In Weimar, Germany, where the streets once echoed with the notes of Bach, Liszt and Goethe, another European musical tradition has been reverberating for more than a quarter-century: Yiddish. The annual Yiddish Summer Weimar festival brings hundreds of musicians, students and scholars to the former Nazi city for workshops, concerts and performances celebrating the language, music and culture of Ashkenazi Jews that the Nazis sought to destroy.

But since 1998, the program has grown and influenced an interest in Yiddish language and culture from a wide swath of society — Jew and gentile, young and old, religious and secular. What began as a weekend workshop with a handful of participants has become the largest festival of its kind in Europe, lasting more than a month, and attended by more than 10,000 people in total. This summer’s program ran from July 11 through August 15.

Photo by Shendl Copitman