Modeling the Jewish Learning and Humanity of Our Late Teacher Rabbi Michael A. Signer.

The Rabbi Michael A. Signer Clergy Cabinet of Friends of Jewish Renewal in Poland aspires to model the Jewish learning and humanity of our late teacher Rabbi Michael A. Signer. Our plan was for Rabbi David Ellenson to co-write this letter to invite you to join the cabinet but, alas, both of them are now joined in the Yeshiva Shel Ma’alah. Their leadership example inspires us.

We are creating a Progressive clergy cabinet for Beit Polska and Friends of Jewish Renewal in Poland to carry forward the example of our teachers. Many of you have urged us in this direction, and we welcome your immediate response through our Rabbi Michael A. Signer Clergy Cabinet Participation Form.

Obviously, we need the financial support, but beyond the immediate practical reason, we want to create a “new commons” in our discourse with Jews around the world emphasizing the internal meaning of Jewish life. We seek to enlist you to teach via dual-language Zoom technology and, where possible, in person. *1  Please take a moment to indicate your participation and interest on the form.

As a practical matter, this infusion will deepen the conversion experience for the courageous individuals in Poland who are coming forward to join our people. They need a view of Jewish life that is not focused on victimization. This approach begins with the recovery of our own history of Progressive Judaism in Poland. *2

The Beit Polska Freighted Legacies bi-lingual webinar series has contributed that process. The themes of our wide-ranging webinars have included literature, history, poetry, music, and memory—all best summarized by Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowksi: “[w]e learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are.” On my blog, we framed each of the nearly thirty webinars as having a meaning for our Polish-speaking community (Poles living all over the world) and our English-speaking community with historical roots in Polish lands.

On January 21, 2024, we will take another step in the dialogic process by focusing on the figure of Progressive Polish Rabbi Ozjasz Thon, who demurred from joining the World Union for Progressive Judaism under Lily Montagu but led the largest Progressive Jewish community (300,000) prior to World War II. Many of the survivors of that community from Tarbut schools went on to invigorate the modern Progressive concerns of Jewish life in Israel, North America, and other successor communities. Rabbi Thon, a spellbinding speaker, was the leader of the Jewish delegation in the Polish parliament. His influential role points to a significantly different picture of Polish Jewish life, parallel to the courageous and lauded leadership of Stephen S. Wise (in America) and Leo Baeck (in Germany). The proud leadership of Progressive Jews in the radically diverse experiences these leaders faced are an important part of the ethos of modern Jewish life. Rabbi Thon’s narrative is waiting to be told.

Beit Polska and Jewish Renewal in Poland are rebounding from the pandemic and responding to the presence of Ukrainian refugees and a few Israeli families as a result of the Ukraine–Russia war on our doorstep and the Israel–Gaza war in the Middle East. One of our own, Alex Danzig, is a Polish-born, Yad Vashem historian who lives on Kibbutz Nir Oz and is currently a Hamas hostage. (Read another of our blog posts showing a sign “BRING ALEX HOME NOW” held by our Beit Polska Chair, Hania Gawronska-Spiewak, at March for the Liberation of the Hostages, November 19, 2023, Warsaw.)

The Cabinet seeks your participation as teachers and ambassadors of Judaism to the dozens of people in Poland seeking to join our people through our Step by Step program. As clergy, you will recognize a unique feature of our program in that none of the approximately thirty current participants studying for conversion are seeking to convert for the purpose of marriage. I had the privilege of interviewing our new candidates for conversion in December 2022 and November 2023. I was humbled and inspired. *3

Currently, the two-year Step by Step courses are being taught in Polish by recently ordained rabbis via Zoom by Rabbis Mati Kirschenbaum (Beth Tikvah, Fullerton, CA) and Menachem Mirski (Beth Shalom, Long Beach, CA). These rabbis and the boards of Beit Polska and Friends of Jewish Renewal in Poland are seeking to create a larger human context for Jewish life in Poland that is more than courses. Many of our members are academics seeking to develop their Jewish knowledge skills to teach in the community.

We hope to integrate visits from rabbis and their congregants to our communities to make them mutually powerful encounters for our learners and your congregants. We are also hoping to recruit volunteer rabbis/teachers/professors who will teach in Poland for a month or two in our congregations and, perhaps, in a university or seminary. Polish universities, gymnasiums (high schools), and adult education programs are eager to welcome speakers. *4

Many visitors to our congregations report their surprise and joy participating in our musically enriched Tefilah. The contrast with the visiting of memorial sites requires encounters with Poles—Jewish and Christian—addressing the past in a constructive fashion. The four Beit Polska congregations—Beit Warszawa in Warsaw, Or Hadasz in Krakow, Beit Konstancin in Konstancin, and Beit Trojmiasto in Gdansk—are part of the reframing of what it means to visit Poland’s Jewish past and recognize our living present.

Too often trips to Poland focus exclusively on the Holocaust. The POLIN: The Museum of the History of Polish Jews marked a turning point in presenting the diverse Polish Jewish culture that once existed, and, now, the return to a more liberal government in Poland is anticipated to foster a greater openness in Polish society, including in its approaches to Jewish life.

Beit Polska is interested in recharging our musical resources. Progressive life thrives on the role of Shelichay Tzibur. Styles have changed, but Beit Polska is proud to connect to the Shelichay Tzibur (Cantorial soloists) of contemporary music, Hassidic inspiration, and the great musical traditions of the Tlumacki Synagogue. The late Cantor David Wisnia (father of our late colleague Rabbi Eric Wisnia) was a child choir member in the Great Synagogue and taught our prayer leaders.*5  We are eager for our connection to Progressive musical and rabbinic traditions to grow.

As part of our commitment to Tikkun Olam, we continue to be involved with contributing to Ukrainian relief. We seek the Clergy Cabinet’s participation as well, in some unique programs that we will develop. Faced with the on-going Ukraine–Russia war, our focus will be to aid Ukrainian refugee children in Poland through Janusz Korczak Child Care centers, working in conjunction with Spynka: Early Childhood and Care for Ukrainian Children in Poland, a Polish, Ukrainian, and international effort.

Many of our members are volunteering in Israel sustaining farms and doing whatever tasks come to hand.

The role of social justice on behalf our “own” and “others” is a commitment of Progressive Jews and is a key part of emerging Polish Jewish life modeled by the Clergy Cabinet.

Please consider joining the Rabbi Michael A. Signer Clergy Cabinet. Consider consulting with us when you plan your congregational trip. Consider being a teacher and mentor in our program. Participate in our effort to create a new commons with both our past and emerging Jewish communities. We have plans for a Clergy trip in the future. Please join and stay tuned for those plans.

Warm regards,

Rabbi Haim Beliak
Volunteer Executive Director
Rabbi Michael A. Signer Clergy Cabinet
of Friends of Jewish Renewal in Poland

Honorary Chairs
Rabbi Michael A. Signer Clergy Cabinet
of Friends of Jewish Renewal in Poland

Rabbi David Oler
Rabbi Rick Sarason

Endorsers
Rabbi Michael A. Signer Clergy Cabinet of Friends of Jewish Renewal in Poland

Cantor Paul Busch
Rabbi William Cutter
Rabbi Karen Fox
Rabbi Abraham Havivi
Dr. Richard Hecht
Rabbi Alan Iser
Rabbi Bruce Kadden
Rabbi Jan Katzew
Rabbi Mati Kirschenbaum
Rabbi Jonathan Kupetz
Rabbi Susan Laemmle
Rabbi Jame Mirel
Rabbi Menachem Mirski
Rabbi Marc Rosenstein
Rabbi Jason Rosner
Rabbi Paul Saiger
Rabbi Jack Shlachter
Rabbi Gary Zola

Chair, Beit Polska
        Hania Gawronska

*1 For far too many people, Poland is only a Jewish graveyard. For many Jews, Poland is the quintessential negation of the Jewish past. For too many Jews, the perceptions of Poland are as the place of historical woe. We seek to open up the narrative for the sake of a greater historical perspective on Jews in Poland. Many elements of the Jewish world were part of that larger perspective, including a diverse determined Progressive Jewish community. As we develop the current Progressive Jewish community of Beit Polska, we need the infusion of leadership by current Progressive movements beyond Poland to participate in our dialogue.

*2 Rabbi Marcus Jastrow and His Vision for the Reform of Judaism: A Study in the History of Judaism in the Nineteenth Century (Jews of Poland) by Michal Galas and Anne Tilles and A Prophet of Consolation on the Threshold of Destruction– Joshua Ozjasz Thon by Shoshana Ronen.

*3 Three generations removed from the 20th century’s European devastation of our religion, young people are seeking their way to Judaism in Poland. The curious nature of reflecting on this phenomenon of the embrace of Jewish life was the subject of Barry Cohen’s Open the Drawer: The Hidden Identities of Polish Jews and a webinar.

*4 We have plenty of interpreters to help with language barriers. Other rabbis/teachers can, via dual-language Zoom technology, teach not only in our synagogues but in Catholic seminaries, universities, and adult education forums, especially in summers and special convocations.

*5 I indulge myself to share with you a 2015 interview with Cantorial Soloist Rivka Foremniak and Cantor Wisnia.