Jewish culture now refashioned

Scrawled on a building on Rome’s Via Cavour this spring was a Star of David. Written over it was the word raus -- “out” in German. This anti-Semitic graffito reportedly can be seen throughout the Italian capital, as well as in many other European cities.

Yet just weeks ago, 15,000 Poles could be found dancing to the wildly infectious music of an onstage klezmer band at the 16th annual Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, a city with only 200 Jews.

In fact, such festivals are occurring all over Europe. More than 25 of them sprouted last year alone in Belgium, Sweden, Italy and Poland -- countries whose Jewish populations are tiny fractions.

Now this flowering of Jewish culture amid a new surge of anti-Semitism is going on display in “Zeitgeist,” an international festival offering performances from today through Aug. 28 at the Skirball Cultural Center and set to restart in late January. It will feature Jewish-oriented contemporary music, dance, film and performance art -- all imported from Europe.

The U.S., where religious tolerance is cherished, doesn’t have anything to match this energetic outburst.

“Jews in the United States are viewed as ‘white,’ ” says Skirball program director Jordan Peimer, who curated “Zeitgeist” with funds largely bequeathed by the late Harry and Belle Krupnick of Los Angeles. “They seldom had to be self-protective about their traditions. Instead, there was a natural impulse to assimilate into the American arts mainstream.”

Peimer acknowledges that in the pre-civil rights period, signs saying “No dogs, no Jews” were familiar to Americans, along with hotels that were restricted and professional schools that had admissions quotas. “But even so, Europeans could never hope to enjoy the kind of open door that American Jews had otherwise.” After the Holocaust, he adds, not only were Jewish populations in Europe all but wiped out, but “things Jewish” were missing.

Ruth Gruber, the author of “Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe” (UC Press), believes the coexistence of anti-Semitism and popular interest in Jewish culture can be explained partly because many Europeans regard Jews the same way some on this side of the Atlantic regard Native Americans.

“Everything from guilt to fascination to New Age mysticism to commercial exploitation is involved,” Gruber says. “Even some of the kitsch is similar. Rows of mass-produced Indian dolls in souvenir shops in Niagara Falls, say, are remindful of mass-produced, carved wooden Jews in souvenir stalls in Krakow.

“But anti-Semitism is forever, and these festival celebrations come in reaction to it.”

Whatever the impetus, no one can deny the rousing and robust refashioning of Jewish culture by European artists. Its face, as represented in the Skirball’s offerings, looks altogether current -- including everything from the disc jockey scene in London to theater projects out of Uzbekistan to world music that blends boogie, Cuban rumba, chansons and North African chaabi, with a little Sephardic and Ashkenazic influences for good measure. There’s also a British Arab-Jewish collective that mingles dub, funk and drum-and-bass and not a small amount of klezmer fusion.

What’s more, many of these artists from Western and Eastern Europe -- some of them non-Jews -- have grown up creatively in an atmosphere of post-Communist freedom. For most of them, the spirit of the times is the spirit of fusion.

Pianist Maurice El Medioni, appearing at the festival Aug. 20, has a dual identity from his Algerian beginnings. “Jews and Arabs share the same musical story,” says the headliner, 74, who now lives in Marseille, France, and appears at such celebrated venues as the Barbican in London. Both peoples, along with the Moors, “were kicked out of Spain in 1492, and in our baggage was the same music,” he says.

As a teenager, El Medioni was living in the Mediterranean port city of Oran, Algeria, when U.S. troops landed in 1942. The GIs brought him Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Xavier Cugat, whom he lovingly added to his musical polyglot. A prototype of the dispossessed Jew, he waxes philosophical when recounting being called names and driven into exile from Algeria in 1962.

“It’s not quite like choosing to leave London for Australia in search of a better life,” he says.

Max Reinhardt, on the other hand, was born after the World War II generation who endured persecution and displacement. Billed as “the undisputed maitre d’ of discerning dance floors du monde,” the London DJ, music director, composer and writer finds all his influences right at his front door, many of them deposited by the likes of El Medioni. “But until the late 1980s,” says Reinhardt, who will appear Aug. 21, “I kept my musical roots to myself. The idea of a club night featuring Jewish music would have been a nightmare, not a dream.”

Those roots consisted of cantorial prayers, Israeli songs, Yiddish pastiches, Borscht Belt material from singers such as Mickey Katz, and music played at weddings and bar mitzvahs.

“Then the jazz-klezmer fusionistas entered the picture,” he says, “and, especially in the U.K., there was a trend toward taking identifiably Jewish music out of the community context and into clubs and concert halls. These new hybrids ended up putting everyone light years ahead of the divisive political situation in the Middle East or even in Europe and the U.S.”

What is identity?

For Danny Scheinmann, who now heads the London-based A&BC; Theatre, fusion takes the form of a 75-minute show, “The Tale That Wags the Dog.” It joins a parable from the Talmud to excerpts from the Mahabarata, Plato’s Symposium and “The Arabian Nights.” The piece, he says, grew out of the transformative experiences he had with a traditional storytelling troupe.

“We arrived in Soviet Russia just after Gorbachev took power. He had just relaxed the Communist ban on religion. The people we performed for were Jews, but in name only, since they’d been forbidden to practice since 1917 and had been persecuted and murdered by the thousands for being Jews.

“A newly opened synagogue drew a few old men. They went there on Saturdays and just sat quietly for an hour or so, not knowing what else to do. They knew they were Jews because the word was stamped in their passports. They heard that we, Besht Tellers, were a Jewish theater company, and so attended our performances. As we enacted the folk tales, they were discovering themselves for the first time. It was extraordinary.”

Soon after, Scheinmann says, “my thirst for stories led me to other cultures and a path of cross-referencing them.” Now, his highly choreographed “Tale,” which plays at the Skirball on Saturday and Sunday, is scheduled to open this fall in London’s West End.

Agnieszka Holland, whose film “The Dybbuk” will screen Aug. 26, is best known for her Oscar-nominated 1991 picture, “Europa, Europa,” about a teenage boy who survived World War II by passing as an Aryan.

“Europa, Europa,” Holland says, was “all about Jewish identity -- a thing that is both fragile and strong. One little step saved him from a bad fate. One little piece of skin did not allow him to forget who he was.”

The director says she made “The Dybbuk,” based on the classic Yiddish play about supernatural possession, for Polish TV “because, as a Pole, I wanted my people to know about Jewish mysticism as interpreted by a Jew.”

Her mother, a non-Jew who at 16 helped save Jews during the German occupation, was heroic, Holland says. “But me, I’m like the milk, half and half. Being that way helps me understand both sides deeply and inspires the greatest tolerance.” Scheinmann too -- who says, “I like being Jewish, I was a bar mitzvah” -- puts great stock in the spirit of inclusion.

What is identity today? Scheinmann tells the well-known Hindu story of a town where people had never seen an elephant. One dark, moonless night they gathered in a tavern. Someone ran in saying there was an elephant outside, whereupon they all rushed out to grope and feel the thing. “It’s a tree trunk, “ said one. “It’s a snake,” said another. But no one lied. All just had different impressions of this strange creature.

“I’m trying to find it myself,” Scheinmann says. “And I’d like to believe I’m humble enough to acknowledge cultures besides my own.”

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Spirits of the times

The opening phase of “Zeitgeist: The Harry and Belle Krupnick International Jewish Arts Festival” runs from today through Aug. 28 at the Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., (310) 440-4500. Some highlights:

Today, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.

The musical ensembles Klezperanto! (United States) and the Cracow Klezmer Band (Poland), plus Rosenzweig Dance (Denmark)

Tuesday, 8 p.m.

The film “Jewish Luck” (Poland) accompanied by the Cracow Klezmer Band

Wednesday, 8 p.m.

Rozenzweig Dance (Denmark)

Thursday, 7:30 p.m.

The musical ensemble Zohar (Britain)

Aug. 20, 8 p.m.

Musician Maurice El Medioni (Algeria and France)

Aug. 21, 7:30 p.m.

The musical presentation Dis/Orient (Britain, France, Algeria)

10 p.m. Club Night with DJ Max Reinhardt (Britain)

Aug. 28, 7:30 p.m.

The musical ensemble Les Yeux Noirs (France)