Festival fun for all

Krakow was in party mood this weekend, celebrating the long Corpus Christie holiday, the midsummer Wianki festival and the launch of the 21st Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow. Its a triumvirate that heralds the beginning of a season of summer fun in the city, which will be dominated for the next ten days by more than 200 events in Kazimierz. As ever, this years Festival of Jewish Culture will include a mix of art, craft, history, performance, literary, music and academic features. They range from the provocative (see More Rabbis Than Jews? When Polish Rabbis discuss their work at a meeting organised by the JCC on July 1) to the curious (A workshop with American Arie Kaplan, called How to Lay Out a Comic Book, on June 27, and Bagles and Bongos: the Jewish Latin Wave, a lecture by Roger Bennett, David Katznelson and Josh Kuhn, on June 29). And the finale will be the massive free open air concert, Shalom on Szeroka, broadcast by Polish TV around the country.