Hillel International professionals and Taube Center staff at JCC Warsaw
By Lisa Kassow
Hillel Director Trinity College
Although these questions resonate in a contemporary context, they were posed by Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich to a group of Hillel professionals during a text study at the Nożyk Shul in Warsaw about 16th century Talmudic Responsa to the issue of anusim, forced converts after the Spanish Inquisition, who wanted to rejoin the Jewish community after many generations of assimilation. The 400-year-old Hebrew text could have been written with young Poles in mind who are still discovering that somewhere along the line they had Jewish roots, seventy years after the Holocaust and thirty years post Communism. Along with others whose relatives always knew they were Jewish, they make up groups of young adults such as Gimel in Kraków and ZOOM in Warsaw, the third generation now writing their own chapter of Jewish life in Poland. Their spirit of inclusion, acceptance and pluralism is leading the way for the next generation of “Polish Polish Jews,” those who have always called Poland home and will continue to do so as they proceed on their rich Jewish journeys in the place where 1,000 years of Jewish history and culture flourished.
"How do you feel about including people in your Jewish community who have not practiced Judaism for generations? How far do you fight to get them back?”
Engaging with these inspiring young Jews was just one of the unexpected surprises encountered by our group of thirteen Hillel professionals from the U.S., Israel and Russia who traveled to Poland for a heritage study tour, joined by my husband Dr. Samuel Kassow as scholar-in-residence. As a Hillel director passionate about global Jewish Peoplehood and the spouse of one of the lead historians of the new POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, I was excited to share recent developments taking place in the Jewish community of Poland with my Hillel colleagues. The trip was organized by the Taube Center for the Renewal of Jewish Life in Poland Foundation, in partnership with Hillel International and expertly guided by Helise Lieberman, Taube Center director (and former Hillel director herself), and Aleksandra Makuch, assistant director. Together we explored the renewal of Jewish community in Poland in conversation with many creative, forward-thinking leaders who are changing the narrative from one concerned primarily with the death of Polish Jewry to one embracing the rich past as a foundation for the present and future. As Dr. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, POLIN Museum chief curator,
Although these questions resonate in a contemporary context, they were posed by Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich to a group of Hillel professionals during a text study at the Nożyk Shul in Warsaw about 16th century Talmudic Responsa to the issue of anusim, forced converts after the Spanish Inquisition, who wanted to rejoin the Jewish community after many generations of assimilation. The 400-year-old Hebrew text could have been written with young Poles in mind who are still discovering that somewhere along the line they had Jewish roots, seventy years after the Holocaust and thirty years post Communism. Along with others whose relatives always knew they were Jewish, they make up groups of young adults such as Gimel in Kraków and ZOOM in Warsaw, the third generation now writing their own chapter of Jewish life in Poland. Their spirit of inclusion, acceptance and pluralism is leading the way for the next generation of “Polish Polish Jews,” those who have always called Poland home and will continue to do so as they proceed on their rich Jewish journeys in the place where 1,000 years of Jewish history and culture flourished.
Engaging with these inspiring young Jews was just one of the unexpected surprises encountered by our group of thirteen Hillel professionals from the U.S., Israel and Russia who traveled to Poland for a heritage study tour, joined by my husband Dr. Samuel Kassow as scholar-in-residence. As a Hillel director passionate about global Jewish Peoplehood and the spouse of one of the lead historians of the new POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, I was excited to share recent developments taking place in the Jewish community of Poland with my Hillel colleagues. The trip was organized by the Taube Center for the Renewal of Jewish Life in Poland Foundation, in partnership with Hillel International and expertly guided by Helise Lieberman, Taube Center director (and former Hillel director herself), and Aleksandra Makuch, assistant director. Together we explored the renewal of Jewish community in Poland in conversation with many creative, forward-thinking leaders who are changing the narrative from one concerned primarily with the death of Polish Jewry to one embracing the rich past as a foundation for the present and future. As Dr. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, POLIN Museum chief curator, told us, “The mission of the new POLIN Museum is to tell the rich 1,000-year history of Jewish Polish coexistence and conflict, the full spectrum of interactions. Jews were of Poland, not just in Poland.”
As Hillel professionals, our work is focused on Jewish identity-building with young adults. We were impressed and inspired by current efforts by young Jewish leaders such as Emil Jeżowski who is reestablishing HaSzomer HaTzair, the Zionist Youth group started in the early 1900s in Poland, Agata Rakowiecka, director of the Warsaw JCC whose clientele looks like they would be equally at home in hipster Brooklyn, and Anna Chipczyńska, the second woman and first Progressive Jew to direct the organizational body of the Jewish Community of Warsaw. These young Jews are choosing their identity – based on their collective history, culture, religion, values, and beliefs – identifying as contemporary Jews in their society, the new generation of “Polish Polish Jews.”
Another unanticipated surprise for our Hillel group was encountering Poles who dedicate their lives to the preservation of Jewish heritage, while honoring the multicultural, multilingual past of their country that included centuries of Jewish life. Master’s degrees in Jewish Studies are now offered at multiple universities throughout Poland, training scholars to delve deeply into the texture of life as lived by millions of Jews throughout a millennium. This is particularly evident at the Auschwitz Jewish Center, where the 400-year Jewish history of the Polish town of Oświęcim (Jews were once 60% of the population), is displayed through an interactive exhibition, and the only surviving synagogue has become a vibrant center of learning. Seminars such as How Can I Fight Prejudice and Understanding Evil are offered to Polish and international students as well as law-enforcement officers, linking the intolerance and irrational hatred that caused the Holocaust to current issues of the growing immigrant and Roma population in Europe. We grappled with the idea of spending a night with Hillel students in the town of Auschwitz-Oświęcim, to take advantage of the Center’s rich offerings and to daven the morning shacharit prayers in the modest, lovingly restored synagogue there before visiting the camps.
This message of honest engagement with the past to inform the present was emphasized by Dr. Sebastian Rejak, Special Envoy of the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Relations with the Jewish Diaspora, whose involvement with Jewish life began with the study of religion, first his own Catholicism, and then a scholarly focus on Jewish Studies. Dr. Rejak characterized the current Polish-Jewish relationship as one that requires dibur emet, Hebrew for “honest, open talk.” We heard a consistent message from Jakub Nowakowski, director of the Galicia Jewish Museum, and others: many Poles not only embrace the memory and legacy of Jewish life by wearing the yellow daffodil to remember the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising each April 19; they also take on the responsibility of maintaining Jewish material culture such as renovation of synagogues and cemeteries throughout the country. This brings up a question of whose responsibility is it to maintain the physical traces of memory and heritage in the former epicenter of Jewish life? In places where there are no Jews left, who is tasked with preserving the memory, and why? In response, Dr. Rejak referred to the Hillel saying from Pirkei Avot, Ethics of the Fathers, “B’makom she-ein anashim, histadel l’hiyot ish—In a place where no one behaves like a human being, you must strive to be human.” (Avot 2:5)
Now is the moment for Hillel International to forge new relationships in Poland in support of global Jewish Peoplehood in the place where it grew to its fullest expression over a period of a thousand years.
These questions and interactions challenged the assumptions about Polish-Jewish relations with which our Hillel group came to Poland. With the opening of the POLIN Museum, the new JCC in Warsaw, and the well-established JCC in Kraków where we shared a magical Shabbat dinner under the stars with 200 people, now is the moment for Hillel International to forge new relationships in Poland in support of global Jewish Peoplehood in the place where it grew to its fullest expression over a period of a thousand years. My hope is that through Jewish heritage trips, as well as the creation of a Hillel presence in Poland with the Gimel generation, students will have the opportunity to unpack their own unique connections to their cultural birthright, adding layers of resonance and meaning to their Jewish identities, not only as stewards of Jewish heritage but as agents of innovation and growth.
For more information, contact Lisa Kassow at: Lisa.Kassow@trincoll.edu
