By Rabbi Marna Sapsowitz, Special to JTNews
I recently had the privilege of spending December in Poland, serving as rabbi for Warsaw’s first liberal/progressive Jewish congregation since before the War.
Beit Warszawa came into being 3-1/2 years ago as an alternative to the “official” (Orthodox) Jewish community in Warsaw. It is still in its organizational infancy, feeling its way, trying to figure out how to be a congregation.
It was an amazing month. Here are a few of my experiences and impressions:
Poland’s Jewish community still lives largely in the shadow of the Holocaust. It suffers from what might be called “corporate post-traumatic stress” symptoms; people carry deep confusion and ambivalence about their Jewish identity. Some individuals have fierce, “in-your-face” pride about their Jewishness, while others are not “out” as Jews.
The Jews I met adamantly do not want the Holocaust to be the sole definer of their Jewish identities. Yet they have few resources to help them define that identity in other ways.
No one knows how many Jews live in Poland today. Estimates range from 3,000 to 100,000. That’s quite a range. One joke circulating says that on the day the last Jew leaves Poland, 300 Jews will show up at the airport to send him off.
Everybody has a story. All are unique yet some form patterns. One such pattern, I think, even deserves to be called a trend.
We’ve all heard stories of Jewish babies saved and raised by Christian families—babies often thrust into these bystanders’ arms as their parents were carted off to the extermination camps. No one knows how many of these children there were. But it’s starting to look like there were more than anyone had thought. It also appears that the majority of these adoptive parents never told the children of their origins. In some cases, this decision was made was for very defensible, altruistic reasons: a child can’t disclose what she doesn’t know, endangering her-self and her whole adoptive family. Understandably, as time passed, it became harder to tell them. Some adoptive parents were concerned about potentially anti-Semitic neighbors. In other cases, it seems, the reasons were less pragmatic: another soul had been baptized into the Church, and there appeared no reason to muddy the waters.
Fast forward 60 years: those babies are now in their early 60s. Their parents, now in their 80s and 90s, are reaching the end of their lives and, for whatever reasons, are deciding, in significant numbers, not to take their secret to the grave with them. They are making deathbed confessions. As a result, Poland is full of shell-shocked Jews (or are they Jews? ) in their early 60s who have just had this bombshell dropped in their laps. They don’t know what to make of this information, how to integrate it into their lives and self-concepts, and have no one to speak to about it or help them process it.
There is a desperate need for skilled, compassionate, Polish-speaking counselors to help them explore these identity issues. And not only them, but their siblings, spouses, children, and grandchildren.
Some of these new-found Jews are not even “out” to their spouses. I met a man at Shabbat services who had snuck out of the house, not telling his anti-Semitic wife where he was going—he had come to explore this “Jewish thing.”
How many members does Beit Warszawa have? No one really knows. In North America, “membership” in a congregation is defined very clearly: you are a member if you fill out the appropriate forms and pay membership dues. Our synagogues are free-standing institutions which exist because people pay dues, make donations, and, to a small extent, fundraise for them.
In Poland, there is no such concept. This can, I believe, partly be attributed to Poland’s recent history of 40 years under Commun-ism. More salient however, is the importance of the Catholic Church in Polish life. The Church is very prevalent and very wealthy. If you go to church on Sunday, maybe you’ll put a few zlotys in the collection plate and maybe you won’t, but whether you do or not, you don’t have to worry about the church closing its doors or not having a priest there when you need one.
Against this backdrop, Polish Jews have no concept of paying dues to build a congregation and to ensure its ongoing ability to “stay in business.” Even if they did, many would be unable to afford the cost. Poland’s economy is not strong. Many people are unemployed. All predications are that when Poland enters the European Union later this year prices will go up and salaries will not.
Hence, Jewish institutions are largely dependent on the generosity of benefactors from the West and on philanthropic organizations based both in the U.S. and Israel. This generosity is a wonderful thing. Without it, there would be no such institutions. But it has its drawbacks. Many Polish Jews have little investment in, or feelings of ownership toward, the synagogues they attend. Yet there is a sense of entitlement which is not, in the long-term, healthy.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and emigration became possible for those who had lived for 40 years behind the Iron Curtain, the major Jewish philanthropic organizations assumed that most Jews young and healthy enough to leave for the West or Israel would do just that: leave. The agencies saw their job as providing badly needed social services to those Jews who were too old or sick to emigrate. When that population died off, popular belief said there would no longer be any Jews to speak of in Eastern Europe.
To their credit, these organizations have done an excellent job providing elderly Jews with kosher meals, medical and dental care and equipment. But what they didn’t expect was that not all of the young Jews chose to leave their birthplaces. Some stayed to explore their Jewish identity and (re-)build the institutions to nurture that identity. Funding organizations are still trying to adjust to that new reality. To do so, they have to re-examine their attitudes toward Poland.
Few remnants of pre-WWII Warsaw remain. It was important to me to see one of the few remaining parts of the Ghetto wall. They are difficult to find, not clearly marked. The one I was told was most accessible—or least inaccessible—is in an apartment building courtyard; you need to get someone who lives there, or who happens to be coming or going through the locked gate, to let you in. The ghetto wall remnant is a short stretch of an old, worn reddish brick wall, with a little alcove where there are maybe six or seven old memorial candles people have left, and a plaque placed there by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. It felt like a deeply sad, holy place. I felt a much deeper emotional resonance here than I’ve ever had with the Western Wall in Jerusalem. I wonder what it would be like to have your living room window—the one where you place your Christmas tree—look out on it. I wonder if anyone who lives there ever even gives it a thought.
On my second Shabbat in Warsaw I had two back-to-back thought-provoking conversations with two regular attendees at Beit Warszawa. They both said, essentially, “We don’t know anything about liberal Judaism here. We need you to tell us what to do.”
I firmly believe there is a need for a liberal/progressive Jewish alternative in Poland. I am thrilled to be a resource, a teacher, a suggestion-maker, but I am wary of American Jewish imperialism being imposed patronizingly upon Poland’s Jewish community because there is a vacuum to fill. The challenge is how to strike the right balance—to provide the background, the learning, the experience, to help facilitate the (re-)birth of an organic Polish liberal/progressive Judaism, which can be best responsive to the needs of that community.
Beit Warszawa’s leadership believes that having a rabbi would be an important milestone in their growth. They haven’t yet figured out how to fund such a position. Of course, ideally, there should be (Polish-speaking) leadership coming out of the community itself; but they expect the possibility of a Polish liberal rabbi to be some years away.
I returned home with much to think about, and hopes of returning.
After serving as Rabbi to Temple Beth Hatfiloh in Olympia for 13 years, Marna Sapsowitz is engaged in a mid-life course correction, seeking opportunities to build progressive Judaism in Eastern/Central Europe.