Join is in Massolit Books & Cafe where Adam Schorin and Michael Rubenfeld will tell more about Lucky Jew – the most controversial, yet the most popular project of FestivALT. The term “Lucky Jews” refers to figurines and small paintings of Jews with gold coins that are sometimes sold in Poland as good luck charms.
FestivALT is a Jewish arts collective that produces an annual program of critically minded art and activism in Kraków, Poland.
One of its ongoing projects, Lucky Jew, takes a common object of Polish folk culture and turns it on its head. The term “Lucky Jews” refers to figurines and small paintings of Jews with gold coins that are sometimes sold in Poland as good luck charms. While some people also see them as remembrances of Poland’s pre-war Jewish communities, for many people they are simply anti-Semitic caricatures. Lucky Jew engages with the cultural complications of these objects by bringing a Lucky Jew to life in the public spaces of the city. The performance, at once sincere and satirical, is our most well-known and most controversial piece and is guaranteed to provoke meaningful conversation and debate.
