Bankito Festival

"Bánk is a tiny village in Nógrád County with its not-so-tiny Lake Bánk in the middle. It has everything a tiny village built around a lake could need: a small store, a tobacco shop, a pizza place, a pub, some hotels, motels and a lakeshore eatery. Plus the extremely friendly locals. Bánkitó Festival has been in town for 10 years, mostly around the Lakeshore and the Camp, though throughout the years, we ventured out to settle around the Reeds and the Meadow. Besides the lake, the small wooden cabins and the venues hiding around small clearings throughout the enclosing forest make Bánkitó the festival it is." -Bankito

Festival of Jewish Cultures

The Festival of Jewish Cultures offers an eclectic cultural program each summer aimed at discovering the richness and diversity of Jewish culture, in a spirit of openness, dialogue and intercultural exchange.

Krakow Jewish Culture Festival

Every year the Festival features almost 300 events during 10 days. 30,000 participants from many countries around the entire globe take part in workshops, lectures, discussions, guided tours, and of course various musical events: from concerts to DJ-parties to jam sessions. 150 artists, instructors and lecturers share their experience with our audience.

The Great Synagogue Restores Memory

The stunning virtual reconstruction of the synagogue, first projected onto the Blue Tower to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

March of the Living

The March of the Living  is an annual educational program which brings students from around the world to Poland, where they explore the remnants of the Holocaust. On Holocaust Memorial Day observed in the Jewish calendar (Yom HaShoah), thousands of participants march silently from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp complex built during World War II. The program was established in 1988 and takes place annually for two weeks around April and May, immediately following Passover. Marchers have come from over 50 countries, as diverse as United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, China, Estonia, Panama, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Hungary, and Turkey. The Israeli founders of the March of the Living were Avraham Hirschson and Dr. Shmuel Rosenman. They were assisted in the early years by Jewish communal leaders and philanthropists from the United States (Alvin Schiff, Gene Greenzweig and Joseph Wilf, the first North American Chair of the March of the Living), and Canada (Walter Hess, Shlomo Shimon, Rabbi Irwin Witty, and Eli Rubenstein).

Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Inquisition

March 31st has recently been chosen as the date to commemorate the victims of the Portuguese Inquisition. On this day in 1821 the Inquisition in Portugal was officially disbanded. This day is to remember the expulsion of Jews from Portugal, the subsequent massacres of the Jews, as well as the Portuguese Inquisition. The Portuguese Inquisition began in 1526, ending with the sudden migration of tens of thousands of Jews from Portugal. While some Jews fled, others who were forcibly converted to Christianity continued to practice Judaism in secret for centuries.

Jewish Book Week

Jewish Book Week is an annual international literary festival, held in London. Every year, the festival brings together writers and speakers – from the most eminent to the first-time published – from the worlds of history, journalism, philosophy, science, art, music, poetry and fiction in a celebration of ideas. The festival features Jewish themes and writers, as well as discussions on the most important issues of the day, and is open to everyone. Over eighty events are presented during the festival itself. A number of special events are also organised over the course of the year, outside the festival period. Jewish Book Week is organized by the Jewish Book Council, a registered UK charity.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day Virtual Commemoration

Holocaust Memorial Day

Holocaust Memorial Day takes place on 27 January and there are many different and meaningful ways you can get involved and play your part to mark HMD. From schools and libraries to workplaces and prisons, HMD activities take place in thousands of diverse settings. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT) is the charity, established by the Government, that promotes and supports Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD). HMDT encourages and inspires individuals and organisations across the UK to play their part in learning lessons and challenging hatred and discrimination today.

Limmud Online

Hannukah Lighting in London

Come celebrate Chanukah, the Jewish festival of lights, with a giant menorah that will be lit up in Trafalgar Square!

Public Hannukah

Come join the Grand Menorah Lighting in the Campo del Ghetto, one of the oldest ghettos in the world. There will be music, delicious fresh doughnuts and crispy potato latkes tasting, and 100% chance of dancing.

Great Big Jewish Food Fest Online

The archives of the Great Big Jewish Food Fest, contains recorded festival sessions and more from the 10-day festival by and for people who love Jewish food.

Sephardi Music Festival Online

Sephardic Music Festival’s goal is unifying people through culture and education, celebrating diversity and common ground. By way of this work, we put forth a public Jewish face to multi-cultural, inter-faith, creative, and collaborative bridge-building. The Sephardic Music Festival showcases the remarkable diversity that exists within the Jewish community. One of the music groups to perform in previous years was the Ancient Groove, which aspires to bring new life to the music’s world. The music of Ancient Groove seeks connection between the canonical songs of the Sephardic and Jewish music and theirs musical origins in the various cultures of the Mediterranean. With a vision that throws its from his original context and plant them in a new musical world. It’s music maintains a balance between complexity and expression of emotions

Event 3

Event 3

TISH Jewish Food Festival

Third edition of the TISH* Jewish Food Festival is going to be unique: it will be held both in-person and online, with audiences all across Poland and the globe in mind. POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews invited famous chefs and renowned culinary experts from the United States, Poland and Israel to join in debates on Jewish food, to discover its history together and also to learn how to prepare it. ‘CLOSENESS’ is the key word of this year’s TISH Festival edition.

The experience of the past few months of the pandemic and the need to keep two-metre distance from another human being made us rethink the meaning of the word “close.” TISH Jewish Food Festival provides an opportunity to build a community, despite physical distance, and to seek things—such as food—which bring us all together. Yet again, we will point to close links between Polish and Jewish cuisine, and to the ways they permeate and inspire each other. POLIN Museum also invites you to explore the history of the area it is located in by touring the current temporary exhibition titled Here Is Muranów. For “closeness” may also refer to being part of one's local environment and immediate neighbourhood. POLIN Museum has planned various activities for the five Festival days: cooking together without the need to leave your home, sharing family stories connected to food, embroidering a unique Festival tablecloth together at the Museum as well as culinary walks through old Jewish Warsaw where languages, flavours and fragrances intermingled. Festival guests will find out what dishes they could fix based on a pre-war Yiddish cookbook and they will realise that barley and pasta actually go well together. During workshops, children and their parents will learn how to make a Shabbat challah and will find out why a tree growing sweet yellow fruit has become a protagonist of a book. POLIN Museum also invites you to join in decorating a sukkah—a traditional hut erected each year in front of the Museum building to celebrate the joyous Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

Uman Rabi Nachman MeBraslev Memorial Celebration

Join some 30,000 Jews, mostly from Israel, to gather in Uman ahead of the Jewish New Year as part of an annual pilgrimage to the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, an 18th-century luminary buried in Uman. Rabbi Nachman, when he was alive, called on his followers to be with him on Rosh Hashanah.

European Days of Jewish Culture

The AEPJ has promoted, together with the network of participating institutions, an edition that will be based on new technologies and the digital world, giving the opportunity to reach a wider audience worldwide. In this way, for the first time in 20 years, on the opening day of the Festival, an eight-hour online program will be held, open to the entire public, where conferences, interviews, concerts and videos on European Jewish heritage will take place, offering a unique look, from the inside, at the history and Jewish communities of a large number of European participating countries. We will connect live with Luxembourg, Barcelona, Jerusalem, Paris and Oxford.

European Days of Jewish Culture

This European-wide festival, dedicated to the knowledge and deepening of Judaism, and to the encounter between cultures, will celebrate this year its 21st edition.  This year the coordinators of the more than 20 participating countries have made a great effort to ensure that the Festival will continue and guarantee the promotion of European Jewish history and heritage, through all kinds of activities, especially designed for the general public. The central theme of this edition is Jewish Journeys, and although it may seem contradictory, it may be more revealing than ever. The Festival will offer all kinds of proposals that will make us reflect on a few Journeys, that are a big part of the Jewish story.

Jewish Krakow Festival Online

One of the oldest and largest Jewish Culture festivals in the world, presenting contemporary Jewish culture from Israel and Diaspora, held in beautiful venues of Krakow's Jewish district of Kazimierz. Now watch recorded videos online!

Jewish Summer Festival

The first Jewish Summer Festival took place in 1998 with the intent to introduce Jewish culture to people of other cultures. This included Jewish music, films, dance, art, and books.  The center of the event is in Great Synagogue on Dohany street, the second largest synagogue in the world.

Jewish Life in Germany: Past and Present

Alongside the presentation of objects, art installations, hands-on stations, and virtual reality over two levels await visitors. The wealth of the museum’s own collection has a greater emphasis than before – more than 70 percent of the over 1000 objects are from the museum’s own holdings. The restorers have been busy preparing objects for the exhibition over the past months to let them shine in a new light. The exhibition is divided into five historical chapters spanning from the beginnings of Jewish life in Ashkenaz, through the emancipation movement, the Enlightenment, and its failure, to the present. The largest space is dedicated to National Socialism and the chapter “After 1945,” where topics such as restitution and reparation, the relationship to Israel and Russian-speaking immigration from 1990 onwards are the central themes. As a “final chorus,” the video installation Mesubin (The Gathered) brings the polyphony of contemporary Jewish together. - JMBerlin

Moscow Jewish Film Festival

"For three thousand years, the Jewish people have been scattered around the world. That is why Jewish cinema is created in many different countries, alongside with special festivals that select and showcase those films. The Jewish Film Festival in Moscow became the first of its kind in Russia. It was founded in 2015 and has been held annually ever since.

What is the Jewish cinema, after all? It encompasses far more than films made by Jewish directors or films which star famous Jewish actors. The never-ending search for Jewish identity, assimilation of diasporas and philosophy of self-determination and separation of the Jewish people in a society, return to the past, glorification of national heroes and mourning of victims, challenges of today’s world and the problem of relevance and preservation of traditions - these and many other issues attract filmmakers of all countries and continents. By searching and selecting the best Jewish films during the course of the past year we have attempted to shape an answer to the question of what these rapidly changing ethnic-themed films really are. Moscow, a large metropolitan area, a place where many cultures and nationalities live side-by-side, is one of the world’s most fitting locations for a festival that represents a dialogue of national communities. The MJFF holds screenings of the most important and resonant Jewish films of the latest years. At the centre of the Festival is the Feature Films Competition Program, which is complemented by screenings of documentary films, short films and documentary shorts (as part of either competition programs or special screenings), as well as by discussions with experts on different topics raised in films and critics who specialize in Jewish cinema." -MJFF

Yiddish Summer Weimar

Yiddish Summer Weimar has brought together artists, scholars, students, volunteers and audiences from all over the world for a unique atmosphere of learning, sharing and joy!

Ride for the Living

This four-day event includes a one-day, 60-mile bike ride from Auschwitz-Birkenau to the Jewish Community Center in Krakow, among a packed program of cultural festivities. There is also a separate program running on the same day as the ride, for non-riding participants. You’ll receive a private guided tour of Auschwitz, unique tours of Krakow, and an invitation to the largest Shabbat dinner in Krakow since World War II. RFTL has welcomed participants as young as 16 and older than 80. It’s a festival that combines sad memories and cultural celebrations for an overall hopeful message about Jewish life in Poland. RFTL was started by Robert Desmond, who cycled 1,350 km from London to Auschwitz, visiting WWII Liberation sites along the way. Once Desmond learned about the Krakow JCC, he realized it was the perfect destination. The revival of Jewish life in Poland should be celebrated, and Desmond created a way to do so while paying tribute to a difficult past. Just 14 riders joined the first official RFTL from Auschwitz to the JCC in 2014, but now there are over 100 riders, and biking communities around the world host events in solidarity with with RFTL.

Krakow Film Festival

Every year since 1961, the city of Kraków has been hosting the Kraków Film Festival, making it one of Europe’s oldest events celebrating independent film. Each year, the festival hosts eight days of documentaries, shorts, and animated films submitted to an international competition for filmmakers and directors. Guests can watch a collection of around 250 Polish and international films as well as attend exhibitions, open-air screenings, concerts, and meet-and-greets with the filmmakers. The Kraków Film Festival is a historic event that celebrates the art of filmmaking with a Polish twist. Krakow’s film festival began in 1961, making it one of the oldest film festivals in the world. It started as a local Polish film festival, showing only films made by Polish filmmakers. In 1964, it expanded to include international films, and in 2001 its name was changed to the Krakow Film Festival. Today, the Krakow Film Festival includes film competitions across four categories - national films, international films, documentary films, and music documentaries (DocFilmMusic). The 900+ attendees can view over 250 films, as well as enjoying concerts, open-air screenings, exhibitions, and meetings with film industry professionals.

Cultural Summer

The Jewish Museum Berlin hosts an annual two-month-long festival during the summer. Traditionally hosted in the museum’s garden, visitors flock to the seemingly endless selection of events which include concerts, readings, the sharing of traditional and modern delicacies, as well as the popular Jazz in the Garden event. The Cultural Summer Festival attracts visitors and contributors from many diverse and exotic corners of the world. The festival, which began in 2004 as a secret event, is now a primary cultural event in Berlin where summer is celebrated, and guests can enjoy the museum's new additions and exhibits. Several known figures have attended past festivals, including fiction writer Molly Antopol, actress Katharina Marie Schubert, and Parisian singer Noëmi Waysfeld.

Dirshu World Siyum

Millions of dafim, millions of tests, endless hours of ameilus and dedication, will all culminate at the World Siyumim held in 7 locations across the globe. Throughout the limud of shas over 25,000 lomdim immersed themselves in the world of gemara with the Dirshu system of accountability, to ensure that they truly retain the knowledge they acquire. Gedolei Yisroel, Rabbonim, family members of the Dirshu lomed and yidden from all walks of life will join in an uplifting celebration of Ameilus B’Torah. Be in the moment, be inspired forever.

Jewish Culture Days Berlin

Jewish Culture Days Berlin has a different theme each year, which is expressed through a range of exhibitions, concerts, performances, readings, discussions and more. This collective expression of Jewish culture takes place over eight days and has expanded every year. It now proudly honors Berlin as being, once again, the Jewish capital of Germany. The festival aims to reinforce the notion that while there is still the distinct tragic memorial aspect to the Jewish history in this city, there has been a revival of Jewish prosperity, strength, respect, and immersion into the local society. The festival was created to share and appreciate Jewish culture. With events scheduled throughout the city, visitors are presented with a vibrant display of Berlin’s modern Jewish population in a unique and exciting way. Covering a wide variety of areas such as music, food, religion, literature, arts and more, this festival truly exemplifies the robust nature of Jewish society in Germany today.

Shabbat in Krakow

JCC Krakow organizes kosher Shabbat dinners, which are the central event of each week. Each holiday is celebrated with respect towards traditions, but also manage to intertwine with a contemporary look at heritage. This is why these celebrations are open to everyone, regardless of their attitude towards religion.

Day of Jewish Monuments

On the Day of Monuments, which first began celebrations in 2017, there are 50 or so selected Jewish heritage sites, in more than 40 towns throughout the Czech Republic, that are open to visitors.

Jewish Book Festival-Italy

The Jewish Book Festival is a compilation of Letters, books, and personalities, from the Renaissance to David Grossman. lt is organized in collaboration with the Municipal Theater of Ferrara. This festival is supported the Emilia-Romagna Region, the Municipality of Ferrara, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities and the Jewish Community of Ferrara.

Seret International - The Israeli Film and Television Festival

Seret International, an Israeli film and television festival has been around since 2015. It will premiere in four locations across the Netherlands. Taking on a comparatively larger pool of talent than their first two years, the film festival will be showcasing internationally acclaimed Israeli filmmakers, including both feature films and documentaries. Seret International will be screening for 5 days at the Amstelveen and Rialto cinemas in Amsterdam, the Lumière in Maastricht and the Louis Hartlooper Complex in Utrecht. The event has flourished since its inception two years ago. If you're travelling in Amsterdam during the month of November, be sure to check for the festival’s details and stay up to date!

International Jewish Music Festival

IJMF is a charity dedicated to celebrating and promoting Jewish music throughout the Netherlands and around the globe. The charitable foundation strives to lessen the gap between performers and audiences, while growing the musicians’ reach and furthering international knowledge of the music itself. The IJMF achieves their goals by producing concerts, educational activities and competitions. This year marks the fifth bi-annual International Jewish Music Competition, and renowned and upcoming artists who represent all genres from around the world will be in attendance. The event is marketed as ‘the world’s only all-genre Jewish music competition’, and attendees can expect entertainment from a diverse set of over 100 performers!

Ben Bril Memorial Boxing Gala

The Ben Bril Memorial Boxing Gala takes place in October at the Royal Theatre Carré, formerly the circus ring, in the center of Amsterdam. The show’s highly celebrated namesake, Ben Bril, was a Jewish boxing legend in Amsterdam and abroad. Barend “Ben” Bril (1912-2003) paved the way for Jewish athletes worldwide and is continually honored with this esteemed annual gala event. Throughout October, stay informed of the event's details, as this is one not to be missed! The Dutch boxer participated in the 1928 Summer Olympics at age 15. Although he was very successful, Bril’s life was not without hardships. Ten years after being denied participation in what would have been his second Summer Olympics because he was a Jew, Bril was deported to a concentration camp in Germany along with his family. After the war, the boxer began refereeing in Europe.