Kuba Kaminski: The Whisperers

Photo © Kuba Kaminski-All Rights Reserved

In remote northeastern Poland there lives a group of elderly Orthodox devotees who are said to possess special powers. They are called “Whisperers.”

The work of Kuba Kaminski was recently featured in LENS, the photo blog of The New York Times, and it got my attention, not only because of its subject matter, but also because of the back stories that are told by Mr Kaminski about this photo essay.

"The Whisperers" are people in northeastern Poland who believe they have the power to heal diseases and physical pain, and that they are able to throw bad spells and exorcise possessed people from evil. It seems that they, mostly elderly women, treat their 'patients' by whispering special prayers.

I initially shrugged off this as being a way to con people out of their money, but it appears that the "whisperers" take no money for their services. After all, I've come across shamans in Bhutan, balians on Bali, the Zar women in Egypt, and the charlatans in the Sufi shrines of South Asia....but reading the text on the LENS blog, and Mr Kaminsky introduction of his web site makes me wonder.

Do read the article on the LENS blog with the back stories recounted by the photographer, and of his initial incredulity.

As he's quoted in the article...“It’s this type of situation when if you believe in something, maybe it’s true or maybe it’s the power of suggestion. Maybe it’s real spirits, and you don’t know that, and you cannot know that because, how can you?”

Kuba Kaminski was born in Poland, and hold a degree in photography from Lodz Film School. He worked as a photographer for the "Zycie" daily and a staff photographer for "Rzeczpospolita" daily newspaper till 2012. He's currently part of reportage. by Getty Images Emerging Talent.

Jewish Culture, etc., Festivals in 2012

Festival of the Jewish Book, Ferrara, Italy, 2011. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

As usual, I am trying to put together a list of as many as possible of the numerous Jewish festivals -- culture, film, dance, etc -- that take place each year around Europe.  I've already missed a few that have taken place this winter -- Please help me by sending me information!

The big culture festivals and other smaller events make good destinations around which to center a trip. Some, like the annual Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow, are huge events lasting a week or more, which draw thousands of people and offer scores or sometimes hundreds of performances, lectures, concerts, exhibits and the like. Other festivals are much less ambitious. Some are primarily workshops but also feature concerts. Many of the same artists perform at more than one festival.

 The list will be growing and growing -- and again,  I ask my readers to please send me information and links to upcoming events. Thanks!



ALL OVER EUROPE

Sept. 2, 2012 -- 13th European Day of Jewish Culture. This year's theme is Jewish Humor


AUSTRIA

April 19-May 23 -- Vienna --  Weanhean: Das Wienerliedfestival (Jewish music and performers are featured this year)


CZECH REPUBLIC

July 5-8 -- Boskovice -- UniJazz2012: 19th Festival for the Jewish Quarter

July 30-August 4 -- Trebic --  Trebic Jewish Festival held in one of the most extensive and best-preserved old Jewish quarters in Europe, part of the town's UNESCO-listed historic center.


GERMANY

April 9-15 -- Weimar -- Weimar Winter Edition

 June 3-16 -- Berlin & Potsdam -- 18th Jewish Film Festival


July 21-August 21 -- Weimar -- Yiddish Summer Weimar 


GREAT BRITAIN


June 24-July 1 -- Leeds -- 12th International Jewish Performing Arts Festival


HUNGARY


April 6-14 -- Budapest -- Quarter6Quarter7 Spring Festival, over Passover


ITALY

April 28-May 1 -- Ferrara -- Festival of the Jewish Book


POLAND

 April 25-29 -- Warsaw -- Jewish Motifs International Film Festival

May 10-12 -- Oswiecim -- Oswiecim Life Festival

May 13-16 -- Warsaw -- Jewish Book Days

June 29-July 8 -- Krakow -- Jewish Culture Festival


RUSSIA

March 8, 2012 -- Moscow -- Yiddish Fest


UKRAINE


SEPT. 6-12 -- Drohobych -- Fifth Bruno Schulz Festival




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Poland -- Travel story on Lodz

Artur Rubinstein street sculpture monument. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The New York Jewish Week runs a lively travel story by Hilary Larson on Lodz, Poland, highlighting the city's Jewish heritage as well as its new spaces and places -- which include Manufaktura, a big shopping center in the transformed red-brick factory that was once run by Lodz's wealthiest Jewish industrialist, I.K. Poznanski...

This onetime outpost of the Russian and German Empires was among the world’s most Jewish cities before the Holocaust, with a quarter-million Jews, a good third of the city’s total. Every year, thousands of heritage travelers come to bear witness to Lodz’s wartime ghetto and the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe. 

So fixed is that mournful image that it takes a mental leap to consider what Europeans already know: Lodz is suddenly the coolest place in Poland. 

“It’s where all the hipsters and artists are going,” said my Polish friend Piotr. “They are in Warsaw for the jobs, in Krakow for the universities. But they come to Lodz for the scene.” [...]

This so-called “City of Four Cultures” (Polish, Jewish, German and Russian) is polyglot and full of surprises. There are 19th-century Orthodox churches, baroque Teutonic mansions, Soviet housing blocks with underground cafes. Though Jews are few today, Jewishness continues to pervade the city — a subtle but persistent overlay of nostalgia, and a belatedly appreciated cultural influence.

I'm glad to see Lodz get such coverage. I have always greatly enjoyed my visits to the city and walks down ruler-straight Piotrkowski street, looking at the old mansions and the street sculpture of Rubinstein, Tuwim and others.

Piortrkowski st. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber)

Larson doesn't mention however, two of the key Jewish and "Jewish" sights..... the large and fascinating Jewish cemetery, with Poznanski's immense domed tomb, and the "Jewish" restaurant Anatewka, which, since I first saw it, has been one of the Platonic ideals for me of the "virtually Jewish world"..... where, the first time I visited, in 2005, the waiters were dressed as Hasids, and where guests are (or were) all given little figurines of Jews clutching coins as sort of favors.

Poland/Lithuania -- Cooperation between Jewish cultural institutions

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

At the end of December, three key Jewish cultural institutes in Poland and Lithuania signed a cooperation agreement that will enhance and expand the Virtual Shtetl portal, an excellent and up-to-date news source for Jewish heritage and culture events and issues in Poland.

Virtual Shtetl reports:

The co-operation agreement concluded between the Jewish Historical Institute Association, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews and the Center for Jewish Culture and Information in Vilnius governs the co-operation with regard to the administration of the ‘Virtual Shtetl’ portal.

Under this international agreement, the Lithuanian version of the ‘Virtual Shtetl’ portal will be created. The Center for Jewish Culture and Information in Vilnius, together with the teams from the Museum of the History of Polish Jews and the Jewish Historial Institute Association, will research the history of Jewish communities that lived in the territory of contemporary Lithuania and will promote the knowledge about Jewish cultural monuments in Lithuania on the ‘Virtual Shtetl’ portal.

It is the beginning of a very promising co-operation and it will be the first time that a foreign organization contributes so extensively to the development and administration of the ‘Virtual Shtetl’ portal. The concluded agreement paves the way to international research and cultural projects on the history of Jews in Eastern and Central Europe.

Poland -- Aleksander Hassidim

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

An article in the Jerusalem Post  by Levi Cooper gives fascinating background on the Aleksandrow Hassidim, who still make pilgrimages to the small town of Aleksandrow Lodzki to visit the grave of the founding Aleksander rebbe, Rabbi Yehiel Dancyger (1828-1894), and his sons. In January 2010, more than 300 Aleksander Hassidim traveled to the town to mark the 100th anniversary of Yehiel's son, Rabbi Yerahmiel Yisroel Yitzhok. The only physical traces left in the town are the cemetery and the former residence of Yehiel's grandson, Rabbi Yitzhak Menahem Dancyger (1879-1942), who was killed in Treblinka.

Rabbi Yehiel requested not to be accorded any rabbinic title and asked his followers not to place notes with requests on his grave as is traditionally done with a hassidic master. Aleksander Hassidim, therefore, bring such notes to the grave, read them out and then, in accordance with the wishes of Rabbi Yehiel, they do not place them on the grave. Rather, they place them on the nearby grave of Rabbi Heynech.

The article traces the complex history of the dynasty and describes the situation today, with centers in Israel and the U.S.

Read full story HERE