Purim of Carpentras
Virtual launch of the Group of Friends of the Jewish Culture at the United Nations
UN diplomats from some forty nations, representing all regional groups of the UN and all the continents, came together on Monday 26th of April to mark Pesach Sheni, the second Passover, in a cultural celebration hosted by the Forum for Cultural Diplomacy (FCD). The celebration featured classical music from the Great Synagogue in Paris and the reading of literary texts by the Special envoys in the combat against antisemitism, including the EU Envoy, Katharina von Schnurbein, and the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Ahmed Shaheed.
The virtual event was moderated by FCD Co-Founder Tomas Sandell and was the first in a series of cultural events to mark the gradual launch of the Group of Friends of the Jewish Culture at the UN. It featured excerpts of literary texts by Jean Racine, Emile Zola, William Shakespeare and Armand Lunel, as well as music composed by Serge Kaufmann, Ernest Bloch, Maurice Ravel, Fromental Halévy, Joseph Achron and Darius Milhaud.