Shabbat December 29-30

December 29th Parashat VaYechi

It’s been a while since I posted, which is multifactorial. No trips to Israel, a very busy late summer and fall, and then the events of October 7th and the subsequent war against Hamas. Yes, there has been a lot to write about, and I am sure we have all written our share on what is currently going on in our communities. Whether you are directly involved by having friends and family in Israel, or you are an academic or a student on campus, or are even living in a city like Montreal, Toronto or New York, it’s obvious that we are living in very troubling times. I plan on writing a bit on reflections on what’s going on in Israel, but that is being saved for at least 2-3 posts to focus on important family events. 

 

To start, I am going to reach back a couple of weeks and share the simcha that we were privileged to be part of in Cleveland on Shabbat Chanukkah. We celebrated the Bat Mitzva of our granddaughter Talia Bella, or Tali, as everyone calls her! The Montreal contingent of Barbara, my Mom (AKA Grandma) and I descended on Monty, Daniella, Tali and Ezra in Cleveland on the Thursday prior to the simcha. Friday morning, we were treated to a very fun “Grandparents Day” at Fuchs Mizrachi School, where we joined Ezra for a fun pre-Shabbat Sing-a-long. 

Then, on to the next big event. We were joined by members of the Wagner family, Elan from Israel, the Mazer Family and friends of Monty and Daniella from the cities that Monty had done medical training, including Buffalo and St. Louis!  And what a party it was! First and most important, Tali is an incredible young woman, bright, poised, confident, friendly, and very, very kind and caring. She is also a superb big sister to Ezra (age 7) who is always an important part of Tali’s world. It’s really fun to see how well they relate. Daniella and Monty planned an amazing weekend, with a beautiful Friday night dinner for family and out of town guests at their synagogue; Shabbat morning the synagogues services were led by Monty and his friend Max Gornish, with Ezra singing with Abba (Monty) on the bimah for a key part of the service (that was awesome). The services culminated with Tali presenting a d’var Torah (Torah Lesson) about Channukkah to the entire congregation. She was well prepared and pulled it off flawlessly. The entire congregation was invited to a “kiddush” sponsored by Daniella and Monty but featuring (among many other great foods) Babka from Chezkie’s Bakery on Park Ave in Montreal. If you have not yet had Chezkie’s Babaka, well, you just haven’t lived 😉

After a fun family lunch and the afternoon services (which included a d’var Torah from Elan), many of the gang went to the best kosher restaurant in Cleveland (Mendel’s KC BBQ, which we had been to Thursday night). 

But the piece de resistance was a Sunday night Hanukkah party for Tali and her friends (and of course other family members and friends). There was great music and dancing, fantastic kid-friendly food, and lots of ruach. Tali was everywhere at once, dancing with her friends and really appearing to enjoy the moment. It was a very fitting Bat Mitzvah celebration. 

Fast forward 2 1/2 weeks and we have arrived in Israel! We are at the beginning of a few new adventures. First, we will be celebrating another family milestone, our grandson Shlomo’s Bar Mitzvah, a week from Saturday. Second, we be spending several months here on Sabbatical as Bruce will be working in research with the Pediatric Food Allergy Unit in Sheba Hospital at Tel Hashomer in Tel Aviv. So, lot’s more to share in the coming weeks and months.   

We also have completed some upgrades in our apartment which we planned on our trip last summer. This was actually all carried out while we were in Montreal, following along by video and WhatsApp messages, under the watchful eye of an amazing designer named Linda Dekel. We now have a new kitchen and 3 brand new bathrooms, and the place looks really great. A good start to our several months long sojourn. 

We are now preparing for Shabbat in Petach Tikvah with Gila and Ariel. But of course, we had to have some minor Israeli mishap….we rented a car on Wednesday on arrival, but did not use the car on Thursday. This morning as we packed up the car, guess what? It did not start! So of course, we called Hertz and they pleasantly said that the repair person would come within 3 hours! So helpful…Anyway, happy ending, the service person called me about 30 minutes later that he would be there in 10 minutes. A quick evaluation, and a new battery, and we were on our way. 

So, stay tuned for more updates with commentary and current events interspersed. We’ll keep you posted with our unique perspective!

Refuah Shelema to Paltiel Rafael ben Esther

Refuash Shelema to Aliza bat Chaya

Mazel tov to Haim Fruchter and Family on the recent Bat Mitzvah of Sheelo, daughter of Yacov and Ryla!

Happy Birthday to Uncle Peter!

Happy Birthday to Sheila!

Happy Birthday to Alvan!

Happy Birthday to Debbie!

Happy Birthday to Elaine!

Happy Birthday to Shlomo!

Happy Birthday to Gail!

And to all a Happy 2024, may it be a year that brings more peace and understanding to the world.

Shabbat Shalom!

Barbara and Bruce

In the Footsteps of our History Part 4

It’s been a bit of a surreal week, to say the least. We spent the remainder of Sunday in the company of Cheryl and David Solomon, Phil and Ruth Farkas and Abigail Hirsch, setting up a tour of the Oskar Shindler Factory Museum, and sampling two of Krakow’s “finest” kosher restaurants, Falafel Shelanu and the Kosher Delight Branch next to the Kupa synagogue. If we had any doubts about the amazing professionalism and logistical prowess of the J-Roots team before (which we did not!) we were humbled by our mishaps in organizing these few simple things. Besides not reserving for the museum in advance, being taken advantage of by cabs (after an Uber and our group could not figure out how to meet up), and not calling the bigger Kosher Delight restaurant to see if they had space (they did not!), everything worked out for the best and we have things to laugh about.  

So, we are back home, working to process what we saw and observed in the week in Poland. Clearly, the amazing comradery and support that our one-of-a-kind group gave to each other has been sorely missed by all, as there are dozens of WhatsApp messages being shared daily. There are so many lessons that we learned from visiting the remnants of the tragedy of the Holocaust, and so many important events and stories that will remain in all of our minds. I could not presume to do justice to all the important lessons, but would like to try and highlight a few points.  

I would venture to start on a positive note. We learned a lot about resilience and hope. Whether it was from Zvi’s stories and testimonies of the survivors that he has brought back to Poland, from the family histories of those members of the group who are children of survivors, the stories told by Willie, Chaya, Ruby, Phil and others about their families harrowing escapes and about rebuilding their lives in North America, and especially from our amazing travel partner, Josef Lewkowicz, we tangibly saw what people could accomplish despite hardships that none of us can fathom. Survivors created new lives, families, businesses, and networks. Even with the constant specter of the camps, the expulsions, and the degradation clouding all their thoughts, as in the poem read to us in Auschwitz, people found the strength to press on. Was that universal? Unfortunately, no. Was it the most audacious thing that one can imagine? Absolutely yes. Just read the poem “The Survivor” by Primo Levi.  This short poem captures the horrors that flow through any normal person’s head after this most traumatic of experiences (see below). 

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/primo_levi/poems/3720 

Yet, they survived, and in many cases, thrived. I have heard Mr. Lewkowicz's testimony before, but will never tire of his energy and the outlook he wants us to have. We can all learn a tremendous amount about resilience, about keeping focused despite all that is creeping into our heads, and about having a bit of chutzpah and being able to bring more good into the world.   

Conversely, the next point is about injustice and cruelty. We are witnesses to the history of some of the most dastardly deeds humans have ever committed against other humans. The testimonies of mass killings and plans for extermination of the Jewish nation included forms of debasement, degradation, and death that are unspeakable. Yet we must speak about them. We must at all costs be willing to talk, expose and protest these horrors. Many people say that with social media, this could not happen again. Monday morning, I met with 4 members of my research team, including a scientist from the Ukraine, a student from Lebanon, and one from Iran. They are all living examples that despite 24-hour news coverage, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, atrocities continue. People do not only not learn from history, but those who wish to have power, and those who hate, do not feel that the atrocities of the past have any bearing on what they do in the present. I won’t start listing all that is going on in our world today, but we all must keep very conscious of the fact that the tragedies of the Holocaust can be repeated again. God forbid they are repeated to the scale of 6,000,000 Jews and 50+ million others who died as a result of the Nazi’s war on humanity. There is no question that these tragedies continue to occur. When will humanity learn? 

Finally, I want to just underscore Zvi Sperber and Rabbi Poupko’s key messages about maintaining Jewish culture, learning, and pride, in spite of the taunts, threats and ultimately the death sentence that the Nazis brought upon the Jewish Populations of Eastern Europe during the Holocaust. Poland had been one of the key places that Torah study flourished over the centuries. Other Eastern European countries such as Lithuania, Latvia and Russia were also bastions of preserving Jewish learning and culture. Also, Jews contributed to workers’ movements, unionization, the sciences and arts. During the war, we not only fought, but studied Torah in the Warsaw Ghetto and even in concentration camps. People wrote poetry and importantly, people chronicled what was going on in the towns, ghettos, and the camps, including people who were in hiding and those who had escaped. We should not only take tremendous pride in how these people held up their heads and stated clearly that they are Jews and wanted to preserve our Jewish way of life, the two-thousand-year history of the study of Torah and Jewish law, and our wish to be a light unto the nations, we should emulate this. In fact, we need to embody it, with an exclamation point! 

Our group was very special; the participants have been active in the Jewish community and many are very passionate advocates for the community, for Tzedakah projects, and for Jewish learning. As we inch slowly away from the intensity of the trip, let’s retain this passion, and continue our efforts to both continue our personal journey in Jewish education and advocate for others to climb on board.

We look forward to seeing many of you at the Kiddush at BIBA!

Shabbat Shalom

Barbara and Bruce

The Survivor by Primo Levi

Once more he sees his companions' faces

Livid in the first faint light,

Gray with cement dust,

Nebulous in the mist,

Tinged with death in their uneasy sleep.

At night, under the heavy burden

Of their dreams, their jaws move,

Chewing a non-existant turnip.

'Stand back, leave me alone, submerged people,

Go away. I haven't dispossessed anyone,

Haven't usurped anyone's bread.

No one died in my place. No one.

Go back into your mist.

It's not my fault if I live and breathe,

Eat, drink, sleep and put on clothes.'

In the Footsteps of Our History Part 3

August 3, 2023

Following the amazing spirit and fun of the Siyyum, we bussed to Rzeszow and stayed at the Bristol Hotel for the night. The day started off with close to an hour of stories from Mr. Lewkowicz who told us about his childhood and some of his harrowing war experiences. I will hopefully create a second post based on my notes from his talk. Rzeszow is a medium sized city in Poland with a population of over 175,000. However, like many older cities, some areas have pretty narrow streets. Navigating a bus around these corners with cars parked on both sides is no mean feat, as we found out, with a minor mishap happening as our bus rounded a corner. The fender bender brought a bit of comic relief into a day that had some very intense moments. 

Once we extricated the bus from the twists and turns of Rzeszow, we headed off to Lancut, a small town of under 20,000 people. Like most places, Lancut has grown considerably since the Second World War. There had been a Jewish presence in Lancut since the 16th century, and in the 1700s it was home to a significant number of rabbis who were important in the genesis and growth of the Hassidic movement in Judaism. These included Jacob Issac Horowitz, also known as the Seer (HaHozeh) of Lublin. The community synagogue was destroyed by a fire in the 1720s and was rebuilt starting in 1726 and was finished in 1761, with help from the Polish nobleman who’s family owned much of Lancut, Count Potoki. This synagogue is still standing; though desecrated by the Nazi’s, it was saved by Count Alfred Potoki, descendant of the original benefactor. Prewar Lancut had 1700 Jews which was 45% of the city, but the community was destroyed by the Nazis. The synagogue still stands today. Amazingly, the caretaker, a non-Jewish gentleman named Mirek, has dedicated himself to the synagogue, to the point of teaching himself Hebrew so he can provide a proper historical tour. The synagogue is not large but has a magnificent high ceiling and ornate painting on the walls, and there are likely buried treasures of books and manuscripts hidden away in the archives. We celebrated the past vibrant community by reading the Torah there, and commemorated some of the more famous individuals who came from there. 

We continued in the countryside and arrived in Zolyina in the pouring rain. The dreariness matched the mood of the village. Today the town has a population of about 5000; however, Zolyina is a forgotten place that once had a small but vibrant Jewish community. We visited the Jewish Cemetery which was mostly destroyed, with its tombstones used to pave roads or reinforce walls. There are under a dozen graves that still have markers. There we heard one of the members of our trip, Chaya Lieberman, talk about her grandfather who escaped from there with her father and uncle, and was able to ultimately move to the US. His family stayed together during the war, hiding, and moving from place to place. Chaya recounted a wonderful line; “One stick is easy to break, but four is much stronger”; referring to the 4 children in the family who survived. The idea is clear; there is safety in numbers, and sticking together with family was a powerful key to survival. Of course, this is wonderful advice post war as well!

The rain continued, as did our visits to Jewish communities that were completely wiped out during the war. The township of Tarnow, which had always had a sizable Jewish population, had to absorb several thousand more when the Krakow ghetto was built. Of the 65,000 Jews in Krakow, only 15,000 were allowed into the ghetto (in an area that housed 3,000 before). The remainder fled to places like Tarnow and the village of Zbylitowska Gora. Over 7,000 Jews in Tarnow were rounded up in mid-June 1942 and shot. In Zbylitowska Gora, we marched slowly along the road to an area with 3 fenced in areas and a memorial. This was among the most difficult places we visited, as the fenced in areas were mass graves where over 700 children were summarily executed after they were rounded up, taken from their parents and ordered to lie down into pits that had been dug. It is impossible to fathom the emotion of the parents, the children, and any onlookers who witnessed this barbaric act. There were no dry eyes as we slowly left where these children were buried. 

Keeping with the theme of in the Footsteps of our History, we once again participated in an amazing event that brought life to a long dormant Jewish Community. The city of Bobowa (pronounced Bobov) is the home to a large Hassidic group, which still has many members in North America and Israel. Two families on our trip (Phil and Edie Freedman and Dr Ruby and Adele Freedman) purchased a Torah Scroll that had been rescued from the Holocaust many years ago, refurbished it, and we celebrated the completion of this project by participating in the writing of the last letters into the Torah. This was performed in two stages, the first in the synagogue in the town of Bobowa (AKA Bobov), and the second was in the city of Oswiecim, the Polish word for Auschwitz. We paraded through the streets of Bobov, with Israeli Flags and the Torah and were greeting by interested onlookers who waved and took pictures. The synagogue in Bobov was beautiful and is slowly being refurbished and repainted as a memorial site. It has been decades since such an event was conducted there.  

The day ended quite late, as we arrived in Krakow to prepare for the next day, the visit to Auschwitz

August 4th, 2023

To be honest, I don’t think any place sends shivers down the spine of anyone who knows anything about World War II as the Auschwitz concentration camp. Auschwitz I was a forced labor camp and the area known as Birkenau was also part of the Auschwitz complex. With the slogan over its gates “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Labor makes you free), this was the most well-known and deadly of the death camps. Over 1.1 million Jews perished there, either from the extreme conditions due to forced labor, or in the gas chambers. Many were sentenced to work for a few months and then killed. Auschwitz was specifically chosen as it was situated near multiple rail lines, leading it to be the unloading point for Jews from as far north as Norway, as far East as Greece and from areas of North Africa, such as Tunisia and Algeria. In addition to the Jews killed there, several hundred thousand Roma (also known as gypsies) were imprisoned or killed there, as were Poles, Russians, and other victims of the Nazi horror. However, the number of Jews killed dwarfs them all.

The Auschwitz Museum incudes horrendous displays of looting of items from jewelry and watches, to glasses, dishes, clothes and shoes of all sizes, even hair (from shaving of bodies done to humiliate the Jews). The visit to Birkenau included viewing the cramped barracks, the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoria and learning about the horrendous life of the prisoners as well as the acts of heroism and resistance. Even simple things such as trying to hold a makeshift Passover Seder or welcome the Sabbath were highly risky, yet people tried not to completely lose their humanity. We learned of Dr Gisella Perl, an obstetrician who tried her best to save Jewish women who may have been sent to Auschwitz while pregnant. Dr Perl survived the war, and despite the hardship and unspeakable sights she saw, she went on to having an award winning career in hospitals in New York and Israel. We learned of other acts of heroism among the female prisoners, who had worse conditions than the men, and yet defied the Nazis by lighting Shabbat candles in the barracks and trying to preserve what little shards of hope they had. It is incredible what people will do despite the hardest of hardships, and we can learn many important lessons from these small but heroic acts of defiance. 

As mentioned above, the Freedman family celebrated the completion of the Torah Scroll in the city of Oswiecim. For those who have never witnessed this type of event, it is a major celebration. Consider this: the Nazi’s went into communities, took out the Torah Scrolls and burnt untold numbers of Torahs. For a new one to be competed in Auschwitz is the ultimate justice and emphasizes who ultimately prevailed in the Nazi quest to eliminate all traces of the Jewish people.    

August 6-7, 2023

After this incredible week of heart wrenching sites and the highs of celebrating the restoration of a small amount of life to the destroyed communities of Poland, we were all very glad for Shabbat to finally arrive. No bus travel, a more relaxed schedule, great food and drink…what more could one want. The group came together for enthusiastic prayer services, including praying in two synagogues that date back several hundred years. We took a long walk through the old Jewish Quarter, and visited Lewkowa street, which is named for the family of Josef Lewkowicz, who regaled us with stories about how life was when he was a young man in pre-war Krakow, when 25% of the population was Jewish. At the Corner of Lewkowa street is the Remah Synagogue and cemetery, where Rabbi Moses Isserles, the renowned expert in Jewish Law, wrote the definitive commentary of European (Ashkenazi) Jewish Practice. What was very interesting about the Jewish Quarter is the fact that not only is it preserved, but the shops and restaurants in the area reflect the Jewish character of yesteryear. The restaurants serve gefilte fish and other traditional Eastern European foods (not all of them such delicacies, such as “Gesi Pipiq” or Goose pipik) as well as humus and falafel. The bars play klezmer music, and the shops sell “hamsas” and other artifacts. While much of this is meant for Jewish tourists, the outdoor terraces of restaurants such as Ariel and Klezmer-Hoiz appeared to be filled with people of all nationalities. The street names include Abrahama, Jacoba, Jeruselema, and others, all reflecting the former large Jewish presence. There are at least 4-5 very old synagogues as well as a new Chabad centre and three Kosher restaurants in addition to the many “Kosher-style” ones. 

We also visited Krakow’s city square, a beautiful classic eastern European square and the largest city square in Europe. It was a mixture of old-world architecture and modern stores. The main church and clock tower is known for ringing in every hour with a combination of chimes and a live bugler who plays and then waves to the crowd. Krakow, the seat of the Nazi General administration of Poland, was not bombed, as opposed to Warsaw which was 80% destroyed.

As we neared the end of the trip and the end of Shabbat we engaged in a session where we talked about what this trip meant to people in the group. I will reflect more on that in the next installment. Shabbat ended with the Havdalah prayer which I led with beautiful harmonies by the Hassidic choir that had joined us in Lejansk. They were 5 very talented singers (and their keyboardist) who really added to the spirit of the events and the prayers on Shabbat. They sang and harmonized with us, chatted and laughed with us, and really captured the mood with their music.

Sunday was the official end of the weeklong mission to Poland. To be honest, the denouement could have been a let-down, but in the spirit of this amazing trip, it was anything but. For those who have seen Shindler’s List, the award-winning Steven Spielberg movie, the primary settings of the movie were Oskar Shindler’s Factory and the Plashow forced labor and concentration camp. Mr. Lewkowicz, who grew up in Plashow, was one of 750 Jewish men from the town who were conscripted to build the camp at the age of 13. The site of the Plashow camp was the Jewish cemetery; the entire area was bulldozed, and the conscripted members of the Krakow Jewish community had to remove the headstones and the remains. Just picture what it would be like for someone to be ordered to disinter remains of friends and relatives to build a labor camp. I will append a full accounting of stories from Mr. Lewkowicz; they are frightening and harrowing but also show what resilience, faith, chutzpah, and a bit of good luck can lead to. 

Plashow includes a memorial to a woman named Sarah Schenirer, who in 1917, established the first school for girls that taught traditional Jewish texts and subjects that had previously only been taught to boys. The Beis Yakov (House of Jacob) school system continues to exist today and is found in most major Jewish Communities world-wide. Ms. Schenirer passed away at age 52, before the War, but the profound positive influence she had on women’s education continues to this day. 

We completed our tour in the rain at the Rema Synagogue cemetery. Interesting choice for a finale, no?  Like everything else on this trip, there was a clear purpose set out by the tremendous educators who led the mission, Tzvi Sperber and Rabbi Poupko. Just as Krakow was a major centre for Jewish life in Europe, the cemetery is the resting place of many great individuals, including a list of rabbis who were important contributors to the classical Jewish literature, with their commentaries on Talmud and Jewish law. Our visit represents a continuum, starting from biblical times, to the codification of Jewish law from the 3rd-6th centuries, to the writings of great European and North African rabbis over the millennia, to our using these same texts today. This great confluence of history and preservation of traditions may be one of the most important secrets to the preservation of the Jewish people despite the horrific attempts to uproot us in Second World War. 

More to come soon

Barbara and Bruce

Links to the previous posts

https://mazers-in-jerusalem.blogspot.com/2023/08/in-footsteps-of-our-history-part-1.html

https://mazers-in-jerusalem.blogspot.com/2023/08/in-footsteps-of-our-history-part-2.html

In the Footsteps of our History Part 2

Tuesday August 1st

What does one think of when one thinks of the Warsaw Ghetto? Many people automatically think of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. However, to get that event, it’s important to understand the conditions in the Ghetto, how people scraped to survive, and how ultimately the Ghetto was destroyed. 

Today if you walk in Warsaw there is an area demarcated with red bricks on the road which indicate the walls of the former Ghetto. The area is approximately 2.8% of the area of the entire city and included the poorer area of Warsaw at that. Non-Jews living there were relocated to Jewish homes, and the entire Jewish population of Warsaw, over 350,000 individuals, were shoehorned into this small locale. This was compounded by the addition of Jews from surrounding towns and villages. At the apex, over 560,000 people were crammed into the ghetto. The average number of people populating these homes was 9 people per room. 

The food situation in the Ghetto was also beyond comprehension. People were given rations of 180 calories per day. That’s not a misprint. The rations were intentionally at starvation level. Survival was based on the ability to smuggle in food. This took all means of black-market trade with soldiers, with Poles living on the outside, primarily via small children who could take advantage of small holes in the Ghetto walls to get in and out. Clearly this was highly perilous; most of the children were under 11 years of age to be able to contort in and out, then steal food or negotiate with people on the outside. Hunger and disease were thus rampant. We saw a mass burial site and memorial in the Warsaw cemetery to the 100,000 or so who died of typhus and other diseases in the ghetto. Unfortunately, the vast majority met an even more difficult end. 

We moved on to the area where the main train platform, the Umschlagplatz, had been. That was where the mass transports to labor and death camps were organized, and this was known as “Resettlement”.  People were herded from the ghetto to the train stations with the promise of going to work for the Reich in some productive labor. Instead, they were loaded onto cattle cars and, during the peak times in summer of 1942, headed off to Treblinka, from where there was no return. More about Treblinka later. 

The resettlement transports and disease decimated the Jewish population of Warsaw. However, there were groups who attempted to show some resistance to the German armies. Housed in an apartment complex at Mila 18, there were several disparate groups who tried to put up a fight. The largest, led by Mordechai Anielewicz, repelled an SS attempt to liquidate the Ghetto in January 1943. Men and women made up this small band of individuals who stood up to the SS. The Germans did not try to capture this part of the Ghetto again until April, and then brought in a larger battalion. Even then, according to the writings of the Commander named Stroop, there was more resistance than they expected. In the end, by lighting buildings on fire, the members of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising were defeated, although several escaped to bear witness to this display of heroism. To this day, this resistance against the Nazis is a highly celebrated part of both Jewish and Polish history of the war. While standing at Mila 18, Rabbi Poupko spoke eloquently about the need to never lose hope, to stand up to adversity and to dream that we have the power to accomplish tremendous things; even in defeat the example of the Ghetto uprising represents resilience and tenacity. 

We ended the tour of the Warsaw ghetto at a large monument describing the fate of the Jews during the war and celebrating the resistance of Anielewicz and his small army. In an incredible irony, the black onyx used for the sculpture had been set aside for Hitler to use for a bust or statue of himself. The tables were turned…..

Our next stop was Tykochin (AKA Tiktin) about 2 hours away. This small town had a vibrant Jewish population of 1640 before the war, a town square with markets where the towns folk came to barter and haggle, and a beautiful riverwalk. The Jewish community in Tiktin started in the 1500’s and with it came generations of merchants and trades people. This all ended in August 1941. The community was rounded up en-mass, marched several miles into the Lopuchowo forest, executed and buried in large pits. 

Try this for contrasting emotions. In this idyllic setting were probably several synagogues, but one beautiful building still stands as if frozen in time. It has not been used as a synagogue for decades, and since the 90’s has been a tourist site. Our group prayed the afternoon (Mincha) prayer there, sang songs and danced, which transfixed several onlookers. We brought life to a dormant synagogue. Then we moved on to the forest, and to the memorial of the mass graves. We could not bring them to life, but we could memorialize and try to carry on with pride the Jewish religion and culture they personified. 

As horrific and inconceivable the mass shootings that destroyed the population of Tykochin and hundreds of other villages in Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and elsewhere in Europe were, this paled in comparison to the terror and clinical efficiency of the death camps. We next traveled to Treblinka, which is hidden in a forest north-east of Warsaw. The camp was dismantled and plowed over to leave little evidence and is currently a large grassy area with memorials to the 17,000 cities, towns and villages; their inhabitants brought there by train and then killed in gas chambers. The camp was closed soon after a large revolt of the prisoners and laborers in August 1943. The survivors have provided testimony into the brutality and dehumanization experienced by the victims of the camp, from its façade train station to the Red Cross infirmary with no physician but a pit into which anyone sick or infirm was hurled after being shot. In total likely 900,000 Jews perished in Treblinka. Many of our group had parents, relatives or close friends with origins from Poland, and we all took a picture of one of the many communities memorialized at Treblinka to say a prayer and remember. 

Wednesday August 2, 2023

We started out our next day by visiting the Warsaw Jewish Cemetery. Before you say that’s a depressing way to start the day (not that the end to the previous day was uplifting) lets share some facts. Established in 1806, it was the burial ground for a thriving Jewish community for over 130 years. Great Rabbis such as Rabbi Chaim Soloveichik, and Rabbi Naftali Tzve Berlin are buried there, as is Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, plus thousands of husbands, wives, doctors, lawyers, educators, and people from all walks of life. The monuments are impressive and the cemetery itself covers a huge area. The majority of people buried here had normal lives and were buried as all people should be. It’s amazing what one can learn about how to live life by studying those who were buried in the cemetery.  

We got back onto the bus and our next stop was the city of Lublin, which again had a sizeable Jewish community. Lublin was unique, in that it is famous for the Rabbinical Academy known as Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin (The academy of the scholars of Lublin). Friends who have followed this blog may remember that our children all studied for various times in Yeshivot in Israel, and Elan teaches in Yeshivat Hakotel. These are usually post high school academies of learning based on the Study of Talmud. The Yeshiva in Lublin was opened in 1930, which meant that unfortunately it had a very short life. It was built in a grand style, due to its founder’s concept that Talmudic study is the most elevated pursuit for Jews and should have appropriate accommodation. The Founder was Rabbi Meir Shapiro, a brilliant Talmudist and innovative Educator. Rav Shapiro is well known for his concept of Dav Yomi, the study of one page of the 2711 pages of Talmud (64 volumes) in a cycle of 7.5 years. This began in 1923 and has continued continuously; the Jewish world is currently on the 14th cycle and there are literally hundreds of thousands of Jews who follow the cycle and study daily. When the Nazis captured the Yeshiva, they cleared out the library and there are witnessed testimonies of the burning of books. It’s clear that the attempt to destroy Jewish knowledge was not in the least bit successful. Fascinatingly, the Holocaust monument in Berlin is made up of 2711 bricks arranged in a mosaic. The official web site (and the Wikipedia page) says this number was chosen at random, perhaps because that’s the number that would fit into the allotted space. This might be a very fortuitous accident; however, the parallel with the number of pages in the Talmud cannot possibly be coincidental. 

Literally on the outskirts of Lublin is the Mydanek concentration camp. Picture the hydro lines in Cote St Luc. Then switch the vison to a large camp with smoke constantly billowing from a chimney. People lived right next door to possibly one of the most evil places on earth. Not to be crass, but the stories and testimonies that we heard about life and death in Mydanke came straight out of hell. Again, the purpose of this blog is to provide a record of where we were and what we experienced; the amount of information is overwhelming, and this record allows to go back later to refresh memories. If you want the full experience, you need to go with an experienced guide who is passionately versed in the history and implications, as our guide Tzvi and the Rabbi with whom we are travelling. Mydanek is a post war reconstruction of the camp by the Russians, using a lot of the original materials. Reconstruction or not, the place is eerie and horrific; we walked through disinfection showers and gas chambers. The crematoria have the original ovens. The places where people were selected to go to the right or left, not knowing if they were to survive or not, are still standing as they did 80+ years ago. We were told about the psychological torture and physical humiliation that accompanied people to their deaths. Again, the term dehumanization is the constant theme. We did not walk through the entire camp (which I did in 1996) which contains barracks holding the remnants of the prisoners, including suitcases, shoes, jewelry, even hair.  The vision and emotion from visiting these rooms are etched deeply in my mind despite the years. I can’t fathom how those who survived the camp can shake the hideousness of these visions. In all about 90,000 Jews were killed at Mydanek, as well as many Polish prisoners and Russian POWs. 

So, how do you combat such evil? You could do it with revenge; you could do it with holding hatred in your heart. In contrast, since the war, Jews have survived by rebuilding and rededicating itself to our roots. Just picture this: when Ukraine was attacked by Putin’s army, who were the first to set up on Polish soil to lend a hand by building a field hospital? Israel. Think of the irony; Israel landing on the border of two countries where the Jewish population was decimated to provide assistance to those in need (credit to Rabbi Poupko for this great concept). We also rebuilt with the study of sacred texts, Torah, Talmud and writings by many great Rabbis. Our next stop was Lejansk, which is a small town where one of the early disseminators of the wisdom of the Hassidic movements, Rebbe Elimelech, is buried. The grave of Rebbe Elimelech is housed in an “Ohel” (literally Tent) which is a small mausoleum where hundreds of thousands of people come annually to pray, beseech, and look for spiritual guidance. We had a moving ceremony in the Ohel, accompanied by a troop of Chassidic singers and Mr. Josef Lewkowicz, father of our friend Zigui, a 97-year-old Holocaust survivor who comes from the city of Krakow (which is our destination for Thursday). 

To place an exclamation point on the concept of renewing Jewish Identity post-Holocaust, we ended the evening with a special event.  Lejansk is also the place where our friends, the Liebermans, parents came from. On our trip there are 6 cousins from the same family. Our friend Willie and Linda Lieberman hosted a Siyyum; the completion of a tractate of Talmud; in the city that Willie’s father left in 1939. Willie spoke about the genesis of this trip, the history of his family, their escape from Lejansk, and ultimate migration to Montreal and rebuilding their lives. This culminated in Willie teaching us the final section of the Talmud tractate. A siyyum is usually celebrated with a festive meal, and we certainly did that, with amazing food and drink and the Hassidic choir providing music. Finishing with Talmud study was a very fitting way to demonstrate how we can climb out of the depths after learning of the harrowing treatment of Jews at places like Mydenek. We turn one page of the 2711 pages of Talmud and move on to the next to continue the unbroken chain of study. 

In the Footsteps of our History Part 1

We begin the next phase of our trip, entitled “In the Footsteps of our History”, in the city of Warsaw. Let’s first address the question, why Poland? Why should we explore the Holocaust via Poland’s second world war ruins, rather than through, for example, Germany, when Nazi Germany were ultimately responsible for the horrors of the Holocaust? The truth is that the majority of the imprisonment, killing and the full-blown machinery of the liquidation of the European Jewish population was meticulously planned by the Nazi’s to take place in Poland. 

The Jewish community in Poland had existed since the 11th century. Pre-war Poland was home to 3.3 million Jews, living in the large cities as well as in many towns and villages. Many villages had populations that were 50% Jewish. In Warsaw, the capital of Poland, there were over 350,000 Jews in a city of 1.3 million people. Jews represented all walks of life, from the ultra-observant and those that built large Academies of Torah Study, known as Yeshivot, to highly secular, academic, and business-minded individuals, and everything in between. At the end of the Second World War, only approximately 11% of Polish Jewry survived (1% of Polish Jews who were in Poland during the war); close to 50% of the 6 million who were murdered were of Polish Jewish origin. 

The second facet is the sheer number of Jews who were transported from the surrounding European countries, as well as places as far as North Africa and Greece, to concentration camps in Poland. The number of concentration camps in Poland far outnumbered those of any other country including Germany. This horrendous outsourcing of the labor and killing factories was clearly intentional, to shift blame and focus to others. Thus, for one who delves into the history and wishes to visit the places where so many lives were lost, Poland is the focus. 

This visit will not only be about the lives that were brutally taken during the war, but as the name of the trip implies, it will also be about the lives that were lived for the hundreds of years that Poland had Jewish communities. Many of the participants on our trip are children of Holocaust survivors, including several with roots in Poland. This theme will come up as we record the details about the places we will visit. Examining the richness of life of a community that spanned 900 years is not only important to remember but provides many crucial lessons. Today, people talk about living in the moment; many think that their perspective, based on the events of the day, the philosophies, cultures, or fads of the moment, is the only perspective that is required. This is problematic thinking. We all need the perspective of history to understand where we come from and where we are going. Let’s take an example: Nazi thinking about Aryan’s being a superior race was rooted in Eugenics. This was not some purely evil underground take on life; eugenics was a supposedly well-studied, highly academic pursuit that was the basis of political decisions, not only in Europe, but in North America as well. The Nazi philosophy was clearly the most perverse application of eugenics, but even in the US, there were successful political movements based on the pursuit of a superior race. These lessons of history must not be buried. 

Furthermore, to not understand our own roots means that one does not acknowledge where one has come from and what has influenced one’s practices, thoughts, even cuisine. We all need to know where we came from, to celebrate the richness of our collective histories. This is indeed a key part of the journey that we will be participating in, even if it’s for a brief 7-day period. 

Sunday June 30th

Barbara and I left Israel and flew to Warsaw to begin the Poland trip. The flight was smooth, and despite a bit of an annoying 90-minute wait for luggage (with no explanation and for almost all the passengers of our plane) we got out of the airport and moved on to The Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Warsaw. The first observations we had were how clean and modern Warsaw looked. I had been to Poland on a community trip with high school students in 1996, which was only a few years after the fall of the USSR. At that time, Poland still looked very “Soviet”. Large grey cinder block buildings, unkept streets and very poor roads. More about that in a bit. However, since Poland joined the EU in 2004, there have been major improvements. The Intercontinental is a very modern hotel and the Warsaw skyline is dotted with tall modern buildings, and has shopping centers with all the stores you would find in any big city. Plus, the streets and roads are smooth and well paved, as opposed to some places we know….

The group that we are joining consists mostly of people that we know from Cote St Luc, and a few others who are somehow connected, such as relatives of participants living elsewhere. There was a group of 12 who arrived early and we had dinner arranged at one of Warsaw’s Kosher restaurants, Kosher Delight. The meal was great and besides catching up with people, there were two other highlights. A Rabbi who was stationed in a border city in the Ukraine, R’ Yechiel Levitansky, gave us some insight into what it was like to be under the siege of the Russian invasion, including a harrowing escape with his family via a 20-hour car ride into Poland. We were also joined by a large group of Israeli high school girls. The restaurant was relatively empty when we arrived, but then the noise and excitement level certainly rose when 4 high school classes joined in!

Monday July 31st

Monday was travel day for many in the group, so we had the luxury of a relatively late start for the tour. We took a walk around the area; in fact, the hotel is right next to where the Warsaw ghetto was. A few blocks from the hotel we saw a new exhibit which marks the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, entitled Ghetto Burning. It’s based on a graphic novel about the uprising and it’s graphic in many ways, hammering home the lessons of history about Jewish resistance and ultimately about loss of life. That it’s in the heart of the downtown area is quite impressive. 

We left the hotel to pick up the new arrivals at the airport, and then set off for what turned into a 12-hour day of stops, visits to sites, and testimonials. The trip is being led by Tzvi Sperber, who founded J-Roots 17 years ago. J-Roots runs historical education tours to many Jewish communities, past and present. Tzvi is a master educator, drawing his audience in with a combination of history and emotion, emphasizing that while 6,000,000 is an insurmountable number to comprehend, it is made of individuals who deserve to be remembered. 

We drove from Warsaw to the village of Dabie, a few km from our ultimate destination, the Chelmno death camp. Dabie had been home to 1100 Jews who perished at Chelmno. We visited the site of a cemetery, that had been ploughed over and was now in a corn field. We later visited a synagogue, completed in 1885, that is now used as an apartment building. However, the top floor still has the painted walls that surrounded the ark which housed the Torah Scrolls, sadly in tremendous disrepair. 

Nearby is the Chelmno death camp. I will say upfront that it is impossible to include all of what Tzvi and Rabbi Reuben Poupko shared with us about each site. I could not possibly do it justice, and honestly, much of it is too painful to re-write. (I can share some material from them to whoever asks, and I would highly recommend joining one of these trips).  Suffice it to say, Chelmno was the first of the death camps, and possibly lasted the longest. Chelmno was a testing ground for different ways to carry out mass exterminations. Prior to gas chambers, they used large vans with the exhaust reversing into the storage compartment to kill the victims. All told, Chelmno was the burial place of 300,000 Jews and others who were deemed expendable. 

We moved on to the city of Lodz, some 45 minutes away. Lodz is a city not far from the German border, and upon the invasion of Poland in September 1939, was under German rule as an annexed area. Prior to this, Lodz was home to 240,000 Jews, many coming to the city in the late 1800’s due to the large garment industry there, predominantly built by Israel Poznansky, who developed many of the industries in Lodz. His massive red brick manufacturing complex is now home to a large shopping and entertainment complex, and his huge 3 story mansion, which covered a large city block, is a museum.  To this day, his tomb or mausoleum following his death in 1900 is considered the largest Jewish grave in the world. 

The Jewish population of Lodz was one of the first to be cordoned into a ghetto, in March 1941. The Lodz ghetto also lasted the longest, until 1944. Over 250,000 individuals had been imprisoned in the ghetto, with most either succumbing to disease and hunger, or perishing following transport to Chelmno, Auschwitz, or other camps. The stories of the Lodz Ghetto are harrowing and are backed up by the fact that there were two photographers who chronicled much of what happened there. There are a sizeable number of Montrealers who were survivors of the Lodz Ghetto, making the stories not only more meaningful but more harrowing.  

We completed the round trip back to Warsaw at 11:30 PM, and will be setting out for the Warsaw ghetto on Tuesday. 

Shabbat Nachamu July 28-29

Confucius says: Some days you can blog, other days you need to deal with a clog…

Welcome to another busy week in the travels of Barbara and Bruce. We left our heroes starting Shabbat in Efrat. That was as usual a lot of fun, with great food, lots of family time and playing with all the kids. Of course, with 4 boys in the house there is a lot of energy so it’s important to include playground time, Lego time, and rollerblade and bike time. Of course, there is always Shoshana who just turned 15, and really sets the tone. She is a tremendous young lady and will be starting a new high school in Jerusalem this fall, commuting by bus daily. Shlomo is 12 and is having his Bar Mitzvah in January 2024. I am having the great pleasure to be helping him prepare, along of course with Elan. We are getting him ready to read the weekly Torah portion and prepare a Dvar Torah, a Torah lesson on a topic that he has chosen. The gang also includes Nadav, who at 9 is a voracious reader in both Hebrew and English, Aryeh, almost 6 who is a ball of energy and is starting grade one this fall, and Eitan, now two, who is, like all two-year-olds, cute and fun. 

Following Shabbat, we took off for Petach Tikvah to see the other grandchildren in Israel, Elisha, also age 9, Ora, age 6 and Adi age 3. Ariel and Gila had days off, so we wanted to do some fun stuff with kids, and that mission was accomplished, with a day full of trampolining, lunch in the mall, a movie for the big kids (Elemental, two thumbs up!) and Gymboree for Adi. We stole away with the kids to sleep over in Netanya for the night and to be able to hang out the next day, with a fun time at the Arcade in the local mall. After taking the kids home we had dinner overlooking the water at a local café, which is one of the nicest parts about living in Netanya. Around the corner from our home are a group of restaurants, and that evening most were full on the outdoor patios, enjoying the sea breezes. 

The following afternoon we met up with Elan and Nomi and family for dinner in Bet Shemesh and more arcades (that explains the bumper car theme for the pictures).  The rest of Tuesday and Wednesday was taken up by more renovation stuff, with a focus on tiles, bathroom fixtures and appliances. So far, things are moving smoothly!

Thursday was Tisha B’Av, a national day of fasting and mourning for Jews. It is said the Biblical sin of the Spies occurred on Tisha B’Av and part of the punishment was that all major tragedies that would befall Israel would happen on the same day in the future; as an example, both First and Second Temples were destroyed on this day. The day is a very intense day of introspection and most observant Jews fast for 25 hours. This is no mean feat in the warm Israeli sun, so  we stayed indoors (Synagogue or home) most of the day. 

The intensity of Tisha B’Av was juxtaposed to the current political divide in Israel. It’s taught that destruction of the second temple was caused by “Sinat Hinam” or baseless hatred; what should be disagreements or civil debate leads to extreme behaviors and hatred. This obvious historical parallel has many people calling for cooler heads to prevail, and to try to change the rhetoric over changes to the supreme court and constitution here to a more positive tone. I think in the end, whether there is political strife or just normal everyday activity, there is a lot to be said for not allowing disagreements to spiral out of control. This Shabbat is called Nachamu, be comforted, for even if things look bleak there can be light ahead, and it’s clear from our history that this is indeed true. Furthermore discussion, debate and difference of opinion is healthy, but in the end all people need to be respected whatever their opinions. 

We wish you all a positive and uplifting Shabbat Shalom!

Speak to you next week from Poland 

]Barbara and Bruce

Shabbat July 21-22, 2023

Hi everyone!

We left Montreal in a tornado, and we arrived in Israel in a Whirlwind! Well, Montreal had a Tornado warning (with some real severe thunderstorms, flooding and blocked traffic, shades of 1987!!) and our week in Israel has been, as usual, a fast paced, head spinning bunch of days that blurred together! However, it is my task to deconvolute them into useful chunks of information and share them with everyone….

So due to the increasingly unpredictability of the weather, the trip started off last Sunday with a 2-hour delay due to the fact that Air Canada needed a suitably sized plane to arrive for us. There were multiple gate changes while they decided which late plane would be given the honor of flying to Israel. Although we finally left two hours late, we arrived only an hour off schedule on Monday AM due to brisk tailwinds. We got to the rental car lot in record time (less than 30 minutes from landing to exit; Pearson could take a few lessons) and took off for Netanya via Petach Tikvah. 

Petach Tikvah of course means visiting Elisha, Ora, and Adi, who had just come home from day camp. Ariel was at work, but we had a great visit with Gila and the kids including a fun take out dinner from a new place we had not tried called Schnitzeliano. Very good reviews from the kids.

Then off to Netanya to try and catch up on the lost night of sleep from the previous night. 

We have been lucky enough to have an apartment in Netanya since 2011. As many of you know, it’s in a really great location very close to the boardwalk in Netanya. However, we have not really done much to spruce it up, so we are planning a bit of renovation. I won’t bore you with the details (although all are welcome to visit the finished product!) but a few days on this trip will be spent working on this little reno. 

More importantly, what is happening in Israel? As many of you know, there is a push within the current government to change some of the balance of power between the supreme court and the Knesset, the main seat of government. One example is that at the moment, the supreme court can be asked to decide on the “reasonableness” of a law and strike it down if they decide it’s not reasonable. This is one of the major changes being proposed (actually, the one being voted on in Knesset at present) and has led to protests against the government. There is a 4 day walk from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem down the main highway that began on Wednesday and will end tomorrow night. There are really thousands of people walking in 33 C heat and more people join everyday. Since I don’t live here, I don’t really think it’s fair to take sides. However, the current proposed law is quite like the “not-withstanding” clause that we have in Canada. So, for perspective, let me ask our Quebec readers…how do you like that law?

 So, keeping in mind the march down highway 1, we left Netanya on Wednesday, dropped in to see Ariel for lunch on the way, then took off from one coast to the east to Jerusalem area to Efrat, where Elan and Nomi and family live. Waze came in very handy, routing us away from the protests and into their neighborhood with minimal delay. So, since our arrival, we have kept the grandchildren happy with food and treats (Sushi, ice cream, lunch out) and activities (shopping, an escape room) and lots of games, stories, and a few piggyback rides. We are now preparing for Shabbat. 

Our trip this time will be three weeks in total, but the last week with be very different and promises to be very special. We are joining a group from the Beth Israel Beth Aaron synagogue in Montreal which will be doing a historical trip to Poland. Entitled “In the Footsteps of our History” there will be quite a bit of visiting of important Holocaust remembrance sites, but there will be a focus on the communities that existed, and the richness of Jewish life in Poland prior to its almost complete destruction during the second world war. This will begin on June 31, and I promise to keep everyone posted on events that we will participate in and key messages that we will receive. 

PS: Please check out the picture of the grandchildren in matching dresses, Barbara made those!

We wish you a great Shabbat and please try to keep cool!

Please have a meaningful fast to those observing Tisha B'Av. 

Barbara and Bruce

We wish a happy birthday to Rochelle!

We wish happy birthday to our eldest granddaughter Shoshana!