Passover!
“Can I leave early?” I shyly asked my literature professor, a jovial man by whom I’m still intimidated.
He laughed the way he did when we attacked the racier parts of Schultz and Gombrowicz. “Fine, fine!” he said, not even bothering to ask where I was off to. “No problem!”
No problem indeed, I thought as I raced across Dietla, heels clicking on the sidewalk. Here I was, dressed in the most modest clothes I could find and I had approximately fifteen minutes to get to synagogue. I felt like I’d stepped back in time, as this is probably not the most common reason for hurrying in Poland these days, but replacing my tights that had snagged on the wall was something that needed attending to first. Two minutes later, I was freshly hosed and was running like a bat out of hell to make up for lost time. 6:41, four minutes.
The more rational part of my mind was lecturing me on the absolute stupidity of running to a synagogue service. Surely these Polish Jews (or whomever I would find at Remuh Synagogue), also functioned on Jewish Standard Time-that elusive time zone created by taking the amount of time it takes you to get to Temple without breaking any speed limits, multiplying it by the number of people you have to greet before you sit down with your prayer book in the sanctuary, and adding it to the local time. Even if they didn’t, this is Krakow and Cracovians are renowned for being perpetually 20 minutes late. Studies of this phenomenon suggest that it has to do with the fact that the city’s many church bells all ring at different times, meaning that no matter where you are, you will think that you’re on time because your internal clock runs in time with the bells of the church nearest to you, and whomever is waiting for you will think you’re late because the bells of the church nearest to them ring slightly earlier/later. Throw in finicky trams, uneven sidewalks that put power-walking out of the question, and the absolute necessity of smoking a cigarette right outside the building in which your business is about to be conducted, and you’re 20 minutes late. Or, perhaps it’s everyone operating on Jewish Standard Time, garnered by osmosis before the war. This of course did not slow me down at all, as the completely OCD German-Jewish side of my psyche has this tendency firmly under its influence. When they say 6:45, I will be there at 6:40, if not 6:30, and then worry why everyone’s late. I did manage to slow to a walk as I rounded the corner of Jozefa and into Szeroka. It would not do to show up looking breathless, I was nervous enough at the prospect of attending an Orthodox shul with my ankles showing and then trying to find a girl I’d only met once and go to the Seder.
Fortunately for me, Jewish Standard Time and Krakow Lag Time are pervasive beasts and there was quite a crowd standing outside of the gates having a last smoke or a chat before going in. I quickly glanced at my fellow Jews and breathed a sigh of relief that I was appropriately dressed. Hasids these people were not, just regular-looking people who came to celebrate Passover in Krakow, and I felt a lot better. I still wasn’t exactly sure where to go, as I’d only been in the Remuh Synagogue as a tourist, meaning I got to use the men’s entrance so my group could see the bimah and the ark up close, and couldn’t remember where the women’s door was. After a few minutes of standing around awkwardly, praying that the women would start walking in, I followed a group into a door right beside the men’s entrance and huddled in a pew in the far corner.
As with most Orthodox rites I’ve been to, the service seemed little more than organized chaos to me. The synagogue is very small, but it’s difficult to hear what’s going on in the men’s section from all the way in the back over the voices of other women who are admiring the new baby in their midst or wishing each other chag sameach. I also didn’t have a prayer book, which didn’t exactly matter because it didn’t seem like many people-men and women-were paying much attention except when it was time to stand up and then sit again. Instead, I took the opportunity to look around at my surroundings, especially my fellow worshippers. The Remuh Synagogue was built in the 16th century and named for Rabbi Moses Isserles, who was known by the Hebrew acronym ReMA. When it was constructed, it was on the edge of the area the Jewish community inhabited at the time, bordering the new (now the old) cemetery. It’s a pretty white building, elegantly understated and easy to miss if not for the Hebrew letters on the arch above the entrance gates, and about the same on the inside. The walls are white and there is no decoration except for some chandeliers and the gray ark with a few gold accents. Functional applies to every aspect of this synagogue-from the décor, to the exterior, to its purpose today. The Remuh Synagogue is the only functioning synagogue in Krakow today, in comparison to the 120 officially registered places of worship in the 1930s.
Bored with the interior and completely lost in the service, I took a good look around me at my fellow worshipers (or worshipettes, I suppose it would be). There were about 25, 26, of us in the women’s section, all of whom but me seemed to be native speakers of Polish. Interestingly, we all ranged in age from about 20 to roughly 60, which was surprising because Jewish guidebooks frequently stress that there are only 200 aging Jews left in Krakow. Granted, I wasn’t seeing the entire population, but there were mighty few gray or white heads in the men’s or women’s sections. There were a couple of children too, but I think only one family, so the congregation was a bunch of adults who had either come of age under Communism in the ‘60s and ‘70s (after Stalinism) and students.
After the service, which was the fastest Orthodox service I’d ever attended, I stood around looking for Daniela. She was there, but I wasn’t sure if she’d remember me as we’d only met once, so I slipped outside to just head to the seder. Fortunately she stopped me and told me to join her and a large group heading to Kupa Street for the seder. I got over my nervousness quickly and made friends with a woman who happened to have sat next to me during services. Her name was Regina, which was pretty funny as that’s the only Polish equivalent of Gina that any of my Polish professors and friends have been able to come up with. It’s nice to know that it’s actually used. This got us giggly and we talked about Poland and what I was doing here and her family in America and Germany. She lives in a small town about 100km away, near Kielce, and came into Krakow for services because the Jewish community of Kielce lacks a rabbi and enough organization to have a Seder. When we walked into what I’m going to call the social hall of the Izaak Synagogue for the sake of the argument, I ran into a friend of mine who studies at the Center as well. Her name is Matilda and she’s from Switzerland, but is the daughter of two Polish Jews and speaks beautiful (but very fast) Polish. We were also joined by a girl named Ola (Alexandra) and we had a great time.
Like most Seders, this one was organized chaos. We all had little Haggadahs in Hebrew and Polish (copyright 1927, Germany, reprinted in Warsaw in 1991) and also an extensive song sheet which, to my delight, included the Hebrew/Polish versions of the fantastically popular ‘Who Knows One’ and ‘A Kid, an Only Kid (that my father bought for two zuzym! Ha-gad-yaaaahhh ha-gad-yaaaahhh!). There were about 50 people at the service and it was led by young people, more specifically the rabbi’s two oldest sons and Daniela. It was hard to hear exactly what was going on because everyone was talking and the kids were very hyperactive (there were maybe 6 or 7 of them and Lord help me if they didn’t pull the same shenanigans that certain members of my family pulled at that age). We started going around the table and had a rousing rendition of the Four Questions, as sung by an adorable eight-year-old who looked like a miniature academic, complete with little round glasses and a Harry Potter-esque suit, standing on a chair and puffing out his chest as he loudly sang the words. Why is this night different from all other nights? I could think of several, nontextual, answers to that. After all, I was sitting conversing in (quite passable, if I do say so myself) Polish with two native Poles and a heritage speaker at a Seder table of all places. On all other nights, we speak English and dine with goyim.
We continued around the table, trying to read over the noise. I started getting extremely nervous as my turn drew closer. If I get one of those long paragraphs, I thought to myself, I’m done for! This language is WAY out of my league! My whole body was shaking when my turn came. Thankfully, I only had to read a small paragraph, and only stumbled over a particularly tricky word. It wasn’t until Ola started reading that I took a closer look at the text. I had been so nervous about my turn that I hadn’t noticed what part of the service we were reading. As it turns out, we were at the part of the story of the Four Children: the wise one, the wicked one, the simple one, and the one who cannot yet speak. Depending on my Dad’s mood, I am either the simple (dumb) one or the wicked one if I’ve been particularly mean to David. I think the year I got into Northwestern I might have read the part of the wise child. Much to my amusement, I realized the passage I’d just read was the part of the one who cannot speak, or as this particular Haggadah says, the one who cannot yet speak. It was so deliciously prophetic.
Before I knew it, the meal was served. I think people were getting so lost that the reading was called off after the important prayers and songs. Plus, we apparently had quite a few English speakers who weren’t able to follow the service so the reading dwindled to a halt of sorts. The food was quite good, though I found the horseradish not particularly up to scratch in that it tasted a lot more like beets than horseradish. I seriously thought I was eating the chopped beets the Poles call salad, until the Rabbi’s wife mentioned that the chopping machine had broken down from exhaustion and she had to chop the stuff herself. It was a very, very good effort in that case (as she is rather pregnant as well) and the charoset more than made up for it. As I ate and talked with Regina, Matilda, and Ola, I noticed that there were some rather interesting…things that varied with my normal Passover experience. First, instead of parsley, we dipped a potato into salt water and then made a Hillel sandwich out of matzo, horseradish, charoset, and a lettuce leaf. I don’t know where the first tradition came from, maybe because back in the day it was easier to get potatoes than parsley, but the second tradition makes a lot of sense. Everyone in Poland eats open-faced sandwiches with bread, some sort of spread (usually butter), a lettuce leaf, some sort of meat (usually ham), and a tomato. This was just a kosher for Passover Polish sandwich. I did miss the parsley though and the combination of charoset and lettuce was kinda icky. Then again, as Stephanie and Alissa will attest, I’m really not fond of lettuce on anything.
During dinner, Regina told a story about her younger cousin from New York who came to visit Poland on a March of the Living type of deal. Regina drove all the way to Krakow to see her and they apparently had a great time. This gave her the idea to see if maybe Czulent could hook some of their students up with these groups so they could see that there is still some Jewish life in Poland. It was a no-go. “They’re just not interested in what’s here today,” she said, in between bites of matzo ball soup. “They only want to see the graves.” Both she and Ola really got excited when I told them that was one of the reasons I decided to come back to Poland-no one on European Roots answered my questions about the remnants of the Jewish community, not even when they had just mentioned that the Remuh Synagogue was still open. How many Jews live here today? I asked the same snotty rabbinical student who I had to trot out the ‘my uncle the rabbi’ line on in order to get him to listen to my point of view. He looked at me like I’d grown horns, shrugged, and got back onto the bus without looking around at the street we were on.
To this day, I am still floored by that conversation. Yes, I understand the gravity of the Holocaust. Yes, I understand that most survivors left Poland. Yes, I understand that there wasn’t Jewish life under Communism (except a bit at the beginning and a little under Solidarity). But to be completely ignorant of a community, no matter how small it is, is completely and utterly ridiculous. I’ve spent six years trying to find the right word or phrase to fit that attitude and the only thing I can think of is willful ignorance. We sang that song in Sunday School:
Wherever you go, there’s always someone Jewish
You never need to feel alone ‘cause you’re a Jew.
If you’re ever in a place that feels kinda new-ish
Don’t be afraid, ‘cause you’ll find someone Jewish!
It’s really true, but in more places than just Amsterdam, Disneyland, and Tel Aviv, in places you don’t even expect. There are Jews in Wroclaw (aka the town formerly known as Breslau), Warsaw, Krakow, Opole, Kielce. Granted, there aren’t many, but there are some and there are quite a few young people among them. Jewish Polandophile that I am, I don’t understand why people on my ‘real’ side of the pond are not interested in people like Regina and Daniela, Ola and Kasia, and all the other people at the Seder. The Rabbi’s wife, beaming over her two eldest sons as they led the Seder, remarked that she’s so proud to have raised two boys to be good Polish Jews. And this is coming from an Orthodox woman originally from Israel. How can people not get excited about the opening of a Progressive congregation in Warsaw? Or that there’s an active Jewish student organization? What about the Polish schoolchildren who showed up at the Krakow Ghetto Memorial March of their own volition, because their teacher happened to mention the march during class? People who dismiss these things as small and insignificant and not good enough do not understand what a miracle it is that these things are happening at all. Every member of this community is a survivor-whether of the Holocaust or of the Communist regime, which wasn’t fond of Jews either. How can we expect this community to survive unrecognized and unsupported? It’s hard enough to be Jewish in Poland and the current political situation isn’t making it any easier, but it’s possible and people need to recognize that. Mourn for what is lost all you want, decry the Giertychs and the anti-Semites that flock to LPR as loudly as you can, but spare a thought for a few good things that have happened since 1989.
Now that I’ve found my thesis topic (and maybe, just maybe NU will get back to me this time), I’ll end my rant now.
I ended up having to leave the dinner early because it was already 11:30 and it’s a good 30 minute walk from Kazimierz back to Zaczek. It’s all very safe and well-lit, but I was tired and had things to do in the morning-like the ever-tedious summary writing one of our teachers makes us do because she simply doesn’t have the five extra minutes it would take to make up/find questions about the text so we’d have something to talk about rather than sounding like parrots. Also, Regina had to leave early and her place was taken by possibly the most unpleasant expat in Krakow. We have mutual friends and so have met, and I really didn’t relish the prospect of him acting like the snotty New York Jew he desperately wants to be (he’s from Cali and so has a complex of sorts about being Jewish-er than thou), which includes denigrating everything about Poland. I’m still not sure why he’s living here. Anyway, after him asking Ola if I had an American accent-the asshat doesn’t even try to speak Polish-I had enough. I made my goodbyes and headed back home.
It was funny, on the way back I happened to go down the street where the Bishop’s Palace is located and ran into a whole mess of people. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, but then remembered that it was the anniversary of the Pope’s death. There were memorial candles everywhere-piled up on the ground floor windows of the palace, on the sidewalk, on the low wall across the street, spilling into the Planty where they looked like something from that kid’s book where the girl builds an elf village in her backyard (Afternoon of the Elves maybe?). People were kneeling and praying, singing, or just sitting and reflecting. I hurried on by, but it was strange to end a Passover night with a sight like that.
He laughed the way he did when we attacked the racier parts of Schultz and Gombrowicz. “Fine, fine!” he said, not even bothering to ask where I was off to. “No problem!”
No problem indeed, I thought as I raced across Dietla, heels clicking on the sidewalk. Here I was, dressed in the most modest clothes I could find and I had approximately fifteen minutes to get to synagogue. I felt like I’d stepped back in time, as this is probably not the most common reason for hurrying in Poland these days, but replacing my tights that had snagged on the wall was something that needed attending to first. Two minutes later, I was freshly hosed and was running like a bat out of hell to make up for lost time. 6:41, four minutes.
The more rational part of my mind was lecturing me on the absolute stupidity of running to a synagogue service. Surely these Polish Jews (or whomever I would find at Remuh Synagogue), also functioned on Jewish Standard Time-that elusive time zone created by taking the amount of time it takes you to get to Temple without breaking any speed limits, multiplying it by the number of people you have to greet before you sit down with your prayer book in the sanctuary, and adding it to the local time. Even if they didn’t, this is Krakow and Cracovians are renowned for being perpetually 20 minutes late. Studies of this phenomenon suggest that it has to do with the fact that the city’s many church bells all ring at different times, meaning that no matter where you are, you will think that you’re on time because your internal clock runs in time with the bells of the church nearest to you, and whomever is waiting for you will think you’re late because the bells of the church nearest to them ring slightly earlier/later. Throw in finicky trams, uneven sidewalks that put power-walking out of the question, and the absolute necessity of smoking a cigarette right outside the building in which your business is about to be conducted, and you’re 20 minutes late. Or, perhaps it’s everyone operating on Jewish Standard Time, garnered by osmosis before the war. This of course did not slow me down at all, as the completely OCD German-Jewish side of my psyche has this tendency firmly under its influence. When they say 6:45, I will be there at 6:40, if not 6:30, and then worry why everyone’s late. I did manage to slow to a walk as I rounded the corner of Jozefa and into Szeroka. It would not do to show up looking breathless, I was nervous enough at the prospect of attending an Orthodox shul with my ankles showing and then trying to find a girl I’d only met once and go to the Seder.
Fortunately for me, Jewish Standard Time and Krakow Lag Time are pervasive beasts and there was quite a crowd standing outside of the gates having a last smoke or a chat before going in. I quickly glanced at my fellow Jews and breathed a sigh of relief that I was appropriately dressed. Hasids these people were not, just regular-looking people who came to celebrate Passover in Krakow, and I felt a lot better. I still wasn’t exactly sure where to go, as I’d only been in the Remuh Synagogue as a tourist, meaning I got to use the men’s entrance so my group could see the bimah and the ark up close, and couldn’t remember where the women’s door was. After a few minutes of standing around awkwardly, praying that the women would start walking in, I followed a group into a door right beside the men’s entrance and huddled in a pew in the far corner.
As with most Orthodox rites I’ve been to, the service seemed little more than organized chaos to me. The synagogue is very small, but it’s difficult to hear what’s going on in the men’s section from all the way in the back over the voices of other women who are admiring the new baby in their midst or wishing each other chag sameach. I also didn’t have a prayer book, which didn’t exactly matter because it didn’t seem like many people-men and women-were paying much attention except when it was time to stand up and then sit again. Instead, I took the opportunity to look around at my surroundings, especially my fellow worshippers. The Remuh Synagogue was built in the 16th century and named for Rabbi Moses Isserles, who was known by the Hebrew acronym ReMA. When it was constructed, it was on the edge of the area the Jewish community inhabited at the time, bordering the new (now the old) cemetery. It’s a pretty white building, elegantly understated and easy to miss if not for the Hebrew letters on the arch above the entrance gates, and about the same on the inside. The walls are white and there is no decoration except for some chandeliers and the gray ark with a few gold accents. Functional applies to every aspect of this synagogue-from the décor, to the exterior, to its purpose today. The Remuh Synagogue is the only functioning synagogue in Krakow today, in comparison to the 120 officially registered places of worship in the 1930s.
Bored with the interior and completely lost in the service, I took a good look around me at my fellow worshipers (or worshipettes, I suppose it would be). There were about 25, 26, of us in the women’s section, all of whom but me seemed to be native speakers of Polish. Interestingly, we all ranged in age from about 20 to roughly 60, which was surprising because Jewish guidebooks frequently stress that there are only 200 aging Jews left in Krakow. Granted, I wasn’t seeing the entire population, but there were mighty few gray or white heads in the men’s or women’s sections. There were a couple of children too, but I think only one family, so the congregation was a bunch of adults who had either come of age under Communism in the ‘60s and ‘70s (after Stalinism) and students.
After the service, which was the fastest Orthodox service I’d ever attended, I stood around looking for Daniela. She was there, but I wasn’t sure if she’d remember me as we’d only met once, so I slipped outside to just head to the seder. Fortunately she stopped me and told me to join her and a large group heading to Kupa Street for the seder. I got over my nervousness quickly and made friends with a woman who happened to have sat next to me during services. Her name was Regina, which was pretty funny as that’s the only Polish equivalent of Gina that any of my Polish professors and friends have been able to come up with. It’s nice to know that it’s actually used. This got us giggly and we talked about Poland and what I was doing here and her family in America and Germany. She lives in a small town about 100km away, near Kielce, and came into Krakow for services because the Jewish community of Kielce lacks a rabbi and enough organization to have a Seder. When we walked into what I’m going to call the social hall of the Izaak Synagogue for the sake of the argument, I ran into a friend of mine who studies at the Center as well. Her name is Matilda and she’s from Switzerland, but is the daughter of two Polish Jews and speaks beautiful (but very fast) Polish. We were also joined by a girl named Ola (Alexandra) and we had a great time.
Like most Seders, this one was organized chaos. We all had little Haggadahs in Hebrew and Polish (copyright 1927, Germany, reprinted in Warsaw in 1991) and also an extensive song sheet which, to my delight, included the Hebrew/Polish versions of the fantastically popular ‘Who Knows One’ and ‘A Kid, an Only Kid (that my father bought for two zuzym! Ha-gad-yaaaahhh ha-gad-yaaaahhh!). There were about 50 people at the service and it was led by young people, more specifically the rabbi’s two oldest sons and Daniela. It was hard to hear exactly what was going on because everyone was talking and the kids were very hyperactive (there were maybe 6 or 7 of them and Lord help me if they didn’t pull the same shenanigans that certain members of my family pulled at that age). We started going around the table and had a rousing rendition of the Four Questions, as sung by an adorable eight-year-old who looked like a miniature academic, complete with little round glasses and a Harry Potter-esque suit, standing on a chair and puffing out his chest as he loudly sang the words. Why is this night different from all other nights? I could think of several, nontextual, answers to that. After all, I was sitting conversing in (quite passable, if I do say so myself) Polish with two native Poles and a heritage speaker at a Seder table of all places. On all other nights, we speak English and dine with goyim.
We continued around the table, trying to read over the noise. I started getting extremely nervous as my turn drew closer. If I get one of those long paragraphs, I thought to myself, I’m done for! This language is WAY out of my league! My whole body was shaking when my turn came. Thankfully, I only had to read a small paragraph, and only stumbled over a particularly tricky word. It wasn’t until Ola started reading that I took a closer look at the text. I had been so nervous about my turn that I hadn’t noticed what part of the service we were reading. As it turns out, we were at the part of the story of the Four Children: the wise one, the wicked one, the simple one, and the one who cannot yet speak. Depending on my Dad’s mood, I am either the simple (dumb) one or the wicked one if I’ve been particularly mean to David. I think the year I got into Northwestern I might have read the part of the wise child. Much to my amusement, I realized the passage I’d just read was the part of the one who cannot speak, or as this particular Haggadah says, the one who cannot yet speak. It was so deliciously prophetic.
Before I knew it, the meal was served. I think people were getting so lost that the reading was called off after the important prayers and songs. Plus, we apparently had quite a few English speakers who weren’t able to follow the service so the reading dwindled to a halt of sorts. The food was quite good, though I found the horseradish not particularly up to scratch in that it tasted a lot more like beets than horseradish. I seriously thought I was eating the chopped beets the Poles call salad, until the Rabbi’s wife mentioned that the chopping machine had broken down from exhaustion and she had to chop the stuff herself. It was a very, very good effort in that case (as she is rather pregnant as well) and the charoset more than made up for it. As I ate and talked with Regina, Matilda, and Ola, I noticed that there were some rather interesting…things that varied with my normal Passover experience. First, instead of parsley, we dipped a potato into salt water and then made a Hillel sandwich out of matzo, horseradish, charoset, and a lettuce leaf. I don’t know where the first tradition came from, maybe because back in the day it was easier to get potatoes than parsley, but the second tradition makes a lot of sense. Everyone in Poland eats open-faced sandwiches with bread, some sort of spread (usually butter), a lettuce leaf, some sort of meat (usually ham), and a tomato. This was just a kosher for Passover Polish sandwich. I did miss the parsley though and the combination of charoset and lettuce was kinda icky. Then again, as Stephanie and Alissa will attest, I’m really not fond of lettuce on anything.
During dinner, Regina told a story about her younger cousin from New York who came to visit Poland on a March of the Living type of deal. Regina drove all the way to Krakow to see her and they apparently had a great time. This gave her the idea to see if maybe Czulent could hook some of their students up with these groups so they could see that there is still some Jewish life in Poland. It was a no-go. “They’re just not interested in what’s here today,” she said, in between bites of matzo ball soup. “They only want to see the graves.” Both she and Ola really got excited when I told them that was one of the reasons I decided to come back to Poland-no one on European Roots answered my questions about the remnants of the Jewish community, not even when they had just mentioned that the Remuh Synagogue was still open. How many Jews live here today? I asked the same snotty rabbinical student who I had to trot out the ‘my uncle the rabbi’ line on in order to get him to listen to my point of view. He looked at me like I’d grown horns, shrugged, and got back onto the bus without looking around at the street we were on.
To this day, I am still floored by that conversation. Yes, I understand the gravity of the Holocaust. Yes, I understand that most survivors left Poland. Yes, I understand that there wasn’t Jewish life under Communism (except a bit at the beginning and a little under Solidarity). But to be completely ignorant of a community, no matter how small it is, is completely and utterly ridiculous. I’ve spent six years trying to find the right word or phrase to fit that attitude and the only thing I can think of is willful ignorance. We sang that song in Sunday School:
Wherever you go, there’s always someone Jewish
You never need to feel alone ‘cause you’re a Jew.
If you’re ever in a place that feels kinda new-ish
Don’t be afraid, ‘cause you’ll find someone Jewish!
It’s really true, but in more places than just Amsterdam, Disneyland, and Tel Aviv, in places you don’t even expect. There are Jews in Wroclaw (aka the town formerly known as Breslau), Warsaw, Krakow, Opole, Kielce. Granted, there aren’t many, but there are some and there are quite a few young people among them. Jewish Polandophile that I am, I don’t understand why people on my ‘real’ side of the pond are not interested in people like Regina and Daniela, Ola and Kasia, and all the other people at the Seder. The Rabbi’s wife, beaming over her two eldest sons as they led the Seder, remarked that she’s so proud to have raised two boys to be good Polish Jews. And this is coming from an Orthodox woman originally from Israel. How can people not get excited about the opening of a Progressive congregation in Warsaw? Or that there’s an active Jewish student organization? What about the Polish schoolchildren who showed up at the Krakow Ghetto Memorial March of their own volition, because their teacher happened to mention the march during class? People who dismiss these things as small and insignificant and not good enough do not understand what a miracle it is that these things are happening at all. Every member of this community is a survivor-whether of the Holocaust or of the Communist regime, which wasn’t fond of Jews either. How can we expect this community to survive unrecognized and unsupported? It’s hard enough to be Jewish in Poland and the current political situation isn’t making it any easier, but it’s possible and people need to recognize that. Mourn for what is lost all you want, decry the Giertychs and the anti-Semites that flock to LPR as loudly as you can, but spare a thought for a few good things that have happened since 1989.
Now that I’ve found my thesis topic (and maybe, just maybe NU will get back to me this time), I’ll end my rant now.
I ended up having to leave the dinner early because it was already 11:30 and it’s a good 30 minute walk from Kazimierz back to Zaczek. It’s all very safe and well-lit, but I was tired and had things to do in the morning-like the ever-tedious summary writing one of our teachers makes us do because she simply doesn’t have the five extra minutes it would take to make up/find questions about the text so we’d have something to talk about rather than sounding like parrots. Also, Regina had to leave early and her place was taken by possibly the most unpleasant expat in Krakow. We have mutual friends and so have met, and I really didn’t relish the prospect of him acting like the snotty New York Jew he desperately wants to be (he’s from Cali and so has a complex of sorts about being Jewish-er than thou), which includes denigrating everything about Poland. I’m still not sure why he’s living here. Anyway, after him asking Ola if I had an American accent-the asshat doesn’t even try to speak Polish-I had enough. I made my goodbyes and headed back home.
It was funny, on the way back I happened to go down the street where the Bishop’s Palace is located and ran into a whole mess of people. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, but then remembered that it was the anniversary of the Pope’s death. There were memorial candles everywhere-piled up on the ground floor windows of the palace, on the sidewalk, on the low wall across the street, spilling into the Planty where they looked like something from that kid’s book where the girl builds an elf village in her backyard (Afternoon of the Elves maybe?). People were kneeling and praying, singing, or just sitting and reflecting. I hurried on by, but it was strange to end a Passover night with a sight like that.