V. "Vus Is Geven Is Geven" (What is Lost is Lost Forever)

An Old Yiddish Folksong: The World That Was

This Chapter And You...

In just a few months you will descend from an airplane at the airport in Warsaw, Poland. You will look around and immediately be struck by the fact that you are in Poland. You will begin to search for signs and symbols of the Jewish community. What do you think you will find? Will you find any of the 400 synagogues and temples? Will you find any of the Yiddish newspapers? Will you find any of the schools and youth groups and cultural clubs? Will you find any Hebrew classes or Zionist organizations or Yiddish theater?

As you travel through the villages and towns and cities you will occasionally see the signs, the indentations on the door posts where the mezzuzot used to be hung; the vandalized remains of the cemeteries; the Hebrew and Yiddish writing inscribed on the cement (in those places where it hasn't yet been sandblasted off). You will begin to wonder at the community which existed before the Holocaust.

When you walk the streets of Cracow, you may close your eyes and try to hear the sound of children playing, the singing from the wedding party, the chatter from the social clubs, the rustling of the Yiddish newspapers being read in the park, the arguments from the Zionist societies, the sing-song chant of studying in the religious schools, the reading of the Torah in the synagogues. These are all the parts of the enormous Jewish community which existed in Poland: some 3.5 million Jewish souls, exterminated.

The March of the Living is a march back in time and into the future. It challenges you to imagine life in Poland before the Shoah. The March asks you to walk carefully in Poland, to watch every step you are taking, and observe everything around you. From what you learn, and what you see, the March then asks you how the past and the present will affect your own future.

As you read this chapter you will be challenged to use your imagination. What was, is no more. You will not see almost any part of what was an incredibly beautiful, vibrant and vital Jewish community. The readings can only give you a taste for what used to take place on the streets, in the houses and the synagogues and other Jewish institutions. If you are capable of recreating this wonderful panorama of Jewish life in your mind, then add to it the loss of not only the generation massacred in the Holocaust, but also the future generations which could have been born to the 3.5 million. What wonders would these young men and women have had in store for the world!

"Suddenly, all those placeswhere Jews had livedfor hundreds of years,for over a thousand years, had vanished.And I thought that in years to come,long after the slaughter,Jews might want to hear aboutthe places which had disappeared,about the life that once wasand no longer is."

Roman Vishniac, noted Jewish photographer

"When I first came to Israel after World War II, I would meet the country's young generation and listen to their songs and the way they spoke as progenitors, as human beings; Jews, deeply aware that they were writing a new genealogy that began with them. And as I remembered the heritage that had gone up in smoke in Europe, I was doubly sorrowful - also for this excellent generation of young Israelis who may just grow up and grow old, without ever really knowing what they should weep for."

(From a speech by Abba Kovner, November, 1983.)

Objectives

1. You will begin to understand the diversity and depth of what was once one of the largest Jewish communities in the world.

2. You will begin to recognize some of the names of famous Jewish personalities who perished in the Shoah, and others who survived.

3. You will begin to understand the loss of potential great Jewish personalities who might have risen to the top.

4. You will be able to compare and contrast the Jewish experience in Poland before the Shoah with the community in which you live.

5. You will begin to understand the incredible loss of 6 million, not as a mere number, but as unique and individual souls, each one a person, each one who could have been you if you had lived in Poland before the War.

Activity #A

Write down all of the things that you do during a given calendar year which are in any way considered Jewish, e.g. food, holiday celebrations, jokes, life cycle and family observances.

Now look at the list and try to understand that most of these things were part of the vibrant Jewish community of Poland. If you had lived in Poland in 1938 you would have written the same or similar list.

Now eliminate every third item. If you are forbidden to do those things, how would that affect your life? Now eliminate every other item. Again what effect would this have on your life? Now eliminate all of them.

Questions:

1. Do we appreciate things more when we are told we cannot do them? Why?

2. Group the items in your list according to the following categories: Religion, Culture, Race, Social Life.

3. How would your life be different if this happened? Why?

4. By your choice now, which items could you eliminate and not "miss"?

Reading #1

Reading #2

Reading #3

You know the impact Jews have had in the U.S. What about in Poland? This article begins to share the depth and vitality of the immense Jewish community of Poland. It was a community like New York or Miami or Jerusalem.

The Jewish Catastrophe in Europe - Edited by Judah Pilch

After World War I, the newly established state of Poland had a Jewish community of 3,300,000, the largest and one of the oldest in Europe and the second largest in the world. It was organized as a Kehillah, with power of owning all communal property, such as synagogues, cemeteries, hospitals, and the like, and with authority to direct the communal educational, religious and social-cultural institutions. Each town, large and small, was represented on a Council which was elected by direct, secret ballot. The various organizations found their interests reflected in the bodies of the Kehillah through proportional representation.

The greatest achievement of Polish Jewry was its educational system maintained at its own cost. Here, too, the different Jewish ideological and religious groups maintained their respective types of schools, each with its own language of instruction in Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, or bi-lingual. Of the total Jewish school population of 425,000 some 340,000 attended these schools. The Jewish community also maintained teacher training schools, rabbinical academies, trade schools and other cultural institutions, such as museums, libraries, and adult study courses.

In higher general education, Jewish students were greatly handicapped because of discrimination against them by the universities. As many as half of the Jewish trainees in various professions had to seek admission to foreign universities. When they returned home they had great difficulty in gaining permits to practice their professions.

Jewish cultural life of a religious and secular character flourished throughout Poland. There was a large output of books, magazines, dailies and other publications. In higher institutions of Jewish learning, such as the famous Yeshivoth of Lublin and Mir, the Yiddish Scientific Institute (in Vilna), the Institute for science of Judaism (in Warsaw), scholars produced many volumes on Jewish subjects and trained students who later spread Jewish knowledge throughout the world. Among the outstanding writers, who later lost their lives under the Nazis, the educator Janusz Korczak, the Religious-Zionist leader Rabbi Isaac Nissenbaum, and the religious philosopher Hillel Zeitlin. In the Jewish museums of Warsaw, Vilna, and Cracow one could find treasures of the past as well as creations of such contemporary artists as Marc Chagall, Henryk Glickenstein, and Arthur Szyk. A vibrant religious life, centering around thousands of synagogues, courts of Hasidic rabbis, and individual homes, endowed the Jews with the strength and courage to live a traditional Jewish life in a non-Jewish world, frequently hostile. The Sabbaths and the holidays, all rites and customs were observed in an atmosphere that glowed with joy and piety.

Jewish communal life also abounded with a variety of political, social, philanthropic, and mutual aid organizations and institutions which helped the Jew to cope with the complexity of problems calling for action. There were organizations aiming to restore to the Jew individual human rights and freedom as well as collective autonomy, and to defend these rights along political lines. Numerous Zionist organizations helped in the rebuilding of Palestine. Agencies were established for health work, as well as a net of philanthropic institutions and youth organizations (upholding divergent religious, secular, Zionist, Yiddishist, and socialist ideologies), most of them aiming at a strong, living Jewish people.

Jews also contributed their full measure to the general culture of Poland in science, art, literature, and music. Among others, Julian Tuwim was considered the foremost contemporary poet of the Polish language, Bruno Winawer was prominent in literature. Bronislaw Huberman in music, and Szymon Ashkenazi in historiography.

The Jewish community of Poland functioned under tremendous hardships of financial limitations and governmental discrimination, which drove large Jewish masses into poverty and migration. The anti-Semitic attitudes of the government and the masses produced economic boycotts and outbreaks of violence against Jews. Nevertheless, the Jews fought their battle for survival with all possible means through internal efforts and with the aid of American Jewry, and they maintained their communal life on a high level to the very end of the inter-war period, when the German army overran the country in September 1939.

Reading #4

Names... The Nazis tried to even take away our numbers by tattooing numbers on the victim's arms. But the names are real. Some Jews departed Poland before the War and others escaped. Just a brief list tells you a lot about the power of the Polish Jewish community. What about all those Jews who died? We will never know the impact they would have had, or their children. This article talks to you about the names...

A World That Has Vanished - Gideon Hausner

(From the opening speech at the Eichmann Trial - excerpts)

Of the 257 Nobel Prize winners in the first fifty years of this century, 34 were Jews, 12 of whom were expelled by the Nazis. I shall not list here all the outstanding Jews stemming from those countries which suffered the hand of Hitler. It is sufficient to mention great geniuses like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud; Fritz Haber, the chemist; Henri Bergson, the philosopher; Paul Erlich and Ilya Mechnikov, the biologists; Niels Bohr, the physicist; Otto Warburg and Ernst Boris Chain, the physiologists; thinkers like Martin Buber; jurists like H. Lauterpacht, L. Brandeis, and H. Kelsen; writers like Emil Ludwig, Stefan Zweig, Franz Kafka, Franz Werfel, Jacob Wasserman, Max Brod and Lion Feuchtwanger; Sculptors and painters like M. Antokolsky, M. Chagall, A. Modigliani, and Max Liebermann; Max Reinhardt, the producer; musicians like B. Huberman and A. Rubinstein, to give some idea of the contribution of European Jewry to European culture in recent years.

In terms of the Jewish people, European Jewry on the eve of the Holocaust was the nation's heart, the source of its vitality. The great majority of its spiritual guides and leaders either dwelt there or were of European origin. Here were to be found the principal religious scholars, the successors of the great Rabbi Elijah of Vilna, in the renowned Yeshiva of Volozhin. It was here, in a suburb of Kovno, that the Slobdka Yeshiva was situated, in which the Lithuanian tradition of study was maintained. It was from Europe that the former Chief Rabbi Kook and Rabbi Meir Kahane, known as the "Hafetz Hayim", came; that the visionaries of the State, the architects of Jewish nationalism, its leaders, thinkers and writers, emerged. This was the Jewry which in the last generation, gave to the nation Theodore Herzl and Max Nordau, Ahad Ha'am and Leo Pinsker, Chaim Nachman Bialik, Saul Tchernichovsky, Z. Schneour and Shalom Aleichem, Chaim Weizman, David Ben Gurion and V. Jabotinsky. It was from here that the daring pioneers - the chalutzim- set forth their quest for the Promised Land. The members of the first and second Aliyot - waves of immigration - who laid the foundations on which the State of Israel was constructed. From here came the dreamers and the fighters, the molders of the new Jew's way of life, thought and character, men like A.D. Gordon, Berl Katzenelson, Kurt Blumenfeld, Shmaryahu Levin and many others. I have mentioned but a few by name, and I know that I have passed in silence over many others who should have been mentioned; and for that I am sure I shall be forgiven.

Ancient communities were destroyed, of which I shall mention a few, by way of illustration only. There was the illustrious Jewry of Amsterdam, Whelter of the Spanish Marranos, where Menashe Ben Israel dwelt, where Baruch Spinoza lived and wrote. Gone is the Jewry of Prague, with its magnificent synagogues, which had been in existence since the 10th century, the city of Rabbi Liva Ban Basalel, known to this day affectionately as the "Maharal", and of Rabbi Yehezkial Landau, author of "Noda Biyehuda". The Jewish community of Berlin - the home of Moses Mendelsohn and Israel Hildesheimer -was blotted out.

Catastrophe befell the Jewry of Vienna, with a history going back more than a thousand years, where Theodore Herzl wrote and worked. Gone forever are the glorious Jewish centers of Poland, headed by the illustrious Warsaw community, the heart of Polish Jewry, steeped in Jewish lore, the city of I.L. Peretz, David Frishman and Nahum Sokolov, Lvov Jewry has vanished, that great center of Jewish religious learning and enlightenment, that focus of Jewish education, cradle of leaders and guides, the city of Rabbi Samuel Ben David Halevy, author of "Turei Hazahav", and of S.E. Rappoport. Even its ancient cemetery, itself a glorious record of Jewish history, was uprooted and is no more. The Jewry of Lodz, a city of industry and trade, of Jewish craftsmanship linked with a rich Hebrew culture, was obliterated. All past is Jewish Vilna, known traditionally as the Jerusalem of Lithuania, the home of the Vilna Gaon, replete with learning, wisdom and study, depicted by the poet W.L. Wolfson as "City of spirit and righteousness; steeped in Jewish thought, where all night through, quiet prayer and meditation blend". It was from here that the famous edition of the Talmud was printed and distributed to all Jewish communities throughout the world.

Questions:

1. Using the above article, make a chart of professions i.e. doctor, lawyer, politician, author, etc. and list all the famous Jews from Europe in their appropriate category. <Think of what it means to eliminate that entire potential population from the future.

2. Now go back to the activity at the beginning of this chapter.List the items that you mentioned that would be no more, if these professions would be eliminated.

Reading #5

Embarrassment - we cringe when we think of being embarrassed in public. How much worse when that embarrassment is prejudice, or racism, or anti-Semitism? Many of us have never experienced anything like this. But it happened. The survivor who will travel with you can tell you their own stories. Read the article, then remember to ask them.

The Last of the Just (excerpts from)

The school comprised perhaps fifteen "Jewish guests," as people affected to call them now, and about the same number of Pimpfe - pioneers in the Hitler Youth. But by an unexpected trick of the childish soul, when the latter launched their attack on the Jewish platoon in the corner of the playground near the chestnut tree, many "apolitical" students joined them for that small, so recreational war. When the Jewish lines broke, they dragged their prisoners to the middle of the playground where, under the prudently detached eyes of the teachers, they amused themselves with them.

The new teacher burst in without ceremony. At five minutes after eight the door blew open and a short, square man sprang in like a jack -in-the-box. Paying no attention to the students, he went to the desk immediately and sat down, keeping a stiff attitude in order to lose nothing of the little height he had. The abruptness of his entrance was almost funny, but Ernie restrained himself because everyone seemed extremely serious.

At the moment Herr Geek clacked his heels, and his arm rose obliquely into the air in a single sudden motion, with the rigidity of a beam. "Heil Hitler!" he cried furiously.

Herr Geek's gesture was so sudden that the students responded without exception. Ernie himself, somewhere in the obscurity of his being, found the inspiration and the technique for a perfect clicking of heels. At the same moment he realized that he was crying at the top of his voice "Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!" His voice was lost in the roaring of the whole class. Dumfounded, he discovered his arm pointed at the ceiling. Slowly, he brought it down and let it lie discreetly at his side, like a branch alien to his body.

"And now," he cried in a raging tone, "die Hunde, die Neger und die Yuden, austreten! Dogs, Negroes and Jews, step forward!" For a moment Ernie Levy attributed those words to Herr Geek's incomprehensible sense of humor, but when the student's did not laugh as the teacher stared furiously at Ernie's dark curls, the boy understood that the phrase was directed solely at the Jews. Immediately, he slipped to the side to take up his position as a Jew in the center of the aisle. Behind him, fat Simon Kotkowski was already sniffling.

"Jews!" Herr Geek cried. "When I give an order to the class in general, it means that I am addressing myself to the German students and not to their guests."

At a curt gesture, Moses Finkelstein rose with a fully submissive air. He stepped forward, repressing a bird-like hiccup. When he had arrived before the large lectern, a tear rolled from under his glasses, a tear of shame, of suppressed hilarity and of terror. No one really knew Moses Finkelstein - his father had abandoned his mother, who did housekeeping and breathed through the nostrils of her son, which is to say barely at all. Placing his hands flat against his chest in a vague gesture of defense, he broke into a singsong in a sighing, nasal voice, almost a murmur. He was then sent back to his knees, broken, fearful, licking at his tears, tasting the dregs of shame.

"I don't want to sing," Marcus Rosenberg then said.

"But, who is forcing you to sing, my friend?" Herr Geek repeated in a smooth, insinuating voice. "Where I come from people only sing for pleasure. Ask Moses Finkelstein..." Then, taking him from behind, Geek threw the Jewish child to his knees, twisting his wrist in a hammer lock.

"So it's that way? We have our pride?" Geek murmured affectionately, and he increased the pressure to force the child to groan. "But the pride of the Jew is made to be broken. And this is how," he added, and Marcus Rosenberg released a wail within himself without opening his tightened lips.

Geek's voice was syrupy sweet. "Come now, come now - `wenn Judenblut', when Jewish blood...? When Jewish blood...? At the end of five minutes, Marcus's lips were opening imperceptibly. When his mouth was wide open, a sudden drowned scream of music escaped it. The proof of a Jewish ignominy was achieved. Her Geek breathed delightedly, and flinging the child to the floor, he said, "Filth!"

Questions:

1. Can you imagine such a scene in one of your classes? How would you react?

2. Should teachers be answerable to a "higher authority" in how they conduct a class and in what they teach?

Reading #6

For years Jews throughout the world were prejudged as either a Litvak or a Galitzianer. What do these mean? Read and learn.

Litvak - Yiddish: Lithuanian

1. A Jew from Lithuania

2. An erudite, but dry, pedantic Jew (say the Polish Jews)

3. A clever, sharp, or shrewd Jew

4. A humorless Jew (say the Galitzianers)

Galitzianer (pronounced gal-itz-ee-on-er) Yiddish: A Jew from Galicia

I have received a raft of inquiries about where Galicia (from which Galitzianer Jews came) actually is. It has nothing to do with the Galicia of Spain; it is in Central Europe, north of the Carpathians. It once was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Since 1919 Galicia has been annexed to Poland.

Jewish settlements in Galicia date back to the ninth century. Galicia was famed as a seat of Jewish learning. Its yeshivas produced great scholars and noted rabbis.

Rivalry between Galitzianer and Litvak (a Jew from Lithuania) was pronounced; Polish Jews were condescending to both; Russian Jews derided all three; and German Jews (Deutsche Yehudim) shuddered at all four.

In the United States, first-generation Jews envied second-generation Jews; and German Jewish families - Warburgs, Kahns, Schiffs, Lehmanns - formed an elite of noteworthy cohesiveness. The "pecking order" of this Establishment and its Pecksniffian patronage (of Russian and Polish Jews) is described by Stephen Birmingham in Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York. San Francisco's Jews were a distinguished group of descendants of settlers dating back to the Gold Rush.

Questions:

1. Ask your family if you are a Litvak or a Galitzianer.

2. Ask them what it means.

Reading #7

Not all Jews were famous. Many were just Jews like you and me. They led normal lives like you and me. They marched through life just as we do. This article will show you normal Jews and how they lived in Poland.

Excerpts from various "Remembrance Books" - Writings from Polish towns before 1939

At the Market - A Jewish Town's Struggle for Bread

The fair at Kolbishov constituted a colorful, bustling spectacle, which took place both on Commerce Street (where the trading in cattle was held) and the market square, where a lively trade in all sorts of merchandise went on. The air was filled with a grating mixture of shouting voices. All the voices flowed together into a chorus expressing one word and one word only: Par-no-se (livelihood)!

The center of town was organized in precisely the same way as the tribes in the desert. Four lines of low houses surrounded the big square.

The Biale vegetable growers, who had arrived the previous night in order to secure their accustomed spots, creep out from underneath the wagons where they spent the night, and begin to sort out their produce. The "Bialer goyim" are well-acquainted with the things Jews need for their Sabbath table. Onions for fish, parsley for soup, little cucumbers with dill for pickling, and carrots for tzimmes.

After selling their produce, the peasant men and women wander around the Jewish shops and stalls to do their own shopping.

Right in the middle of the square are the woodworkers. Jews from nearby Sokolov are represented by the furniture they've manufactured. Among piles of wooden vessels, sieves, and strainers, strides the grizzled and venerable Reb Matisyohu, the patriarch of the industry.

Not far away are the textile dealers, Hasidic youths in velvet hats and long black overcoats, who sell striped and flowered percales and muslins for peasant dresses and kerchiefs, and speak to the women in Polish mixed with Hebrew: "Well, then, how much will you offer?"

There were Jewish tinsmiths, capmakers, coatmakers, shoemakers, Jewish porters, even Jewish peasants, but at the time when the Polish pogroms broke out, most of the Jews left the villages, where life was less safe than in town.

Jews bought factory goods in the big cities and sold them at the market. They were far from being parasites, as the anti-Semites depicted them, for they served the peasant, who received everything he needed for a minimum price.

Evening falls.

The pace of the fair grows slower and more relaxed. Jews hurry to the synagogue.

The Burial Society

One of the oldest, most influential and wealthiest societies in town was the burial society. It was a great honor to belong to the burial society, not to mention becoming one of its officers. Very few people achieved the distinction of being a gabay in the burial society, which was somewhat like being a president. Only outstanding individuals, the scholars of the town, such as Reb Yisroel Mazursky, Reb Hillel, and Reb Sholem Kastrinsky, merited the honor.

Whenever someone wanted to join the society, he had to pay an initiation fee of twenty-five rubles, and also make the annual feast on the night before the beginning of the month of Shevat.

The burial society had fairly high expenses: maintaining the cemetery, paying the grave digger, feasts that were considered very important because of the prominence of the society, and so forth. But where was the money to pay for all of this? the society attempted to cover its expenses by charging a fee for each burial, based on the financial situation of the family. A committee was appointed to determine how much to charge in each case. The committee saw to it that the society had all of the money it needed. In fact, it must be said that the committee's calculations were not very precise.

Girl's Cheyders

Girls were not taught to read the Bible in the original Hebrew in Horodets, but every Sabbath they used to read the Tzene-rene, the Yiddish adaptation of the Bible. If Grandmother didn't finish the weekly portion before the end of the Sabbath, she read it during the week.

The melamdeke or rebetsin, as she was called, was different from the male melamed. Most of the male teachers worked at this profession all of their lives, until their deaths. The women, however, held their positions only temporarily. Often they saw it as a means of earning extra income to help out their husbands.

Sports Clubs and Self-Defense

It was in 1925 that the idea of founding a sports club in town was born. Of course, this club was to be only one link in a chain of social organizations, such as morning schools, evening courses, and trade unions. The latter had begun in the lumber industry, and then spread to many other trades. There was also a movement to build up libraries. Virtually every party and organization took upon itself the initiative to start its own library.

The first article in the statutes of the three sports clubs that were founded then concerned the establishment of libraries.

The movement began with two clubs: Maccabi, consisting of the bourgeois element in town, with the active participation of Hechalutz (a Zionist organization whose members studied Hebrew and gained experience in manual labor in preparation for emigration to Palestine) and Hashomer Hatzair (a Zionist-socialist youth movement that prepared its members for settlement on kibbutzim); and the united workers' sports club, Skala - although the unity only lasted for a few weeks. The main cause of dispute was ideological. All of the members of the Left-labor Zionist group left Skala club, and immediately founded the third sports club, Gwiazda (Star). Then the spirit of competition took hold. Every club organized a soccer team, and the matches made the life of the town lively.

There were also moments when the Jewish clubs had tasks in common. It was the custom in Vishkov (it is difficult to say when the custom began) for nearly all of the Jewish youth of the town to come to the marketplace and stroll back and forth in couples and groups. We chatted, debate and gossiped about this or that. There was plenty of time. The stroll lasted from nine to eleven o'clock in the evening. The street used to be full of people. The sound of laughter and cheerful voices made the walking pleasant. Apparently, our Polish neighbors couldn't stand this; they hit some street boys, got them drunk, and sent them out to drive us away. When one of these gentiles showed up among the strollers and began shouting "Jews to Palestine!," chaos broke out in the street. People fell down and stepped on each other. In one part of town people ran, and in another part of town people shouted that Jews were being slaughtered. After this sort of panic, the marketplace would remain empty. We became afraid to step out of our houses. this began to happen more and more often. The hired hooligans were reinforced by many volunteers. They enjoyed the game, and they grew bolder each time. One gentile made a thousand Jews run.

The leaders of the Jews sports clubs decided to get together and organize self-defense. Strong, healthy fellows were chosen to work in pairs. Their first task was to put an end to the panic, make people stop running away on account of one belligerent person, defend Jewish honor, and be on guard against possible serious attacks. And secondly, they were not to permit the delightful custom of Sabbath strolls to be repressed. It was no easy job convincing representatives of the Skala club that the first order of business was to get the hired goons off the street. Most of them were lumber workers who were members of the same union, and Skala had to explain to them not to give up their ideals for a bit of whiskey. We accomplished little along those lines, but the Jews who went out for a walk knew that there were strong hands among them, ready to ward off any attack.

Tall Libe

That's what everyone in Otvotsk called her, and she was known for the two ways she gained her livelihood: the first was delivering milk, and the second was making Jewish women kosher, as the attendant in the mikve in Otvotsk.

Libe had written down a list of dozens of poor, sick people, either widows or people who were simply needy, who couldn't afford a glass of milk for themselves or for their sick child. Quietly, in secret, she brought to each of those homes a bit of milk, which she had managed to save in the course of a day. In winter, she knew in which homes people were freezing, because they didn't have the few pennies it would cost to buy fuel. She herself would bring them a little coal, some money, warm, cooked food or a piece of bread to keep body and soul together.

Weddings and Sheva-Brokhes

In our town, Jewish weddings were celebrated with all of the traditional customs. Several months before the wedding, material for the bride's and groom's wedding clothes were bought. Rich parents had the tailors come to their homes. Ten days before the wedding the cooking, baking, and frying began in the parents' house. Rich parents made a meal for the poor several days before the wedding, after which a substantial amount of money was distributed.

The bride and groom fasted on the day of the ceremony. The bride, dressed in white, sat on a podium. All of the guests wished the bride and then the in-laws "Mazel tov!" as they came in. Waiters gave baked pastries to everyone. Jewish musicians played festive tunes, and the girls danced.

The groom sat in front, surrounded by young boys, relatives, and friends. The tables were covered with white cloths, and many candles were lit.

Late at night the ceremony of veiling the bride began. The in-laws took the groom by the hand and led him to the bride's house. At the entrance, musicians played, while the groom approached the bride and covered her head with a white silk shawl. Then the groom was led back to where he waited. During this ceremony, the wedding jester began to sing rhymed couplets in Yiddish, and sometimes in Hebrew as well, accompanied by the fiddlers. The songs were taken from old Jewish folklore, and were often quite sentimental, making tears flow from the women's eyes.

Exactly one hour before midnight, the parents walked the groom arm-in-arm to the canopy. The musicians went first, playing festive music, and guests carried burning, multicolored candles; the groom was led to the synagogue, where the canopy had already been set up. When he was in place under the canopy, the whole crowd, including the town rabbi, stood near him, awaiting the bride's arrival.

The bride was accompanied by both of the mothers-in-law, and musicians played before her. Guests carried candles, while women danced near the bride with special challahs in their hands. These wedding challahs were braided and covered with many-colored poppy seeds. When the bride reached the canopy, the musicians ceased playing. The bride walked around the groom three times and stood at his left. The rabbi read the betrothal document and the wedding contract, both in Aramaic, blessed the wine, and gave it to the bride and groom to drink. Then the groom put the ring on the bride's finger and pronounced "Behold, I consecrate you to me." Then a glass was placed under the groom's foot, and he smashed it by stepping on it. The entire crowd shouted loudly, "Mazel tov! Mazel tov!" On the way back as well, the groom was led off first by himself, and the bride came after. Along the way the musicians played, as some relatives sang and others danced alongside with wedding challahs in their hands. Soon the bride and groom were conducted into a separate room for a few minutes of solitude. Then the groom was led to the men's table, and the bride went to the women's table. While everyone ate, the wedding jester sang to the bride and groom and the musicians played along.

After the meal, the wedding presents were announced; after a traditional wedding dance with the bride, everyone recited the grace after meals and the feast ended.

The First Day of Cheyder

When a boy began to attend cheyder, guests were invited to a feast, along with all the students in the cheyder. A feast was also given when the boy began studying the Five Books of Moses.

A special feast was given in the boy's honor when he reached age thirteen. His teacher taught him how to place phylacteries on his head and arm; on the day of his bar mitzvah, the child put on phylacteries and was counted as part of the minyan, the ritual quorum of ten men, for the first time. He was also called to bless a portion of the Torah reading. His father was called as well, and recited the verse, "Blessed be He who frees me of responsibility for his sins." At the feast at home afterward, the bar mitzvah boy presented a speech to the guests.

Questions:

1. With which of the scenes above can you relate to best? Why?

2. By the examples given above, can you discern the values which were important to the Jews? What are they?

Reading #8

On the March we will be in Cracow for a few days. You may know of it because Oskar Schindler had his factory here, and the concentration camp in Schindler's List was Plaszow, located in Cracow. Now you will visit these places. You will walk the streets of Kazimiercz, the Jewish quarter. This article briefly explains the background of Cracow.

Cracow - Source: Encyclopedia Judaica

City in southwest Poland along the Wisla River. At one time (1305-1609), it was the capital of Poland. There is historical record of a community in Cracow dating back to the 10th century. The Wawel Cathedral and Palace were built beginning in the 14th century. The University of Cracow, named for one of the royal dynasties, is the oldest in Eastern Europe.

In the third division of Poland, Cracow fell in the domain of the Austrian Czar. In the Vienna Congress of 1815, Cracow became a republic which included surrounding areas. It existed until 1846. With the rebirth of Poland in 1918 after World War I, Cracow return to Poland.

The city was captured by the Nazis on September 4, 1939 and became the headquarters/capital of the "Generalegouvernement" which encompassed most of Poland. It was liberated by the Soviets on January 9, 1945.

Jews Of Cracow

The Jewish community in Cracow was one of the oldest in Eastern Europe and it became a very important Jewish center. Already in 1304, there is record of a "Jewish street" in Cracow. The Jewish population grew as follows:

The Jewish community in Cracow was the first to receive "autonomy" in the 16th century. Cracow became a religious and cultural center. The first Jewish publishing house in Poland was in Cracow. In 1530, the Torah and Megillot were published. In Cracow we find a chain of Gedolai Torah (Torah Sages) from the 14th century to the 18th century.

Towards the end of the 19th century, Cracow also became a center for Zionism. The Hebrew newsletter "HaMagid" was published here. In local publishing houses they printed poems of Bialik and writings of Echad HaAm. A network of Zionist "Ivri" schools was set up. After World War I, there was a daily Zionist newspaper. Many of the international Zionist conferences took place in Cracow and all the Zionist youth movements were strong in Cracow and sent many olim to Israel.

With the entrance of the Nazis, the property of the Jews was officially "free" and within a short time the Jews were moved to a ghetto on the other side of the river. In Plashov a special work camp was set up. The majority of the Jews were sent to death camps including Auschwitz which is 45 kilometers from Cracow.

In Cracow there was organized resistance by youth. In the ghetto of Cracow the first organized Jewish fighting group was formed. Some members escaped to Warsaw where they became part of the famous uprising there.

With the liberation of the city, several thousand Jews returned to Cracow where they were not welcome. They left within a short time period and only a tiny, elderly population remains.

Kazmierz - The Jewish City (file copy)

In 1495, the Jews were expelled from Cracow. The entire Jewish community which had been built up over 200 years with great effort was completely eradicated. However, unlike many other Jews who were expelled from various cities and counties, the Jews did not have to travel far. They were permitted to settle in Kazmierz, a nearby city across the river.

With the settling in Kazmierz, a new era began for the Jews of Poland. This was the beginning of the united Jewish community which became a unique place filled with Torah and the basis for a new center of Judaism in Poland. This would be the leading center for 400 years.

It was very crowded in the "City of the Jews." Rows of stone and wood houses with no insulation were packed against each other. For lack of room in the houses, workmen worked in the narrow alleyways which resulted in a lot of contention among them.

The names of the streets and alleys as they were called by the Jews are a good indication of the social structure of the community. For example there is a "Dark Street," "Poor People's Street," "Narrow Street," "Rav Isaac's Street," "Talmud Torah Street," etc.

During the Crusades (end of the 11th century) and the accompanying decrees against the Jews, there was a massive immigration of Jews from Czechoslovakia to Poland which resulted in many family and economic ties between the Jews of Cracow and Czech Jewish communities.

The "Old Shul" - the central one (there were tens of them in Kazmierz) - was built with the help of the king (for whom the city was named). Its architecture is testimony to the "Czech influence" on Kazmierz. It is almost identical to a shul in Prague.

Reading #9

Lublin - the Jerusalem of Poland, site of great Yeshivot and the infamous death camp, Majdanek. You will be there. This chapter briefly explains the importance of Lublin.

The Polish Jews: The Final Chapter - Earl Vinecour

Lublin

Prayer had not been the only pillar of Polish Jewry; study and scholarship were equally important. Even in the poorest homes could be found a well-used library, and into the late hours of the night bent many, laboring over the holy books after a hard day's work. To be poor was no blessing to Polish Jews, but to be an am-haaretz (ignoramus) was to be truly cursed. It was thus no accident that in Poland had been located many, if not most, of the greatest world centers of Talmudic study, the yeshivas; and nowhere else in the world had there been a yeshiva like that of Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin (Academy of the Sages of Lublin). For Lublin had been the very spiritual heart of Polish Jewry, renowned for its scholars and sages, one of them so great that he was referred to as the Seer of Lublin.

So important in the life of the entire Polish nation had been the influence of the great Yeshiva of Lublin, that for centuries its rector was appointed by none other than the King of Poland himself. In 1930, 50,000 people, including high-ranking government officials, attended the ceremonies dedicating a new headquarters for the Yeshiva. It was considered to be one of the most modern prewar buildings in all of Poland, six stories high, 120 rooms, a huge auditorium, and even a scale model of the Temple in Jerusalem. In 1939, 500 students studied there full time.

A horrifying account of the wanton vandalization of this center of learning by the Nazis is found in the Deutsche Jugendzeitung (February 1940). "It was a matter of special pride to us," proclaims the Nazi narrator: "to destroy this Talmudic Academy, known as the greatest in Poland. We threw out of the building the large Talmudic library and brought it to the market place. There, we kindled a fire under the books. The conflagration lasted twenty hours. The Jews of Lublin stood around weeping bitterly. Their outcries rose above our own voices. We summoned a military band, and the triumphant cries of the soldiers drowned out the noise of the wailing Jews.

Today in Lublin, there are only thirty Jews out of the 46,000 who lived there before the war (forty percent of the city's population). Miraculously, the building which housed the famous Yeshiva has survived, and as a center of learning at that. It now houses the Lublin Medical College."

I asked a professor of the college why there was no memorial of any kind explaining the great historical significance of the building, especially for the future generations of Polish doctors who were unknowingly carrying on the building's reputation as a center for scholarship. Blushing with embarrassment, the good doctor responded, "Rabbi, your question in Poland today is sadly a political one, and I am only a doctor."

Notwithstanding the refusal of the Communist government to memorialize officially this renowned, historic center of scholarship and to include it within the intellectual heritage of the Polish nation, folk legends about the academy and its scholars persist among the people of Lublin. Many of these legends center around the lofty, densely wooded, Grodzisk Hill, near the Yeshiva, where a great stone wall shields a sixteenth-century Jewish burial ground. Here rest not only the academy's most illustrious teachers, but also two of Diaspora Judaism's greatest intellectual giants - Solomon Luria (1501-1573), known by the acronym of Maharshal and considered along with Remo of Cracow, one of two major architects of contemporary Orthodox Judaism, and Rabbi Meir Lublin (1558-1616), known as the Maharam.

A story has been passed down by Polish families who have lived at the foot of this hallowed site for generations, that the sages buried there were so sensitive that even in death their souls required undisturbed silence to continue their eternal studies. After a Catholic monastery was constructed next to the cemetery hill, the legend continues, the monks and rabbinical souls became scholarly neighbors who gloried in meditative silence. When the monastery was converted into a church, however, the cloistered solemnity was shattered by the frequent ringing of a bell. So upset were the departed sages that they pronounced a malediction upon the bell. To this day, we were told, the bell hangs in silence, none daring to ring it for fear of the ancient rabbinical curse.

While the power of a rabbinical censure may have been effective enough to silence a bell, it had been helpless against a far more deadly sound. While climbing the steep path to the tombs of the Maharshal and Maharam, we were guided by a Polish teenager to a pit in the cemetery where, protruding through the eroding soil, could be seen the skulls and bones of Lublin Jews massacred there amidst the deafening sounds of Nazi machine-gun fire.

Lublin had been renowned not only as a center of scholarship, of Talmudic sages and academies, but also for a most unusual event which is said to have occurred there in the sixteenth century. At that time, a highly influential Jewish banker by the name of Saul Wahl, for whom a synagogue in the city was named, became, of all things, King of Poland. According to the legend, Saul's father had saved the life of a Polish nobleman, Prince Radziwill, who in gratitude became a patron of Saul. On the day when the election of the new king, Sigismund III, was due for final ratification by the Sejm (parliament), Prince Radziwill appointed Saul Wahl to assume the duties of the throne during the interregnum. His reign, however, lasted only one day, as the Sejm ratified Sigismund's election before the day's end. Legend or history, the story of Saul Wahl, as part of age-old folklore, testifies to the sense of deep rootedness the Jews felt in Poland.

The Saul Wahl synagogue, and that of the Maharshal, which, constructed in 1567, was so huge that it could accommodate 3,000 worshipers, were located at the base of the king's castle. This site became the Jewish quarter referred to as Podzamcze, meaning "below the castle." The location in many ways symbolizes the symbiotic relationship that existed throughout Polish history between the throne and the Jewish community. Wherever in Poland there was a royal castle, one would be sure to find the Jewish quarter nearby.

Podzamcze was a maze of courts and twisting alleys, of houses of study and synagogues of every variety, including the Kotlerschul, belonging to the coppersmith guild; the Mschorsimschul, for business clerks; the Lauferschul, for porters; the Scneiderschul, for tailors. This historic section of Lublin was totally leveled by the Nazis. Today, only the former entrance gate, still referred to by the local populace as the Jews' Gate, remains, while Podzamcze ("below the castle") now refers to a vast, empty plaza.

Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin, the Maharshal, the Seer of Lublin, Rabbi Meir Lublin...were what to Polish Jews had given a city its name. And so it was with Kotsk, Bobov, Ger, Przemysl, Rymanow...not seen merely as names of Polish hamlets, but as great Hasidic courts; not geographical locations, but mystical gateways to the divine.

In 1930, Rabbi Meir Shapiro began the practice of "Daf Yomi." Each day one would study a page from the Talmud. Within a seven year period one could study the entire Talmud. The practice continues to this day.