A Pilgrimage
Every Jew Should Make
NFTY-EIE's
Poland Pilgrimage: A Faculty Perspective
By David Alon
"Don't you ever get tired of
guiding the sites in Poland?" my students asked me the day before our
departure.
"Well," I answered,
"You can look it at it two ways.
It's true that I've done this trip fifteen times already, and there
can't possibly be anything new that I haven't seen or experienced. However,
when I experience all this through the eyes of the students, it's as if it is
the first time all over again!"
That was my standard reply that I
gave each time a new class of students put that same question to me. It's not necessarily a rehearsed answer that
I just say automatically; I really do believe those words. But this time I continued to ponder it, and
it occurred to me that guiding EIE in Poland is meaningful for me far beyond
the opportunity to show a new group of students the sites. Everything that we do, everything that we see
is so multi-layered, so multi-faceted, so complex, and so nuanced that for me
personally, there is something new to discover on each subsequent visit.
For as long as I have been on the
EIE faculty (since Fall 2006), the Poland Pilgrimage has been an essential
component of the educational curriculum.
When I sit down with each student for a one-on-one conversation at the
end of the semester, the Poland Pilgrimage is most often mentioned as the most
memorable experience. As a staff, we
work very hard to make the trip a success.
The madrichim work tirelessly to ensure that everyone is prepared, and
that we do everything possible to look out for the health and well-being of
each student. Beyond that, my fellow
Jewish history teachers and I invest all of our energy and creativity into
assembling a curriculum that is compelling and worth-while. From a faculty point-of-view, the key to a
successful experience in Poland is not allowing ourselves to be
complacent. No matter how pleased we
were with previous semesters, we are always looking for new ways to improve and
enhance each element of the week in Poland.
Why We Spend A Week In Poland
Taking the entire student body to
Poland for a week along with the faculty is certainly a logistical
challenge. Wouldn't it be better to just
teach all this material in the classroom at Kibbutz Tzuba? After all, the students have already come all
the way to Israel and visit Yad VaShem; isn't that enough of an accomplishment?
I believe that we spend a week in
Poland to both "pay tribute" and "bear witness". We pay tribute to the magnificent Jewish
communities, the kehilot kedoshot קהילות
קדושות, that thrived for centuries in Poland and Eastern Europe; and
we bear witness to the immense tragedy of the Shoah.
Many Israeli high schools take their
12th graders on similar trips to Poland (we often run into them
everywhere we go). However, the focus of
those trips is overwhelmingly on Holocaust sites and Holocaust education, only
paying lip service to the richness and beauty of the Jewish communities that
were destroyed. Our goal at EIE is to
place equal emphasis on both life and death.
"Life" meaning Jewish life that existed for centuries going
back to the Middle Ages. One simply
cannot comprehend what was lost in the Shoah without first learning in-depth
about the entire civilization that was Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jewry. In fact, each day of the Poland trip is a
delicate balance of teaching about life and death.
Warsaw
It is almost impossible to find the
words to describe the Warsaw Jewish Cemetery, but I think the most appropriate
phrase is Beit Chaim בית חיים,
meaning "house of life". Yes,
there is an irony in calling a cemetery a house of life, but that is precisely
what the Warsaw Jewish Cemetery represents, thriving Jewish life. Warsaw was a city of over 300,000 Jews before
the Shoah. Beyond the sheer numbers
though, Warsaw was the absolute center of Yiddishkeit, the emphatic cultural
capital of Eastern European Jewry. The
overall theme for day one of the trip is the cultural richness and diversity of
the Warsaw Jewish community. Nothing
speaks to this more than visiting the cemetery.
It is at once a picture of orthodoxy and acculturation; Hebrew, Yiddish,
and Polish; rich and poor; scientists, writers, and rabbis; famous and renowned,
and simple and modest; monuments to a community at its height of success, and
memorials to its tragic destruction.
Guiding the students around the area
of the former Warsaw Ghetto is a challenge in the sense that the entire city
was destroyed and rebuilt. To visit
Warsaw today is to take in a view of drab communist era apartment buildings
interspersed with ultra-modern sky scrapers and shopping malls that sprung up
after 1989. Only a tiny fragment of the
original brick wall of the ghetto remains, and it is right smack in the middle
of an apartment complex. (Students
always ask me how people can live there, and to this day I have struggled to
find a satisfactory answer.) Even more
challenging is the task of trying to tell the story of the Warsaw Ghetto in one
afternoon. Do I focus more on the
tragedy, the fact that most of the residents of the Ghetto were gassed to death
in Treblinka in the summer of 1942? Do I
focus more on the heroism of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in the spring of
1943? How do I even define the
uprising? As a symbolic victory despite
the fact that it was brutally suppressed by the Germans? As a beacon of light and hope in an ocean of
darkness? Like so many other things that
we do during the trip, we are left with more questions than answers.
Tykocin
קהילה קדושה kehila kedosha is a Hebrew phrase that is hard to
translate. The literal meaning is
"holy community", but that translation doesn't do justice to what it
actually means. Poland and Eastern
Europe was once home to a countless number of shtetlach, small towns and
villages reminiscent of Fidder On The Roof's fictional Anatevka. A place where the rhythm of life is Jewish,
the language is Jewish, the culture is Jewish, and everything that one sees and
does is connected to tradition and Torah.
Tykocin in northeast Poland is such a place. Jews first settled there in 1522, building a
prosperous community based on the local trade routes. The jewel of Jewish Tykocin is the
magnificent restored 17th century synagogue that sits in the center
of town. The walls of the beit knesset
are adorned with the Hebrew prayers of the siddur, including the poignant
phrase עבדו את יהוה בשמחה ivdu
et Adonai b'simcha (worship God with joy) which conveys the essence of the Hassidic movement
that was so popular among Jews from this area.
To see Tykocin is to see how our
ancestors in Poland lived. Walking
through the unpaved streets, one can imagine boys on their way to the kheyder,
merchants and craftsman selling items out of their houses, the cacophony of the
market place…and then we arrive as a class to the town cemetery, a completely
different picture than what we saw the day before in Warsaw. One can scarcely make out the faded Hebrew on
the tombstones, many of them sinking deep into the Polish soil. But we have not come to Tykocin as mere
tourists, we have come with the sacred mission to breathe some life back into
this once thriving kehila kedosha.
One of the absolute highlights of the entire trip from my point-of-view
is the opportunity to pray the mincha service in the Tykocin
synagogue. True to the words עבדו את יהוה בשמחה ivdu
et Adonai b'simcha, we prayed fervently with all our might, singing and dancing and
with joy, so glad to be able to bring a small semblance of Jewish life back to
this community.
Despite all this emphasis on life,
we cannot escape the dark truth that 1400 Jews, almost the entire Jewish
population of Tykocin were exterminated by einsatzgruppen on August 26, 1941. The nearby Lepochova forest, the site of this
atrocity like so many other forests where mass shootings were carried out,
remains silent except for the rush of the wind through the trees. Three mass graves marked off by a metal
railing draped with Israeli flags, candles, and memorial items left behind by
previous delegations. For months I have
seen our students talk, smile, laugh, run, and express themselves, but this is
the first time I have observed them in stunned silence trying to comprehend the
imprehensible. In the Lepochova forest,
there are no words.
Lublin and Majdanek
One of my favorite parts of the
Jewish prayer service is אלו דברים שאין
להם שיעור elu
dvarim sh-eyn lehem shiur, the passage that declares that the study of
Torah is equal to all of one's good deeds and righteous acts combined. Jewish Lublin embodies this quotation. The renowned Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva is the
essence of this prayer. In Judaism, the
study of Torah is never meant to be an end unto itself. One does not study Torah just for the sake of
learning, but because the wisdom imparted from studying Jewish texts serves as
basis for all that we do in this world.
The brightest Torah scholars from all over Europe came to study in
Lublin because of its outstanding reputation as a center for Jewish learning. At EIE, our visit to the Chachmei Lublin
Yeshiva is not just an acknowledgment of its former glory, it is a chance to
recreate the atmosphere of Jewish learning that pervaded its halls. We chose to study in particular this day a
Talmudic passage from Tractate Kiddushin dealing
with the eternal question: what is more
important, study or action? We read it
aloud, we argue, we debate, and through it all we realize that this was the
sound that was heard in these hallowed halls for the all-too-brief decade that
the yeshiva existed in the 1930s. The
flame of scholarship that was kindled here by its founder rabbi Meir Shapiro is
still burning brightly today in the form of the Daf Yomi system, the
one-page-of-Talmud-a-day method that has swept across the Jewish world
inspiring generations of Jews to explore the infinite wisdom of the Talmud, the
central pillar of Judaism.
I have never met Halina Birnbaum,
but I know that I have a lot to thank her for.
A Holocaust survivor who had her entire world taken from her at a young
age, she found the courage to rebuild her life, and even more to publish her
personal story in the gripping book Hope Is The Last To Die. It is the perseverance and fortitude of
people like her that have helped Am Yisrael emerge from the ashes of the
Shoah. Halina Birnbaum was thirteen
years old when she was sent to the Majdanek concentration camp; thirteen year
old when she witnessed her mother and brother taken from her forever. It is her story that provides the backdrop
for how I guide the students in Majdanek.
It is thanks to her that I can read personal testimony about the most minute
details of prisoner life here. And even
so, Halina's words barely scratch the surface of the unimaginable nightmare of
life in this concentration camp. But
after three hours of gloom, after finishing at the gas chamber and crematorium,
I find my spirit lifted by the inspirational words and prayers of our students
in the memorial ceremony that they have worked so hard to prepare. I don't leave Majdanek despondent, but rather
with my head held high knowing that these amazing teenagers are the future
leaders of our people.
Krakow
If the previous day of the Poland
trip is the most intense, then day four in Krakow is lightest in terms of
content connected to the Shoah. "Shul
hopping" is what I like to call it.
That is, visiting five different synagogues that in one way or another
personified the pre-war Jewish community of Krakow. The beauty of Jewish Krakow is that it is
hard to differentiate between myth and fact.
Is it true that King Kasimir the Great had a young Jewish lover named
Esther in 1300s (they were so in love that the king used a secret tunnel from
Wawel Castle in order to meet her at night according to the legend)? Is it true that in the 1600s there was a rich
miser in the community who was labeled with the unfortunate moniker "Mr.
Olam HaBah" (meaning "Mr. Next World") because everyone thought
that his refusal to give any tzedakah was a sign that he was saving all his
money to take with him the next world?
(Only to discover after his death that all his life he was giving
anonymously and never sought recognition for his generosity!) Is it true that once God himself made the
Earth swallow up a wedding reception for continuing past sun down on a Friday
and thus violating Shabbat? Indeed,
Jewish Krakow straddles the fine line between myth and reality. The main question that I put to the students
is what does the existence all these myths and legends say about the Krakow
Jewish community.
Unfortunately too many people get
their impression of Jewish Krakow from the movie Schindler's List which was
filmed and takes place there. I believe,
however, that the real story of Jewish Krakow is found in the multiple
synagogues of Kazimersz, each one a testament in its own right to specific
shade and layer of the once vibrant kehila.
None more so than the Beit Knesset De Remu, the synagogue named for
Jewish Krakow's most revered 16th
century scholar Rabbi Moshe Isserles, known as the Remu. His monumental halachic work known as the Mappa (the table
cloth) became the concise halachic guide to Jewish practice for the entire
Ahskenazi world, similar to what Yosef Karo's Shulchan Aruch written in Tzfat did
for the Sephardi world. In a time in
which the observance of halacha was the backbone of all Jewish life, the Remu's
writings were indispensable to the perpetuation of the Jewish people. That's why it’s so surprising to walk across
the street and enter the Temple Synagogue, Krakow's so-called Reform shul. I say Reform, but certainly nothing like we
know the Reform movement today. In many ways, the Temple Synagogue more
closely resembles what we call today modern orthodox. Whatever one wants to call it, it cannot be
denied that the Temple Synagogue is spectacular in every respect: the ceiling, the windows, the bima, the ark,
the décor, everything. Perhaps the most
gratifying part of this day is that it is the students themselves who do the
guiding. We have designed this
"shul hopping" to me more of a self-guided scavenger hunt than just
the teachers talking and explaining.
From my perspective, it gives the students the chance to take ownership
of the guiding and kind of do-it-themselves.
Even though this is a lighter
activity than the other days of the trip, we cannot ignore the ultimate tragedy
that befell the Jews of Krakow (that Schindler's List does a great job
of portraying). After learning about the
Golden Age of Polish Jewry from the different batei Knesset, we silently walk
across the bridge of the Vistula River retracing the steps that the Krakow Jews
were forced to take when they were ordered out of their home and into the
ghetto. It hardly needs to be
explained. The students just get it,
they know that we are transitioning from the lively atmosphere of "shul-hopping"
to the seriousness of the Shoah. With a
maturity beyond their years, they tackle the difficult topics of ghetto life
and the excruciating dilemmas that those in the ghetto confronted on a daily
basis. I am amazed at their ability to
talk about the controversial actions and decisions of those in the ghetto in a
non-judgmental way, not easy for anyone to do, let alone a teenager in today's
world 70 years removed from the Holocaust.
But Krakow has an uplifting story as
well. The inspiring story of Oscar
Schindler was destined to be told and shared with the world. The story of one man who defied history, who
defied his time and circumstance. The
heroic story of Oscar Schindler is just one example of over twenty two thousand
righteous gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews. Although the factory itself has been transformed
into an art school and gallery, the setting itself hasn't changed, and neither
has its significance. It is here that we
share the unbelievable stories of Irena Sendler, the Danish underground, just a
few striking instances when courageous people refused to give in to the evil
and madness of the Nazis and look away indifferently from the atrocities, which
is precisely what most their neighbors were doing at that time.
Auschwitz-Birkenau
There is simply nothing to say that
can adequately prepare one for a visit to Auschwitz. The size of Birkenau is incomprehensibly enormous. The staggering amount of people murdered is
difficult to realize despite the number we attach to it. How do I find the right balance between the
dry historical details and the personal stories when guiding? Standing on this cursed soil, we are required
to use all of our senses to begin to understand where we are. Although the railroad tracks went quiet seven
decades ago, we touch them with our bare hands and attempt to feel the vibrations,
those same vibrations that carried 400,000 Hungarian Jews to their death. In fact, the entire framework for guiding at
Auschwitz is based on re-tracing the steps the community of Hungarian Jews in
the summer of 1944, the vast majority of them immediately selected to be
murdered in the gas chambers upon arrival.
During this time period, an SS officer at the camp decided to take a
roll of black-&-white photographs recording the arrival, selection, and
walk to the gas chambers of a train filled with Hungarian Jews which became one
of the most important historical artifacts that gruesome process. I say out loud to the class that "the
people in these photos were murdered in the gas chambers within an hour or two
of their arrival," but I'm not sure if that sentence registers. I'm not sure if even I can understand this awful
truth even when I utter these words.
There is a building at
Auschwitz-Birkenau known as the "sauna". This is the reception center where those
selected for work were sent to me transformed into fulltime prisoners. Among other horrors, this is where numbers
were tattooed onto arms, where one's hair was cut off, and where the stripped
"pajamas" were issued out. In
short, this is the place where people entered as individuals and left as numbers,
the place where any last semblance of humanity was shredded. But the "sauna" is significant not
just because of its gruesome history. It
contains one of the most poignant exhibitions on display, dozens of old
photographs that were confiscated from people's suitcases are assembled into a
remarkable display showing what these folks looked like in happier times, as
they are meant to be remembered. It is
not lost on me that in the same place where people were deprived of their
humanity, these pictures have succeeded in restoring a small glimmer. These photos
are at once charming and haunting. There
is a Mona Lisa-type aspect to many of them in which the eyes of those in the
pictures seem to follow you. It is
possible to gaze into their eyes and attempt to connect with them.
Ultimately, we are able to do
something that those victims could not.
We recite kaddish, we sing HaTikva, we wave Israeli flags, and we walk
out of that darkest of places. There is
hope, there is a tomorrow, there is a free Jewish state in our ancient
homeland. The only fitting way to end
this day is with a message of Am Yisrael Chai.
For this, we are fortunate to pray the evening prayer at the Lomdei
Mishnayot Synagogue in the town of Oswienciem.
This is the Polish town that the Germans took the name Auschwitz from. For the Jews of this town, it was
"Ushpizim", the holy guests that one invites into the Sukkah on the
holiday of Sukkot. This was a place
where Jews felt at home, it was Polanya.
It would be so easy to give into our despair and retreat into the pain, but
we overcome. As we recite the Amida
prayer, the central paragraph states that God remembers the righteousness of
our ancestors, and thus will bring redemption (geulah גאולה) to their descendants (meaning us).
To Eretz Yisrael
There is a special feeling one gets
after returning home to Israel after a week in Poland. There is a feeling of completeness, a feeling
of coming full circle to our biblical roots in the land of our ancestors. Hebrew is a language that warms the
soul. To return to Israel and be
immersed once more in Hebrew is to appreciate the miracle of the redemption of
the Jewish people. Now the true
understanding of what we just went through starts to slowly sink in. The
understanding of the life that was, and the tragedy that ended it is ingrained
in our collective memory. The
realization that this is a pilgrimage that every Jew should make in their
lifetime.
