jpr / report       No. 3 2002

Mapping Jewish culture in Europe today: a pilot project

Preface

Some time ago, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research published a report entitled Cultural Politics and European Jewry (Waterman 1999). That report formed the basis of discussion at a seminar in Paris in February 1999, entitled 'Jewish Culture for the Twenty-first Century', convened jointly by JPR and the Alliance Israélite Universelle. That meeting provided a stimulus for the creation of both the European Association for Jewish Culture in 2001 and the project presented here on 'mapping' the extent of the Jewish cultural renaissance in Europe.

To study the Jewish cultural revival across the whole of Europe would have been a massive undertaking. We decided to concentrate on just four diverse countries, each with a relatively small Jewish population. And, although the report presents quantitative data on the results of the exercise, the lessons learned in the process of conducting the research are as important as the findings themselves. The challenges thrown up in the course of developing this project, such as how to collect, collate, classify and present data on a 'cultural product', and on the typologies created, should make any future efforts at mapping the nature and extent of Jewish culture easier.

During the first year of this project, Dina Berenstein made the initial contacts with the correspondents, and under the supervision of the then Director of Research at JPR, Dr Jacqueline Goldberg, collected and classified the data and set up the database of Jewish cultural events in Italy, Poland, Sweden and Belgium. Dina also sketched out the first draft of the report. On Dina's departure in the latter part of 2001, Rebecca Schischa replaced her and it was she who authored the final report.

We are grateful to the four country correspondents who worked on the project: Laura Mincer in Italy, the late Wlodzimierz Susid in Poland, Miriam Andersson in Sweden and Michèle Baczynsky in Belgium. We are also grateful to Julia Rapp and Mathilde Jakobsen who worked on the culture database.

We are indebted to Professor Jonathan Webber, who acted as academic adviser, and Ruth Ellen Gruber, who provided insightful comments on an earlier draft. We are also greatly indebted to Mr Frank Green and The Rich Foundation for their support of this project. Frank Green's enthusiasm and constant involvement in this undertaking has ensured the successful conclusion of the task we set ourselves.

Stanley Waterman

Director of Research

1/ Introduction

This project takes the pulse of a perceptible Jewish cultural revival in Europe and sets out to unravel its scope and substance. Though a 'Jewish renaissance' in Europe has become something of a catchphrase, what are the facts and figures to support it? This pilot project was born out of an awareness that very little has been done so far to document or map this very contemporary Jewish phenomenon.

There is little doubt that a Jewish cultural and artistic scene has flourished over the past decade in Europe. Klezmer music ¹, once thought to have died out with the shtetl, has experienced a highly successful revival. Jewish cultural festivals—many inaugurated during the 1990s—are establishing themselves as annual fixtures in towns and cities across Europe, and new Jewish films, plays and art exhibitions are showcased in film festivals, in theatres and in galleries and museums across the continent. This report aims to categorize and quantify the breadth of this phenomenon in four selected European countries—Poland, Sweden, Italy and Belgium—as a preliminary mapping exercise.

In introducing a project concerned with the mapping and classification of Jewish cultural products, it is important to define 'Jewish culture' more closely. The term 'culture' is a complex one that eludes a cohesive definition. The cultural critic Raymond Williams offers three general categories of use of the word 'culture':

• a general intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development;
• a general or specific indication of a particular way of life, whether of a period, people or group;
• the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity.²

It is this third definition that will be employed in the discussion of 'culture' in this report. In other words, we define 'culture' as the artistic or creative products of music, theatre, film, dance, visual art and, to a lesser extent, the media.

Defining 'Jewish culture' for the purposes of this project, in the light of this general definition, thus becomes more straightforward. Notionally, the term 'Jewish culture' incorporates religion, language, history and knowledge. It can also denote a form of Jewish consciousness or a general Jewish way of life.³ However, this paper does not set out to examine such broad concepts as trends in Jewish society or general Jewish intellectual development in contemporary Europe. Rather, it is the Jewish cultural products created in each of the four test countries—Poland, Sweden, Belgium and Italy—that will provide its focus.⁴

Much of contemporary Jewish culture in Europe is shaped by outside influences, by an engagement of non-Jewish writers, performers and musicians with Jewish cultural themes and often in response to the increasingly widespread interest of predominantly non-Jewish audiences. Ruth Ellen Gruber colourfully delineates this 'virtually Jewish' cultural phenomenon, this very contemporary non-Jewish fascination with Jewish culture, in her book Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe.⁵ She highlights a range of (sometimes conflicting) motivations behind the phenomenon, such as the process taking place in several European countries, primarily Germany, of Vergangenheitsvers-arbeitung ('working through the past'). This is the long process, taking place in European states, of psychologically revisiting and confronting the truth about their histories during the Nazi period and the decimation of local Jewish communities. As a gesture of atonement to the Jews in the light of the horrible truths that have emerged, and to enable a reconnection with their lost Jewish communities, Europeans have begun embracing all forms of both universalized and localized Jewish culture, history and memory in their respective countries.

Reclaiming Jewish culture is more than just uncovering a forgotten Jewish past. It is also perceived as a way of reclaiming a lost part of national identities. Across Europe, the national importance of the restoration of lost Jewish cultural life is increasingly acknowledged as people come to realize the significant influence that Jewish communities have exerted on European history, in both local and national spheres. Moreover, this importance has been given official European Union recognition: the 1987 resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe recognized 'the very considerable and distinctive contribution that Jews and the tradition of Judaism have made to the historical development of Europe in the cultural and other fields'.⁶

The recent growth of Jewish culture parallels, and is an integral part of, a wider growth in the popularity of world cultures. This increased appreciation of minority cultures may well be stimulated by the emergence of multicultural societies in Europe. Ethnic minority cultures are no longer solely inward-orientated and now appeal to a wide external audience as well. In other words, the growth of general interest in ethnic culture is in no way restricted to the Jewish community alone; on the contrary, customs and cultures of all communities perceived as 'other' have become objects of fascination for people across Europe and the western world. For example, not only klezmer, but world music in general, has flourished during the last decade, as the upsurge in the popularity of Latin, rai or reggae music shows.

Local Jewish communities are often involved in many of the Jewish cultural initiatives that take place across Europe, but sometimes play no part at all.⁷ Indeed local Jewish communities may sometimes feel removed from the 'Jewish-style' cultural events, restaurants and other venues mushrooming in old Jewish quarters in towns across Europe, as well as from the romanticized images of Jews and shtetl life presented in European museums. These phenomena provoke ongoing debates about the nature of 'authentic' Jewish culture and about the legitimacy of the non-Jewish artistic participation in the creation of new Jewish cultural products. At times kitschy and commercialized, these aspects of Jewish culture across contemporary Europe feed on overtly stereotypical, or otherwise mythologized, representations of 'the Jew'. As a result, local Jewish communities may keep their distance from such activities, questioning the authenticity of such representations of Jewish culture.

For Jewish participants, Jewish cultural events facilitate the expression and strengthening of Jewish identity and also provide a form of recreation. They provide a means of communicating—and creating—aspects of Jewish cultural, social and communal life as well as Jewish history. For Jews now living in other countries, whose parents or grandparents left Europe and then drifted away from Judaism, the emerging Jewish culture is becoming an important space in which they can seek out and revisit the Jewish traditions that their forebears abandoned or that were lost in the dissolution of Jewish communal life during and after the Holocaust. Furthermore, the general decline in religiosity in European Jewish communities is part of a more widespread decline in religious belief, and their integration, or assimilation, into the general population may be encouraging an interest in and need to explore cultural aspects of Jewish life as an 'authentic' alternative to religious practice. And official Jewish bodies are recognizing the importance of Jewish culture in shaping this 'new Jewishness' as the expression of a new Jewish identity: 'Being Jewish today means, most of all, the identification with Jewish culture. Jewish culture has replaced the synagogue, Israel, and philanthropy as to become the major Jewish concern. This . . . is a major shift in Jewish identity.⁸

A strong sense of Jewish cultural identity exists among many Jews whose religious affiliation may be minimal or non-existent. The American sociologist Herbert J. Gans has called this phenomenon Jewish 'symbolic religiosity', a term that denotes a 'residual, minimalist Jewish observance on the one hand, and the quasi-mystical, mythological and essentialist view of Jewish peoplehood on the other'.⁹ The decline in the potency of the message of Zionism may also have led people to search for other forms of Jewish expression. The market or audience for Jewish cultural events may therefore be wider and greater than ever before in the Jewish, as well as the non-Jewish, world.

The revival of Jewish culture is not without complications. For example, over the centuries, Jewish culture has been dominated by the word, both in its written and oral forms. This dependence on the literary, whether expressed in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino or any of the other Jewish languages, has proved challenging at a time when Jews are increasingly dispersed throughout nation-states that use different languages, and when Jews—at least those in the diaspora—are increasingly ignorant of traditional Jewish languages. As a consequence, alternatives to the spoken and written word have been sought, including music and painting, which both overcome linguistic boundaries, and film, which succeeds in fusing the verbal with the visual. The new artistic media thus incorporate modes of communication in which the emphasis on the word is less dominant.¹⁰

This pilot project, then, is essentially a feasibility study into the ways in which contemporary Jewish cultural production in Europe can be mapped and recorded systematically. Such a comprehensive mapping exercise of the Jewish cultural landscape is unprecedented both in terms of content and methodology. At this stage, it is not intended to provide a complete picture of the whole of the European Jewish cultural world. This lies beyond the scope of its research parameters. The primary aim has been to construct and test a working methodology—a mapping model—for the collection, recording and classification of data on Jewish culture throughout Europe. This model was employed in the four selected, diverse test countries for a twelve-month period between May 2000 and April 2001. If successful in these four countries, it is envisaged that this pilot study will generate wider investigations into contemporary Jewish culture in Europe, and that the model will function as a prototype for future research. With this pilot study, we also intend to raise awareness of the current state of play of the Jewish cultural sector in each of these countries. We aim to identify patterns and trends emerging in the thematic content and artistic form of Jewish cultural productions. We also identify types of audiences and participants, as well as organizations and individuals involved in the management and funding of Jewish cultural activities. These findings may then act as a catalyst for the further study of Jewish cultural activity and production across Europe, as well as for the establishment of new forms of funding for Jewish culture.



1 The word 'klezmer', from the original Yiddish, is commonly used to denote professional Eastern European Jewish dance musicians or, more recently, musicians who identify themselves with that tradition. The term combines two Hebrew words: kle, meaning vessel or instrument, and zemer, meaning song. In recent years, 'klezmer music' has become the term used to describe the music klezmorim (the plural) perform. Hankus Netsky, 'An overview of klezmer music and its development in the US', Judaism, vol. 47, no. 1, 1998, 5-12. This winter 1998 issue of the quarterly journal Judaism contains eight interesting articles on the klezmer phenomenon; see, in particular, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett's 'Sounds of sensibility', 49-77.

2 Raymond Williams, Keywords (London: Fontana 1976), 80.

3 For a discussion of the issues involved in defining Jewish culture, see Jonathan Webber, 'Notes towards the definition of "Jewish culture" in contemporary Europe', paper delivered at the conference 'Jewish Identities in the Post-Communist Era', European Institute, Budapest, July 2001 (papers from this conference will be published in a forthcoming book).

4 The decisions reached as to what is signified by the Jewish nature of a cultural product will be discussed in detail in the methodological discussion in Chapter 2.

5 Ruth Ellen Gruber, Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe (Los Angeles and London: University of California Press 2002).

6 Ibid., 5.

7 Indeed, as Gruber observes, the sheer volume of Jewish cultural events in some European countries means that skewed perceptions about the numbers of Jews living there may exist; people think there are still huge Jewish communities in places where most Jews were annihilated in the Holocaust.

8 Richard Siegel, executive director of the American National Foundation for Jewish Culture, May 1999, cited in Webber.

9 Herbert J. Gans, 'Symbolic ethnicity and symbolic religiosity: towards a comparison of ethnic and religious acculturation', Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 17, no. 4, 1994, 577-92.

10 Richard Cohen describes how this development was already, to some extent, underway in the nineteenth century. He overturns the stereotype of Jews as people of the text, unconcerned with the visual, and shows that the end of the nineteenth century heralded an era in which the study and collecting of Jewish art became a popular pursuit, and in which Jews entered into the art world as painters, collectors and dealers; Richard I. Cohen, Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe (Los Angeles and London: University of California Press 1998).

2/ Mapping methodologies

Selection of the four test countries

Italy, Poland, Belgium and Sweden were the countries selected for this mapping exercise. A major factor in the decision to map the production of Jewish culture in these particular countries was that the Jewish community in each of them is relatively small in size, and consequently relatively easy to survey. The Jewish population of Italy stands at 29,600, Poland 3,500,¹¹ Belgium 31,700 and Sweden 15,000. Comparing these figures with those for the Jewish community in France (over 500,000) or the United Kingdom (just under 300,000) demonstrates why, for the purposes of a feasibility study, these four Jewish communities were preferred.¹²

These countries cover a wide geographical range, incorporating northern, southern, eastern and western Europe. They also represent a varied cross-section of European societies, with contrasting Jewish histories, traditions and national cultures. This diversity produces a useful sample for this study. Different languages are spoken in each of the four countries and they encompass areas in which 'indigenous' Jewish languages such as Yiddish, Ladino and Judaeo-Roman have had a strong presence. An additional, important aspect taken into account when selecting the countries was the differing Holocaust experiences of each national Jewish population. These experiences directly influence and inform the state of play of Jewish culture in the post-war era, and remain influential to this day.

Italy deserves special attention in this pilot study as Europe's oldest Jewish community, with an uninterrupted Jewish presence for over two millennia. Indeed, the Italian Jewish community has become so deeply established in Italy that, over the centuries, it has developed a form of prayer and a tradition distinct from both the Ashkenazi and Sephardi traditions. This unique tradition means that Italian Jews often describe themselves as 'Italkim', rather than either Sephardi or Ashkenazi. Italy still has many established Jewish communities spread across the country. During the Second World War, Italian Jews were initially excluded from public life, but this persecution did not lead to extermination until the Nazi occupation in 1943 when the authorities began hunting down and deporting Jews. In the eighteen months of German occupation, some 8,000 of the roughly 57,000 Italian Jews—a figure that included approximately 10,000 recent refugees to Italy who had fled from other parts of Europe before the war—were deported to Auschwitz, where the vast majority was murdered. In the post-war era, Italy has officially recognized this loss and, in more recent years, Jewish cultural events have gained huge popularity in mainstream Italian society.

For centuries, Poland was regarded as the epicentre of Jewish cultural life in Europe. It is estimated that, before 1939, the Jews in Poland constituted approximately 10 per cent of the total population. During the Holocaust, Poland suffered the greatest blow to its Jewish—as well as its non-Jewish—population. By 1945 an estimated 3 million Polish Jews had been killed. For a long time after the Second World War, when the country came under Communist control, Poland was regarded as a country in which the Jewish community had all but vanished. The situation for the remaining fragile Jewish community degenerated with the suppression of religion under Communism, culminating in 1968, when most Jews and others of Jewish origin elected to leave Poland in the face of a virulent anti-Jewish campaign conducted by the Communist government. However, in post-Communist Poland, and in the last decade in particular, Poland has experienced a remarkable revival of Jewish life and cultural activity, despite the fact that only a tiny Jewish community of no more than an estimated 3,500 remains. This development of Jewish cultural production in Poland—despite the small numbers—is what makes the Polish case unique.

The strong non-religious identity of Swedish Jewry and its decision to recreate itself as a national minority makes Sweden an interesting case study. The Swedish Jewish community is now officially recognized as a national minority with Yiddish as its minority language. Sweden remained neutral, and therefore unoccupied, throughout the Second World War. Consequently, the Swedish Jewish community suffered no losses and Sweden also became a safe haven for Danish and Norwegian Jews. In 1945 Sweden also granted asylum to many Jews freed from German concentration camps in the collapsing Third Reich.

Finally, Belgium was chosen because of its religiously and linguistically diverse Jewish community, linguistic diversity being a notable feature of Belgian society as a whole. Belgian Jewry suffered great losses during the Holocaust. The Nazis occupied Belgium in 1940 and as many as 26,000 Belgian Jews—half the Belgian Jewish population of the time—perished in concentration camps before the end of the war. In the post-war era, the Belgian Jewish community ranges from the large strictly Orthodox community in Antwerp, to the more secular Jewish community in Brussels, the latter being far more involved in Jewish cultural production.

Appendix 1 provides more detailed information about the four countries chosen and the four national Jewish communities.

Classification of cultural products

After early discussions about how to define the term 'culture', the overriding need to establish exactly how we would functionally define and categorize 'cultural products', as well as specifically 'Jewish' cultural products, remained.

Precedents

This question of classifying cultural production is not just an issue in the Jewish sphere but is an ongoing concern for federal bodies working in the field of culture across Europe. In a 2000 study entitled Cultural Statistics in the EU, aiming to assess the extent of cultural production across the European Union, the task force recognized the need for a formal structure for classifying cultural products. The stated aim of the study was to 'define a common core of activity fields unanimously considered to be cultural' by all member-states—and to create a harmonized system of classification once a consensus had been reached—in order to replace the existing diversity of conflicting national definitions of culture and the national systems of recording cultural statistics to which each member-state adhered.¹³ A relatively reliable set of comparative statistics could then be compiled on the level of cultural production generated within each country. The eight categories of cultural products ultimately selected by the task force for classifying cultural production throughout the EU are shown in Table 1.

Table 1: EU classification of cultural products

Source: European Commission, Cultural Statistics in the EU, 27_8.

Bearing in mind this existing classification, we then customized our own system. Pragmatic or, at times, subjective decisions made about the nature of the different cultural events or products that surfaced in the course of the year-long data collection period also played a significant role in the creation of this database and in dealing with anomalous entries.

While most cultural products did slot into the main categories devised, there were several anomalies that resisted classification. The very nature of a classification system is fraught with imperfections. There are always grey areas, products that do not conform to the system: products that do not fit neatly into any one category, and seem to belong simultaneously in several different categories. Decisions had to be taken about how to classify 'problematic' items, such as specific cultural events that were part of an ongoing series, or about what constitutes a 'cultural festival', given that the term 'festival' is used loosely and in many different cultural contexts. Moreover, what was to be done with the labelling and categorizing of festivals within a system of classification, when festivals generally extend across multiple categories within that system? And how should we deal, for example, with a lecture about music that also involves a live musical performance? Is this a performing arts event or an educational event? What about a book launch that takes place as part of a festival: should it be counted under the publications section or listed as a festival component, under a separate festivals section?

In the end, we decided to classify cultural productions according to seven main art types. Anomalies were treated on a case-by-case basis and we attempted to ensure that we dealt with them consistently. Festivals were to be counted as a separate category. The seven arts categories were then subdivided by discipline (e.g. the category of performing art includes the disciplines of music, theatre and dance), and the whole system was recorded in a comprehensive database that would allow for the optimum level of comparison and quantification of entries. Table 2 below shows the classification system that was established.

Table 2: The categories and disciplines constituting Jewish cultural productions

Exclusions

Our definition of 'cultural products' is not as wide as that of the European Union model. As a result, in comparison with that model, there are some differences as well as some intended omissions in the categories devised. We realized that if we were to take 'Jewish culture' in its broadest sense, it could be an umbrella term for all types of Jewish-related activities, including, for example, sporting activities, Jewish learning programmes and religious activities. However, we have not adopted this all-encompassing definition of Jewish culture and are defining 'Jewish culture' in its secular form (i.e. Jewish arts and cultural activities as opposed to Jewish religious activities). In any case, it would certainly be an impossible task to cover all such manifestations of Jewish cultural life in this type of feasibility study. We have purposely limited data collection to events or products that are specifically cultural or artistic, as defined in Table 2. Any other cultural product was excluded from the research findings. The principal categories excluded are presented in Table 3.


Table 3: Excluded categories

We should note however, that any specific concert, exhibition or other form of cultural production, as defined in Table 2, that took place in relation to any of these excluded categories, was included in the inventory. For example, although heritage tours to sites of Jewish interest were not recorded, specific exhibits or other events that related to these sites were collected.

Defining the Jewish nature of cultural products

As the project set out to map the production of Jewish culture in each of the four countries that constitute its focus, there were important issues to confront in the decision-making process concerning the question of how to define the actual Jewish element of a cultural event or production.

The Jewish/non-Jewish conundrum

While many Jewish events take place in exclusively Jewish venues or are created by Jewish artists and play to audiences that are mostly Jewish, the increasing non-Jewish interest and participation in the creation of Jewish cultural events and products were important to bear in mind in the process of formulating definitions. Furthermore, many events take place in mainstream venues, outside the formal structures of Jewish communities, and are attended by mainstream, non-Jewish audiences. Is the definition of 'Jewish' culture disrupted by this significant non-Jewish presence in its creation and consumption? Does a Jewish cultural event still qualify as such if it has not been created, organized or attended by Jews?

Conversely, the presence of Jewish artists, organizers and funders is not always a reliable gauge of the essential 'Jewishness' of an event or product. Jewish artists, organizers and funders are not only involved in events that have a distinctly Jewish theme. Likewise, fundraising events might be held for a Jewish cause without any perceptible Jewish thematic component or repertoire. Actors or other celebrities from mainstream society may constitute the line-up for such events. Similarly, a recognizably Jewish venue is no guarantee of a Jewish theme for a specific event. For that matter, a non-Jewish venue is not necessarily an appropriate marker of a product's lack of Jewishness. Jewish community centres or other Jewish institutions occasionally host performances devoted to themes that are not specifically Jewish, and mainstream venues are increasingly used for a variety of ethnic minority cultural events.

Defining Jewish cultural products solely as those created by Jewish artists therefore seemed limiting and somewhat imprecise. Defining exactly who is or is not a Jewish artist is also a complex issue. Moreover, however we chose to define Jewish artists, many may well deal with non-Jewish themes in addition to, or instead of, Jewish ones. Some might clearly identify themselves and their art as Jewish whereas others may prefer to avoid such 'ethnic categorization' of their work.

Furthermore, Jewish culture is a hybrid culture, assimilating local cultural traditions. Diaspora Jewish culture has always fed off its natural cultural surroundings and has gained from these diverse influences. Indeed, over the centuries there has been an ongoing non-Jewish influence on, and participation in, Jewish cultural production. The early klezmer musicians in Eastern Europe, for example, took their inspiration not only from Jewish musical traditions, but also from the music of Roma and other non-Jewish musical forms.

Bearing this in mind, we decided that the definitional thrust of categorizing Jewish culture should be thematic. The essence of any cultural product is what it conveys, or what it is about. The Jewishness of those who establish, organize or fund an event, or of the venue at which it is presented, are of secondary importance. The common denominator for all the records in the inventory is the presence of a Jewish theme in the product. As an additional bonus, mapping Jewish events that take place outside formal Jewish structures is also a useful tool for ascertaining the popularity of Jewish-related issues within the wider society.

However, this does not mean that Jewish cultural and artistic productions cannot be defined and described in several different ways. Labelling cultural products as 'Jewish' may just be one option among many, and does not necessarily fully characterize that product. Jewish art and culture are not necessarily only Jewish, and may express many universal values, such as experiences of exile and immigration, the search for identity, loss and spirituality. These are all experiences shared with other religious, ethnic or minority groups.

Culture v. Torah

Given the way we have chosen to define 'Jewish culture' and Jewish cultural products, this project is essentially an examination of ethnic or secular Jewish culture.¹⁶ We did not intend to chart the revival of religious Jewish life in Europe. Therefore, we chose to exclude activities and events with a specifically religious purpose. These include religious services, study sessions or any other religious activities, e.g. Hanukkah celebrations, Purim parties, Talmud and Torah study, Sunday schools etc. While this type of activity paints a picture of Jewish communal or religious life, it does not lie within the project's parameters.

That is not to say, however, that the thematic content of Jewish cultural events or products may not make implicit or explicit allusions to Jewish religious practices, Torah concepts or Jewish mysticism or spirituality. Religious symbols and icons are often referred to, subverted or embodied in Jewish artistic or cultural productions. Likewise, organizers of Jewish cultural festivals may adopt Jewish religious festivals, e.g. Passover, or rituals as unifying festival themes, and lectures on Jewish rituals and spirituality often take place as part of Jewish cultural festivals or as stand-alones. Indeed, it would be impossible to imagine a form of Jewish culture existing or thriving that was devoid of any reference to Jewish religious traditions.

As Jews are becoming increasingly secularized, Jewish arts and culture seem to be gaining prominence in shaping contemporary Jewish identity and seem to offer a viable Jewish alternative to a traditional Orthodox lifestyle. As Jonathan Webber writes: 'It may be . . . sociologically speaking, that feelings of Jewish belongingness are less and less determined today by religious criteria.'¹⁷ Conversely, for strongly committed Orthodox Jews with an integrated Jewish religious framework in their lives, participation in Jewish cultural life—as defined here—may well be less important than it is for Jews who live outside such a religious framework. Moreover, we can argue that tensions necessarily exist between the strictly Orthodox notion of Torah observance as the raison d'être of Jewish existence and the conception of an ethnic Jewish culture that exists independently of the Torah. As such, and because of the exclusion of events with specifically religious purposes, Orthodox Jews are therefore less obviously represented in this survey.

Other grey areas

Products that concern racism, xenophobia and extreme right-wing ideologies have not been included unless they also have a specifically Jewish element. Such productions deal with socio-political issues that are relevant to Jews but, in terms of the project definition, they do not in themselves constitute Jewish cultural productions.

Likewise, events and debates on the contemporary situation in Israel and the Middle East (including its historical background) are excluded. Most Jewish communities follow the developments in Israel and engage in Israel-related activities to some extent. However, these are not seen as cultural productions or as indicative of Jewish cultural life as such, but rather as an indication of a community's relationship to Israel.

Equally, although there is often an automatic association, in the public mind, of 'Israeli' with 'Jewish', productions of Israeli origin or by Israeli artists have not been automatically included, unless they fit our criteria for Jewish cultural products. Productions by Israeli artists or performers do not necessarily always have a Jewish theme. For example, a concert of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra with music by Beethoven and Brahms has not been included. On the other hand, performances by contemporary Israeli klezmer musicians have been included.

Initially, the project set out intending to include Jewish educational events only within the realm of arts and culture. However, there were differences in interpretation of this among the correspondents who were commissioned to collect the data in each of the four sample countries (see the section on 'Data collection methodology' below). The nature of 'Jewish cultural themes' seems to have been understood in a broader sense by the Polish correspondent, relating principally to Jewish tradition and historical themes. Therefore, many European educational events of a socio-historical-political nature (such as minority relations, local Jewish life or general Jewish history), rather than of a directly artistic or cultural nature (defined as relating to Jewish theatre, music, fine art etc.), were recorded for Poland. These activities were deemed important enough to include in the dataset but this consequently resulted in a somewhat uneven spread in the gathering of data for educational events since the Belgian, Italian and Swedish correspondents did not submit reports on non-arts or culture-based educational events. This disparity indicated differences in the level of understanding of the data collection guidelines that were created for the project.

Data collection methodology: an evaluation of mapping methods

As this project was exploratory in nature, its parameters and its focus evolved organically over the course of the research. For this reason, it is important to provide this account and to evaluate the methods used, as well as describing and analysing the actual cultural statistics gathered.¹⁸

The basis for the analysis is a comprehensive inventory or database. It comprises information on Jewish cultural events and productions gathered between 1 May 2000 and 30 April 2001. Correspondents were employed in each country, and information transmitted by these correspondents formed the primary source of data for the project. These individuals reported on Jewish cultural events in their respective countries on a regular basis. This data gathering was supplemented by in-house research at the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, using the Internet, national Jewish magazines and contacts with other institutions or individuals in the field. The inventory currently consists of over 450 individual events, and another 280 that were component parts of festivals.

Country-based correspondents

Each of the country-based correspondents was fluent in local languages. The recruitment of correspondents with extensive local knowledge and networks was the key to the success of the project because desk- and Internet-based research in London can only generate a very limited amount of data. The Swedish and Italian correspondents were both full-time workers in the cultural field; the Polish correspondent was a journalist writing for Jewish publications and the Belgian correspondent was an artist and performer. There were, in each of the countries, additional informal correspondents who provided information on an ad hoc basis during the year-long period of data gathering.

Each correspondent received the same data submission forms for cultural products and events, to be completed on a monthly basis. A form was to be completed for each event in as much detail as possible.¹⁹ The information requested included the title of the cultural product or event, the geographical location, the arts type (e.g. performing art), discipline (e.g. storytelling), genre (e.g. documentary film), theme (e.g. Holocaust), the type of product (e.g. one-off event or festival component), language, artist(s), venue(s), organizer(s), funder(s), admission fee and audience. However, in practice, the amount of detail of the information submitted varied according to the individual approach of each correspondent. Furthermore, as there was only a single principal correspondent in each country, regardless of the size of the respective Jewish communities or the amount of cultural activity, an element of filtering necessarily took place. This was due to time constraints and the material resources available, as well as to differing understandings and interpretations of the content and composition of Jewish cultural production, or differing approaches to giving priority to the type of information reported.

The correspondents were all based in capital cities, as it was anticipated that these would be the locations of the greatest level of cultural activity. Consequently, events in the capital cities may be disproportionately represented in the study in comparison to events taking place elsewhere in each country.

Accessibility of comparable information

A combination of differences in the accessibility of information on cultural products in each country, together with the differing prioritization of information submitted, resulted in an uneven coverage of all media and publication categories. Articles in mainstream newspapers, as well as television and radio programmes on Jewish topics, were particularly poorly documented, largely due to their intermittent nature. Likewise, information gathered about Jewish cultural websites in each country was quite patchy.

As for Jewish publications, many data submissions were made in Poland, but very few or no records were submitted in the other three countries. While this is indicative of a prolific Jewish publishing industry in Poland, we cannot, of course, conclude that Jewish-themed publications are not published in the other countries—rather that these have not been recorded by the respective national correspondents. This kind of inequality skews the overall dataset.²⁰

The only media discipline that was reliably documented was Jewish radio, and this is because there were, at most, just two stations per country, and knowledge of them is widespread among those interested in Jewish culture. However, because data were not consistently available for any other Jewish media categories—or for Jewish publications in any country other than Poland—a decision was taken to exclude these two arts types from the overall data analysis so as to gain a more accurate comparative reading.

Another area in which difficulties were encountered in obtaining data was the Flanders region of Belgium. This was mainly due to the lack of communication and co-operation across linguistic borders in Belgium, a trend within the Belgian Jewish community that reflects Belgian society as a whole.

Organizers

There were challenges posed in identifying organizers and venues as events were often cited in different ways in the publicity materials. Thus, for example, organizers might be listed in the programme at one event, whereas in other cases, the names of the organizers might appear only in advertisements. Sometimes the full name appeared, at other times only acronyms were used. Again, sometimes names appeared in local languages while, at other times, they were given only with an English spelling. This made it difficult to determine whether or not the same organizers were involved in different events, a task exacerbated by the multinational and multilingual nature of the project. It was also difficult to determine relationships between different organizations in different countries, and therefore whether or not to classify them together.

Language usage

Clearly, language is a key consideration in cross-cultural research of this nature, both for enabling direct communication with those involved in culture in each country, and for processing national mainstream and Jewish magazines, reviews and websites. In some instances, knowledge of national languages was essential in order to communicate with specific organizations or to read certain written materials. As the principal researcher on the project was fluent in most of the key languages (French, Polish and Swedish), this kind of research was carried out comfortably for three of the four test countries, but to a lesser degree in Italy. As a back-up, the four correspondents all had at least a good working knowledge of English, thus minimizing language barriers.

Notes

11 Out of all the national Jewish population sizes, Poland's, in particular, is frequently disputed. Certainly, given the sizeable group who claim a connection to Jewish ancestry—if we were to take the widest possible definition of 'who is a Jew'—the figure would be higher than the population size cited here. However, for the purposes of consistency, we are relying on the same source for each national Jewish population throughout this report.

12 Population figures taken from Sergio DellaPergola, Uzi Rebhun and Mark Tolts, 'Prospecting the Jewish future: population projections, 2000_2080', in David Singer and Lawrence Grossman (eds), American Jewish Year Book 2000 (New York: American Jewish Committee 2000), based on research at the Division of Jewish Demography and Statistics, Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

13 European Commission, Cultural Statistics in the EU: Final Report of the LEG (Luxembourg: Eurostat 2000), 24.

14 It is important to point out that, although language courses lie beyond the remit of this project, we are aware that the recent development, promotion and popularity of Yiddish (and indeed Ladino) are important indicators of the Jewish cultural revival in Europe. Other cultural events that promote these languages, such as Yiddish plays or recitals/performances of Yiddish song, are of course included in the study.

15 We decided that, although the increasing presence of Jewish studies courses and departments in universities across Europe is significant, tracking ongoing programmes of Jewish studies degree courses lay beyond the scope of the present study. However, if a Jewish cultural festival, or other one-off Jewish cultural events, ran in association with Jewish studies departments of local universities, they were included.

16 The term 'secular' must be treated with some degree of caution. First, as noted, Jewish culture is often infused with spiritual traditions. Furthermore, there are, and always have been, Orthodox Jewish artists and musicians who will not necessarily perceive the art or music they create as secular; indeed, they may perceive it as an expression of Jewish spirituality. The term `secular' in this context is really used as a pragmatic term to describe Jewish cultural products that are distinct from religious/Orthodox Jewish practices.

17 Webber, 8.

18 It should be noted that it is not practically possible, within the remit of this project, to evaluate the cultural events in terms of their quality or success.

19 A sample of a completed data submission form is shown in Appendix 2.

20 This problem exemplifies the difficulties encountered in this pilot project in relying on correspondents for sufficient information on Jewish culture. Important information can be, and was, omitted. With regard to Italy specifically, Ruth Ellen Gruber points out, in a personal communication, that many books of Jewish interest are published in Italy, and that, indeed, in the year 2000-1, when data was collected for this report, there was a Jewish book fair in Milan that was not reported.

3/ The cultural landscape

Trends emerging in contemporary European Jewish culture in the four focus countries

During the year-long period of tracking cultural production in the four focus countries, a total of around 450 separate cultural events was recorded. Because of their special nature, each of the 28 festivals documented—altogether comprising over 280 separate components—was recorded once within this total, and then analysed separately in greater depth.²¹

Media productions and publications amounted to just over a fifth of the aggregate. However, because events within this category were only comprehensively recorded in one country (see 'Data collection methodology' above), we decided to remove them from the quantitative comparative country analyses in order to avoid possible misrepresentation. Consequently, the quantitative element of the report is based on a total of around 360 cultural events and does not include this category.

The percentages shown in Figure 1 demonstrate that there is little correlation between the size of a national Jewish community and the level of cultural activity. Poland, with by far the smallest Jewish population (standing at just over 4 per cent of the total Jewish population of the four countries), was the site of far more Jewish cultural activity (37 per cent of all cultural products recorded) than the other three countries. This amounts to 38 events per 1,000 Jews in Poland, contrasting with the average rate of reported cultural activity in the other three countries of about 2-3 events per 1,000 Jews. This level of cultural activity in Poland is extraordinary and begs the question as to whether the target audience for such cultural products in Poland differs from the three other focus countries. This issue will be addressed later in this chapter.

Figure 1: Breakdown by country of Jewish
cultural events in relation to combined
Jewish population of four focus
countries. ²²


In each country, approximately half of the Jewish population lives in the capital city. It comes as no surprise, then, that a vast proportion of Jewish cultural events took place in the capitals. As Figure 2 indicates, over 80 per cent of Jewish cultural events in Belgium and Sweden took place in those cities, while, in Poland and Italy, the figure is lower, about 50 per cent. Poland and Italy traditionally have, or have had, Jewish communities spread throughout the country, whereas Belgian and Swedish Jewry have nearly always been concentrated in just a few major cities. The geographical dispersal of cultural events is therefore largely reflective of these respective national Jewish demographic histories.




Figure 2: Percentage of Jewish cultural
events taking place in the capital cities

Figure 3 shows the breakdown of Jewish cultural production across the four countries by arts type. What is immediately apparent is that while there was an even spread of most arts types, music stood out as by far the most popular form, accounting for a quarter of all Jewish cultural products. This phenomenon will be discussed later in this chapter.

Figure 3: Cultural disciplines in the four
sample countries


Country analyses

Poland

The Jewish community of Poland is small. Nonetheless, Poland was the site of a remarkable level of Jewish cultural activity, proportionately some fifteen times higher per 1,000 Jewish inhabitants than Belgium, Italy and Sweden. This finding entirely confounds the hypothesis that countries with larger Jewish communities will have higher levels of Jewish cultural activity.

In recent years, there has been a remarkable growth in Poland of the publication of books on Jewish-related issues, and this is reflected in the number of book promotions recorded. A vast majority of the publications reported in Poland—nearly 80 per cent—were of a documentary nature and primarily concern Polish-Jewish history and culture. They include books on antisemitism, Polish-Jewish relations, religion and the experiences of exile and immigration. Holocaust-related publications were undoubtedly the most prevalent, many taking the form of biographies or autobiographies. This trend is due to the recent emergence of a level of freedom of information impossible in Communist Poland, where topics of this kind were taboo. It also reflects a Poland that is re-examining its recent history and acknowledging the importance of eyewitness accounts, as well as demonstrating a willingness by both authors and publishers to record these, often damning, accounts.

Literature has always been an important element in the development of Polish national identity. During the Communist period, literature also served as a vehicle for social criticism. The prominence of Jewish issues in recent publications demonstrates an awareness among Polish writers of the importance of the Polish-Jewish experience in forming contemporary Polish identity, and also marks a significant point of departure from the Polak-Katolik tradition, the belief that Catholicism is the defining feature of Polish identity.²³

Apart from Romania, Poland is the only European country with a functioning Yiddish theatre—the State Jewish Theatre in Warsaw—and a long-standing Yiddish theatrical tradition. Of the seven Yiddish theatres in Poland that existed during the inter-war years, only the Warsaw theatre now remains.²⁴ Nevertheless, Poland still hosts numerous Yiddish theatrical performances. It is interesting to note how those involved in running the Warsaw theatre perceive its role in contemporary Poland:

Ostensibly there is something incomprehensible in the fact that there exists a Jewish theater in Poland, that it functions and develops in a country where Jews represent a marginal percentage of the population. The plays are performed in Yiddish, the theater stages plays by Jewish classics who are little known to the public, it displays images originating almost from the world of the perished Atlantis. Yet despite everything it has numerous old as well as new spectators. How come? The answer is simple. The theater is a temple of national mementoes to the Jews who have remained in Poland, and to the Polish audience Jewish culture created in Poland, over almost a thousand years of mutual existence appears to be, to an increasing degree, part of the culture of the Polish nation.²⁵

This provides us with an interesting insight into the uniqueness of the Polish-Jewish relationship and helps us to understand the ongoing fascination with Jewish culture in Poland today in spite of there being such a small Jewish community still living there.




Figure 4: Jewish cultural disciplines in
Poland


The large number of documentary exhibits is a more recent development in Poland. Documentary exhibits largely portrayed Jewish life in the past—including during the Holocaust period—or incorporated displays of Jewish religious or ritual objects. Exhibition titles such as 'Crumbs of Memory' and 'We Are Here—Documenting the Presence of Jews in Poland' speak for themselves. The history of Polish Jewry was also portrayed at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, where specific sections on the Holocaust and the Warsaw Ghetto formed a crucial part of the exhibition. The Jewish Historical Institute is itself a heritage site, as it is one of a very few Jewish buildings that survived the war, having been used by the Nazis for storage.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum held an exhibition in the camp's largest building, 'the Sauna'. People transported to Auschwitz would go through the Nazi dehumanizing registration process in the Sauna. This involved being disinfected, the confiscation of all personal possessions and being tattooed with a prisoner number. The exhibit traced this process by allowing visitors to follow in the footsteps of the Auschwitz detainees. Family photographs brought by Jewish people arriving in Auschwitz covered the walls in the final section of the exhibition, showing a rich and diverse pre-war Jewish world. In addition to the quarter of a million Polish visitors, almost 250,000 people visit this museum every year from over 100 foreign countries.²⁶ Many other local museums across the country have also begun to host exhibitions about the vanished pre-war Jewish life in Poland, and some even have specific permanent Jewish collections.

Overall, this activity exemplifies the efforts being made in post-Communist Poland to inform the population about the Holocaust and Polish-Jewish relations, such information having being suppressed during the Communist era as part of the policy of 'non-ethnic differentiation'. Nowadays, the Holocaust is debated in the public arena, and national school history textbooks have been rewritten to include it.

Antisemitism has played a distinctive part in the history of Poland and is crucial to an understanding of Polish-Jewish life. Consequently, 'Polish-Jewish relations' are treated in a unique way in Poland. While this project does not analyse this aspect to Jewish life in its survey of contemporary Jewish culture in Poland, the legacy of the Holocaust and antisemitism is omnipresent in the country's cultural products.

Sweden

The Judiskt liv i Sverige (Jewish life in Sweden) survey, carried out among members of Sweden's two largest Jewish communities in Stockholm and Gothenburg, revealed an extensive community interest in Jewish cultural activities.²⁷ Nearly 60 per cent of respondents said that, for them, Jewish culture was very important in creating a sense of Jewishness, and half said that they would like to see greater resources made available for the creation of more Jewish cultural events in the future. Furthermore, 80 per cent believed that the future of Swedish Jewry could be ensured by consciously investing in Jewish cultural and social activities. That Swedish Jews perceived Jewish culture to be the key to the future of the community confirms its importance in sustaining and developing contemporary Jewish identities. It also demonstrates the potential for a wide audience for Jewish cultural events within the Swedish Jewish community.

In this context, it is interesting to examine the shape of the Jewish cultural landscape in Sweden. As Figure 5 shows, the production of Jewish culture in Sweden was characterized by a broad interest in film. Two of it's three Jewish festivals were film festivals, and nearly 30 per cent of the country's Jewish cultural events overall were film screenings. Indeed, according to the Judiskt liv i Sverige survey. 80 per cent of those questioned had seen a Jewish film in the previous twelve-month period. Only Jewish music was equal in popularity to Jewish films in Sweden. Other types of cultural activity made up a smaller proportion of total cultural production, and consequently had a lesser uptake. This may indicate a correlation between availability and attendance. On the other hand, the differing level of availability of various cultural activities may reflect consumer demand.

Figure 5: Jewish cultural disciplines in
Sweden

Exile, immigration and the Holocaust were recurring themes in Jewish films reported in Sweden. Interest in these themes may reflect the fact that the majority of Swedish Jews have foreign roots. Several films were specifically concerned with the Polish-Jewish experience, and someof these were actually Polish productions. This involvement with Polish-Jewish productions relates to the immigration of around 2,500 Jews from Poland to Sweden after the March 1968 antisemetic campaign.

Italy

The landscape of Jewish cultural production in Italy was characterized by the relatively even representation of many disciplines. Music stood out as the most popular Jewish cultural form, as it did in all the countries analysed. Particularly in Italy, klezmer and Yiddish music achieved widespread popularity among mainstream audiences. One particular Yiddish music performer, Moni Ovadia, whose performances often feature in this study, has become a cultural icon in Italy. Gruber describes Ovadia's impact in Italy: 'A veteran folk singer and stage performer who began devoting the bulk of his work to Jewish, particularly Yiddish, themes in the late 1980's, Ovadia has been one of the chief catalysts in the vogue for Jewish culture that mushroomed in Italy in the late 1990's.²⁸ Interestingly, although a Sephasrdi Jew by origin (born in Bulgaria), and given that Italy's Jewish tradition is closer to the Sephardi tradition than the Ashkenazi, the Jewish culture Ovadia for the most part promotes is one steeped in clichés of the shetal and Yiddish traditions. This brand of Judaism is increasingly popular with mainstream Italian audiences.

Figure 6: Jewish cultural disciplines in
Italy

Belgium

Nearly 90 per cent of Belgium's Jewish cultural production took place in Brussels (see Figure 2). The Centre Communautaire Laic Juif (CCLJ, Secular Jewish Community Centre) in Brussels is amongst the most dynamic venues and co-ordinators on the Belgian-Jewish cultural scene. The CCLJ is committed to developing and promoting a non-religious brand of Judaism and hosted a variety of events, from book promotions and concerts to film screenings, photography exhibitions and festivals.

There was a perceptibly lower level of cultural activity registered in Antwerp, despite the fact that nearly 50 per cent of Belgian Jews live there. This may be because two-thirds of the Jewish community in Antwerp are strictly Orthodox and the activities reported within that community were mainly religious ones that lie beyond the parameters of this project. This would then account for the lower level of cultural production registered in Antwerp.

Figure 7: Jewish cultural disciplines in
Belgium

Music

Music stood out as the most popular discipline across all four focus countries. Comprising 25 per cent of all cultural production, music commanded a presence on the Jewish cultural landscape unlike any other cultural form (each of which, in comparison, represented an average of between 5 and 10 per cent). The driving force of the whole Jewish cultural renaissance therefore seems to lie in an almost meteoric rise in the popularity of Jewish music, particularly klezmer music, across the continent, part of the general explosion of popularity of all forms of world music. The predominance of music over other cultural forms may also relate to its more instant accessibility.

Jewish musical production assumes many forms, including klezmer, Yiddish and Sephardi song, fusion and traditional, liturgy and opera. This wide scope was reflected in the musical performances recorded for this mapping survey, which include a concert of `Liturgical Music from Italian Jewish Communities' that took place in the Jewish Cultural Centre in Rome, and a performance of the opera Brundibár (composed in 1938 by Hans Krasa, a Czech Jew, and performed in the Theresienstadt internment camp during the period 1943-4) in both Brussels and Rome.²⁹ In Sweden, the Klezmerföreningen (Klezmer Society) was established in the year 2000, and was the first of its kind in Sweden. The society's popular dance workshops and concerts were held at mainstream Swedish community and cultural centres.

There was a far greater presence, in the Jewish music scene in each of the four countries, of the Ashkenazi music tradition than of Sephardi music. Considering the national Jewish heritages of each of the countries, which, apart from Italy, are predominantly Ashkenazi, this is unsurprising. Consequently, only in Italy was there a significant presence of Sephardi musical performances, often performed in Ladino or Judaeo-Roman. It is also interesting to note that the term 'Sephardi music' is commonly used for describing such music, while the parallel term 'Ashkenazi music' is only very rarely used for describing music originating in Eastern or Central Europe.

In contrast to the prominence of music, there were few performances of dance in the four countries. Although traditional Jewish wedding dances were performed, these were usually at private or religious events. Unlike Jewish music and song, there is a less prominent tradition of Jewish dance, and the best-known Jewish dance form today is Israeli dancing, which received a boost from the Zionist movements of the 1950s and 1960s. Though most Jewish communities organized Israeli dance classes or workshops, there were very few dance performances as such. This indicates that Israeli dancing is regarded primarily as a participatory activity rather than as a performance genre.

Thematic expression

The Holocaust emerged unequivocally as the most prominent theme in Jewish cultural productions in each of the four focus countries. It is quite clear that issues relating to the Holocaust are far from exhausted, and continue to command a strong presence in the creation of contemporary Jewish culture in Europe.

Ironically, the legacy of the Holocaust tragedy is closely connected to the contemporary European Jewish cultural renaissance. Non-Jews involved in Jewish culture cited a preoccupation with the absence of Jewish cultural life in Europe created by the Holocaust as a primary motivation for their interest and involvement in the contemporary revival of Jewish culture.

This thematic dominance also reflects the recognition that mainstream society now accords to the universal historical relevance of the Jewish Holocaust. The Holocaust was often employed as a focus for education on issues of racism, intolerance and discrimination. Indeed, in January 2001, several European countries established an annual National Holocaust Day on 27 January, marking the day Auschwitz was liberated. On this day, many cultural events to commemorate the Holocaust were held in participating countries, including film screenings, exhibitions, lectures, ceremonies and concerts.

Closely linked to the Holocaust theme were those of contemporary antisemitism and racism, which also featured strongly in contemporary Jewish cultural productions. In fact, in Belgium, all of the theatrical performances recorded in this study dealt with these issues, often incorporating themes of intolerance, guilt complexes and identity formation. One play that was performed in Belgium, Parle (Talk), written by Niklas Radström, dramatizes a debate between a neo-Nazi and a Jewish doctor who escaped the Holocaust as a child, and deals with broad issues of historical truth and uncertainty.

Other frequently recurring themes explored were exile and emigration, religion, identity and Jewish history. Jewish life in specific localities and the lives of prominent Jewish individuals were also popular subjects.

In spite of an increase of mixed Jewish and non-Jewish relationships in contemporary Jewish society, this issue rarely emerged as a theme. One of the few productions recorded that does tackle this topic is Jonathan Metzger's play Men i fremtiden då? (But in the future, then?). This play explores the complications of a relationship between a Jewish man and a non-Jewish Swedish woman. Jewish/non-Jewish interaction was particularly pertinent to the Swedish Jewish community, in which over 50 per cent of the Jewish population are open to the idea of marrying a non-Jew and 60 per cent feel as comfortable in the company of non-Jews as Jews.³⁰

Although Israeli artists and performers often tour Europe, Israel was not particularly prominent as a theme in the events logged in this survey. Many fundraising events were held in support of Israel, and numerous lectures and debates took place concerning the contemporary situation in the Middle East. However, as previously noted, these activities lie outside the scope of the project and are therefore not included in the final inventory. Israel as a theme is primarily represented in this survey in Israeli dance events, in the screening of Israeli films at film festivals—such as the one-off days entirely devoted to Israeli film recorded in Italy—and some Israeli book launches.³¹

Venues, organizers and funding of Jewish events

As discussed in Chapter 2, we have included in this inventory any organization or institution showcasing events with a subject matter of a Jewish nature, regardless of the 'Jewishness' of the organizers or venues. Distinctly Jewish venues, such as Jewish museums, theatres, community centres and synagogues regularly hosted Jewish cultural events, but they did not hold a monopoly on them. Mainstream theatres, museums and community centres frequently featured as venues as did the 'Jewish-style' restaurants or cafés run without any affiliation to local Jewish communities.

Some of the organizations or institutions that ran these events have few, if any, Jewish employees and some events were established entirely on the initiative of non-Jews. This is the case with the Jewish Culture Festival Society in Cracow, which organizes the large-scale Cracow Jewish Culture Festival. This annual festival was established by non-Jews and continues to be run primarily by non-Jews, with one of its key aims being to provide a forum for Polish-Jewish dialogue.³²

Jewish cultural events are taking place more frequently in mainstream venues such as hotels, outdoor squares, restaurants and even churches. One event recorded in Belgium, for example, was a concert of music from the Sephardi Golden Age held in a church in Brussels. This trend reflects the increasingly wide appeal of Jewish artistic and cultural productions within wider society. This development was most noticeable in Sweden and Italy where Jewish cultural events are becoming part of the general arts scene, reflecting both an increasingly outward-looking focus of the respective Jewish communities and a growing public interest in Jewish culture.

The rise in general public interest in all things Jewish was evident in Poland and Belgium also, but Jewish cultural events there were still most commonly held at Jewish venues. In Poland, this suggests a growing desire among people—both Polish non-Jews and Jews of Polish origin—to explore Polish-Jewish roots. Synagogues (some no longer consecrated as such, but still in use as cultural centres or concert venues) were often used as venues for Jewish cultural events in Poland. The monthly concerts at the pod Bialym Bocianem synagogue (the White Stork synagogue) in Wroclaw, for example, featuring klezmer, cantorial or Yiddish music, were overwhelmingly popular with mixed non-Jewish and Jewish audiences. Moreover, somewhat ironically, not one member of the choir that performed in the synagogue was Jewish. There were also cultural venues that were overtly Jewish in terms of their programming, such as the Jewish Culture Centre in Cracow, but that were run by non-Jews. In Warsaw and Kazimierz, the former Jewish area of Cracow, recently opened Jewish-style restaurants and cafés also hosted performances. These Jewish-style venues are part of a growing tourism industry exploiting 'all things Jewish'. Poland's longstanding centres of Jewish activity, such as the State Jewish Theatre in Warsaw and the Jewish Historical Institute also accounted for much of Polish Jewish cultural production.

Similarly, in Belgium, many events took place within the framework of the Jewish community, primarily in the two active Jewish cultural centres in Brussels that focus on secular Jewish activities. Although Jewish culture is becoming popular amongst non-Jewish audiences in Belgium, there still remains a certain reticence to project Jewish culture into mainstream society.

In spite of a growing trend for Jewish cultural events to be held at non-Jewish venues, only about 15 per cent of all the events recorded were created as the result of a Jewish/non-Jewish collaboration. These collaborative events tended to be evenly distributed between Jewish and non-Jewish venues. However, Jewish institutions and individuals were still more likely to be the organizers of Jewish cultural events and were far more likely to use Jewish venues for their events. To some extent, this reflects the fact that Jewish institutions still see their task as serving the needs of their own members. It is the non-Jewish organizers that took the Jewish cultural events to non-Jewish, and often more mainstream, venues, perhaps reflecting a commercial imperative. Non-Jewish organizers, in turn, rarely presented events at Jewish venues. Table 4 shows the relation between the Jewishness of organizers and the Jewishness of the types of venues they used for all the events recorded in this survey.

Table 4: Types of venues used by organizers in all four countries

Only Italy stood out in this respect: half of the events recorded for Italy that were organized by non-Jews were held at Jewish venues. Likewise, Jewish institutions also frequently used non-Jewish venues. A performance of Erinnerung (Remembrance), for example, a play about the Holocaust accompanied by traditional Jewish music, was organized by the Venice Jewish community at a local theatre, and My Ngkacir Lady, a Judaeo-Roman version of My Fair Lady, was organized by Il Pitigliani - the Jewish community centre in Rome - at a theatre in Rome. My Ngkacir Lady was such a success that it ran for a second season at trhe same theatre several months after its premiere. That the non-Jewish/Jewish demarcation line is less rigid in Italy than in the other three countries is possibly a result of the longstanding Jewish presence in the country and of the perception that many Italian Jews have of themselves as being as much an Italian as a Jewish community. Whether the boundaries between the Jewish and non-Jewish spheres are stronger in Belgium, Poland and Sweden deserves further investigation.

There seems to be a fairly even distribution between funding for Jewish culture from Jewish and non-Jewish sources. Such funding came predominantly from community centres, city councils, national ministries and business corporations such as banks, airlines, the press and other companies. Funding information was generally gathered through 'common knowledge' oranecdotal accounts, without much hard data to confirm the reports. For many events - up to half of the total - the source of the funding was unknown.


Table 5: Known funding sources

What are the motivations behind an individual or orgainsed decision to support a Jewish cultural event? Jewish funders may well be more likely to fund events on the basis of their perceived thematic or symbolic value, or an interest in promoting Jewish continuity, rather than on commercial grounds. It may well also be that, given their limited resources, Jewish funders are less inclined to stake a claim in those events for which the orgainzers have been successful in receiving mainstream funding or subsidies.

Market factors influence those seeking funding for cultural projetcs. There is often a commercial imperative for those involved in creating events to look beyond the Jewish community for funding. Indeed, none of the twenty-eight festivals recorded in this survey operated solely on the basis of Jewish funding, but relied, in addition, on mainstream funding sources such as goverment ministries and corporate sponsorship.

Festivals

Festivals offer consumers culture in a condensed format, concentrated in both time and space.³³ With programmes that continue from morning until late at night and that offer a wide variety of choices, audiences at Jewish cultural festivals are invited to immerse themselves in Jewish culture, at least for a few days, for the duration of the festival. Whether festivals showcase one specific cultural genre such as music, or whether they incorporate different artistic forms, in all instances they paint a diverse picture of European Jewish cultural life.³⁴ Rebeka Blajfer Weintraub, of the Stockholm Jewish film festival, explains that, through their selection of films for the festival programme, the orgainzers intended to convey the diversity and richness of Jewish life, as well to acquaint mainstream audiences with aspects of Jewish life less familiar to them.³⁵ In addition, the festival format means that events often receive wider publicity than one-off events and, as a result, may further boost interest in Jewish culture.

The twenty-eight Je