The day of the bar mitzvah has finally arrived! At 11:00 a.m. I was the first to arrive at the synagogue, which was not yet open. I took the opportunity to examine the building, the only Renaissance style synagogue in Poland. It was originally built to match the architecture of the rest of the town which was laid out and designed by an Italian architect in the 16th century. Immediately next door is the house in which the great Polish writer I.L. Peretz was born, standing now, appropriately, on Peretz Street. The lovely synagogue courtyard is surrounded by a wrought iron fence, each section topped with a stylized 7-branch menorah.
In just a few moments the caretaker arrived, carrying the borrowed Torah wrapped in a tallit. Inside, the simple but beautiful painted-plaster sanctuary was bare, save for rows of folding chairs and a desk which would serve as the lectern. The niche for the Torah, inset in the wall, was blocked by a very heavy 4-foot tall brass chanukiah which resisted efforts to move it, so we placed the Torah scroll on the desk instead.
The Wisniks had gone out early in the morning to see the house in which Eva's father and grandparents had lived. While I awaited their arrival, we set up the room, placing copies of the service I had compiled (in Hebrew, transliteration in English and Polish, as well as translation into English and Polish) on each of the seats, rolling the Torah, tuning the guitar, etc. Despite the unusual setting, much of the preparation was very like what I would do in Tarrytown. And as at home, while I prepared, the guests trickled in.
The diversity of the attendees was wonderful. First to arrive were staff of the Forum for Dialogue Among the Nations, the Polish organization which has helped make all of the arrangements. They left Warsaw at 6:00 a.m. to be in Zamosc by noon. The Forum is leading the movement for Polish-Jewish reconciliation. More about their important work another time. One of their partners is the American Jewish Committee, whose American summer intern in Poland also attended the service.
The next group were the students and teachers from Zamosc and a nearby town who are part of the School for Dialogue a program of the Forum in which they study the Jewish history of their communities (partly using a website called Virtual Shtetl). Later in the day they gave us a tour of Jewish Zamosc based on what they have learned. For most of them today was the first time they had ever met a Jew, to say nothing of attending a bar mitzvah! They were very nervous about saying or doing something wrong during the service, and were relieved when I told them that the only thing that would upset anyone is if they didn't help us celebrate this joyous occasion.
The deputy mayor of Zamosc was there with some other officials. Four American Jews who happened to be passing by came in and stayed (giving us a minyan). Perhaps most touching, two elderly Jews who spoke almost no English had heard about the ceremony the night before on the radio in Lublin, 1 1/2 hours to the northeast. They were so excited that they drove down to be part of the event. And they brought a bar mitzvah gift! Afterwards they asked us to pose with them for pictures so they could remember the moment, and kept thanking us for being here. In total, perhaps 70 or so guests attended.
And then there was the media. Only one reporter was invited: Don Snyder, who was for twenty plus years the producer of NBC's the Today Show made the trip with his wife and a photographer from Greenwich, Connecticut, covering the bar mitzvah for the Hearst papers. But we were surprised at the amount of local media who turned up: two TV stations each with reporter and camera man, several radio stations and newspapers, also with reporters and photographers. The pre-bar mitzvah photo op was nothing like what happens on Shabbat morning at Temple Beth Abraham! I have never been the target of paparazzi, but I now have a small sense of what it's like to face a wall of cameras. We all did interviews with several different journalists, I showed them the Torah scroll and explained how it's made and what it contains, and they remained a somewhat intrusive presence throughout the service. This was one of the revelations of this trip: Poles really are interested in and happy about renewed Jewish life here.
When we finally got everyone in place, we were only about fifteen minutes late. The ceremony itself was beautiful (IMHO!), very similar in style to what we do back at TBA. I explained, with the help of a translator, what was about to happen and asked everyone to participate as best they could. We sang, and thanks to great acoustics and our four newly-recruited American Jews, the music filled the room. Jake led almost all of the service and his parents spoke movingly to him. Of course Jake read from the Torah. The portion was the story of King Balak, who, frightened of the oncoming Israelites, asked the prophet Balaam to curse them so that he and his army could destroy them. In his d'var Torah Jake taught that this was but one example of the many times in history that people have tried to destroy the Jews, the most recent of which largely took place right here in Poland. Thank God, he said, no one has ever succeeded. And now, Jake continued, his bar mitzvah in Zamosc and the presence of so many Poles at the ceremony symbolizes a small step in the rebirth of this 1000 year old Jewish community. His words were greeted with applause and copious tears.
Thinking later about Jake's words, I was struck by the serendipity of this ceremony taking place in a Renaissance (French for "rebirth") style synagogue in the center of a Renaissance style town. The Renaissance marked the slow emergence of Europe from the darkness, ignorance and brutality of the previous age. The founder of Zamosc, Jan Zamoyski embraced that ideology, envisioning and creating a diverse, international community, in which Poles, Armenians, Greeks, Hungarians, Germans, Scots, and Jews lived and worked side by side. It is an inspiring model for what all those involved in today's bar mitzvah celebration hope will bloom again in Poland.
Every bar or bat mitzvah ceremony is joyous. But this morning the room was overflowing with feelings in a way I rarely experience. Joy, absolutely. A sense of being part of an historic moment, yes. And also sadness at what was lost here. Wistfulness for what might have been if not for that loss. Hope for what might yet be. And for me, an overwhelming sense of gratitude: to Jake and his family for their vision; to the many diverse individuals who felt so strongly, each for their own reasons, that they simply had to be here, in this place, at this moment; to the many Poles - a few Jewish but mostly not - who worked so hard for more than a year to bring us all together; and finally to God, shehecheyanu v'kiyamanu v'higiyanu lazman hazeh: who gave us life, sustained us and allowed us to reach this moment. May it be only the first of many more like it.
No comments:
Post a Comment