Welcome to a series of meetings dedicated to Klezmer music!

We will explore the fantastic and rich repertoire of Eastern-European and American Jewish instrumental folk music: its joyful and melancholic melodies, how to interpret and embellish them with traditional ornamentations, discovering the structure of the melodies and their modes, as well as how to accompany the various dance forms with their diverse and characteristic rhythmical patterns.

The course is taught by ear. Participants must have intermediate knowledge of their instruments (no beginners), meaning knowing the names of notes and corresponding positions on their instruments. Music scores are made accessible at the end of the lessons, but we will not be reading from them in class. Participants are expected to learn the melodies by heart to proceed with learning how to embellish and accompany them.

Participants will have access to EDU Soundtrap, an online platform for recording multi-track, to be used as a tool for practising at home and creating their own arrangements, and will be introduced to MuseScore, an open-source and free music notation software, to be used as a tool for analysis of the tunes learned in the class. The course combines in-person and online meetings and will conclude with a concert.

This course is given in collaboration with Svenska Klezmerföreningen.

 

Course structure

The teaching takes place partly through physical meetings at the school’s premises and partly through digital meetings remotely. It is not possible to only participate in the course remotely.

  • 12 meet-ups at the school on Thursday evenings. Some meet-ups online via Zoom.
  • 2 meet-ups at the school daytime on Sundays.
  • A concluding concert (date and time to be set during the course).

More information will be sent in the admission letter, if you are accepted to the course.

Group division

Participants are divided into groups based on their instrument skills and experience of learning to play by ear without sheet music. Depending on the number of groups and applicants, each group meets for between 1-2 hours.

Participants are expected to learn the melodies by heart, and practice at home, to proceed with learning how to embellish and accompany them.

Prior knowledge 

The course is given in English.

The course welcomes new as well as previous participants, who have passed the beginner level on their instrument by a good margin. The course is not suitable for guitar players due to its focus on melodies and ornaments. Participants bring their own instruments.

To apply for this course, basic computer skills and knowledge of using the digital platform Zoom are required. The school offers Zoom manuals and a training opportunity before the course starts.

Course material

Course material is included in the cost for this course.

Participants bring their own instruments. 

About the teacher

Valeria Conte is a multi-talented Italian clarinettist who has studied and performed klezmer music since 2006 (www.valeriaclarinetta.com), exploring the music’s connection to Jewish culture and society. She has participated in various seminars and workshops on klezmer music and Yiddish song & culture in and outside Europe. Valeria holds a BA in classical clarinet and an MA in global music. She has performed internationally in various multicultural environments and world music styles. She currently performs with her band, Valeria’s Klezmer Chariot, and is the leader and organiser of the OAKJS – Klezmer Sessions.

Photo: Aaro Keipi.

Frequently Asked Questions

Most of us find reading the Torah, the five books of Moses, an exceptionally challenging task. We are most often reading a translation, large portions of it seem to deal with topics that are of little relevance to a modern reader, and perhaps most challenging of all, we come to it with so many preconceptions that we cannot even begin to really listen to it.

In this course, we will systematically un-learn the ways in which we habitually read text, allowing us to encounter the Torah on its own terms. We will learn specific tools for reading and unpacking the multilayered text of the Torah with a view to discovering our own insights into it.

 

Prior knowledge

The course is given in English.

No prior knowledge about the subject is needed. 

Course material

Course material is included in the cost for this course.

About the teacher

Eiran Davies is a rabbi with roots in London, England. He has studied at Montefiori endowment in London, Midrash sepharadi in Jerusalem and Yeshivat hamivtar in Efrat. He is also an artist, beekeeper and trained goldsmith. 

Photo: Paideia folkhögskola.

Frequently Asked Questions

This course is a continuation of the previous Fashion and Identity course, which explored fashion from classic time until the 19th century. In this follow-up, we turn our focus to the 20th and 21st centuries, examining how fashion reflected—and influenced—social, political, and cultural change.

Each lesson explores one decade, from the 1900s through the 2000s, and breaks down the values, aesthetics, and key events of the time. We’ll look at how fashion echoed everything from wars and revolutions to feminism, queerness, and pop culture. Art, music, film, and politics will help us understand the broader visual world of each era.

In the final sessions, we’ll step into the 21st century and the future, asking how technology, sustainability, identity politics, and artifical intelligence are reshaping the way we dress and design. What does the future of fashion look like? And who will define it?

From flappers to punks, power suits to digital couture—this course gives participants the tools to critically explore fashion as a cultural language, decade by decade and into the future.

 

Course structure

Visual presentation is the main method used in the course. Participants are asked to prepare a short presentation at the end of the course as a final task.

Prior knowledge

The course is given in English.

No prior knowledge about the subject is needed. This course is open to anyone interested in fashion, art, or cultural history. Suitable both for returning as well as new participants.

Course material

Course material is included in the cost for this course.

About the teacher

Roei Derhi is a designer and lecturer specializing in the intersection of fashion, art, and cultural history. He has worked with institutions across Europe and the Middle East, and his teaching focuses on how visual culture creates meaning, identity, and power structures. His recent research focuses on antisemitism and the politics of representation in visual media.

Photo: AI-generated picture by Roei Derhi, fashion show in the 21st century.

Frequently Asked Questions

This page is not available in English as this course is given in Swedish.

Photo: Joel Wolfson of Mikaela Rhodin and Jean Hessel in Stockholms Jiddisch Teateramator’ns “Der Inspektor” (2020).

This page is not available in English as this course is given in Swedish.

Photo: Canva.

This page is not available in English as this course is given in Swedish.

Photo: Canva.

This page is not available in English as this course is given in Swedish.

Photo: Canva AI.

Each session, we look at that week’s Torah reading, or Parsha, for insight into our contemporary lives, our relationships and our inner worlds. The texts and commentaries guide us in creating and exploring an expressive, creative vocabulary of symbols and marks on paper, using various art materials and techniques of art therapy. 

The course is given in collaboration with the Jewish Community in Stockholm.

 

Course structure

The methods used in the course are lectures, discussions and artmaking. 

Prior knowledge

The course is given in English.

No artistic or textual experience is needed, the course is also suitable to those with previous knowledge of the weekly Torah reading, Parsha.

Course material

Course material is included in the cost for this course.

About the teacher

Esther Amster moved to Stockholm as a Rabbanit in the Jewish Community and lives here with her husband, Rabbi Mattias Amster, and their children. Esther received her Masters degree in Art Therapy from the School of Visual Arts in NYC, and has studied Jewish texts, thought and history at schools in the US and Israel, receiving her BA from Touro College.

She has taught studio art for over ten years, led art therapy groups with a focus on identity and empowerment, and taught Jewish texts with special attention to symbolism in Jewish thought and practice. 

Photo: Canva/Paideia.

Frequently Asked Questions

Under what circumstances was Israel born and what is it today – a dream come true out of the ashes of the Holocaust or an attempt at creating an utopia on its way to become another Middle-Eastern failed state? When did it stop being a social-democratic welfare state and become a neo-liberal market economy? And is there any chance for peace with its neighbors?

The course will take us on a journey through the historic events, the big questions, ideologies and vital issues, the conflicts, the violence and the wars, the leaders, the prophets and political parties and the people who shaped 75 years of Israeli history. 

 

Prior knowledge

The course is given in English.

No prior knowledge about the subject is needed.

Course material

Course material is included in the cost for this course.

About the teacher

Born and raised in Israel and currently living in Stockholm, David Stavrou is a journalist, a guide and a teacher. As a journalist he writes for Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz and for other publications about Sweden, Scandinavia and Europe and about issues related to democracy, human rights and genocide worldwide. His book, “An Israeli Cross”, which he co-authored with his brother, Daniel Stavrou, was published in 2014 by Israeli publisher Indibook. His second book about the Israeli diaspora in Europe, “Leaving Zion”, was published in 2020 by Israeli publisher Pardes. He is married and a father of four boys.

Photo: Haifa, Canva.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yizkor Books have been published since 1943 to commemorate entire Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust. They have been published mainly in Israel, in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English. There have also been publications in other languages, such as Hungarian and German. The books were published by individuals, various organizations, and even school children, reaching peak numbers in the 1960s and 70s.

The books include a variety of texts, stories, historical overviews, poems, maps, drawings, photographs, and necrologies (lists of Holocaust victims) of the people and the institutions that made up the now-gone Jewish community. The books were created based on the idea that every person in the community was worth remembering, including even people from the lowest social strata, from the poorest to the richest. Yizkor books are an essential source of knowledge about Jewish life in Eastern Europe in the generation before the Holocaust, as well as during the Holocaust itself. In many cases, the books are the only source we have on the life and death of individuals, who would otherwise be lost to oblivion.

In this course, we will examine Yizkor books in person, take a look at their history and the people who published them, as well as discuss the role the books filled in Jewish commemoration of the Holocaust and its victims in the wake of the complete destruction of entire Jewries, and how they approached some areas of society, such as people with disabilities and Jewish-Gentile relations. We will also talk about how valuable books have been used as an essential source of information about Jewish victims of the Holocaust, as well as how we can use the books today to find information about family, ancestors and roots.

The New York Public Library has a substantial collection of Yizkor books available digitally online at Yizkor Book Collection – NYPL Digital Collections. 

 

Course structure

The methods used are lectures, discussions and examining actual Yizkor books in class. 

Prior knowledge

The course is given in English.

No prior knowledge about the subject is needed.

Course material

Course material is included in the cost for this course. 

About the teacher

Lior Becker, PhD, is a modern historian, teacher, and interdisciplinary scholar. His areas of expertise are Holocaust history, historiography and memory, 19th and 20th-century intellectual history, genocide studies, and Eastern-European Jewish history and culture. He has long experience teaching teens and adults in both Sweden and Israel. 

Photo: Iosif Perlman and his sisters and brothers, from Centropa.