The Sound of Change: Performing 'Jewishness' in Small Polish Towns

Then he said to me, 'Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: "I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live."'

Ezekiel 37: 4–5

Hundreds of churchgoers in the small southern Polish town of Chmielnik (pop. 4,000) listened intently as a small, elderly man, barely visible above the podium, addressed them in Hebrew: the words of Ezekiel and their Polish translation resounding in the cavernous eighteenth-century baroque Catholic church.¹ With this, Meir Mali, a 95-year-old Israeli kibbutznik and Holocaust survivor born in Chmielnik, introduced the residents of the town to the twelfth year of the Encounters with Jewish Culture festival in June 2014. During the day, Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, was recited at the former Jewish cemetery. Hundreds viewed an official memorial ceremony, involving the local scout troop. Jewish dance and theatre were presented on a large outdoor stage set up for the occasion in the main square. Winners of a Jewish song competition received their awards. A local klezmer band, the Chmielnikers, performed, as did the late Leopold Kozłowski (1919‒2019) a Holocaust survivor and descendant of the famous Brandwein klezmer dynasty known as Poland's 'last klezmer'.² Curious visitors checked out the nearby synagogue, which was founded in the seventeenth century and had been recently renovated as a museum. Young boys, dressed in black trousers and white shirts and sporting costume talitsim and yarmulkes, engaged passers-by. Girls passed out flowers.

A few months after Chmielnik's inaugural Encounters with Jewish Culture festival in June 2003, the village of Lelów (pop. 2,000), located about 60 miles away, launched its Ciulim and Chulent festival.³ The event has become the largest cultural festival in the region and the largest Jewish cultural event in a small town anywhere in Poland.⁴ For many years, Saturday has been dedicated to showcasing Polish culture and Sunday to Jewish culture, in order to permit the participation of religious Jews. Conceived jointly by a representative of the Lelover hasidic dynasty, who lives in Israel, and the head of the village at the time, the idea from the beginning was to attract people with food and fun. The Jewish sabbath stew chulent and its regional pork equivalent ciulim are the main culinary attractions. In recent years the activities have included amusement rides and music and dance performances on a large temporary stage. The venue, a sports field, is ringed with dozens of vendors, mostly selling food and craft products, but there is also a booth selling cheap pictures of a bearded Jewish man with a money sack and metal trinkets of old Jewish men holding a grosz, souvenirs intended to bring their owners good fortune.⁵ Throughout the weekend, a Polish graduate student in Jewish studies from Jagiellonian University in Kraków guides hundreds of visitors through the building that serves as a synagogue and mikveh for visiting hasidim, and the tomb of Rabbi Dovid Biderman (1746–1814), founder of the Lelover hasidic dynasty, built on what was remembered as the original site.

About 6 miles down the road from Lelów, the town of Szczekociny hosted the Yahad–Razem festival annually from 2008 to 2017.⁶ The event was the idea of Yossi Bornstein, the Israeli son of a Holocaust survivor originally from the town, and is organized jointly with his partner, Agnieszka Piśkiewicz, a former resident and English teacher who has made her home in Israel, and Mirosław (Mirek) Skrzypczyk, a high-school teacher from neighbouring Lelów and later deputy director of Szczekociny high school. With a commemorative ceremony in the morning on the site of the former Jewish cemetery and a concert at night at the high school, it is more modest than the other two festivals. Relying on volunteers, this grassroots effort is supported by the mayor, albeit with a minimal contribution from the municipality. While the provost of the local church has never participated...