About us

Jewish Week Dresden is a festival for contemporary Jewish art and culture in all its many voices. Every autumn, concerts, theatre, dance, performance, literature, film and discussion bring international artistic perspectives to Dresden and open up spaces for encounter, exchange and debate. Jewish life is presented not only through the lens of history, but as a vibrant, diverse and sometimes contradictory present.

The festival’s origins date back to 1996. Under the leadership of Detlef Hutschenreuter and emerging from the circle around Rocktheater Dresden e. V., the “Dresden Yiddish Music and Theatre Week” was founded as a platform that was almost unique in Germany at the time: a platform for Yiddish-speaking artists and writers, and for the music, theatre and literature of the rich Eastern European Jewish culture that existed before the Shoah.

Over the years, the festival grew artistically, thematically and geographically. Further perspectives, forms of expression and stories were added. The Yiddish Music and Theatre Week first became “Encounters with Jewish Life” and, since 2012, the festival has been called “Jewish Week Dresden”. Yiddish culture nevertheless remains an important point of reference.

Today, Jewish Week Dresden brings together different biographies, generations and artistic languages. Memory connects with the present, tradition with change, and local experience with international perspectives. The festival invites people to listen, ask questions, enter into conversation and celebrate together – with curiosity, openness and mutual respect.

Jewish Week is organised by Jüdische Musik- und Theaterwoche Dresden e. V. Together with the Societaetstheater Dresden as its cooperation partner and festival venue, numerous funding bodies and committed people from Dresden, the association creates the festival anew each year. A jury selects the artistic contributions from the applications received and the curators’ proposals.

The association’s current articles of association can be viewed here.