La source de vie : Nancy’s heritage

FRANCE 2 TELEVISION - 2001

A TV program by Josy Eisenberg, directed by Pascale Kenigsberg-Cahen, with the participation of the Consistoire Central and the Lucien Lévy Foundation. With Daniel Dahan (Rabbi of Nancy and its region) and Claude Jablon (President of the Jewish Cultural Association of Nancy)

Officially founded in 1754, Nancy’s community developed quickly, strongly accelerated by the arrival of Jews from the Alsace and Moselle regions, who fled the departments taken by Germany after 1871. During World War II, around 900 members of the community were killed by nazis.
In the 1960s, the arrival of about 60 families from different countries of North Africa revitalized the community. The reorganisation of the neighbourhood in the 1970s led to the creation of a new community center built by the architect Jean Prouvé.

This show hosted by Josy Eisenberg presents the cultural and religious life of the Jewish community of Nancy through the history of two important institutions: Nancy’s synagogue and the Jewish Cutural Association.

  • The synagogue of Nancy is a place with an intense Jewish life rhythmed by the singing of great hazzanim such as André Stora or Michel Heymann.
  • Originating from the Jewish immigration from Central Europe in the beginning of the XXth century and filled with the memory of the Holocaust’s survivors, the Association Culturelle Juive (ACJ) has a material and symbolic heritage of great value, in particular a French and Yiddish library with over 1500 books, several of them being very rare. The nostalgia and memory of the Yiddish language and songs is articulated through the creation of the choir Yid’n Blues. These two institutions join every year in April to commemorate the uprising of Warsaw’s ghetto.

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