum was built by the architects Schmitt and Schmitt-Noesen. This building, along with its monument, the Justice of the Peace building and the Labour Office, shape the image of the town of Esch. Following renovations carried out between 2018 and 2023, the museum has tripled in size.
This exhibition presents a little-known period of the painter’s life, in particular his sojourns in the two cities of Rome and Paris that were so inspiring and welcoming to artists. Samuel Bak, who lived in Boston, bequeathed a large number of his works, a third of which were painted in these two cities. 159 of his works were received earlier this year, adding significantly to the collection. Blending past and present, Samuel Bak developed his art in Paris and Rome while continuing to paint the Vilnius of its heyday as well as its darker hours.
A new exhibition by Samuel Bak is opened – Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History (jmuseum.lt)
Until 30 August 2024 at the Thessaloniki Jewish Museum
Legend has it that the Golem, the monster created to protect Jews from anti-Semitism, rests in a geniza in Prague. While waiting to find it there, another geniza in Cairo, at the end of the 19th century, uncovered numerous documents, biblical and literary texts as is customary, but also all sorts of historical and artistic documents and objects, recounting the history of many centuries of the Mediterranean basin, all the way to Andalusia. It is this land where the monotheisms meet, and its heritage, that are celebrated in this exhibition.
« L’âge d’or des Juifs d’Alantalou » (jmth.gr)
22 August 2024
This tour, organised by the Danish Jewish Museum, allows visitors to discover this historic site where Jews have been buried for over 300 years. The guide will talk about the personalities who have left their mark on Danish history and who are buried in this cemetery. These include Moritz Levy and Harriet Salomonsen. This tour is also available in September.
Until 31 December 2024 at the Dossin Barracks
One of Antwerp’s culinary specialities, the hand-shaped biscuits, symbol of the city, are very popular with tourists. They were invented 90 years ago by baker Jos Hakker. This son of Dutch Jewish immigrants paid tribute to his host city. Less well known is his personal story: arrested in 1942, taken to the Dossin barracks and deported to Auschwitz. From there he escaped to join the Liège Resistance and became involved in politics after the war. This exhibition presents all these aspects of this astonishing personality.
Exposition temporaire : Jos Hakker | Kazerne Dossin
Until 27 October 2024 at the Jewish Museum Vienna and the Wien Museum
During the Nazi persecution that led to the extermination of Viennese Jews during the Shoah, they were methodically deprived of all their rights and property before being deported. This exhibition traces the history of these thousands of looted homes. Organised in conjunction with the Vienna City Museum, it presents the stages from theft to incorporation of these properties, followed by the slow and belated restitution of a minor part of them.
Exhibition Detail | Jüdisches Museum Wien (jmw.at)
5 October 2024, 6pm to 11.30pm at the Jewish Museum in Hohenems
An evening where the arts come together as day turns to night, with a host of activities based around the exhibitions and other cultural events, such as ‘Yalla Habibi’ on Jewish-Arab relations, presented at the museum. It’s all part of a family-friendly atmosphere, culminating in a musical DJ night.
Lange Nacht der Museen 2024 | Jüdisches Museum Hohenems (jm-hohenems.at)
12 August 2024, 7.30pm at JW3
Director Archie Baron’s film, produced by the BBC and broadcast in 1990, explores the events leading up to the decision to expel the Jews from England 700 years earlier, in 1290, in particular the false anti-Semitic accusations of ritual murder, which inspired other such decisions on the European continent. The director will be present at the screening and will take part in a discussion with Rabbi Jonathan Romain.