From the very beginning, the European Days of Jewish Culture have been of particular importance to the Jewish Cultural Center of Ljubljana and have been prepared with special care every year.
They started the program on 31 August and 1 September, when a street performance was staged, a mini spectacle, Jewish Life in Ljubljana, on the street in front of the center. Robert Waltl has prepared the script and the text together with the extremely prolific Slovenian writer and director Vinko Moederndorfer and put it together in 8 pictures. The play is directed by the Israeli director Yonatan Esterkin. The show is co-produced with Yiddish theatre from Tel Aviv – the cast included 3 actors from Israel, 4 from Slovenia with 5 musicians also from Slovenia.
Then, on 2 September, the Jewish Cultural Center of Ljubljana unveiled a memorial Stolperschwelle in front of the Ex-Sugar Factory- Cukrarna, for the 150 Jewish refugees, mostly from Croatia, who stayed there in 1941 until their deportation to Italy. On that day the new Synagogue was stablished on their premises; the program was led by Rabbi Alexander Grodensky and Cantor Nikola David. In the evening a Special Shabbat ceremony was organized.
From 5-21 September, the 8th House of Others Festival / Festival of Tolerance will be organized, which presents several films on topic of Holocaust, films from Israel and the diaspora, as well as several educational programs for young people, various lectures, theatre shows, a concert for adults. The program is very rich and this year it also includes several of our successful theatre performances as Seven second eternity, Birds of a kind.
In September the Jewish Cultural Center of Ljubljana will also print the first Slovenian-Hebrew-English Kabbalat Shabat, the first Jewish prayer book in the Slovenian language, of which they are extremely proud.
And to round it all off, this year they will also be opening the Holocaust in Ljubljana exhibition. So that this year, practically the whole of September will be dedicated to the European Days of Jewish Culture.