By Larry Gordon
What if I told you that I was in a cemetery in Krakow, Poland at 3 a.m. on Saturday night the week before last, saying Tehillim at the gravesite of the Rema, Reb Moshe Isserles, zt’l? Well, I was there listening to Rabbi Paysach Krohn, Rabbi Shlomo Cynamon, and Ari Scharf expound in detail upon the personality of the Rema and the reverence with which he was viewed by contemporaries and followers alike.
Ari Scharf
The Rema Shul is located squarely in the center of the Jewish ghetto of Krakow, where we spent a good deal of last Shabbos afternoon. Unless you’ve stood in and seen modern-day Krakow, there is no way that you can imagine what it is like.
In a sense, the country—at least in this part of Poland anyway—seems to have come to grips with its past destructiveness and cooperation with Hitler and the Nazis during World War II. And they seem to now be at peace with the significant contributions that Jews have made to that country over many hundreds of years.
For us as observant Jews, one of the important things to note is our ability to visit the cemeteries and gravesites of tzaddikim and historical luminaries like the Rema. For many of us, these men and women are not relics or simply representatives of a glorious past. They are very much a part of our lives; their scholarly works are studied fastidiously and the words that they uttered seven decades or seven centuries ago are still focused on, absorbed, and taken very much to heart.
That Shabbos, we entered several shuls that have been restored with the focus on maintaining their original look from when they were first constructed many hundreds of years ago.
This area that we made our way through over Shabbos is known as the Jewish ghetto. The idea and concept of a ghetto, which is now looked upon as a manifestation of geographic anti-Jewishness, was in fact considered a positive development for the Jews of that era. Not that much different from today, Jews wanted to and looked forward to living in proximity to one another.
So, at first, when German armies invaded countries like Poland in 1939 and the announced plan was to move the Jews into one area, with a little bit of optimism and hope for the future, Jews were not completely discouraged by the development. It was wishful thinking and they had no idea of the destructiveness, cruelty, and violence that was planned for them. But these men and women were heads of households and they had no choice but to be hopeful and confident that things would be good.
Today, the town square in Krakow is an attractive and pleasant place to spend an afternoon. It is perhaps somewhat odd that back when it was the hub of Jewish life in the city, it wasn’t quite so quaint. But now that it has been set up to be a reflection of a past that once was, everything seems as close to perfect as possible.
The blocks around the center of Krakow on this Shabbos afternoon are lined with restaurants bursting with patrons. The signs in the windows of the eateries promote menu items including cholent, kugel, kishke, and blintzes. Yes, it is Shabbos and they are doing a brisk tourist business as people from around the world are anxious to see, or in this case taste, what Jewish life was like in this part of the world.
In addition to the stores being open on Shabbos, it is also important to note—in case you are wondering or planning to travel there someday—that none of what they offer is kosher. I mentioned this seemingly deceptive fact to Ari Scharf, our Jewish Poland expert and director of Project Mesorah, and he pointed out that what we saw in Krakow was not that far off from what the Jewish ghetto was like here in Krakow before the war. He said that while back then all the stores were scrupulously kosher, it was a common occurrence for people to pre-pay for a Shabbos meal and then have that meal in one of these restaurants on Friday night or Shabbos. Back then that was the only way you could participate in a Shabbos meal in one of these restaurants. Modern Poland demonstrates an inability to understand the fundamentals of Jewish life as it once was by setting up the Krakow ghetto in this fashion.
Krakow is quaint, even charming. Two of the shuls we attended were the Kupa Shul and then, later in the day, a larger-than-life edifice that is referred to as the Temple. Later that night, we were in the Rema Shul, which is situated on a significant property directly in the center of town.
We spent our time at the Kupa Shul on Shabbos afternoon. Earlier in the day, we davenedShacharis and Mussaf at our hotel a short distance from this part of town. Once in the shul, we read from the Torah—ParashasPinchas—and then blessed the new month of Menachem Av, led artfully by Cantor Shea Rubinstein.
One of the many fascinating things we learned is the motivation behind the establishment of the different shuls. According to Mr. Scharf, the Kupa Shul was steeped in the traditional customs of the typical European shtetl. As denoted by its name, it was a shul that was open to all.
A sign in the Kupa Shul says that it has already been restored five times since World War II. That is pretty much the same story with most of the stately institutions as well as other buildings here as they are restored with the aim of preserving their original look and décor.
Compared to the Temple, the Kupa Shul is rather austere. It has more of a heimish look to it and we even met the shamash, the sexton or caretaker, a Chassidic young man originally from New York who now makes his home in Krakow. He told us that the Kupa Shul has a minyan almost every day. He adds that he knows of 12 religiously observant Jews who reside in the city and that they make up the morning minyan.
A short distance away from the Kupa Shul is the Temple. It is quite grand; it makes a cathedral-like impression. Here’s an excerpt from an online description of the shul: “The Moorish Revival building was designed by Ignacy Hercok, and built in 1860–1862 along Miodowa Street. The Temple, with its tall central section flanked by lower wings, is designed on the pattern of the Leopoldstädter Tempel, in Vienna, Austria. At the time the synagogue was built, Krakow was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The richly finished interior is adorned with dense patterns painted in many colors and copious amounts of gold leaf, but the patterns, with the exception of the exquisite Moorish design on the ceiling, are not stylistically Moorish. The arch over the Aron Kodesh, with its pattern of alternating tall and short houses, is more in the style of Polish folk art than anything Islamic. The Aron Kodesh is covered by a gold-leaf dome that evokes the dome over the Sigismund Chapel in the nearby Wawel Cathedral.
“The synagogue was ruined during World War II by the Nazis, who used the building as an ammunition storage area. After the war, it was used again for prayers. In 1947, a mikveh was built in the northern part of the synagogue. Regular prayers were held until 1985. A large inflow of financial contributions from private donors around the world allowed the synagogue to undergo a vast renovation from 1995 until 2000. It is still active today, although formal prayers are held only a few times a year.”
Ari Scharf—an expert on the history of Jewish life in Poland, and Krakow in particular—described at length the role the Temple played in the ghetto. As best I could comprehend, elements of the theretofore frum community in Krakow were becoming unsettled, if not physically or geographically, due to outside influences on Jewish youth.
That doesn’t sound too much different from what we are experiencing today. As Scharf explained, the feeling in the pre-war Krakow community was that there were outside influences—whether it was a more enlightened lifestyle, the socialist-oriented Bundt, or even new ideas of Zionism with attention being paid to the shortly-to-be-declared new independent Jewish state. These influences were seeping into many young minds and drawing some of the youth away, to the dismay of parents and community leaders.
The Temple was less shtiebel and more synagogue-like. The communal concession was more openness, events for young men and women, and an outlet for new and more expression in stride with what would become a changing time. Of course all that upended once the Nazis invaded.
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That same night, at about 2 a.m., we visited the gravesite of Sara Schenirer, the woman credited with starting the Bais Yaakov girls’ school movement. We recited Tehillim and sang Eishes Chayil under a star-studded sky, otherwise surrounded by a deep darkness. We visited the building that housed her Krakow-based school and learned about her motivations and the opposition she encountered in her desire to develop a Torah curriculum for young Jewish girls in Poland.
Part of the catalyst that eventually made her the icon that she became was some of those same outside influences that contributed to the development of the Temple. The young women were becoming drawn to and interested in ideas that were blowing an invasive new wind into a community that, up to that point in time, had been very insular.
Krakow was indeed something memorable and special. Jewish life there was wonderful, even extraordinary, for centuries. But then there was war, mayhem, death, and devastation. Today, in the days leading to our observance of Tishah B’Av, when we reflect upon and recall so much death and destruction, we look back at the nearly successful attempts to obliterate the Jewish community, with—all these years later—an uncanny hope for the future.
Where is there a building, a home, or any edifice of any type in which the first part of the project was not demolition and destruction preceding reconstruction? Our hope, as we look back to the sacking of the Beis HaMikdash several thousand years ago and more recently the Churban in Europe, is that these are the first steps of building, renewal, and, someday soon, redemption.
Comments for Larry Gordon are welcome at editor@5tjt.com.