6-19 June 2011
For nearly two weeks in different areas of Łódź meetings, workshops, lectures, film screenings and concerts were held, during which, together with our guests and partners, we presented the extraordinary richness of Jewish culture. Meetings proved enormously popular among numerous attendees.
June 6th 2011 - the Jewish Culture Days were officially launched at the synagogue at 28 Rewolucji 1905r. street, with a lecture by the Head of the Jewish Community in Łódź, Symcha Keller, who talked about holidays celebrated in the Jewish tradition, such as Shavuot, which was about to begin at the time. After the lecture, at the Szafa club, an evening dedicated to Julian Tuwim began. Dr. Tomasz Cieslak from the University of Lodz presented an essay on the poet, and the Rambo Jet group played a concert inspired by Tuwim’s poetry.
June 7th 2011, a lecture on women in Judaism was given by Maria Nowacka from the ETHNOS Society for Culture at the synagogue, 28 Rewolucji 1905 r. street.
June 9th 2011 a meeting was held with Dr. Joanna Lisek, expert on Yiddish from the University of Wrocław, editor of the book Silent Souls? Women in the Yiddish Culture [Nieme dusze? Kobiety w kulturze jidysz], who talked about Jewish writers and artists. The lecture, held at the Biedermann Palace, was attended by over 140 persons (!).
June 10th 2011, at the City Point of Culture PREXER-UŁ, a screening was held of a film: 8 Stories that Didn't Change the World (dir. Ivo Krankowski, script Jan Śpiewak). One of the people interviewed in the film was Halina Elczewska, born in Łódź, whose idea it was to create the Survivors’ Park in Łódź, where the main office of the Dialogue Center will be located. The screening was followed by a Q&A session with Jan Śpiewak, author of the script.
June 12th 2011, a concert was held by Raphael Rogiński, a musician, leader of projects such as Shofar and Cukunft; his concert, Yiddish music on a guitar, proved so popular that we were out of 250 invitations after only one day.
June 13th 2011, a lecture was given by Hubert Rogoziński (Monumentum Iudaicum Lodzense Foundation) on the funeral brotherhood Chevra Kadisha.
June 14th 2011, a meeting was held at the Szafa club with Agata Tuszyńska, writer, poet and journalist, who discussed the figure of Wiera Gran, a Jewish artist and singer from pre-war Warsaw, who died in 2007.
June 16th 2011 - a guided tour of the Jewish Artists in the collection of the Gallery of Polish Masters and the Museum of the City of Łódź was immensely popular.
During the Jewish Culture Days, we also organized lectures and workshops for school students, which were also immensely popular. Due to the number of participants we had to arrange additional meetings for young people. At the specially prepared workshop, secondary school students and high school students had the opportunity to learn secrets of Jewish traditions and symbols – the workshop was taught by Izabela Grynsztajn from the Monumentum Iudaicum Lodzense Foundation (06.08.2011). Students could also learn what tales, kipah and mezuzah are (workshop taught by Dorota and Baruch Ciesielski of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation in Łódź, 15th June 2011)
June 16th 2011, the Embassy of Israel in Poland along with the Dialogue Center invited to Łódź Batsheva Dagan, an Israeli poet, psychologist and teacher, former prisoner of the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Ravensbrück camps, who met with school and university students at the Biedermann Palace.
June 19th 2011, along with the Museum of the City of Łódź, we invited the citizens of our city to a meeting with Professor Andrzej Żbikowski, employee of the Jewish Historical Institute and the Center for Holocaust Research, author of the recently published book Karski, dedicated to the emissary of the Polish Underground State. Other members of the panel discussing the figure of the heroic resident of Łódź, the Righteous Among the Nations, included Adam Puławski (IPN Lublin) and Sławomir Nowinowski (University of Łódź).
During the Jewish Culture Days, we also organized two more guided walks – on June 12th, we arranged a tour of the Jewish cemetery, and on June 19th– we followed the route of palaces and houses of Łódź industrialists.