Every so often we like to highlight crowd-funding efforts in aid of Jewish heritage (and cultural) initiatives.
The Balagan Cafe mini summer festival series, held in the garden of the magnificent, Moorish-style synagogue in Florence, Italy, has just launched a crowd-funding effort — which it says is necessary for it to survive and become self-sustaining.
Balagan Cafe, begun five years ago, may be unique among Jewish cultural and heritage festivals: a weekly Thursday night “open house” mini-festival where the public is invited to join members of the Jewish community for concerts, talks, discussions, and other presentations, as well as to peruse Jewish books, taste kosher food, and visit the synagogue and Jewish museum.
This summer’s season is set to begin June 22, and the Jewish community and Balagan organizers are hoping to raise €5000 in order to make the Cafe self-sustaining. Organizers and staff work on a volunteer basis, but funds are needed for guest artists, supplies, workers and other infrastructure.
As JHE Coordinator Ruth Ellen Gruber wrote in The Forward after the first edition, each “cafe” includes:
music, lectures, discussions, performances and other events. There were free guided tours of the synagogue and stands selling books, CDs, Judaica and Balagan Café T-shirts depicting a full moon over the synagogue dome. Performers and featured participants included nationally known figures such as the rock singer Raiz, the Tzadik label klezmer jazz clarinetist Gabriele Coen, and the architect Massimiliano Fuksas, who designed, among other things, the Peres Peace House in Israel.
Meanwhile, food stands sold kosher meals and kosher wine to crowds eager to sample couscous, baked eggplant, beans with cumin and harissa, spicy chickpeas, Roman-style sweet and sour zucchini and other specialties. One evening saw a “competition” between Sephardic and Ashkenazic cooking; another featured a lesson in challah-making.
See a video about Balagan Cafe (in Italian, but lots of images)
https://youtu.be/embHLtwwQMI
Go to the crowd-funding web page for Balagan Cafe
Read the full article in The Forward