FOSTERING A VIBRANT RENEWAL OF JUDAISM IN POLAND
Friends of Jewish Renewal in Poland Present
Freighted Legacies (Dziedzictwa obarczone): The Culture and History of Jewish Interactions in Poland
"[w]e learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are" (Leszek Kolakowski)
UPCOMING WEBINARS
These webinars will be in Polish and English simultaneously. Enable the Interpretation mode and choose the preferable language after joining the meeting.
Comprehensive Research
POLES and JEWS: A Call for Myth Reconstruction
June 8, 2025
10AM Los Angeles / 12N Chicago / 1PM New York / 6PM London / 7PM Warsaw / 8PM Jerusalem
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.
Through accessible language, Stark-Blumenthal brings the complexity of history to the reader while proposing an important moral reckoning for both Poles and Jews. Through a clear-eyed inspection of the past, this book invites a new moment to emerge in Polish-Jewish relations.
The dean of Polish/Jewish historians, Antony Polonsky, will join the conversation. This will be the second time that Professor Polonsky has joined us (see Barry Cohen’s Opening the Drawer: The Hidden Identities of Polish Jews). Polonsky is the senior editor of series of Jews of Poland.
Freighted Legacies is planning a series of film discussions; cultural and musical presentations
Dr. Michael Steinlauf will discuss his two books:
Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust This Was Not America: A Wrangle Through Jewish-Polish-American History
POSTPONED DUE TO ILLNESS
We will pray for his recovery.
Michael Steinlauf’s scholarship has framed the issues of memory for Jews descended from survivors who retained a connection to the culture of Poland. Steinlauf’s rich historical and emotional memories are spread out in moving detail. For many years, before the travel to Poland fads, Steinlauf’s work was the single reliable perspective. The impact of Bondage to the Dead (1997) was not only on English readers but on Polish readers as well. Beginning in 2014, Elzbieta Janicka initiated with Steinlauf a “river interview” that saw its English debut in 2022. Polish scholar Janicka and Steinlauf engaged in lengthy conversations spanning the years and changing political and cultural situations entitled, This Was Not America: A Wrangle Through Jewish-Polish-American History. These two books will make up the basis of a conversation that will feature Professor Steinlauf in conversation with Rabbi Haim Beliak and Dr. David Kader.
BUY THE BOOK: BONDAGE TO THE DEAD HERE
BUY THE BOOK: THIS WAS NOT AMERICA HERE
Dr. Samuel Kassow’s Translation and Framing of Rokhl Auerbach’s Warsaw Testament
April 27, 2025
WATCH THIS WEBINAR HERE
READ THIS BLOG POST HERE
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.
Dr. Samuel Kossow’s Who Will Write Our History is now augmented with the translation of Auerbach’s Warsaw Testament including Kassow’s annotations. Auerbach devoted her life to documenting the Warsaw Ghetto struggle through her work at Yad VaShem, initially in Yiddish and eventually in Hebrew. Roberta Grossman’s documentary, Who Will Write Our History featured the character of Auerbach. CONTINUE READING
Dr. James Diamond’s forthcoming book “Raging Hassidic Sermons of R. Kalonymous Kalman Shapira”
March 23, 2025
WATCH THIS WEBINAR HERE
READ THIS BLOG POST HERE
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.
Dr. Diamond will apply his deep learning to introduce us to this Hassidic teacher’s profound thinking in the midst of the struggle to survive.
Dr. James A. Diamond holds the Joseph and Wolf Lebovic Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo. His vast writings include Jewish Theology Unbound, and Maimonides and The Shaping of the Jewish Canon, as well as numerous articles. CONTINUE READING
The Many Worlds of a Modern, Young Polish Rabbi in Long Beach, California
A visit with Polish Rabbi Menachem Mirski - teacher, musician, philosopher
February 16, 2025
WATCH THIS WEBINAR HERE
READ THIS BLOG POST HERE
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. CONTINUE READING
Dr. Robert Bernheim Will Discuss “Citizen Diplomacy in Poland: Have A Bagel.”
January 12, 2025
WATCH THIS WEBINAR HERE
READ THIS BLOG POST HERE
When Jews visit Poland, the past can present itself as a complex matter. Historian Bernheim created a unique people-to-people experience that framed his visit to his great-grandfather’s village. Robert Bernheim’s third visit to his great grandfather’s Polish hometown, Kanczuga, Poland, and the place of the old bakery was an inspired attempt to connect to the town’s residents. He began making bagels. Over thirty years of visiting Poland, Professor Bernheim has formed important ideas about what we should seek in these visits. Join in an intimate journey told by an unusual “bagel” emissary. CONTINUE READING
Dr. Jan Grabowski will speak on his book, Whitewash: Poland and the Jews.
December 15, 2024
WATCH THIS WEBINAR HERE
READ THIS BLOG POST HERE
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.
Professor Grabowski’s research includes the issues surrounding the extermination of the Polish Jews as well as the history of the Jewish-Polish relations during the 1939-1945 period. He is the author of several monographs, including Hunt for the Jews and On Duty. Professor Grabowski has recently completed a project dealing with the involvement of the Polish “Blue” and criminal police in the Holocaust. His forthcoming research focuses on the open ghettos in the Generalgouvernement. A recipient of the 2014 Faculty of Arts Professor of the Year Award.
Cursed: A Social Portrait of the Kielce Pogrom
May 12, 2024
WATCH THIS WEBINAR HERE
READ THIS BLOG POST HERE
In Cursed: A Social Portrait of the Kielce Pogrom, Joanna Tokarska-Bakir investigates the July 4, 1946, Kielce pogrom, a milestone in the immediate post-Holocaust events impacting Jewish life in Poland and the Jewish diaspora. This massacre compelled thousands of Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust to flee postwar Poland. It remains a negative reference point in the Polish historical narrative and represents a lack of reckoning with the role of antisemitism in postwar Polish society and identity politics.
Cursed is a microhistory that recreates the events of the Kielce pogrom step by step and examines the dominant hypotheses about the pogrom through the prism of previously classified archival evidence.
The Light of Learning: Hasidism in Poland on the Eve of the Holocaust
April 7, 2024
WATCH THIS WEBINAR HERE
READ THIS BLOG POST HERE
The Light of Learning tells the story of an unexpected Hasidic revival in Poland on the eve of the Holocaust. In the aftermath of World War I, the Jewish mystical movement appeared to be in shambles. Hasidic leaders had dispersed, Hasidic courts lay in ruins, and the youth seemed swept up in secularist trends as a result of mandatory public schooling and new Jewish movements like Zionism and Socialism. Author Glenn Dynner shows that in response to this, Hasidic leaders reinvented themselves as educators devoted to rescuing the youth by means of thriving networks of heders (primary schools), Bais Yaakov schools for girls and women, and world-renowned yeshivas.
During the ensuing pedagogical revolution, Hasidic yeshivas soon overshadowed courts, and Hasidic leaders became known more for scholarship than miracle-working. By mobilizing Torah study, Hasidic leaders were able to subvert the “civilizing” projects of the Polish state, successfully rival Zionists and Socialists, and create clandestine yeshiva bunkers in ghettos during the Holocaust. Torah study was thus not only a spiritual-intellectual endeavor but a political practice that fueled a formidable culture of resistance. The Light of Learning belies notions of late Hasidic decadence and decline and transforms our understanding of Polish Jewry during its final hour.
Turning Points in Jewish History: A Polish Translation
A Roundtable Discussion with Rabbis Marc Rosenstein, Barry Schwartz, Menachem Mirski, Mati Kirschenbaum, Drs. Miroslaw Patalon, and Dominika Zakrzewska
March 17, 2024
WATCH THIS WEBINAR HERE
READ THIS BLOG POST HERE
The Polish translation of Rabbi Marc Rosenstein’s Turning Points in Jewish History will give the Polish reading public a greater understanding of Jewish history. The historical volume makes accessible over thirty pivotal moments from biblical times to the near present to provide the reader with “the big picture.” Its teachers will augment and embellish the Polish version using text and online sources as a core. This is similar to the process developed by the Jewish Publication Society, which has licensed this effort.
The presentations focus on “turning points” from Hellenistic-Roman times, five in the Middle Ages and thirteen in modernity. A group of Polish-speaking Professors and educators will work to adapt the lesson plans to Polish realities alongside adult education leaders such as Rabbi Barry Schwartz and other congregational leaders. We are pleased that noted translator Dorota Golebiewska has agreed to work on the central text. The committee of Polish and International scholars will develop accompanying materials.
The project is dedicated to the memory of Professor Pawel Spiewak, who trained as a sociologist but was truly a Renaissance individual. Spiewak was the long-time director of the Jewish Historical Institute who fostered many of the archives’ historical projects. Shortly before his passing, Spiewak agreed to oversee the translation of Turning Points in Jewish History. All mourn the loss of Spiewak’s wise presence.
The translation and curriculum project is now in the skillful hands of Dr. Dominika Zakrzewska, Professor Miroslaw Patalon, Hania Gawronska, Rabbis Mirski and Kirschenbaum with members of the Rabbi Michael A. Signer Clergy Cabinet.
The Concerns of Polish Progressive Judaism’s Foremost Leader Rabbi Ozjasz Thon (1870-1936)
A Suddenly Familiar Voice
January 21, 2024
WATCH THIS WEBINAR HERE
READ THIS BLOG POST HERE
Professor Shoshana Ronen’s presentation based on her book, A Prophet of Consolation on the Threshold of Destruction will introduce us to the remarkable Polish Progressive Rabbi Ozjasz (Joshua) Thon. Until recently the legacy of Rabbi Thon’s intellectual and lived experience was shrouded by the Holocaust and subsequent events, most importantly the establishment of the state of Israel. Now, Rabbi Thon’s significance emerges for Diaspora communities committed to their national identity and to Jewish cultural and political Zionism. Today’s Jewish world may be astounded to learn that the largest number of Progressive Jews in the world once lived in pre-World War II Poland. Polish Jewry’s dilemmas and lessons are relevant to our moment. In Thon’s thinking Poland’s Progressive Jews would aspire ideologically/religiously to situate between the classical German Jewish reform and the Russian Jewish Haskalah. By following the long and complex career of this pre-Holocaust leader we will learn much about Progressive Polish Jewry. Dr. Ronen will introduce us to the remarkable pulpit orator, parliamentarian, Hebraist, Zionist polemicist and rabbi of the Krakow Temple Synagogue from 1896 – 1935.
The Significant Legacy of Memory Among the Second Generation
December 17, 2023
WATCH THIS WEBINAR HERE
READ THIS BLOG POST HERE
Recent writing of children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors is creating a new literary community genre. Transcending national boundaries, Second and Third Generation children of survivors are encountering each other. Dr. David Kader will lead us in his own exploration that is both literary and personal. He has recently written of his parents’ lives and will share two short memoirs and invite conversation about the role of memory in the Second Generation.
David Kader was born in a displaced persons camp in the American zone of occupied Germany after World War II. His parents were Holocaust survivors. His mother – Lola was from Radom, Poland and his father – Israel Moshe was from Grojec Poland. The family migrated to the United states in 1949.
Webinar participants will be encouraged to briefly reflect on their own Second and Third Generation memories.
Will Wikipedia Withstand the Test of Historical Truth?
The Rewriting of Holocaust History on the World’s 7th Most Popular Website
June 27, 2023
READ THIS BLOG POST HERE
Video Recording (ENGLISH OR POLISH) AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST
EMAIL: RABBIBELIAK@JEWISHRENEWALINPOLAND.ORG
For the past few years, a group of Wikipedia editors has been spreading disinformation on the history of the Holocaust. With no obvious ties to any government, they slowly but relentlessly hack away at reason and accuracy to promote ideological zeal, prejudice, and bias. Due to this group’s handiwork, Wikipedia’s coverage of Holocaust history follows a narrative touted by right-wing Polish nationalists. Its articles whitewash the role of Polish society in the Holocaust and bolster stereotypes about Jews, spinning fantastical tales about Jews’ involvement in large-scale crimes against Poles, and wildly inflating the scope of Jewish collaboration with the Nazis. Many editors have tried in vain to change the narrative over the years. How do so few editors – half a dozen at most – get away with twisting the truth?
READ THIS BLOG POST HERE
VIDEO OF THIS WEBINAR COMING SOON!
Our webinar with Goldie Morgentaler will discuss her mother Chava Rosenfarb’s Yiddish novel of Lodz, Poland January 1939 until the end of Lodz Ghetto in 1944. Dr. Morgentaler translated the book from Yiddish to English. Now there is an excellent Polish translation by Dr. Joanna Lisek . But this towering volume is virtually orphaned of a reading public. Noted author Dara Horn wrote: To call [The Tree of Life] a masterpiece would be an understatement. It is the sort of work—long, immersive, engrossing, exquisite—that feels less like reading a book than living a life.
Extensive references to the Tree of Life can be found at Yidlit, October 30, 2021 and at Yidlit February 22, 2022 and Yidlit April 23, 2022.
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