Shtetl Berlin Presents: Shabbes in Shtetl

This year the Shtetl Berlin team are moving Berlin’s beloved celebration of Yiddish culture and community to the spring, and between December 14 and 19 are instead organizing a ‘Nisht Keyn Festival’. The festival includes events all over Berlin, but this Shabbes evening at Panda is the highlight, a chance to join together and celebrate Yiddishkeit in all its historical and contemporary diversity. As strange and difficult as it can be for us to celebrate at a time when our family, friends and historical neighbors are under the darkness of war, we take our inspiration from the dear Mordechai Gebirtitg, ‘People let’s be joyous, for surely before long the war will be over and THEY will find their end!’

So we present an evening of performances, poetry, jamming, and community singing in celebration of and solidarity with the rich and unique Ukrainian Jewish connection.

We will start by lighting the Shabbes candles, singing some traditional secular and religious Shabbes songs and songs of peace, and then have performances by Maria Viksnina, the band Lebedik, and Mitya Gerasimov, and then sing dance and jam until late. See below for more info and to reserve tickets go to https://panda-platforma.berlin and for info about the booking whole ‘Nisht Keyn Festival’ program go to https://www.shtetlberlin.com

TICKETS:

VVK (online) 5€ / doors 10€

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About the artists:

Maria Viksnina

Maria Viksnina is an award winning singer and performer. She plays baroque guitar, theorbo, renaissance lute, hurdy-gurdy and Torban, an ancestor of the more well-known Ukrainain Bandura.

Her father is a well known luthier, one of the only contemporary Torban builders, and Maria is one of the only people in the world currently performing on this special instrument, who’s use in Ukraine dates back to at least the 16th century. She was born in Zaporizhzhia received her Bachelors degree in Kyiv and currently studies early music at the Universität der Künste Berlin.

Lebedik

A Berlin based band featuring Sasha Lurje (LV), Craig Judelman (USA) and Sanne Möricke (NL) sings the songs and stories of centuries of Yiddish migrations, heartbreaks and celebrations. looking to Yiddish art and heritage for a context to the challenges big and small faced by so in our world today, Lebedik presents Yiddish folk songs, as well as art and theater songs in their own traditional yet personal way.

Mitya Gerasimov

World renowned klezmer Clarinetist and singer Mitya Gerasimov has for many years been one of the leading forces in playing and researching Ukrainian klezmer music. Besides his devotion to the all time greats like Brandwein and Tarras, he has poured through obscure recordings and connected with living musicians in villages and towns around Ukraine, finding klezmer tunes that live on in the local music, which is deeply intertwined with that of with the museum that developed in Jewish communities there. He has also been collecting nigunim from the rich Hasidic tradition that contain Ukrainian lyrics and will share some of his special repertoire with our Berlin community.