Trondheim, also known as Norway’s historic first capital, is not only the home of the iconic Nidaros Cathedral, a Gothic structure, but also hosts a small but thriving Jewish community. In fact, last year the synagogue in Trondheim celebrated its 100th anniversary where Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and King Harald V provided keynote addresses.
For the past 15 years, Trondheim has also hosted an annual Jewish Cultural Festival which celebrates the arts, music, history, and contemporary tradition, and yes, Judaism itself.
“Jewish life, in my experience, is incredibly diverse. It can be both religious and secular, very traditional or modern, and everything in between. It’s usually centered around family, food, music, and literature,” says Festival Director Martin Farstad Borg.
Borg, who was handpicked by Rita Abrahamsen, the festival’s founder and director, has supported its programming since 2011. This year’s festival, the 16th of its kind, is his first as festival director. In the process, Borg has learned quite a bit about Jewish culture, he reveals: “I have discovered a very good sense of humor, free discourse, and no fear of arguments.”
Prior to his appointment, Borg spent the past 25 years straddling the worlds of music, media and business. Borg is also an entrepreneur and CEO/partner at the Mariken & Martin Media AS (MMM), a media company.
To many Norwegians, however, Jewish history can be a bit of an enigma. As of 2023, there are approximately 1300 Jews in Norway, according to the World Jewish Congress. During World War II, an estimated 900 Jews– or two-thirds of Norwegian Jewry – fled or were smuggled out of the country by the Norwegian resistance movement.
“In Norway, we often encounter Jewish history primarily through antisemitism and the Holocaust,” Borg says but points out that the festival does not primarily focus on the Holocaust and World War II. “The World War II legacy is an essential part of our history, and we all bear the responsibility to educate ourselves and know about it, but Norwegians often end up knowing surprisingly little about Jewish life itself.”
At the festival, which runs from August 29 through September 4 of this year, programming includes diverse sessions ranging from art and music, challah baking to discussions centering on identity and belonging. A religious perspective was also included by the rabbi of the Chabad-Lubavitch center in Oslo, Shaul Wilhelm.
“One of the things that we try to do at the festival is to make Jewish culture something that one can actually encounter and be a part of. Most of the programming takes place inside of the synagogue where one can hear the music, dance to it, and meet members of the local Jewish community.”
The festival director is also emphasizing that Jewish culture is not an historical object, it is something that is living and constantly evolving.
Borg, who is not Jewish, has also come to admire how Jewish familial life and tradition are often intertwined. “There is something there which is tied to strong traditions and the strong family bonds that perhaps the post-modern western lifestyle could learn from.”
The festival, which is funded and supported by the Norwegian government, is also well attended by the local community and has been covered by the national media.
Abrahamsen, the festival’s founder, received in April a Metal of Merit in gold from King Harald V, 89. The beloved king, who passed away on August 28, was a good friend of the Norwegian Jewish communities.
Since the global pandemic of 2020, however, Norwegian cultural festivals have experienced a decline in participation. “This is not unique to the Jewish festival, but it seems to be a little harder to sell concert tickets post pandemic.”
One of the things that we try to do at the festival is to make Jewish culture something that one can actually encounter and be a part of
Vision
Borg’s ambitious vision for the festival centers on a platform where people can get to know each other, eat together, dance together, and watch films together. “I see the festival as an opportunity to strengthen our democratic experience and for people to get closer together.” To draw down his point, the festival director points to the difference between reading about challah baking to actually baking one: “My ambition for the festival does not simply rely on people to come and learn about Jewish culture but I want them to encounter it and even participate in it. At the festival, a participant can learn challah baking from somebody who learned it from her grandmother and so on, which is a deeper experience. In a similar manner, one can read about Jewish music or even watch it on YouTube, but it is entirely different when one sits or stands three meters away from Israeli music performed live.”
At the same time, he also wants the festival to be intellectually serious, yet human and warm. “The festival shouldn’t become a simplified presentation of Jewish culture for a non-Jewish audience. It shouldn’t be curated down to some sort of soundbite-size simplified version. There should be complexity intact in the way we present it to the community around us,” which is why Borg wants to broaden its scope to draw on the diversity of Jewish life and culture.
Citing Sephardic and Persian Jewish cultures as examples, the festival director outlines a vision for future festivals that serve as “a broad and authentic spectrum where Jewish voices, artists, traditions and disagreements can be encountered and experienced by participants.” Ultimately, he asserts, “I would like to see the Jewish Festival of Culture becoming the most important Nordic meeting place for Jewish culture.” Borg is also envisioning expanding the scope of the festival to include cultural exchanges with the Sámi people, an indigenous people living in the northern part of the country. “From Trondheim towards the northern part of Norway, there is potential to expand the festival’s geographical reach,” Borg says while adding that the festival also needs to target a younger audience.
With this objective in mind, the festival has established a partnership with the local Cissi Klein high school, which is named after a young Jewish girl from Trondheim who was killed in the Holocaust at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Klein (1929-1943) was one of 773 Norwegian Jews killed in the Holocaust. In 1993, a memorial was unveiled outside the apartment where she lived with her family. In 2022, a local high school was named after the girl who had been arrested in her classroom by police in November 1942 and subsequently deported.
“This year was the first time that we brought about 180 of its students to the festival where they received a curated program especially made for them.”
Part of Borg’s ambitious vision for the festival also centers on expanding its scope to covering the history and culture of Hungarian, Moroccan, Lebanese, Ethiopian, and Italian Jewry, among others.
Finding surprises
Yet, over his decade-long experience with the festival, what surprised Borg the most was how rich Jewish culture is across the world. “I was surprised to learn how incredibly diverse Jewish culture is. It is a culture that can migrate– then integrate into a new society – without becoming its own ghetto inside of another culture yet maintain its core identity without losing it. This really fascinates me.”
Coming of age during the 1990s, when global travel became easier and affordable, Borg quickly discovered an interest in international cultures. “To me, it was fascinating to have the ability to travel across the globe and somehow keep one’s identity.” He quickly realized that “the more one looks into Jewish culture, the less one knows about it because there are communities around the world which have strong traditions, their own music and food. I was very surprised by how diverse Jewish culture is.”
Another surprise, Borg reveals, is the Jewish culture of debate. “There’s a free discourse where people within a religious society can disagree profoundly and still meet every Friday for lunch and still remain friendly and warm towards each other.” These lessons, he insists, “are not only good for the democratic process but “I find it to be a very good yardstick for all of us to strive towards.”
All images are credited to the Jewish Cultural Festival Trondheim. The cover image is of the Jewish synagogue in Trondheim.
