Ashkenaz celebrates resurgence of Jewish culture

By CAROLYN BLACKMAN
Staff Reporter

TORONTO - Ashkenaz, the biennial festival of new Yiddish culture, set to take place Aug. 29 through Sept. 4 at Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, is incredibly contemporary, yet grounded in the past, says its producer and artistic director.
“The music, theatre, art, dance, literature, cabaret and film being offered, melds the traditional spirit of eastern Europe with the new, radical art being created in a contemporary resurgence of Jewish culture. It’s connected, but it features a break from tradition,” says Mitchell Smolkin, 28.
An actor, singer, and “Yiddishist” who is producing his third Ashkenaz, Smolkin says he first got involved with the festival because of his grandmother, a native of Poland.
“She is elderly now, and it is very hard to reconcile that for all intents and purposes, we are about to lose her culture.
“Ashkenaz is an opportunity to show ourselves on the rich, cultural landscape of Toronto, and [give] Yiddish a home. ”
Smolkin, who studied Yiddish at the University of Vilnius in Lithuania, and met his wife while studying the language at Columbia University, says he buried a program of a past Ashkenaz festival at his grandfather’s grave because, “I knew he would have loved to see it. He would have enjoyed the intensity, the sadness and the levity.”
Yiddishists are part of a very intense subculture, says Smolkin. “They connect around the idea that although it is not a living language, we have to make sure we do everything we can to make sure we preserve it. There are thousands of artists around the world devoted to [promoting] Yiddish.”
Ashkenaz events – a few take place at Earl Bales Park and Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre – are mostly free, although some special events require a ticket.
Musical programs include East Travels West: All Stars of the Former Soviet Union; Retro Ashkenaz: Klezmer en Buenos Aires; Yiddish Barbershop and Beyond the Pale; the Klezmer Cuban Connection; Chicago Klezmer Ensemble; and the Chassidic Jazz Project.
The two cabarets are Cabaret Russe hosted by Michael Alpert, and Cabaret, hosted by David Gale.
Among the films are A Geshseft (The Deal), made in New York 50 years ago; Ashke-Animation; and Yiddish Theatre: A Love Story.
Live theatre includes Echoes and Shavings of Yiddishland, and the Wandering Jew with Boris Sichon.
There are also a number of readings, workshops, panels, lectures and talks on such topics as Yiddish dance, Kabbalistic yoga, Soviet Yiddish poets, and music of the Jewish wedding celebration.