[maxbutton id=”6″ url=”https://polishjewsreviving.org/kazanie-na-miesiac-dumy/” ] Being an LGBT person in Poland is a sport discipline requiring a will to fight and fortitude. A few years ago I would have compared it to a 3000m steeplechase race. It is an exhausting athletic discipline, but after the first lap around the stadium you already know what to expect, […]

[maxbutton id=”6″ url=”https://polishjewsreviving.org/w-poszukiwaniu-utraconej-wiosny/” ] This spring and early summer did not conform to the plan I had for them. In late March, I was supposed to submit my rabbinic dissertation; I was looking forward to celebrating my grandmother’s 93rd birthday in Poland in April; I planned to combine my placement visits to Newcastle Reform Synagogue […]

Beit Warszawa, 12 June 2020 – It has been said that the Past is not dangerous, because one has, after all, survived it; the Present is not really dangerous, because otherwise one would hardly be here; but the Future bears unknown risks and the future is where danger, potentially, lies. Hence so many of us are afraid of the Future and what it may bring. This is legitimate; we are biologically influenced to look ahead, to look round corners, to look for[…]

Thoughts on Parasha Behaalotecha

Van Nuys, one of the northern neighborhoods of Los Angeles, Monday around 5 pm. A journalist from a TV station is talking with several people gathered in front of a grocery store. All of them are African-Americans, two of the men are holding shotguns. Just like many others in the neighborhood, they are protecting their businesses from raids of thieves and looters which accompany the demonstrations[…]

Beit Warszawa. 28th. May 2020. (6th. Sivan 5780) – All major Jewish festivals have different layers reflecting different historical periods within and outside the Land, agricultural and post-agricultural activities, and more. Shavuot, as well as being traditionally a harvest festival for the new year’s wheat, is also considered to be the time at which – seven weeks after the Liberation of Pesach – Israel received the specific revelation from God on Mount Sinai, through Moses as the intermediary. The story is (hopefully) well-known – but it is[…]

Thoughts on Parashat Bamidbar

This Sabbath we begin the Book of Numbers, in Hebrew Bamidbar (In the Desert). At the beginning of Parashat Bamidbar God asks Moses to conduct a census of the twelve tribes of Israel. Moses counts 603,505 men able to bear arms (20 to 60 years); the tribe of Levi, however, numbering 22,300 males aged one month and older, is counted separately.[…]