Shema – The Voices of Kazimierz (PL)

23.06.2024 - 16:30 / Start: Józefa 36

Janusz Makuch

Shema – The Voices of Kazimierz 

I remember my first Shabbat in Kazimierz. The year was 1980, it was cold October, in deserted streets, with dead windows and gates and the omnipresent silence.

“Where are you?”, I ask in my mind. “We are here,” I hear them whisper, “right next to you.” I looked around – the pain was everywhere.

After some time, after many Shabbats, I heard familiar footsteps and voices, they passed through my life, going from gate to gate, from synagogue to synagogue, walking on the wheel of days, years and centuries, always facing Yerushalaim, so I go with them, with my loved ones, my neighbours, wounds are healed among the graves of clouds and ashes, we sing mournful and joyful Psalms to a deaf world, carrying the ner tamid of memory in our hands.

Walk with me – as I once did with them – around the history of the Jews of Kazimierz, you will learn their names, stories carved in stone, without them there would be no Festival. Today, more than ever before, we need to listen carefully to their voices.

Tickets (45 PLN) available at 33.jewishfestival.pl/en/tickets/; limited number of participants (30 persons)