Vilna, Warsaw, Wroclaw, and Cyprus

Well, after quite the harrowing journey, we made it to Vilna. And the journey we went on once we arrived was worth every ounce of stress and frustration to get there. 

We began the trip learning about Yiddish culture in Vilna before the war. Because my name is Yiddish, I feel a special connection to the language. I was named for all my ancestors from Eastern Europe who spoke Yiddish so getting to learn about it in the place where many of my ancestors once lived was really special. We met a scholar of Yiddish who gave us some freebies and I got a book of megillat Esther in Yiddish. I may not ever be able to read it but I am very happy to have it. 

We visited a statue of and the grave of the Vilna Gaon and talked about whether intellect or spirituality guide our Jewish practice. I loved getting the opportunity to bring Jewish history into our present lives as spiritual leaders. 

The next day we focused our studies on the Holocaust in Vilna. We stood on the spot where the Ghetto wall once stood and read poetry written inside its walls.

Toys (A. Sutzkever)

My daughter, you must care for your toys, 

Poor things, they're even smaller than you.

 Every night, when the fire goes to sleep, 

Cover them with the stars of the tree.

Let the golden pony graze
The cloudy sweetness of the field.
Lace up the little boy's boots 

When the sea-eagle blows cold. 

Tie a straw hat on your doll
And put a bell in her hand.
For not one of them has a mother,
And so they cry out to God.
Love them, your little princesses¬
I remember a cursed night
When there were dolls left in all seven streets
Of the city.
And not one child. 

There was not a dry eye in the group. 

After our time in Vilna, we traveled on our minibus (as I listened to the new Taylor Swift album!!) to Zhezmir. Zhezmir was a shtetl once rich with Jewish life. Now, only a synagogue remains as the remnant of what once was. One of the residents of the town has made it his life’s work to take care of the synagogue. And because we are emerging clergy, we didn’t just treat this space as a museum. We were in a synagogue - so we davened Shacharit. I felt immense sadness alongside such joy and pride at the opportunity to bring prayer back into that space. The wooden walls and the cold air lifted our voices and made the prayer feel even more urgent. It was one of the most meaningful praying experiences I have ever had. 

And then we continued to Kovno, Lithuania. As many of you may have seen in my dad’s Facebook post, Kovno is an important place in our family history. My dad’s mom’s mom’s mom was born in Kovno. She left Lithuania in the late 19th century to begin a life in the United States. And there I was, five generations later, standing in the synagogue in Kovno where she once prayed. One of my classmates who is a cantorial student stood on the Bima and sang the song Chai by Ofra Haza. 

“׳’חי חי חי כן אני עוד חי. עם ישראל חי. זה השיר שסבא שר אתמול לאבא והיום אני. אני עוד חי’ 

 

“I’m still alive, alive, alive. The Nation of Israel is alive. This is the song that grandpa sang yesterday to dad. And today it’s me”

To sing this song in the synagogue where my ancestors once sang was meaningful beyond words. Something that kept coming up for me during my time in Lithuania and Poland is how grateful I am that my family got out of Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. They all got out, and they all met each other, and because of that I am here today. I couldn’t get this one lyric from the Matilda musical (lol) out of my head “every life is unbelievably unlikely. The chances of existence are so infinitely small.” Kovno, Lithuania is as good a spot as any to have an existential crisis. Well, this was less of a crisis and more of a reaffirmation of my purpose. 

Judaism is a magical thing that allows us to connect to the past, present and future - l’dor v’dor, from generation to generation. Judaism is a long, long relay race. And now the baton has been handed to me. And I will carry it with pride and joy. And I will pass it on to future generations - showing them how it can be used to wipe out hatred, bring more love, and build a better world. 

After Kovno we boarded the bus for Warsaw. Shabbat came in as we crossed into Poland. So we stopped at a gas station and bought a bottle of wine. On the bus we made kiddush and sang a shockingly gorgeous and ruach-filled kabbalat Shabbat service. I’m calling it “Shabbat on wheels.” 

                                                   (this is me trying to push the cork into our wine with a pencil)

Saturday morning in Warsaw, Levi and I led a Shacharit service in a hotel room. It was a new challenge but we made it work. I gave a short dvar torah in place of a Torah service that I’ve included here: 

In our Torah this week, God lays out the rituals and requirements for cleansing oneself in the face of impurity. But we don’t just hear about impurity of the self. 

כנגע נראה לי בבית 

A plague is in my house 

We learn here not just about impurity of person but also impurity of place. And it feels appropriate to be reading this this week, a week when we have been to so many impure places. We are searching for meaning in places plagued by destruction, death, and pure evil. 

The Torah tells us that there are some plagued houses that just need to be destroyed. It needs to be destroyed and what remains needs to be taken outside the city never to be used again as a dwelling place. But I’m less interested in the houses fated with total destruction. I’m interested in the houses that have the potential to be pure. 

Once the priest sees that the house is free of the plague, he performs a ritual, a sacrifice. He marks time and space to free the house of its impurity. But he doesn’t just sacrifice one bird. He sacrifices one, and he lets the other fly free. Only then is the house finally clean. 

When we’ve arrived at these holy unholy plagued sights, how have we marked the space? How have we, through song and prayer, through pouring sand from the beaches of Tel Aviv, re sanctified space? 

וְשִׁלַּח אֶת-הַצִּפֹּר הַחַיָּה, אֶל-מִחוּץ לָעִיר--אֶל-פְּנֵי הַשָּׂדֶה; וְכִפֶּר עַל-הַבַּיִת, וְטָהֵר.

Then he shall let the living bird loose outside the city in the open field, and make atonement for the house, and it shall be clean

In every synagogue we’ve visited, every sight of mass murder, every ghetto wall, we have brought some holiness into some of the most unholy of places. We live , we sing, we pray. We are the living bird. When we leave this place, go out into the sadeh, we must take the pain with us. But we can be at peace knowing that through our Jewish practice, our holy language, and the power of song, we have left this land a little bit holier. 

On Saturday we also visited the Polin museum and toured Ghetto-related sights in Warsaw. It was intense beyond words. That night, we had our last dinner together as a group. We got to reflect on everything we had seen and been together as a group, which was very necessary. 

And then on Sunday (after a bit more time touring around Warsaw), my friend and classmate Will and I journeyed to Wroclaw to begin the Pesach Project. The Pesach Project is an HUC tradition that sends first year students to FSU communities to lead Seder. It used to take place in Ukraine but since the war it has been relocated to Poland. Will and I did not know what to expect but we were excited to lead our first Seder. 

Our first day, one of the board members gave us a tour of the synagogue. It was gorgeous. Abraham Geiger (the founding father of reform Judaism) was once the rabbi there, back when Wroclaw was part of Germany rather than Poland. As two future reform clergy, Will and I felt like we were standing in the footsteps of a giant. The synagogue also ended up with many Jewish artifacts that used to be held in Nazi-created “Jewish museums.” We got to see medieval manuscripts in prime condition. And it was nice to see that they ended up back in the hands of the Jewish people. 

Will and I led a beautiful seder, but we basically led a seder for ourselves with forty people watching (and one woman recording the whole thing on her iphone). The loss of Jewish knowledge and culture due to both the Nazis and the soviets was more palpable than I have ever seen it. The silence in the room when we got to the chorus of Dayenu made me question if the renewal of Jewish life in Eastern Europe is even possible. But despite this sadness, we met many wonderful people who were so happy to have us there, bringing song and Jewish joy back into the space. 

After Wroclaw, I spent a day in Krakow where I visited a friend who is currently working at the JCC there. She toured me around the community center and all hope was restored. The Jewish renewal happening in Krakow is magical. And the same is happening in Warsaw. The smaller cities and towns might just need a little more time (and maybe a full time rabbi). I had a wonderful dinner with two of my classmates who did their Pesach project in Gdansk. It was so fun to swap stories about our different seder experiences. 

I stayed the night at the Krakow airport so that the next morning I could catch my early flight to Cyprus. I woke up at 5am, got on the shuttle and found myself in the Krakow airport staring at the departures screen. And my flight was not there. I pulled up my reservation only to learn that my flight was out of the Katowice airport, not the Krakow airport. Oy! Of course at the end of this insane week and a half I would end up at the wrong airport. I took a deep breath, remembered that worse things have happened to the Jews in this country, and found a flight out of Gdansk. After a six hour train ride, I finally ended up at the Gdansk airport and on my new flight to Cyprus.

Let’s just say my beach weekend in Cyprus was very much needed. And now I sit on the balcony of my hotel in Paphos, watching the sunset over the sea, and thinking about everything I have done and been through in the past two weeks. Tomorrow I head back to Jerusalem for my last three weeks. I cannot believe how quickly this semester has gone by and how much I have grown and changed since January.

Thank you all for being with me on this journey.