For the first time, Saskatoon will play host to a festival focused on Jewish arts and culture.
The Saskatchewan Jewish Arts Festival runs from Oct. 19 to 23, and features Jewish artists and speakers from in Saskatchewan and across Canada.
“With this festival, we celebrate the joy of Jewish culture. We invite the public to experience our thriving community and the talent and artistic beauty we have to offer,” festival producer Malvina Rapko said in a press release.
Festival curator Joel Bernbaum noted that for many years, the Jewish community in Saskatoon had a pavilion in the annual Saskatoon Folkfest where they were able to invite people in to the synagogue and share part of their culture with the general public.
But in recent years, Bernbaum said there hadn’t been a Jewish Folkfest pavilion for “a variety of reasons,” and the Jewish community hadn’t been able to invite in or share with the public in the same way as they had previously.
So the Saskatchewan Jewish Arts Festival was planned, with Bernbaum as festival curator and Rapko as festival producer.
“We started to think ‘what’s something we could do to share and celebrate Jewish arts and culture with the general public that would also invite them to come into our space?” Bernbaum said.
Though the festival proper is scheduled to start on Oct. 19, part of the program is already underway. In partnership with Persephone Theatre and the Broadway Theatre, the award-winning and heartwarming musical Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story by playwright Hannah Moscovitch and starring musician Ben Caplan, has begun its run at Persephone Theatre to great acclaim.
The public will also have a chance to visit the newly-renovated Congregation Agudas Israel synagogue for a traditional Shabbat prayer service on Friday, Oct. 21 led by award-winning Canadian composer Ari Posner and featuring Saskatoon soprano Jardena Gertler-Jaffe.
During the week there will also be a festival-opening dance party, a lecture titled “Ukrainian Jewish Artists Across Three Centuries” at the Ukrainian Museum of Canada, and a Jewish Film Night at the Broadway Theatre. An artist talk called “The Relationship between Music and Prayer” will close out the festival on Sunday.
All events except for Old Stock are free to attend, and Bernbaum said a successful festival could lead to more events in the future.
“It’s an invitation to the general public to partake in our culture,” he said.
The goal of the festival, Bernbaum said was to bring Saskatchewan residents together to learn about and enjoy parts of Jewish culture they may not know or understand.
“I hope people come away feeling they’ve experienced something — that could be thought about something or felt about something — they never had experienced before, that makes them desire to learn more about both our culture and other cultures,” he said.
Bernbaum also noted that antisemitism is still a problem in many parts of the world, including Canada. He said those issues “fuel” the organizers to create an event like the Saskatchewan Jewish Arts Festival and influence
“It sounds so cheesy, but we need more love in the world. There’s enough hate. So we look at pieces of art as a vehicle for peace, love, and understanding,” he said. “It’s not just antisemitism. There’s all sorts of examples of racism both in our province and across our country, and the antidote for that is connecting people,” he said.
“What greater motivation is there than more peace, love and understanding in the world?”
See the full schedule of events for the Saskatchewan Jewish Arts Festival at agudasisrael.org.
