Rabbi's Blog

On July 1st I shared a Shabbat lunch in Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter of Krakow in Poland with Marcel and his wife Marya on their 66th wedding anniversary. Marcel Zielinski was born into Krakow’s thriving Jewish community in September 1934. By 1941, he and his family were relocated to the Ghetto until Marcel was interned in the Plaszow concentration camp, built just outside the city. In October 1944, he and his father were sent to Auschwitz, where he remained until liberation on January 27th, 1945. Ten year old Marcel, along with a few other boys who had survived, left the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau and walked 60 miles to Krakow in search of his family, finding an empty apartment and he ended up in an orphanage. Six months later he was reunited with his mother, the only other surviving member of his family. They moved to Montreal and built a new life. Marcel became a very keen cyclist. In 2015, Marcel made that same 60 mile journey of his childhood from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Krakow — not by foot, but on a bicycle, to the JCC in Krakow. Marcel has done this ride almost every year since.  Now almost 90, Marcel rode the first 15 miles on a tandem with Jonathan Ornstein, Executive Director of Krakow’s JCC on the last day of June this year.  I was riding too, one of the 200 plus riders with my original study partner from Rabbinical School, Greg Alexander, now a rabbi in Cape Town, SA.  I rode in memory of our beloved friend Irene Rosenschein who also survived those horrors.  Ride for the Living participants gathered by the gates of hell, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and joined Marcel and Bernard Offen, another survivor well into his 90s who also rode, for an opening ceremony before setting off through the Polish countryside, cheered on by local Poles along the way, and arriving in the beautiful city of Krakow and the festive finish at the JCC.  This extraordinary experience, about which there is much more to say and which raised money for the inspiring work of Krakow’s JCC, marked the beginning of this past July for me, and on the very last day of that same month, we got to receive our old new Torah from the Czech Memorial Scrolls Trust at the Westminster Synagogue in London and fly back with it to Colorado on August 1st.

Different as they are, these two epic journeys that framed the month of July, seem to be part of the same story, deeply impacting me and from which I draw inspiration and courage. I feel so grateful and privileged for these opportunities.  

Marcel, Bernard, and this Torah are all survivors; all witnesses to horrors and loss and yet tenacious and brave, continuing to tell their stories across the generations, defying the darkness.

The mission of the JCC of Krakow is renewal and regeneration of Jewish life in Poland after the destruction and it has drawn so many Poles, many of them young, discovering their Jewishness, learning and growing.  Jonathan Ornstein, the executive director, often says; “it’s no longer Auschwitz PERIOD, but Auschwitz COMMA.”  Jewish life did not end in Poland. The 60 mile bike ride coincides with RUAH - the Jewish cultural festival in Krakow that brings thousands of people from all over the world to listen to incredible music in the main square of Kazimierz, the original Jewish quarter and participate in other cultural events.

That Friday morning we got up before dawn to get our buses from Krakow to Auschwitz in biking gear to gather for the ride, rode for 60 miles, breaking every 15 miles and ended up at the JCC at 6pm for some photos and beers and a quick turn around to get ready for Shabbat with some different service options, then at 9pm, by which time I could barely keep my eyes open, we went to the JCC Shabbat dinner with 700 people, including the Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Shudrich and guests from all over the world sharing an abundant, kosher Friday night dinner! I was too tired to take in the power and significance of this. 

In 1964, 1564 Torah scrolls from all over Moravia and Bohemia, former Czecozlovakia, that had been stolen by the Nazis from all over the region and stored in a warehouse in Prague, were purchased and shipped to The Westminster Synagogue in London.  Not long afterwards, an ultra Orthodox sofer, a scribe who spoke Yiddish but not English, knocked on the door of the liberal synagogue and said in Yiddish, “I am a sofer looking for work. Do you have any Torah scrolls that need repair?”  A woman called Ruth Shaffer answered the door and happened to speak Yiddish and said, “actually we have 1564, come in.” David Brand spent the next 27 years of his life working every day but Shabbat restoring the scrolls that could be repaired and the refurbished Kosher scrolls were sent to communities all over the world as an act of defiance and resistance.

Memorial Scrolls Trust scroll #335 has been dated to around 1775 from the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague. It survived the Shoah and the communist regime, came to London in 1964 and was one of the first kosher scrolls to be allocated the same year, loaned to Gosforth Hebrew Congregation, an Orthodox community in the North-east of England. When that shul closed, the Torah found a new home with the United Hebrew Congregation in Newcastle-on-Tyne. They downsized and returned the Torah to London, and on July 31st, Robert and Sara Sturtz and I, accompanied by an amazing film crew, received this Torah in London and flew with it on United flight 26 to Denver and brought it to Bonai Shalom where we hope it will be for decades to come.

Every one of our Bnei Mitzvah kids will read from this Torah and will learn its history and each of them will become part of its story. Starting with Morris Schwartz in a few weeks.

A week before Rosh HaShanah, I was part of an online conversation with Ned Price, a Jewish senior advisor to the state department and Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, special envoy on global antisemitism for the White House.  Plenty was shared about the frightening realities in many parts of the world, but Ambassador Lipstadt, who I have had the honor of knowing for years, had a very clear message: “Don't be Jewish because of antisemitism, be Jewish in spite of it. Yes, speak out when you need to speak out, but learn, teach, celebrate this incredible tradition.” That’s why we have this Torah as one of the newest members of our community, to continue to tell these stories, origin stories that help us know who we are, why we’re here and what we are called to do, honoring legacies of the past so that we can dream of a vibrant future. Reading from a Torah that is a holocaust survivor and riding a bike from Auschwitz to a reborn Jewish life in Krakow with two survivors, both feel like acts of resistance.  Not because of the cruelty and hatred of the past, but because of the possibility of the future and the tenacity of survival. On Simchat Torah in a couple of weeks when we end and immediately begin again our Torah reading cycle, we dance and we celebrate the Torah and we will be dancing with our Pinkas old new Torah in its new home, as we honor Robert and Sara Sturtz, who were so instrumental in bringing MST #335 to Bonai Shalom, as Hatan Torah and Kallat Bereshit, the groom of the Torah and the bride of genesis!

Soon we will be beginning our first vidui, the confessional prayers at the heart of this most amazing day.  I feel like adding one this year for myself and for all of us - al cheyt shechatanu l’fanecha, for the transgression of dismissing, demeaning, forgetting and disparaging our beautiful Jewish heritage because of the pain of the past.  

The Torah portion Ki Tavo that we read a few weeks ago from Deuteronomy opens with an act of ritual storytelling where the Israelites celebrate their first fruits in the land, presenting them in a special basket with a declaration of the past, the origin story, to enrich the blessings and gratitude of the present and future. An appreciation of where we come from to inform who we are now is not something that AI can bring. It is profoundly human. Collective memory is so important. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, on that Torah reading, quotes Winston Churchill, who died on the day I was born by the way, saying: “The longer you can look back, the further you can see forward.” Rabbi Sacks adds; “those who tell the story of their past have already begun to build their children’s future.” Thanks to the incredible interim leadership of Rabbi Charna Rosenholtz and Gali Beh and the education committee, we have almost 90 beautiful children in our Hebrew School, excited to learn and grow in our community that is bursting at the seams, with the values, practices and traditions of the Torah at the heart of their learning.

We all know what trouble the world is in right now and for the sake of our new old Torah and the many generations who have read from it and the stories this Torah would tell if it could speak, for these stories and the stories of Marcel and Bernard and other survivors, let’s build a vibrant, engaged future for the children of this community and for the world as proud Jews, heirs to a magnificent tradition.