Starting in April, the Jewish Community of Vienna (IKG) will resume the previously postponed “Jewish Culture Days” on the topic of "Women's Power in Judaism," which were delayed due to the lockdown in the fall. At the same time, the Jewish Film Festival will start in mid-April.
ORF, April 1, 2022
German original: https://religion.orf.at/stories/3212227/
Among the events canceled in the fall was a "political-historical remembrance" of the painter Charlotte Salomon. The German Jew was murdered at the age of 26 in the Auschwitz concentration camp. With the words, "Take good care of them, they are my whole life," she gave a cycle of several hundred paintings (gouaches) to a friend in 1942. A few months later she was dead.
The musical-literary evening will be held on April 10 and is intended to commemorate, on the one hand, the fate of many German Jews, but especially the "unique work of a promising painter who was forgotten for many years after her murder," according to a press release. Therese Hämer will read her texts about Salomon; the Julie Sassoon Quartet will provide the musical accompaniment.
Other cultural days include a concert by Ethel Merhaut at 7 p.m. on May 23 at Porgy & Bess, an exhibition by Dvora Barzilai from June 9 to 16 in the gallery next to the Nestroyhof-Hamakom, and a concert with Lea Kalisch and Bela Koreny at 7 p.m. on June 14 at Porgy & Bess. A new addition to the program is a performance by 2018 Israeli song contest winner Netta at the Vienna Street Festival on June 12.
Jewish Film Festival starting April 24
This year's Jewish Festival is themed "We are Family" and features films on the themes of love and Mischpoche (kinship) and children on the run, as well as a "Salute to Barbra Streisand." The opening film "A Wet Dog" is loosely based on the story of German-Israeli author Arye Sharuz Shalicar and his autobiography "A Wet Dog is Better than a Dry Jew." It tells the story of an Iranian-born Jewish youth whose family moves to the Berlin district of Wedding.
In "Three Mothers" the story of triplets (three sisters) is told beginning in the time of King Faruk (1942) and their life in Israel. In the documentary "Hatuna Hafucha" (Marry me however) homosexuality among the Haredim is highlighted; the comedy "Green pastures" is about cannabis in a retirement home.
"Vibrant, diverse, and connecting"
"1618" is a historical film about Jews in Portugal at that time. In "The Path," a father escapes with his son across the Pyrenees during World War II. "93 Queen" is the name of a documentary about the story of Ruchi Freier, an Orthodox woman who becomes a judge in Brooklyn. "EJ Gumbel" is a documentary about the "father" of statistics, mathematician Emil Julius Gumbel. The program also includes classics such as "Fiddler on the Roof" with Benji Fox Rosen and guests (including Shlomit Butbul and Lena Rothstein) and Babra Streisand's "Hello Dolly."
With its cultural programs, the IKG aims to bridge the gap between the past, displaced, almost extinct Eastern and Central European Jewish culture from the time before the Shoah, through the present, to a future international Jewish culture. "Living, diverse and connecting" is the motto. It also wants to "tread this path of openness and encounter more than ever,” “because of the new and worldwide resurgent anti-Semitic resentments" (...), according to the website.