25 Years of the Ashkenaz Festival

The Ashkenaz Foundation celebrates global Jewish music, arts and culture that embraces the past, present and future. While rooted in the spirit and forms of the Yiddish culture revival, Ashkenaz seeks to spotlight a broad range of multi-ethnic Jewish identities and artistic/cultural traditions. Emphasizing cross-cultural creativity across a wide spectrum of Jewish and non-Jewish traditions, Ashkenaz spotlights world-class artists and also nurtures emerging artists. Through its biennial Ashkenaz Festival and a robust slate of year-round programs across the GTA, Ashkenaz seeks to reach the largest possible audiences, establishing appreciation and demand for high-quality Jewish arts and culture in the mainstream consciousness, and providing its core Jewish audience with a source of pride, inspiration and community cohesion.

The launch of the Ashkenaz Festival in July 1995 represented the coming-of-age of a worldwide revival of klezmer music, Yiddish language and eastern European-based Jewish culture, that had been ongoing since the mid-1970s. The movement had touched down in Toronto in the late 1980s, finding particularly vivid expression in the work of the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, whose bandleader David Buchbinder would ultimately provide the spark and vision that led to the creation of the Ashkenaz Festival.

Click here to view the online exhibition!

The MNjcc Virtual Gallery is a digital home for creativity that educates, entertains and expresses shared experiences of humanity. If you have questions or would like to purchase artwork, please contact Ian Mcnulty, Coordinator of Adult Art and Culture at ianm@mnjcc.org.