Saturday, June 29, 2013

Shabbat in Krakow....who would have thunk?

We had an unbelievable Shabbat experience here in Krakow.  There must have been at least 5 different groups spending Shabbat there and shul on Friday night was packed.... We came late to the Kupa shul (it was raining like cats and dogs) so we made our way over to the JCC where we joined a British group for tefillah and the Friday night meal, which was delicious and plentiful... The caterer Kosher Delight prepared over 400 Shabbat meals (the JCC handled the other groups). 
We went to the Temple Synagogue for Shabbat morning tefillah.  The shul was one of the most beautiful shuls I have been in and on that particular Shabbat there must have been more than 400 people in shul.  This week happened to coincide with the Krakow Jewish Festival so besides the groups, Krakow's Jewish quarter was packed...
It was when the chazan said Av Harachamim, that it hit me... Saying that particular tefilla while standing shoulder to shoulder with Jews from all over the world who had gathered to daven in this magnificent shul that had stood empty but for the ghosts of those Jewish souls that had been murdered for their beliefs was an amazing thing...
The director of the JCC, Jonathan - an ex-pat from NY, spoke to us Friday night and said something very empowering that changed the way I thought about this trip we had embarked on.  He had said that every Jew who came on one of these trips centered it on Auschwitz and on the destruction of the once thriving Jewish communities in Eastern Europe.  He wasn't wrong.  But he said that we needed to not just focus on the darkest part of our history, but on this new and emerging light that - after so many years - was rising from the ashes.  That this trip shouldn't just be focused on the past and death, but in the present and the future and the fact that Krakow's Jewish community was experiencing a resurgence, that Jewish life was coming back to Poland and it was coming back with a vengeance... 

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