SHALOM IN ALL THE WORLD
Years of preparation in the making, many dozens of emails later, excited conversations, meticulously planned festival events, and last but not least, eagerly awaited festival guests…
All this is already, one could say, the history of the second, unique, and premier Lithuanian International Jewish Cultural Festival, “Shalom In All The World”, in the port city of Klaipeda.
A beautiful story, a meaningful, moving and memorable recounting of our shared history. One in which we are the authors, we write together – all of you dear friends, colleagues, performers and supporters out there. It is you who help our humble and modest team of festival organizers to make it happen. For that we are eternally grateful.
A most sincere and enormous thank you to the main sponsor of “Shalom In All The World” Klaipeda Municipality. Without you the Festival would not have been such a wonderfully successful event. Also, let us acknowledge the great contribution made to the Festival by the following, and say a big thank you to: Department of National Minorities under the Government of the Republic of Lithuania; Department of Cultural Heritage under The Ministry of Culture (LT) ; Polish Institute in Vilnius; Institute of Jewish Culture in Sweden.
Heartfelt thanks to the Embassy of Israel in Vilnius, we felt the Embassy’s goodwill and support throughout the festival. This was greatly encouraging for all of us in our preparations to plan and stage the Festival’s programme of events.
Of course, we would like to reach out to and embrace the Klaipeda Jewish Community. So, a very special thank you to all of you and especially Mr Feliks Puzemskis.
To all the friends and comrades of the Festival, who were always there when they were most needed. We will be waiting to welcome you once again very, very much. We always appreciate and value your commitment and support. Huge thanks.
We look forward now to arranging everything for next year and making our annual event, “Shalom In All The World”, grow bigger and become even better. We want the International Jewish Festival to be an integral part and one of the centrepieces of the cultural life of Klaipeda.
Let’s look forward to this new beginning and an even brighter future.
Kindest regards,
Ruta Jakstoniene.
“Shalom In All The World” Festival Head and Chief Organizer
The international festival of Jewish culture „SHALOM IN ALL THE WORLD” which is the only one in Lithuania and runs every Autumn in Klaipeda, has been noticed outside Lithuania. For providing information about the festival we would like to thank the magazine “Jewish Renaissance”, UK, London. The magazine focuses mainly on the history, visual arts, architecture,music,cinema,theatre and literature in Europe and in Israel – as well as on Jewish identity and relations with other cultures and religions.
For the information about the festival we thank the magazine „Jewish Renaissance“ editor Rebecca Taylor, London, England and Richard Schofield,Director of the International Centre for Litvak Photography Kaunas, Lithuania.
This year’s International Jewish Culture Festival „SHALOM IN ALL THE WORLD“ was opened with an extraordinary exhibition of bookplates (exlibris) selected specifically for this festival. The exhibition “Footprints of Jewish Culture” exhibited bookplates by Jewish and Lithuanian artists, created in different periods. Most of the artworks consists of bookplates from the collection of Joseph Shapira.
The exhibition “FOOTPRINTS OF JEWISH CULTURE” was selected and presented by the Šiauliai county Povilas Višinskis Public Library Book Graphics Center and Gerard Bagdonavičius ex-libris fund.
We were and are happy to cooperate with P.Višinskis Public Library Book Graphics Center and Gerard Bagdonavičius ex-libris fund.
p.s.The text about the exhibition is only in Lithuanian.
The initiator of the idea and the coordinator of the events of the Jewish Culture Days „SHALOM IN ALL THE WORLD“ is Ruta Jakstoniene.