Tag Archives: Poland

A Heavy Responsibility

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From my blog:

This is my fourth summer working for NFTY in Israel. The past three summers I have been in charge of my group and logistics, but this summer I am also going to be the tour guide. I have been in a course for the past few months going around Israel to learn about the different sites that we take the participants. Our trip also includes a week in Europe at the beginning (and then 4 weeks in Israel.) The trip is called L’dor v’dor, from generation to generation. We also had a trip with the other guides to Europe, to Prague, Krakow, and Warsaw. This was the fifth time in my life I have been to these locations, so the shock-factor wasn’t part of my experience. But I did feel a new sense of responsibility, more than just Continue reading →

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Toxic Davening

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From my blog:

When you are praying the words “Shema Yisrael”, “Listen Israel”, but instead you hear the sound of people yelling at you.

When there are more photographers and journalists than people praying.

After months of hesitation and apprehension I visit the kotel for Rosh Chodesh. I go to finally see what it is like to be a part of Women of the Wall, an organization that some of my friends have been very active in all year. I have come up with every excuse in the book to not go: “I’m too tired, I really need to sleep”, or “I don’t want to get arrested for being there when I don’t even know how I feel about it”. But after realizing I have successfully not gone for 9 months, and I only have 1 or 2 more opportunities before I leave Israel this time, I pushed my self to wake up and go.

I was waiting on line with this huge group of Argentinian Jews who, from overhearing their conversation, had just come from Poland. And they looked like it, exhausted, drained, and happy to be in Eretz Yisrael. With the look in their eyes, like they know the last week of their lives changed them forever, even if some haven’t realized it yet. Continue reading →

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[Alumni Guest Post] Reflection on Yom Hashoah

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Daniel Shibley (Yr. '11, Fellows '12) shared the following:

A lit Yom Hashoah candle in a dark room (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A lit Yom Hashoah candle in a dark room (Photo: Wikipedia)

As the clock turned from 9:59 to 10:00, it began. Quietly at first, and then reaching a volume that brings all of Israel to a halt. The siren of Yom Hashoah silenced all other man-made noises, leaving every body to their own thoughts and memories of the Shoah and its victims. The gusty wind and the birds, which had been muffled by the sounds of the beit midrash, were accompanying the wailing of the siren. Although Hamas shattered my hope of never having to hear the siren outside the context of Yom Hashoa and Yom Hazikaron, somehow the sanctity of that moment rang true, the souls of the victims were standing with us as we paused our Torah learning on their behalf. Continue reading →

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[PCJE Dvar Torah] God Cries Along – by Aviva Golbert

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291302_10151063154879507_101963524_o (2)It is usually considered good practice to connect one’s Dvar Torah about the Parshah to some current event or to an upcoming holiday. As such, I want to find some segue between this week’s Torah portion – Parshat Shemini – and Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day, which will be commemorated in Israel next Monday. In truth, it is actually next week’s double portion of Tazria-Metzora under whose purview Yom HaShoah falls this year, but Shemini, and its telling of the death of Aharon’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, at God’s hands, because they “offered before the Lord alien fire which He had not enjoined upon them,” is often referred to as a jumping-off point for speaking about the death of six million Jews during the Holocaust.

And yet Continue reading →

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[Student Profile] Hannah Grossman

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hannah

Hannah Grossman is an explorer. Her Jewish journey has taken her from the farthest ends of the earth to the deepest corners of her psyche. Yet the further she has traveled from her native New Jersey, the closer she has come to finally finding her Jewish home.

Hannah grew up in West Orange, NJ to an observant Conservative family. She describes her neighborhood as “very Jewish,” and between her neighborhood and her twelve years spent in a Solomon Schechter day school, “growing up I pretty much knew only Jews.” For her, a large part of what that Jewish environment meant was a commitment to social justice in her home, synagogue, and school, a Jewish value that would remain constant through all the journeys life would later take her on. Continue reading →

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[Alumni Guest Post] Focus on Rochel Czopnik

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Rochel Joanna Czopnik (Year '05, PEP '07) shares
the story of how she ended up back in Poland after
graduating from the Pardes Educators Program (PEP):
Rochel

Rochel taught at the Shoshana S. Cardin (high) School in Baltimore from 2007-2011. She currently teaches at the Lauder-Morasha school in Warsaw.

After graduating from PEP, I was scared and quite anxious about my first job. I moved to Baltimore and for the first time was to live in the US for a long period of time. I was lucky to get a job at such a small school with only about 60 students. I was welcomed with open arms and very quickly felt “at home”. I gained more confidence with each year, and the trust I had from the school’s administration let me truly develop my personal style. I taught mostly Bible, but I also taught some ancient Jewish history and Shoah. I could develop my own curricula (I am most proud of my Prophets and Jewish Historiography classes) and had a lot of freedom to try new, exciting things. I learned from talented educators and deepened my skills and knowledge—not just about Judaism, but also about American history and culture.

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[Guest Post] Reflections of the Alex Singer Hike in 2012, the Year of his 25th Yahrtzeit and a Poem

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by Suzanne Singer, Alex’s mom

Three events happened this year that gave us a theme for the Alex Hike.  Benjy joined around 250 IDF officers on their trip to Germany and Poland to learn about and see the physical remains of the Shoah. Benjy’s son Itai went with his 12th grade class to Poland to witness the physical remains of the Shoah. Alex’s unpublished thesis from Cornell, Letters from the Diaspora, went up on the Alex website complete with all his drawings–available to everyone for the first time at www.alexsinger.org.

Because Alex’s year in Europe studying and traveling to places where Jewish communities had once thrived led to the thesis, and because writing the thesis led to Alex’s decision to make aliyah and join the IDF after college—that became the theme for the hike.

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[Take 5] My Poland Trip in Perspective

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This past Sunday night was Simchat Torah. I spent the evening in the Pardes beit midrash, dancing and singing, along with many of you. The energy in the room was palpable, and filled me up with a feeling of pure joy. I experienced a particularly moving moment when the singing shifted to “Am Yisrael Chai: The People of Israel Live.” I stood there, and I watched people jumping up and down, dancing faster and faster in circles, shouting “Am Yisrael Chai” with all of the energy they could muster.

At first, I couldn’t dance. I couldn’t move. I was instantly reminded of the last time that I heard this song. I was standing with my peers in the Auschwitz concentration camp on the Pardes heritage trip to Poland.

When I was asked to give a “take 5” on the Poland trip, I felt both honored and nervous. I am not sure that my words can do adequate justice as to how this trip has affected me, my Jewish identity, and the way that I walk through the world. But I’ll try.

After some hesitation, I decided to sign up for the Poland trip because I saw it as an opportunity to bear witness to the events of the Shoah, connect to my heritage, and simply because I felt in my gut that this was something I needed to do.

The whole trip, from beginning to end, was a powerful educational experience. Even before the trip, the group was committed to creating an atmosphere where each of us had a role in educating one other. One of my highlights of the trip was learning about all the different Poland personalities that my peers had researched, whether they were Torah giants, contributors to Yiddish culture, or righteous gentiles who risked their lives during the war.

Also, I was appreciative of the balance of the trip. While a significant amount of time was spent visiting concentration camps and holocaust sites, we also spent a significant amount of time learning about the vibrancy of pre-War Poland, Hassidut, and visiting important sites of Torah learning. Another highlight of mine was having an evening to study Torah in a yeshiva in Lublin, one that only a few decades ago had all of their books burned on the front lawn.

While I had many impactful moments on the trip, the greatest, and most unexpected, takeaway from the trip was what happened when I returned to Pardes. On the trip, we had the privilege of seeing many graves and important sites of Torah learning, which laid foundations for Torah study as we know it today. Because of this my learning was infused with new depth, and may separate aspects of my studies were weaved together. My eyes were open in a new way, and I was reading texts differently, and with more enthusiasm than before.

More importantly than this, I now, more than ever, see my learning in the beit midrash as an incredible privilege. And perhaps, going one step further, I see my Jewish identity as a gift, one that I am so incredibly grateful for.

In hindsight, choosing to go on the Poland trip was probably THE most important decision that I made last year. If you have any inkling of interest, I encourage you to go to the meeting on Monday, or talk to students who went on the trip last year. While we all experience things differently, I think that this trip can be an important and transformative trip for anyone.

So, as I stood in the beit midrash on Simchat Torah, I was at first frozen, flashing back to Poland, Auschwitz, the Holocaust, disaster, despair. But as I watched everyone singing and dancing around me, I felt the experience with such depth and emotion that I began dancing, too, and was reminded what it truly means to sing “Am Yisrael Chai,” on Simchat Torah, in Jerusalem.

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Symbolism: Reflections on my Pardes Poland Trip

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In looking back at our Poland Heritage Trip in January, it’s quite difficult to fathom just how much we witnessed in 5 short days. We began with the colorful tapestry of Jewish life that existed in Warsaw and Lublin, which was hardly a foreshadowing of what was to come. We tapped into the spirituality of the Chasidic leaders through visiting the tombs of Hassidic masters, such as Rav Elimelech of Lezajsk. We visited Krakow, and painted a picture of the colorful tapestry of Jewish life that existed by experiencing the beautiful old shuls and telling stories about the scholars who led the community. We stepped into the horror and disbelief that is Belzec, Majdanek and Auschwitz, facing head on the reality of what happened on cold winter nights while the feeling of death lingered in the air. We explored the concept of heroism through studying the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and re-defined what it meant to have courage and conviction in the face of bleak circumstances. We searched for some sort of redemption, as we learned about righteous gentiles like Oskar Schindler while standing outside of his factory, and realized just how much individuals like him risked to save a few Jewish souls.

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The journey our group took during those 5 days forced us to confront a tragedy in our collective history that is painful to address. It would have been much easier to stay in the Beit Midrash. But in freezing temperatures, we trudged through the snow, intent on searching for some sort of answer to our existential questions. I came away from the experience with more questions and less answers than ever before. However, as I was standing in Birkenau trying to fathom what was before me, a chance occurrence gave me a sliver of clarity. As our tour guide’s words pelted us with the alarming numbers of death and cruelty that occurred in the exact spot where I stood, the snow started to fall. I happened to look down and saw on my glove a snowflake in the shape of a Magen David. While it wasn’t an answer, it felt like a still, small voice, perhaps even a quiet charge. And my realization was this: I was standing, by my own choosing, in a place where hundreds of Jews wanted to be freed from their suffering. And through the consistent development and commitment to my personal Jewish identity, Torah study and service in the community, I could in some small way honor and uplift their memory. While it wasn’t an answer to the many questions racing through my head, it was at least a direction gleaned from a symbol that connected me to previous generations.

 

Today when I enter the Beit Midrash to embark on deepening and expanding my Torah knowledge, I am aware that my small actions are easily taken for granted and that I am privileged to carry on our tradition. My Jewish brothers and sisters can no longer carry this on, and in memory of those who perished, I will hopefully begin to regain a tiny fraction of the communal knowledge, culture and vibrance that was destroyed in the Shoah.
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[PJCE: Pardes Center for Jewish Educators] Summer Summary

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(From “You’ve given me the most beautiful set of wings.”)

This is very rare that I have such a long absence from blogging, but thus is life, and it happens. Since my classes ended at Pardes, I was working for NFTY.  http://www.nftyisrael.org/ It’s reform Judaism’s summer trip to Israel. This was my third summer working for NFTY and my third time on the exact same trip. We spent a week in Europe in Prague, Krakow, and Warsaw. Then we fly to Israel for a four week world wind.  At the end, I flew home with the kids and now I’m in Indiana for a week to see my family before I fly back to Israel to start Ulpan (Hebrew language classes) on August 5th.

A couple of things I learned: I’m not so reform. Or I’m reform in my own way, but I love Judaism a lot!  I don’t love having the guitar at every Shabbat service. And I don’t like using my phone on Shabbat and I don’t like driving with the kids before Shabbat is over. And I like to do Havdalah when someone is suppose to do Havdalah, not before or after, or even the next day.  I don’t personally do all these things all the time in my every day, or every Shabbat, life. But I feel like that if these things are going to be done, then they should be done at the proper time in the “correct” (open to interpretation) way. Also, some of the interpretations of the Parsha were a little too liberal for my tastes. At the end of the summer, a girl in my group wrote me a note that said, “You made me think about my Judaism because I never met a reform Jew how took their Judaism as seriously as you do.” I think it’s really important for people who love being Jewish and love practicing Judaism are present in the reform community or the knowledge in the youth will only reach a certain point. Reform Jews should also know everything about Judaism, and then make a choice to be reform, not to be reform because they don’t know more than that.

I was waiting in the airport in New York and I needed to make a phone call, and since I’m Israeli and live in Israel, I don’t have an American phone. I didn’t really see anyone I felt comfortable asking.  So I was just sitting and waiting.  Then, a Jewish Orthodox family came and their three boys were going on the same plane as me to Chicago.  They sat down to wait for the flight. I immediately knew I could ask them to use their phone. Something about the wife’s head covering, the husbands kippa, and the boys tzitzit was very comforting and familiar to me.  They quickly lent me their phone, even before I explained that I lived in Israel. I was surprised to feel more connected to Orthodox Jews in America than to any other American sitting next to me in the waiting area. But I have to say, it was nice and made sense to me.

Finally, tonight is Shabbat, and I was really sad to be in my house because we don’t have Shabbat in my home, or we never have in the past. But tonight, I forced it. I didn’t care, I really wanted it. So I put out grape juice, two pieces of bread. And with my parents, I lead the prayers in front of my parents, for the first time in my life. And then washed my hands, and then did the prayer of the “challah”. First, it was SO nice, and all anger, anxiety, and things that weren’t nice from the day suddenly ceased. And secondly, I was SO proud of myself. The prayers weren’t perfect, I definitely stumbled a couple of times, but I did it. =) And at least now I know that Shabbat is possible in my house. And I can look forward to having Shabbat instead of looking for some other place to go.

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