Last year at this time, I was in the midst of planning a trip to Israel and Germany when I received the Yidbits "Yiddish Activities happening this Summer" newsletter.   I envisioned my trip as a pilgrimage in the wake of my mother's death, revisiting places I had been with her and meeting with people who had known her. The Germany portion of the trip had two such scheduling commitments, separated by four days.  The question was what to do with that time, on my own, in an emotionally significant and often painful country where I do not speak the language?  Yidbits provided the answer.

In scanning the many links to the Yiddish Summer activities provided in Yidbits, I noticed the Yiddish Summer Weimar link.  A Yiddish Music Festival in Weimar, Germany?  Weimar, a town in the former East Germany, a town noted for its intact historical city center and its association with philosophers Goethe and Schiller, a town spitting distance from Buchenwald.  Yes, the Yiddish Summer Weimar festival could be the bridging activity I sought for those four days. 

The Yiddish Summer Music festival brings together Music and Dance teachers from Europe, the US, and Israel with students from over 30 countries to teach Klezmer music, dancing, and Yiddish culture and language.  The festival lasts four weeks, each week featuring a different class.  Since formal classes require a one-week time commitment, I did not take one.  However, in addition to classes, the festival program includes some public concerts and programs that I did attend. 

See footage from Yiddish Summer Weimar on their YouTube channel

Before coming to Weimar I had visited with my mother's friend Gabriele.  Of course she knew of the Yiddish Summer Weimar Festival.  She said that it is very popular in Germany.  Since I have a commitment to myself to visit one concentration camp each time I am in Germany, Gabriele recommended that I see Buchenwald first, so that I might find some healing in the music festival. 

I arrived in Weimar on Friday afternoon.  After checking into my hotel, I took the bus to Buchenwald.  Concentration camps are and ought to be devastating places.  This being my second time in Germany, this was the second concentration camp I had visited - Flossenburg was the first.   So this time, I steeled myself for the experience.  Buchenwald is much larger and better known than Flossenburg and gets many more visitors.  Both are immensely sad, bleak places that pull the heart out of your chest.  Looking at the six ovens in the crematory at Buchenwald, I thought of the verse from the Martyrology recited on Yom Kippur  - How the wicked have devoured us. 

The Yiddish Summer Music festival is distinctly a cultural, not a religious event.  So to recognize the role of Shabbes in Jewish culture without actually observing it is a fine line to walk.  Each Friday night the festival holds a  "Song from the Heart" gathering which resembles a traditional Shabbes Tish (table).  Members of the audience, as well as the teaching staff of the festival, tell stories or lead songs.  An opera singer from Israel, a teacher in vocal music at the festival, sang the most beautiful Yedid Nefesh I had ever heard.  It was the only piece of liturgy presented that evening.  I told my story of why I was in Germany that summer and the people I was meeting while there.   And a Jewish woman from Ireland told the story of how her father had quoted a poem by Goethe to an SS officer, which helped him to survive Mauthausen concentration camp.   Over one hundred people attended the Friday night gathering.  While many were festival participants, some were simply tourists in Weimar.  Among these was a group of about 15 European teens that I had seen earlier at Buchenwald.

Many people associated with the festival spoke with me that night after I had told my story.

The following evening, I attended a Festival Jam Session at an ice cream parlor on the Old Town Square, where festival musicians played and anyone who wanted to danced.  I've attached some photos of the music and dancing at the Jam Session to this essay. Again, many people spoke with me about the story I had told the night before and about how I felt about being in Germany.   I spent a few minutes with Alan Bern, the director of the Festival.  Alan is originally from New York and makes his home in Berlin.  He told me that in four weeks, over 250 students from over 30 countries came to Weimar to learn Klezmer Music, Dancing, and Yiddish Language and Culture.

In addition to the Festival, I toured the homes of Goethe and Schiller and saw the castle of the Duke who ruled Weimar early in the 19^th century.  I also heard an organ concert in a church where Bach once played.

During my stay in Weimar, I found pleasant and meaningful company among the other participants in the Festival.  It met a personal need for me.  The simple existence of the Yiddish Summer Weimar Festival and the propagation of Yiddish Music and Culture that it represents, is affirming.  And I owe this particular experience to one influential Yidbit.