As I travel through Poland and Israel, watching, discussing and writing about films, I find myself tracing the continuities, as well as the tensions, of Jewish identity. The only child of Polish Holocaust survivors, I am returning to Poland for the first time in 25 years, exploring what Judaism means there now. My mother, who…
(JTA) — On the way to his first appearance as Krakow’s new chief rabbi, Eliezer Gurary passed a group of young demonstrators holding signs with messages of affection for Jews. “I [heart] Jews,” one sign read. “Yes to tolerance,” read another. But the demonstration last week outside Krakow’s Old Synagogue was no support rally. Organized…
Several Polish rabbis and Jewish lay leaders criticized Krakow’s new chief rabbi for saying all non-Jews do not like Jews — a statement he was recorded making in an interview and then denied uttering. On Friday, six rabbis who belong to the Association of Rabbis in Poland said in a statement that they “firmly oppose”…
Cracow Crescendo from Jewish Daily Forward on Vimeo. “We sing in Yiddish, we sing in Hebrew and sometimes we sing in Polish,” explains Zofia Radzikowska who joined the JCC choir in Cracow when it first opened two years ago. At the beginning it was uncertain whether the choir would be able to attract enough members….
The directors of the Jewish Community Center of Krakow and the Krakow Islamic Center are joining forces to fight Poland’s ban on Jewish and Muslim ritual slaughter. Jonathan Ornstein, the JCC’s executive director, and Dr. Hayssam Obeidat, director of the Islamic Center, issued a joint open letter Tuesday saying their “communities stand united and call…
In the sultry darkness of a summer night, a tall, skinny figure with close-cropped hair and a purple T-shirt threaded through a beer garden during Krakow’s Jewish Culture Festival, the annual nine-day extravaganza of performance, exhibition, debate and intensive interaction that for a quarter of a century now has been a catalyst of Krakow’s Jewish…
The low-cost airline Ryanair announced it was considering flying a route from Tel Aviv to Krakow, the southern Polish city situated near the former Auschwitz death camp. The announcement Monday came one month after Israel’s government decided to allow new flights to Europe. “It seems that every Israeli child has to go to Poland to…
To the dismay of guardians of Jewish heritage in Poland, a former Krakow beit midrash, or Jewish house of prayer and study, reopened as a disco this past weekend. It was first reported in Gazeta Wyborcza, a local media outlet, that a new club called Mezcal would be opened in the Kazimierz district in a…
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