FOSTERING A VIBRANT RENEWAL OF JUDAISM IN POLAND
Introduction by Rabbi Allen Maller In 2010 I was asked to serve as a Rabbinic scholar in residence at Beit Warszawa. My wife Judy Maller and I were amazed by the wonderful people we met in the congregation. Every rabbi knows that the Halakic definition of who is a Jew is simple: all children born […]
Anna and I were sitting at a country house outside of Warsaw, Poland. There Beit Warszawa, a congregation of Reform Jews, had gathered to celebrate the Jewish harvest holiday, Succoth. The men had already put up the frame of wood beams for the little Sukkah. The men and children headed into the nearby forest to […]
The second public miracle needed in order to proclaim Pope John Paul II a saint has now been proclaimed by the Roman Catholic Church. However, that second miracle could also have been the revival of Jewish music and Jewish life in today’s Poland. Of course, it is simpler to prove an individual case of a […]
More than 20 centuries ago, the great Jewish sage Hillel stated that “Those who do not add; subtract” (Avot 1:13) Our rabbis traditionally applied this wise saying to the subject of study and learning; which they saw as an ongoing process. Hillel’s admonition is the intellectual equivalent of today’s medical advice about our physical health, […]
On November 23, 1939, Hans Frank, head of the Nazi Government General that ruled central Poland, declared that all Jews above ten years of age were to wear a white badge with a Star of David on their right arm. By October of 1940, almost 400,000 Polish Jews had been confined in a 3.5 square […]
