Friends of Jewish Renewal in Poland
How do we say “congratulations” in Hebrew? Mazal tov. What does it mean? Good luck! So when someone gets married what do we say? Good luck! A child is born in a family… What do we say? Good luck… yeah, like we immediately think about all kinds of bad things that can happen.[…]
What is the nature of good and evil? From the Torah to contemporary thinkers, Jewish tradition has placed this question at the heart of its reflection. During our lecture, we will explore how rabbis, midrashim, philosophers, and modern teachers have responded to the dilemmas of the human heart, free will, and the meaning of suffering.
Miriam Klimova is the rabbi of the Shirat ha-Yam congregation in Haifa. She studied and was ordained at the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Jerusalem. She holds an M.A. in Hebrew Studies from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. […]
As we open the Torah to Parashat Bereshit (Genesis 1:1–6:8) in 5786, we are invited to reflect on the very act of creation—a divine process that brings order from chaos and imbues the world with purpose. The Talmud, in Shabbat 119b, teaches us that “the Sabbath gives meaning to the work of creation.” This insight, rooted in Genesis 2:1–3 where God rests on the seventh day, frames the Sabbath not merely as a pause but as the culmination and purpose of the six days of creation. The Sabbath transforms the act of making into an act of meaning, offering a profound counterpoint to a worldview that sees the universe as devoid of purpose. In this D’var Torah, we explore how Bereshit’s vision of creation, crowned by Shabbat, reveals a universe infused with divine order, human purpose, and the delicate balance of chaos and stability.[…]
In this talk, Dr. Michlic discusses a crucial shift in the process of memorialization of the Holocaust in post-communist Eastern Europe that has occurred around the year of 2010. Despite its limitations, the 1989 – early 2000s liberal phase of memorialization of the Holocaust in postcommunist Europe was conducive to the emergence for the first time of critical history writing about the Holocaust, driven by local Jewish and non-Jewish senior and junior scholars living in their respective homelands or abroad. It also resulted in highly emotionally charged public and historical debates, such as the well-known international Polish debate of 2000 – 2002, about the Jedwabne massacre of 10 July 1941, which aimed at coming to terms with the difficult history of the treatment of the Jewish minority during the Holocaust. However, by the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century, troubling undercurrents of the memorialization of the Holocaust, with continuing antisemitic-based prejudices towards Jewish victims and Jewish survivors, have exploded and ascended forcefully. As a result, the memorialization of the Holocaust has been subjected to instrumentalization, abuses, and attacks from a wide range of social, cultural, and political actors as never before. This talk explores the post-2010 shifts in approaches and their cultural significance.
