+ We’re Back from Poland – Reflections

From Rabbi Darren Levine, March 31, 2014

Dear Members and Friends,

We’re back from Poland and I wanted to share a few reactions from the front lines.

Joining me on the trip were Jamie Propp and Bruce and Ellen Salkin. Our purpose was to visit Meseritz, the town from where our Ark emerged from “in spirit.” But as Martin Buber once said, “all journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”

Here’s one example. Last Tuesday, Bruce and Ellen entered the florist shop in Meseritz, one block from where the great synagogue once stood. On the wall of the shop are a series of black and white pictures from their town before the war. And right there, 70 years after the Nazis destroyed that synagogue and the souls of Meseritz, they had in their hands, a photo of the Old Ark, Mesertiz Ark I (circa 1880).

You can see the resemblance of Ark I compared to Ark II (1904), from the Shul on East 6th St. that we rescued which is crowned by the Ten Commandments and has similar pillars and mantle.

Wednesday morning we returned to the village square one more time. As locals in small towns do, an elderly man approached us pedaling a bike. Our guide and translator helped us communicate. Ellen told him, “my grandfather was born here. They lived in the house on the corner over there, do you remember the Yaverbaums?”

“No, it was a long time ago. I was ten years old when the Nazi’s invaded our town. More than half of the residents were Jewish then. It happened here at this square, the deportation, the harassment, the violence. The German guards threatened everyone with their machine guns, every local, everyone’s life was ruined. I have been living with those painful images my entire life. It’s nothing compared to losing a life and family and friends, but in war, everyone loses.”

Three million Polish Jews were exterminated. Three million non-Jewish Poles died, too – either by the Nazis or the Red Army. This was important for me to understand – the place that Poland played in Europe, a border country between the West and the East.

Poland is not a huge graveyard, one large cemetery as many Holocaust movies and books would portray. The new Museum of the History of the Jewish People in Warsaw tells this story. Jews lived in Poland since the Middle Ages and in the 18th century, 75% of world Jewry lived in Poland. The Jews have a 1000 year history in Poland, the second important takeaway for me.

People have asked me, did you feel any anti-semitism on the streets. No, none. At several places in Warsaw, you can look down on the streets, and built into the sidewalk are the borders of the Warsaw Ghetto. Every person who crosses that path is reminded of their past.

Poles also know that 300 days per year, five to ten bus loads of Israeli students are touring Poland. Visiting the camps in Poland is part of their educational curriculum during 11th grade and every Israeli student travels to Poland with their classmates. They wear white sweatshirts with the Star of David and they walk through the camps carrying Israeli flags and singing Jewish songs.

This has inspired me to bring our teens and our families to Poland. It seems to me equally important to make this trip as one to Israel. It’s a painful story but it is our story and we need to know it, understand it, and to learn from it so that we may teach others.

The original purpose of this trip was to visit the home of the original Ark and to understand it’s history. But the history of the Ark cannot be separated from the history of Poland, the history of the Shoah, the history of Jewish immigration to New York, the closing of the Meseritz Shul and the emergence of Tamid.

When we reconstruct the pieces of Meseritz Ark II and install it as our own, the new Meseritz III and the Tamid Ark will become one. It will be more than a vessel that holds our Torah scrolls, it will be a symbol of history that crosses time boundaries and generations of our past. We are now the guardians of this Ark and this history – and it is our responsibility

Thank you for reading about this special experience and please let me know if you’d like to discuss a trip to Poland with your family or if you’d like to support a Teen trip to Poland. I always welcome your reactions and your thoughts and I look forward to sharing more Jewish life with you soon.

In friendship,

Darren

PS. Jamie Propp took 100’s of pictures of our journey and we will share them with you once they are cataloged. And Bruce Salkin will be presenting: Meseritz: Then, Now, and In Between on Wednesday, April 30, 6:30 – 8 PM.