(Oops! Thought this was posted already, but so busy when I got home that I didn't have time to check. Sorry about it being a week late....) Good morning! Well, we had another amazing breakfast at the Polonia Palace Hotel, then boarded the bus (another small van like bus) for our second day in Warsaw. Our “city guide” was Yolanta who comes from a town about an hour away, but now lives in Warsaw. She began guiding after she finished university. (By the way, university education is free in Poland). We did the general Polish touring in the morning, starting at [View Full Entry]

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This is a mini-rabbinic "sermon" as we near our last days in Europe. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to catch you up on the amazing meeting we had this morning with the woman from the Forum for Dialogue Among the Nations. For now, a few thoughts: Good afternoon or good morning! It’s Shabbat afternoon, and this evening marks the beginning of Tisha B’Av - the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av - the Jewish commemoration of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem twice (in 586 B.C.E. and again in 70 C.E.) by the Babylonians and then the Roman [View Full Entry]

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Tonight we had the most amazing evening. We arrived in Warsaw and had a quick half hour to get ready to go to Beit Warsaw to services. The congregation is a progressive (Reform) congregation, affiliated with the World Union for Progressive Judaism. And here is what we discovered: 1) The main rabbi of the congregation, Rabbi Burt Schuman, was away this week. The second rabbi at the congregation is Rabbi Tanya Segal -- who was once an Israeli rabbinical student (immigrated from former Soviet Union) who I befriended back when she was on a semester at HUC-JIR in New York maybe [View Full Entry]

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Friday, August 8th Set out from hotel for another very full day. Began at the Kazimierz district. This was the old Jewish district and Janusz gave us a detailed historical talk as we stood in the shade for an hour outside the Old Synagogue. We reviewed how the Jews came to Poland, how they were treated in different times, and how they came to be in Kazimierz (moved there by the king when they were forbidden to live anymore in Krakow itself). We went to the Ramuh Synagogue, the synagogue of Rabbi Moses Isserles who wrote the Mapah, the commentary to [View Full Entry]

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AUSHWITZ-BIRKENAU August 7, 2008 Some say it is more difficult to visit Aushwitz Birkenau on a beautiful sunny day. Yes, the weather is lovely. Does that make it harder to imagine the atrocities committed against Jews and others in this place of hell? In any case, it was in the 80’s and the sun shone on everything. We met up with our guide, a young man who has been doing this full time for a year. He is a local Polish man whose uncle was among the first Polish local citizens who were killed by the Nazis at Aushwitz in the [View Full Entry]

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Hi, This is Marty L Here are some observations of our tour so far. 8/3/08 Prague is on the Valtava River, from the point of view of the Czech citizenry. Those in the west know of it by its German name, the Moldau. The melody of Hatikva is from folk music of this region; the melody was also used by Bedric Smetna in his music “The Modau” and many people think that the Israeli national anthem came from there instead. The significant part of our experience yesterday was spent exploring the Prague Jewish community and its special history. Much of [View Full Entry]

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THROUGH SLOVAKIA TO POLAND On Wednesday, August 6th, we left early from Budapest for Poland. We had asked our tour company, Ayelet Tours, to put on a stop in Slovakia at the Museum in Banska Bystrica instead of driving straight through to Krakow. This museum is dedicated to the Slovakian Uprising against the Nazis, an uprising led from this small city near the Tatras Mountains. The small museum is inspiring and so well done. The man who took us through, one of the researchers or program people from the museum, was so dedicated to its mission. It showed the pride of [View Full Entry]

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BUDAPEST DAY TWO We went down to breakfast at 8:15 am today, and what a meal! Let’s just say, beautiful and classy and delicious. At 9 am we left for our ½ day tour. Headed across one of the bridges and up to the Buda side of the city. We saw the Royal Palace from outside, and the Coronation Church which is getting a gorgeous refurbished roof of amazing tiles, the Fisherman’s Bastion, and a photo display of history of Budapest. We dropped by the Hilton and saw how they built the new part but kept the old convent walls discovered [View Full Entry]

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Good morning, afternoon or evening - depending on who is reading this… Getting caught up today (Tuesday, August 5th) during a nice afternoon break here in Budapest. We arrived on Monday in the afternoon. The flight was an hour late because of rain and such, but all went well and it was hot (no rain) when we arrived in Budapest around 1:30 pm. We met Aggie (our Budapest city guide) at the airport and started right in on touring. We began at the Heroes Square with the statues of the kings of Hungary. Aggie gave a thorough but very humorous overview [View Full Entry]

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Greetings! It's the end of the second day in Prague. Tomorrow (Monday) we fly off to Budapest. We started out today at 9 am from the hotel, walking over the the Jewish quarter. It's just five minutes from the hotel (great location -- President Hotel, and great hotel). the first building we entered -- the walls are all whitewashed inside, and then the names of the 80,000 Czech Jews who were murdered by the Nazis are written by hand in alphabetical order through the entire building. They are arranged alphabetically by surname; and then each first name is listed with birth [View Full Entry]

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