|
|
September 26, 2008
A feeling of renewal is in the air
After many decades of suppression, the vigor is returning to Poland's Jewish community.
KATHARINE HAMER
For many years, Jews in Poland could celebrate the High Holidays only at home, if at all. Through the Second World War and the subsequent communist rule, which forbade the practice of any religion, Shabbat dinners and holiday meals took place infrequently and outside of any community context.
Benjamin Zajac remembers, as a young child, the lighting of candles for Kol Nidre at his home in Wroclaw, 300 kilometres west of Warsaw. The guide at Nozyk Synagogue – the only remaining prewar synagogue in Warsaw – was raised by a "very assimilated" mother and a father who was the only Holocaust survivor out of a family of 30 people.
"We had very strong Yiddishkeit," said Zajac. "We spoke Yiddish and Hebrew. But we never had a celebration, like at the synagogue." He never had a bar mitzvah, either: "B'nai mitzvah were not possible – no one was organizing them."
Today, Poland – and Warsaw, in particular – is home to a burgeoning Jewish community and, according to the country's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, Rosh Hashanah is a pivotal time of year, "because it gives many chances for Poles with Jewish roots to come to the synagogue and community for many different kinds of events (prayer, Tashlich, community meals, the sukkah, dancing on Simchat Torah). It is a time of year when we can reach out to Jews to connect to our tradition."
Schudrich, an American whose own family has Polish roots, first came to Poland in 1973, just after finishing high school, and became "fascinated with what was left Jewishly in Poland. I came back another five times over the next 12 years."
Schudrich moved to Warsaw in the early 1990s and has since become an honorary Polish citizen. He said that much has changed during his time in the country – noting that there is a much higher level of understanding between Jewish and non-Jewish Poles. Thousands of Jews in Poland, including young children, were converted to Catholicism in order to survive the Second World War – and many Poles have only recently discovered (and accepted) their own Jewish roots.
Poland has long had a reputation among North American Jews for aggressive anti-Semitism – a reputation that, Zajac said, is not entirely deserved. "Now, it is much safer," he insisted, "as normal as most European countries. It's a cliché that this [anti-Jewish sentiment] is forever. The whole history for many people [in North America] stopped in the 1950s and '60s – they don't know anything about what's going on now.
"In Poland today, anti-Semitism is mostly verbal. It's still acceptable in Poland to say, 'Those bloody Jews run the country.' But there is no violence, almost at all. Poland has normal conditions – there are good people, there are bad people. It's still safer than London or Paris or Amsterdam."
Zajac blames the media for much of the horror mongering, citing, by way of example, "That schlemiel with the chief rabbi [in May 2006]. He was hit and kicked in the chest by a young crazy man running in the street, shouting, 'Poland for Poles,' so our chief rabbi started to discuss it with him and the American newspapers said he was almost killed, proving Poland was the worst place for Jews to be. This man used pepper spray [on the rabbi] – it was nasty, but it was not that someone tried to kill him."
"Anti-Semitism in Poland is on the same unacceptable level of anti-Semitism as in other European countries," said Schudrich. "[There's] still a long way to go. However, you also have in Poland a significant group of people who fight anti-Semitism and xenophobia – a much bigger group than in most other European countries. In addition, you have a growing number of Poles who are fighting to preserve Jewish buildings and cemeteries in their towns, adding courses on Jewish history and culture in their schools and organizing Jewish festivals."
The Jewish Culture Festival has been running every summer in Krakow for the past 18 years and Warsaw's Festival of Jewish Culture, held in mid-September, is now in its fifth year. Both feature readings, klezmer music, dancing and exhibitions of Jewish art. The festival-goers, Zajac noted, are all local people and include very few Jews: "In a crowd of 5,000, there are maybe five Jews – because Jews already know their culture."
They know their culture in large part because of the involvement of the New York-based Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, which, said Schudrich, "believed in the re-emerging Jewish community of Poland when almost no one else did. This gave us the material support and the spiritual encouragement that we were missing. The programs are many and diverse. But the key is that Ronald Lauder believed in us and in our rightful place in the Jewish people."
Since the fall of communism in 1989, Lauder has made it his mission to revive Jewish life in central and eastern Europe, with program funding for Jewish learning, research and summer camps in 15 countries, including Poland. Next door to Nozyk Synagogue is a Jewish community centre with its own kosher cafeteria where, for a few zlotys, you can buy a tasty lunch of cucumber soup, latkes, pickles and compote. Warsaw now has its own mikvah, schochet, mashgiach and the Chabad-run Jewish Business Centre, which sits behind the site of the Great Synagogue destroyed by the Germans during the war.
In 1994, Lauder-Morasha School – the first Jewish school in Poland in more than a quarter of a century – was opened. It now has close to 200 students in grades 1-8. The head of Lauder-Morasha School, Maciej Pawlak, was also the first postwar Pole to be ordained as a rabbi and return to work in his own country.
"The interest of people who, till now, had nothing to do with Jewish life is growing," said Pawlak in a recent e-mail. "In many families, this topic was never discussed until 1989. Since then, many older and younger Jews [have] wanted to reconnect with Jewish life. Many people want to learn about Judaism and attend lectures. [And] a significant number of Jews are regular members of the Jewish community."
At Nozyk Synagogue this Rosh Hashanah, 500 people will come together to attend High Holiday services – making it a sweet New Year, indeed.
Katharine Hamer is a Vancouver freelance writer and editor. Her website is www.literaryparamedic.com.
^TOP
|
|
