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Published: July 27th 2015
Castle Wall Viewed from the Vistula River
Wawel Castle in Kraków protected by a fortifying wall. Dates to the 14th century. In the Jewish calendar today, Sunday, is the ninth day of the month of Av. It began on Saturday evening and it is considered the saddest day of the year. It commemorates a number of calamities in Jewish history, and is the culmination of a three week period of solemnity. Apart from Yom Kippur it is the only fast day in Judaism that lasts a full twenty five hours. The Talmud cites it as the day when the Romans began to burn and destroy the Second Temple in 70 CE, three weeks after the first breach of the walls surrounding Jerusalem. It was a calamity at the time because it meant the end of what until then had been the center of the Jewish religion. It also caused massive deaths and led to further rebellions that made the Romans decide to permanently expel the Jews from Judea, thus inaugurating what has come to be known as the Jewish Diaspora. It is also the date that Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain declared as the final day when all the Jews of Spain had to have left the country in 1492. The crown gave the entire population, one that for six
The Alta Shul or Old Synagogue
View of the first synagogue in Kraków. It dates to the early 15th century. hundred years had contributed to Spanish life under both Muslim and Christian rule, and ranging anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 souls (historians still dispute the number), the boot.
In the 20th century this date also has significance that the Jewish calendar has absorbed: in 1914 World War One began on the equivalent of this day in the Gregorian calendar. That war set in motion a series of dramatic shifts in world history that have had profound effects on many groups, the Jewish people included. It is also the date that in 1942 the first round ups of Jews to be deported to Treblinka from the Warsaw Ghetto began. In recent decades a separate date has been set aside to commemorate the destruction of European Jewry (Yom haShoah), but some people argue that this calamity should also become part of the Ninth of Av because Judaism is a religion that emphasizes life not death, and we have a day to memorialize wide scale tragedy. I'm not sure where I stand on that one.
Today, on the Ninth of Av, I spent three hours on a private walking tour of Kazimierz, the famous Jewish district in the Old Town of
Remnant of Medieval Wall Demarcating Jewish Kraków
This is behind the oldest synagogue and was the boundary of the neighborhood back in the day. Kraków. The earliest synagogue in it dates either to 1407 or 1492. It is the oldest synagogue building still standing in Poland, despite having been ransacked and looted of its artwork and relics by the Germans and used as a munition storehouse. It no longer functions as an operational synagogue but houses a museum. As I walked through the area, still rundown in many ways, but also becoming, in the words of my guide, a location for hipsters, I felt as though I were walking on sacred ground. What the alleyways, courtyards, market square, study halls and cobblestones had seen throughout the centuries!
In this city I am reminded of the ways that walls have played a part in European history. I've seen the fortified castle walls of the famous Wawel Castle right next to our hotel on the oldest street in Kraków, to a remnant of the walls built to demarcate the boundaries of the Jewish section, to the cemetery wall beside the second oldest synagogue that has stones from earlier graves that are buried beneath the ones that date no later than the mid 19th century because the cemetery was already full by then. Finally, I saw
Side Wall of Isaac Synagogue
Built in 1644. The height of the building testifies to the confidence the Jews must have felt. a piece of what was the wall of the Bohaterow Ghetto, the ghetto outside of the city limits, where the 68,000 Jews of Kraków were sent and from which they were deported to the Belzec extermination camp. The Nazis made the Jews build these walls themselves. I was reminded that walls can provide refuge, but they can also segregate, isolate, and much worse. Gated communities can become prisons.
And on this solemn day I also was reminded forcefully how the Jews as a people whose history, both sacred and otherwise, has been one marked from inception by frequent migrations as well as periods of relative geographic stability and security, have had to develop a portable culture, one not dependent primarily on the security of a particular place but rather on the wisdom and guidance found in words, both written and oral, passed from generation to generation as an inheritance and a responsibility, in the bonds of community and in the energy to keep reinventing life anew even as we hold to traditions that have enduring value. Yes, in our daily prayers we are constantly reminded of Zion and Jerusalem, and in the biblical narrative the Promised Land is central
Inside Part of Cemetery Wall In Kazimierz
These are stones that were discovered from graves that go back to medieval times. The Nazis used the cemetery adjacent to the second oldest
synagogue from the 1500s as a garbage dump for the area. Jews saved tombstones by burying them with soil. to the story, but the longing for it has not prevented a parallel reality that looks at what is and not only what might be one day. Even as I felt the deep sadness of the destruction of Krakow's Jews and its community, I also was reminded how its once flourishing places of worship and learning, market life and family courtyards, have been created and recreated from one far flung place on the globe to another. It's a model that has worked well for a long time. In this era of new violence and the mass migrations that are one outcome of it for so many, perhaps one of the things Jews can do is help support structures for these latest diasporas.
As I prepare for a trip tomorrow to Auschwitz, which is not far from here, I'd like to end this post with a story that I only heard for the first time yesterday from cousins I'd never met who came to visit us for the afternoon and evening with their three children. Romek (Roman) is 44 and remembers his great grandmother Bella who died when he was eight. I'd been told often that her husband was a
Ghetto Wall For Kraków and Neighboring Jews During WW II
Note the mocking psychological cruelty of the Nazis in the way the walls resemble the design of the tablets of the 10 commandments often seen in the inside of synagogues. socialist and a non-believer. I hadn't heard about Bella's attachment to tradition or faith. Romek remembers seeing her light candles every Friday night in her home where her daughter still lives. Neither he nor his wife knew that this practice was associated with a holiday called Shabbat (they were not familiar with the term or with the day associated with it), but they did know it had something to do with her being Jewish. Neither of my grandmothers lit Shabbat candles in America, although both had strong feelings of cultural connectedness to being Jewish. I felt great admiration for Bella, born in 1896, who went through hell in the war and emerged to lead a family that was caring and respectful enough of each other to make room for a matriarch who was lighting Shabbat candles in Poland after the war, with a socialist husband, a daughter who became a Catholic, who married a Polish Catholic turned communist who never went to church. Allowing for the dignity of each one to be expressed in the safety of their home. Not an easy thing to do even in much less trying circumstances. And I felt how hard it must have been
On the Site of the Ghetto
New buildings for sale. Life goes on. to send one's children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren out into a wider world where they needed to be (and still remain) hyper vigilant about keeping their Jewish ancestry a secret and under wraps lest it cause them harm or trouble even after all this time. Walls of stone are not the only kinds we build as human beings. But walls, thankfully, are not the only option.
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Sarah Siegel
non-member comment
Stamina
Sarah, I am so grateful for this travelogue as Pat & I travel in Israel in parallel. We were in the Old City on Tish'a B'Av, where there was an atmosphere of protest and we didn't know why till reading about it in the newspaper. Reading this post, I feel like you are my beloved rabbi and not just my oldest friend. The best rabbis always build linkage and relevance and manage to inspire and uplift me while making me think and feel. Thanks for your gifts.