FOSTERING A VIBRANT RENEWAL OF JUDAISM IN POLAND
Dr. James Diamond’s book on “Raging Hassidic Sermons of R. Kalonymous Kalman Shapira” will soon be published. We are fortunate to hear of the unique teachings of a Hassidic master known as the Piaseczner Rebbe. R. Kalonymous Kalman Shapira continued to deliver sermons from September 1939 until the summer of 1942. Sermons from the Years of Rage and his other writings were included in the buried archives of the Warsaw Ghetto known as Oneg Shabbat.
Rokhl Auerbach’s many careers as a writer, philosopher, historian, Yiddish language advocate, and survivor are eclipsed by the outsized role she played in preserving the record of the Holocaust. In the Warsaw
Ghetto, Emmanuel Ringelblum conceived and organized over sixty people for his Oneg Shabbat archive. Auerbach worked the Ghetto’s soup kitchen and chronicled the struggle to maintain life. Auerbach was one of three people that knew of the buried archive, She remained in Poland to work on those materials when they were discovered and to collect other testimonies.
Freighted Legacies is a webinar on the cultural life and times of Jews from Poland, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe.
Menachem Mirski is serving Temple Shalom of Long Beach after completing the Ziegler Rabbinic Program. He often appears on our pages, and he frequently discusses the weekly Torah portion in both English and Polish. While very busy in developing a revitalized young generation at Beth Shalom, he supports the re-development of the Sunday and Hebrew schools. Rabbi Menachem Mirski is an outstanding musician with a Ph.D. in philosophy from the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin.
We are pleased that we will learn more about Rabbi Mirski’s journey from Przemysl to Lublin to Warsaw and Long Beach.
Independent researcher Jennifer Stark-Blumenthal will present Poles and Jews: A Call for Myth Reconstruction, an expansive and engaging investigation into centuries of changing Polish-Jewish relations. With forthright honesty the author calls on Poles and Jews to recognize and challenge the “myths” each tells about the other and themselves.
Robert and Patricia Bernheim live in China, Maine. Robert is an Associate Professor of History (Holocaust and Genocide Studies) at the University of Maine at Augusta and the founder of Feivel’s Old World Bagels and Bakery. Patricia is a consultant with Mary Kay and the CEO of ReUse ME, a nonprofit providing makers and tinkerers opportunities to use their skills for local and global good while inspiring a repurposing revolution as a collective of bona fide craftivists. In the spring of 2024, Robert & Patricia began reintroducing bagels to Southeast Poland as part of a concerted effort at bagel diplomacy.
Poland, the epicentre of the Holocaust, began denying responsibility as soon as the Nazi atrocities ended. The nation’s distortion of history continues today – with disturbing consequences. World-renowned Holocaust historian Jan Grabowski examines how the government, museums, schools and state never came to grips with the dark past. This tour de force reminds one of the power of historical research based on documents and historical reasoning.
