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If you wanted to know what Jewish music sounds like, would you turn to a beatboxing hip-hop artist? An avant-garde string quartet? A master of ancient Middle Eastern musical traditions? 

To discover the many ways the range of Jewish identity can be reflected in music, or simply to dance, or explore new musical worlds, Bay Area listeners can turn to the 20th annual Berkeley Jewish Music Festival, which begins this weekend and runs for two weeks. It is the country’s largest Jewish music festival and organizers have assembled a rich and varied lineup of performers and events for this special anniversary.  

The concerts begin Saturday night at Wheeler Auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus, with a joint performance by Israel’s East West Ensemble and Turkish Sufi master Omar Faruk Tekbilek and his ensemble. True to their name, the Israeli group mixes Western instruments with such sounds as the Persian ney flute, stirring up an entrancing mix of Jewish, Arab and Asian music with rock, jazz, and Western classical touches. They’re beautifully matched by Tekbilek’s ensemble, which draws on music of Turkey, Arabia, Greece, Persia and Spain, and has worked with musicians as diverse as Don Cherry and Ginger Baker. 

“It’s our 20th year, so we wanted to start with an opening night that would have more meaning than just a concert,” said Festival Director Ellie Shapiro. “It was to make a statement that we wanted these two rich cultural traditions to come together in music, so this is a collaboration between Sufi Muslim and Jewish mystical traditions, with 14 world-class musicians.”  

For the first time, the festival features an artist-in-residence, the Israeli composer, oud (Middle Eastern lute) player and violinist Yair Dalal. Of Iraqi-Jewish descent, Dalal has done much to teach audiences about the intertwined music and cultures of Arabs and Jews. 

“He’s made it his life’s work to perpetuate the unique culture of Iraqi and Middle Eastern Jews in general,” Shapiro said.  

Dalal has been giving public lectures and performances in the Bay Area since February, introducing Middle Eastern music to 19 Bay Area schools, including a workshop with the Berkeley High orchestra. 

“This is our fourth year in the Berkeley public schools doing workshops on Jewish music. Part of what we do is preserve and perpetuate Jewish culture, so this is also an important part of what the festival is about,” Shapiro said. 

Dalal’s residency concludes with a performance at the Dance Palace in Point Reyes Station on Sunday, March 20, at 4 p.m. 

The festival also features the high-energy Klezmatics. Described as the cutting edge of the klezmer revival, the band has taken their mastery of this Eastern European Jewish dance music and merged it with jazz, rock, and many strains of world music, in the process collaborating with everyone from Allen Ginsberg to Itzhak Perlman to Arlo Guthrie.  

This time around, they’re joined by Joshua Nelson, an African-American Jewish gospel singer who has performed with Wynton Marsalis and Aretha Franklin. 

“He’s incredible. He has a voice that channels Mahalia Jackson,” Shapiro said. “This is a CD release party for a live album they did last year in Berlin, so you have the energy of an African-American Jewish concert in Berlin, and everything that means.” 

The concert will take place at 4 p.m., Sunday April 3, at Wheeler. The Klezmatics will head down the road for a 7:30 p.m. dance party that night at the festival’s home base, the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, where Jewish dance expert Steven Weintraub will lead a festival finale. 

The festival will feature the great singer/actor Theodore Bikel on March 20 at 4 p.m. at San Francisco’s Temple Emanu-El. A leader of the ‘50s folk revival and an Oscar-nominated actor often seen as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, Bikel will be joined by klezmer luminary Hankus Netsky, leader of the Klezmer Conservatory Band. 

“I’m here today doing what I’m doing because when I was six years old, I was dancing around the dining room table to his music,” Shapiro said of Bikel. “In the 1950s he was one of the first people to introduce world music, and now it’s a genre unto itself. It’s a real honor having him here for our 20th year.” 

Another special visitor from Israel is Moroccan-born countertenor Emil Zrihan. The singer, who has been compared to Pavarotti, will be performing with none other than San Francisco’s eclectic new music stalwarts, the Kronos Quartet. The celebrated foursome heard Zrihan and initiated the collaboration, drawn in by the singer called the “Moroccan Nightingale.” Zrihan and Kronos will preview their upcoming world premiere of new arrangements of Zrihan’s classic Arabic-inspired material. 

An all-ages Community Music Day at the JCC will be held on Sunday, March 27, from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Kicking off with a family concert by children’s performer Gary Lapow, guests can delve into 15 workshops, nine performances, and an instrument petting zoo.  

“From the beginning we’ve had the festival as a project of the Berkeley Richmond JCC because the founder of the festival, who was also a founder of the center, recognized the power of music to build community,” Shapiro said. “There’s everything from learning to beat box to learning how to chant Torah. It’s really the gamut of Jewish music today.” 

On March 28 at 7:30 p.m., the JCC will host vocalist and Sephardic music scholar Judith Cohen, in a concert/lecture with her daughter, Tamar Cohen Adams. The program will explore the musical traditions of Spain’s Jews, which survived through centuries of official prohibition. The festival will hold more than a dozen additional concerts, workshops, classes, and panel discussions.  

Altogether, the festival is a Berkeley event, with art, culture, ideas and community coming together. As Shapiro says, “I grew up back east, and I don’t think a festival like this could have happened anywhere else. It’s a cosmopolitan community with an openness to other cultures, and that has allowed us to experiment and be more creative than we could have in many other places.” 

For more information on the Jewish Music Festival, visit www.brjcc.org or call (415) 276-1511.