The Great Buffalo Jewbilee!, a brand new Summer Festival for the whole family, will make its debut Sunday, August 19 on historic Delaware Avenue. It’s the first festival of its kind for Western New York and takes place at the Jewish Community Center and Temple Beth Zion downtown between Barker and Summer Streets.  With FREE entrance all day from 11:30 am until 6:00 pm, thousands of Buffalonians of all faiths will gather to celebrate the vibrancy of Jewish Buffalo through music, all sorts of delicious Jewish food from babkas and bagels to hot dogs and pickles-on-a-stick, entertainment, shopping and family fun. 

Here are the Highlights:

FOOD

• Food Vendors: All items $5 or less
• All food is kosher and under the supervision of the BVK

Vendors:

• A Tapp Creation for: Thumb print cookies, Nish Nosh salad, slider, Swoodle Thai salad
• Sabra Grill: This Rochester Vendor will offer Israeli desserts 
• Luscious by Lori: decadent brownies
• Trader Joe’s soy vanilla and soy cherry chocolate ice cream
• Nissan’s Kosher Deli potato kugel, chopped liver, cold-cut sandwiches, halva
• The Rogue Cellar at the JCC Myers Café:   Babka, cookies
• Spoth’s Farm: Corn-on-the-cob
• BK Gourmet: Challah and fancy dips, rugelach, specialty desserts
• Jewish Discovery Center: Bagels, knishes, pickles-on-a-stick, latkes, potato salad
• Justin’s No Frills hot dogs & drinks
• Beer & Wine Tent Beer from Shmaltz Brewery and wine from Tzafona Cellars will be available to adults in the beer & wine tent all day from 11:30 am to 6:00 pm

• COOKING DEMOS
• 1:00 PM Wegman’s (logo) Chef Joe Ahmed will be doing a demonstration of Peruvian chicken with stone fruit and salad on the Main Stage
• 3:30 PM Kosher Cookbook Author Amy Stopnicki is most recently the winner of the 2016 Gourmand Culinary Award for her book Kosher Taste.  She will be demonstrating easy, delicious dishes direct from Toronto.
• 4:30 PM Cooking Vegan with Annie Krause--Owner and head chef at The Rogue Cellar at the Myers Family Tel Aviv Café, will be showing us how to make mini vegan strawberry shortcakes on the Main Stage

Music 

Rick Recht

Rick Recht is one of the most celebrated Jewish artists of our time playing family concerts, Shabbat Alive! services, religious school concerts, teen concerts, camp concerts, and tot concerts throughout the United States and abroad. Recht is the national celebrity music spokesman for PJ Library.  Rick has 10 top selling Jewish albums, including his latest hit album, Halleluyah. His two solo children's CDs, Free to Be the Jew in Me and Look at Me, have been nationally distributed to tens of thousands of Jewish preschool-age children through PJ Library.   

2:00 PM concert on the Main Stage

West of Odessa

For the past fifteen years, the Buffalo, New York-based klezmer band West of Odessa, has been entertaining audiences with the soul-searing melodies from the former Soviet Union (Ukraine, Moldavia), the Carpathian Mountains of Eastern Europe, and the repertoire of the late Jewish klezmer clarinetist German Goldenshteyn. Musicians Roberta Levine and Alan Sisselman will perform on the Main Stage at 11:30 am and 1:30 pm.

Sing Shalom Pop-up Sing-out & Flash Mob

Cantor Arlene Frank of Congregation Shir Shalom has organized Sing Shalom pop-up Sing-out & Flash Mob, a casual, spur-of-the –moment choir.  Catch them at 12:30 pm on the Main Stage 

Cantors’ Kumzitz

This is a collection of Cantors from all over WNY coming together in a chorale, organized by Cantor Penny Myers.  Catch them on the Main Stage at 4:00 pm, and sing along!

Y-Studs

An a capella singing group from Yeshiva University in New York City.  They will perform at the opening ceremony at 12:00 noon

Kid Stuff  11:30 am- 6 pm @ Jewbilee

• Bounce Houses
• Face Painting
• Arts & Crafts
• A Fabulous FREE concert (2:00 PM) by PJ Library Musician Rick Recht
• PJ Library Radio pre-concert Dance Party (1:30 PM)
• Story Time with Grant Golden (2:30 & 4:30 pm)
• Your Jewish Community Play Date by Kadimah Academy
• Matzoh Factory (11:30 am), Shofar Factory (1:00 pm), Kosher Mini-Chefs (3:30 pm) and a Scribe (5:00 pm) by Jewish Discovery Center
• Fun games with food, like Matzah House Building by Matzahgram (all day)
• Creating “yum balls” by Bubby Bailee’s ( all day)
• Manischewitz Grape Juice Chug & Tam Tams Eating Contest (4:00 pm)

Entertainment

• Israeli Dancing with Osnat Cohen as she teaches Israeli folk dances later in the afternoon. All ages and all dancing abilities are welcome and encouraged to participate. 2:00 pm
• Krav Maga--The Training Edge will be at Temple Beth Zion in the Rabbi Fink Auditorium that day to provide two demonstrations of Krav Maga, the Israeli martial arts sensation. 12:30 and 2:30. 
• Way Back When – Theater with Grant Golden ( Video Recording of Theater presentation at 12:30pm, 2:30 pm, 4:30 pm)

Visitors to the Jewbilee! will be able to watch a video of an outstanding Buffalo Theater trio at the JCC.  WAY BACK WHEN, a trio of cheeky one act plays with their roots in The Book of Genesis, was assembled as a complete evening by Grant Golden, and accepted as a part of the New Phoenix Theatre's 2017-18 season about a year ago.  Two of the plays, THE CREATION and WAY BACK WHEN, were written by Golden.  The other, IN THE BEGINNING, was the brainchild of the late Rebecca Ritchie, a dear friend of Golden and his wife, Deborah Goldman.  It was written in the 1990's, and was published in FACING FORWARD, an anthology of short plays and monologues by women playwrights, in 1995. This was its first Buffalo production.

A Tribute to Sephardic Culture

Sephardic Jewish culture existed for hundreds of years in the Middle East, and has blossomed all over the world.  Enjoy specialty desserts from Rochester’s Sabra Grill, try on a Kaftan, wear some henna, and join Kohava Howard for traditional belly dancing. 

Shopping

Shuk, Artists Market & Agencies @ the Jewbilee! Artisans:  Elaine Kessel, Embrace the Difference, Jennifer Carz, Marcia Carr, Mo Judaica Pashoshim, Temple Beth Zion Sisterhood Shop

Tzedakah:  Food Gnomes Collecting Canned Goods, Personal Products

Food Gnomes is a Mobile Food pantry serving the Greater Buffalo Area.  It is  a joint effort between the Jewish Community and members of the United Church of Christ at Pilgrim St. Luke’s. They work together with community members, people of faith, social workers, and students to bring food to the hungry. Food Gnomes steps in where traditional food pantries fail. While traditional food pantries often require residency within a certain zip code, and request/require documentation of financial need, and often require identification (which not everyone has) Food Gnomes operates on a simple one-question format “are you hungry?”

If the answer is “yes,” then Food Gnomes provides food & hygiene products, no questions asked. It does not raise money, and is entirely volunteer-driven.  The group relies on the donation of the goods that volunteers then drive out to deliver in the community.  PLEASE BRING a can or two (or a box or two) of non-perishable, and in-date (so it cannot be expired) canned or boxed goods to the Jewbilee! For more information, contact Matthew Schwartz at matt@themattschwartz.net .

JCC Grand Re-Opening Ceremony  3:00 PM

3:30 pm- 5:00 pm @ the JCC

The Jewish Community Center will hold its Grand Re-Opening and Ribbon Cutting of 787 Delaware Avenue at 3:00 pm.  Following the ceremony and new Ellen Steinfeld sculpture unveiling, from 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm there will also be Tim, the Balloon Guy in the new indoor playground, Benjamin Berry- hula hoop performer and teacher in the outdoor playground, children’s craft activities in the Early Childhood Center, as well as face painting, entertainment and a bounce house