The role of amateur theatre King David in the preservation of Jewish culture and tradition

Abstract

This work focuses on the role of the amateur theatre King David, founded in 1986 with the Jewish community of Belgrade, in the preservation of Jewish cultural heritage and establishing of intercultural dialogue primarily on the microlevel of a neighbourhood, but also within a wider community framework.1 Over the last thirty yeras the theatre has been devotedly run by one person, Mirijam Salom, who also writes play scipts, makes song arrangements and directs plays. Members of the theatre group are mostly primary and secondary school children and university students. The fact that most of them are not actually of Jewish but of Serbian descent is a sort of a phenomenon. In this way, the theatre has an educational role in presenting Jewish culture primarily to the young people who actively participate in plays and consequently to their family members and the Belgrade audience. One of the aims of this research is to give some answers to questions concerning the role of the theatre in the lives of the young people who take part in it as well as the reception of the plays with the audience. [Project of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Grant no. 177027: Multiethnicity, multiculturalism, migrations contemporary processes]

Keywords

• amateur theatre King David
• Jews
• Jewish community of Belgrade
• cultural heritage
• intercultural dialogue