3rd Day in Krakow - Sunday, June 28, 2009
Posted Jul 2, 06:41 PM by Ellie Shapiro
Festival Director Ellie Shapiro is currently at the 19th Jewish Cultural Festival in Krakow, Poland and then goes on to Lublin and Ukraine with the 2008 JMF Ark Project. She is periodically sending back reports to share with friends of the Jewish Music Festival. Read on!.
The day begins at 8 am with a two hour drive through the rolling hills of Galicia to the village of Lelow, where the tsadik that began the Lelover Hasidim is buried. Before the war Jews made up more than a third of the village. Out of eight hundred Jews, very few survived after they were all sent to Treblinka. What stands out about the non-descript farming community is how totally absent any Jewish presence was before Lelover Hasidim began to return on pilgrimage after the Communist era. Most Jewish homes had been around the marketplace, which was one of the first places the Nazis destroyed, along with the town church. What had been the Jewish cemetery is covered by a plain building that had been a store. The tombstones had long since been removed. The Hasidim, mostly living in Bnei Brak, Israel, and Borough Park, Brooklyn, have since bought the building. A few former Jewish residents recalled where the spot of the original tsadik’s grave must have been, and a very simple monument has been established in part of the acquired building. A very simple shitbl, little shul, has been made out of another building bought for the purpose across the street. No adornment, pure function; it’s claim to fame being that it includes one of three mikvehs in Poland for the Hasidim who visit, especially at the time of the tsadik’s yahrzeit in February. While our little group is milling about the street, a local resident waves from his bicycle, greeting us with a boisterous sholom aleichem.
Among our group, is a Polish-Jewish woman, visiting from the States, along with her cousin and his wife from Israel. They left Poland after the governmental purge of Jews in 1968, when most professional Jews lost their jobs. The cousin returns often to visit. A Bubover Hasid from Brooklyn, David Singer, is the tour guide. His father was Polish and he often leads Jewish groups to Poland, to connect them with their historical roots.
The Festival’s inaugural concert takes place in the evening. Tempel Synagogue is now a concert hall; the bimah replaced by more chairs to accommodate what is now a paying crowd. Emil Zrihan and Benzion Miller steal the show, although a young Hasid, Yaacov Lemmer is also very strong, as are Moshe Schulhof and the Neimah Singers Choir of fifteen, based in England.
I listen from the upstairs balcony, outdoors, this time; and meet Anka, a freelance photographer, who with her husband is doing the photography for a book on Jewish sites in Poland. I ask her what interested her about Jews in Poland. Initially, finding Jewish sites was an editorial assignment. Eventually it became an obsession, she said. She described he search for Jewish sites in Poland as akin to the search for Atlantis. Writing the text is Konstanty Gebert, a Polish journalist and writer, who I met six years ago, during my first visit, and who is still my first address for information on the country, and the evolving Jewish community.
At the post-concert banquet, I meet Monika Fabjanska, now head of the Polish Cultural Institute, in NY, who was responsible for my first visit. We commiserate on the financial situation and its ramifications on cultural events. It’s so hard to hear, because it is so clear how important this cultural festival is to so many.
-Ellie Shapiro, Festival Director
2nd Day in Krakow - Saturday, June 27, 2009 Opening Meeting: Love-the Alchemy of Reconciliation - Monday, June 29, 2009