This voyage into Eastern Europe had fostered a boomerang of emotions. The exuberant tourist street carnival of central Prague mixing with the evolving historic stories of Jewish abundance, survival, destruction, and tenuous rebirth; onto the delightful and fortunate connections with Jean’s Polish family heritage; followed by the deep dive into the abyss of human evil resulting in depraved carnage.

As we drove away from Auschwitz, I needed a break. Time to consolidate feelings and thoughts.  We were looking at a four-hour drive to Warsaw. Time for some KFC chicken along the highway for goodness sake.

Greasy and salty, for goodness sake.

When we initially flew into Poland two days before, arriving at Warsaw’s Chopin Airport (in Polish spelled Lotnisko Chopina w Warszawie ), we had paused to listen to a young girl, perhaps 10 years old, playing Chopin on a piano in the baggage claim area.

If music is the tonic that calms the savage beast, Chopin is the Schweppes of tonics. (Wait… Schweppes of tonics… that can’t be right.)

On our highway approach to Warsaw, Sebastian oriented us to the city we were about to enter, providing historical context and more modern analysis of its municipal role, development and politics. 

At the end of WWII, approximately 85% of all Warsaw structures were completely destroyed or at least uninhabitable. Pre-war, it had been both the nation’s capital and its largest city.  With Krakow substantially intact, there was serious consideration for moving the capital.   But Polish authorities were determined to rebuild Warsaw.

They rebuilt the central city in a fascinating way.  Looking to essentially recreate the city at its most elegant, instead of modeling the main downtown area on pre-war architectural designs, they sought to emulate Warsaw in its 16^th and 17^th Century prime. Of course, there were no photos of that period, but they did have paintings by Polish artists.  Combined with construction diagrams and select photos of buildings from that period, they went about recreating the exterior building and streetscape aesthetics.  They did such a superb job at this re-creation that UNESCO labelled their product a World Heritage Site. This is a highly unusual step for UNESCO which mainly focuses on historical preservation, not modern re-creations.

Here are some scenes from this re-created heart of town:

Sebastian and Jean along the sidewalks of Warsaw.

After checking in to our hotel, Sebastian gave us a quick tour around the neighborhood before parting with us for the evening.  A few highlights:

As the opening salvo of the 1980’s independence movements in the Eastern Bloc from the Soviet Union, there is great honor in Poland bestowed not only upon the Solidarity labor movement, with its leader Lech Walesa, but also the roles of Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paull II in supporting and inspiring the nation’s push for liberty.

And Gary Cooper?

Having taken in the brutalist architecture of the Soviet era for the previous few days, and already oriented a bit to the oppressiveness of the Eastern Bloc state ruling class, I found myself having newfound support and respect for Reagan’s assertions that the Soviet Union really was an “evil empire.” 

Walking down the streets of Warsaw, we saw a house that Chopin was said to live in, and we also enjoyed street benches built along sidewalks which played excerpts from Chopin at the touch of a button!

Sebastian pointed out the WWII-era bullet damage to some of the corridor’s historic monuments.

On our last night in Poland, Jean and I ate a delicious meal of non-Kosher (!) delicacies and walked back to the hotel, more relaxed and at ease from the rigors of the long day.

Shh. Don’t tell my rabbi about the pig’s knuckle that kept on appearing on menus and I found (apparently) necessary to test it out on my last night in Poland.

The next morning brought us a return to Chopin airport and our flight into my family’s homeland.  With the tragic histories of Auschwitz behind us and Jewish Lithuania ahead of us, Warsaw did indeed provide a relaxing and healing intermezzo.

It was a sobering, drizzly morning in Krakow as we drove the 90 minutes necessary to reach the Auschwitz-Birkenau World War II Nazi-run death camp, the site of the largest mass murder in human history.

When faced with overwhelming emotional turmoil, there can be a tendency to fall back on more limited observations. I was a parks planner for most of my career.  And Auschwitz has been, since 1947, a national historical park.   Arriving at the tour entrance parking lot, I found myself thinking of the organizational challenges in processing so many visitors through such a dramatic place.  I observed the parking attendants’ motions, the signage, and the security procedures.  Yes, this was psychological self-protection, but it wasn’t denial. It wasn’t yet denial.

Public demand for the nearly 4-hour tour of the camps, has led to a several month reservation lead time necessary to assure an English-speaking tour.  We hadn’t planned that far ahead. Our reservation, therefore, was for the Polish-speaking tour, with Sebastian placed in the strenuous position as translator.

We passed through the ticketing, security and tour organizational stages and then our group set off.

As it turned out, the tour contained little that I had not already heard or read.  Yet it was, of course, a soul-crushing experience, nonetheless.  Readers of this blog are warned that the rest of the entry may be very emotionally difficult to read. You are given a gracious excuse if you wish to simply take a pass and move onto my next entry.

The large-scale facts are known.  An estimated 1.3 million people were sent to the two camps from 1940 to 45. 1.1 million of them Jews. The fatality rate in the camp was about 90%.  Others died on forced marches away from the camp, starvation and at other war sites. Non-Jewish fatalities included Soviet and Polish prisoners of war, the Roma, and other political and ethnic groups deemed undesirable by the Nazis.

Our camp tour guide showed us the location where the infamous sorting process took place upon entry. A thumb pointing to the left or right by a Nazi doctor determined one direction for women, children, the elderly and the enfeebled. Those souls were led directly to the gas chambers. The other direction led men, and a few women fit enough to work, to be kept alive as long as they were able to contribute to the building of more barracks, sewing of the guards clothing, and providing other practical support useful to the efficiency of the killing process. Then of course virtually all of them too were gassed or died from exertion and/or starvation.

What were perhaps the most devastating, immediate and personal emotional realizations for me, revolved around the actions of the Nazi staff, which were both sadistic and yet somehow institutionally normalized. Yes, the apparent primacy of efficiency in the killings spoke to a classic depiction of the Nazi enterprise as a highly organized operation. Yet, what happened again and again at Auschwitz was cruelty and torture just for its own sake by thousands upon thousands of military and “civilian” staff. Even with some of the torture impeding the efficient killing machine, there was a reveling in the opposite of empathy. No, much more than the lack of empathy, there was a seeming joy in hurting others. Of course, the Germans have a word for that – schadenfreude – which reached a kind of infamous apotheosis at Auschwitz.  Also infamous was the lack of consequences for the sadists.  It is estimated that only 15% of Auschwitz personnel were ever processed through the post-war legal system.

As mentioned above, the first half of the tour found us with a Polish-speaking guide. Sebastian served as our personal translator but was prohibited by the official guide from translating more broadly to the remainder of the primarily English-speaking tour group. The reasoning for that rule had a certain logic, but it failed to make sense when confronted by the reality that 90%+ of the audience didn’t understand the Polish language. The guide told us that Auschwitz would be admitting more than 2 million visitors this year. So, in accepting the language barrier, we found ourselves… ahem… just following orders.

The second half of the tour was at Birkenau, located 3 km from Auschwitz. We clambered upon a bus, sitting in numbed silence, as we were driven to a dark destination of mass murder.  Here, any elements of the “concentration” of prisoners yielded to the sole function of the site. It was a death camp, not a concentration camp. Vast fields of aligned barracks held, at their peak, up to100,000 prisoners at a time. All but a very few perished.

This Birkenau part of the tour was led by an English-speaking Polish Jew. Our tour group had been permitted to merge with another group because Birkenau was out-of-doors, so her English would not interfere with other groups in cramped quarters.  The difference at an emotional level between these two guides was profound. The first guide had been doing this for 5 years.  The second guide for 12. At the end of the tour, I asked the second guide “how can you psychologically do this work for so long?”  She said that she lost family here and elsewhere in the Holocaust and felt a moral obligation to the task. 

Before we all departed, our Polish Jewish guide had one final message to deliver. She said that Auschwitz was not the beginning of the Holocaust.  The beginning was hate. Then came increments of “otherness.”  Of separateness. Jews weren’t allowed in the same schools. So, they had to make their own schools. Jews weren’t allowed on the buses. So, they had to find their own way home. Jews could only live in specific areas. Those areas became known as ghettos.  They had to wear a Star of David. They had to and had to… and it got more and more egregious. And violent. Until the Jews (or Roma or other undesirable minorities) become Untermenschen – below human.  

Our guide said that the most important thing is to not allow this to start. To not degrade others because of their group status. She said it was important and admirable that we had come to Auschwitz to learn and experience the atrocity. But now we must go out and take these lessons, these sensitivities, and apply them to our lives.

I leave this entry with a few references.  Sebastian suggested reading “Zone of Interest” and watching a recent Netflix movie about Herman Hess’ home life at Auschwitz. Our Polish Jewish guide had recommended “Hope Is the Last to Die,” a book by Halina Birenbaum. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315703664/hope-last-die-david-welsh-halina-birenbaum

These are contributions to what has become a vast repository of expositions, known generally as “Holocaust Literature.”

At the beginning of the tour, guides lead their groups from the park’s initial visitor check-in area through a long, slightly inclined passageway into the main Auschwitz camp.  It is a powerful means of preparing the visitor for a different place and time. This same passageway, used for leaving the camp and returning to one’s daily life, is at a correspondingly very gradual decline.

Passageways.  As a person who aspires to a moral life, as a Jew, I really can’t fully leave Auschwitz. It is now a part of who I am and a motivator for making a positive difference in the world. And oddly enough, the Auschwitz entry and departure passageway, and the words inclining and declining and their multiple meanings, have struck me with an ultimate take from the entire camp experience. 

We should be INCLINED to accept the reality of Auschwitz, and we should DECLINE to forget its message and meaning. May it be so. שיהא זה כך

We had a very specific agenda for our three days in Poland.  Jean’s grandmother and grandfather were born in Polish villages about 25 kilometers separated from each other yet actually met in the US.  We wanted to visit each Polish town and make whatever connection we could with Jean’s family heritage. She had been given some material from siblings to facilitate that effort – such as birth certificates and personal letters – but there really was not a lot to work with.

Since neither Jean nor I knew Polish (Jean taught me that Dzień dobry means “good morning” and Dziękuję means “thank you” and I basically pronounced it as Jean does this and Jean does that!), and their birth towns were small, we decided that we needed to hire a Polish-speaking guide with a car. I went on the internet, found a site which specialized in local Polish guides, and started communicating with a guide named Sebastian Urlik.

Almost immediately I recognized that I hit the jackpot with Sebastian. He was fluent in six languages and dedicated to international understanding. (His politics was also on the Polish liberal-democracy side, as he bemoaned the recent election which was won – though appeals are in place – by the more right-wing anti-democratic side.)

Sebastian appreciated our mission to connect with Jean’s family.  He also was supportive and encouraging of our desire to connect with my Jewish heritage (more on that in a subsequent blog). So, working ahead of the trip, we established a detailed itinerary that included visits to three settlements important to Jean’s Polish heritage.  The small villages where her grandmother and grandfather were born and the larger town – Toruń – where Jean had had an address of a cousin that her older sister Barb had met many years previously. Toruń was also an extraordinarily beautiful UNESCO architectural heritage site, the (disputed) home of the astronomer Copernicus, and the origin of gingerbread.  We decided to spend our first night there.

Jean and Sebastian ready to dine on Polish delicacies.

Sebastian picked us up at the airport after our flight from Prague, and off we drove to Konin. We had an historic address where we believed Jean’s grandmother’s nephew lived.

The apartment address was in what appeared to be a working-class village neighborhood. We got out of the car and started walking down a path adjacent to a set of five-story apartment buildings.

Sebastian asked two neighborhood women on the sidewalk if they knew anyone with the last name of Jean’s relative… and it turned out that they knew the cousin’s wife quite well. (Jean surmises that those two knew everyone in the neighborhood quite well!)

All five of us walked up to the door adjacent to the apartment where we believe she dwelled and rang the bell.  A few seconds later, a woman peered out from her window and Sebastian called out her name.  She was initially a bit cautious but then said (in Polish) “Yes, that is me.” 

After a couple minutes of communicating through the opened window, Jean identified herself and the connection to the woman’s husband. Sebastian asked whether it would be ok to get together and talk for a while.  He said we had materials to show her.

The cousin initially demurred, said her apartment was in a bit of a mess and she had been taking a nap, but then warmed up and invited us in.  The two neighbors bid their adieu.

She introduced herself as Danuta and she was indeed the widow of Jean’s grandmother’s nephew. Not only that, she had family photos to prove it! 

We talked and shared pictures and stories. She was excited by our connection as she had been attempting to do a bit of family history documentation herself and didn’t have info from Jean’s side of the family. 

Jean and Danuta going over family photo albums.

Her daughter, it turns out, lives in England with a Moroccan husband, and speaks fluent English.  Email and phone numbers were exchanged.  There will be some attempt to connect.

A lovely visit between relatives, facilitated by a kind and effective local guide.

While not part of the family connection business, Sebastian wanted us to see the spectular and recently completed Basilica of Our Lady of Licheń which was along our route. With a tower greater than 140 meters high, it is one of the largest and tallest churches in the world and appears to come out of nowhere in a rural stretch of country road.

Basilica of Our Lady of Licheń

We then visited Jean’s grandfather’s birth town, Raciazku. There, we took pictures of the church where he was likely baptized.

In the village green in front of the church was an informational sign, with pictures and words commemorating the time that Pope John Paul II had come to the village. He had visited it as a Polish prelate… prior to his ascension to the position of pope.

We then drove to Toruń. Sebastian had arranged for us a lovely hotel above a café.  The hotel had a few rooms dating back to medieval times.  Pictures on the ceiling of our bedroom dated from the 17th century…. exquisite. After checking in to our accommodation, we walked to an address where a previous Michalski relative of Jean’s lived.  But our luck had run out. Our effort to find links with Jean’s relatives was now done for this trip. 

View from our Toruń hotel room.

We parted from Sebastian for the evening as Jean and I walked to a restaurant he had recommended that was housed in a 500-year-old historic mill site.  We ate a delicious meal then walked back along Toruń’s ancient streets, with many structures dating back to medieval times.  It was our first long day in Poland, and when we got back to our room, quickly fell fast asleep.

The next morning after a breakfast provided by the inn, Sebastian walked us around the historic city center and provided insights into significant events in Toruń’s history.

A statue of Copernicus was placed near a home that he allegedly lived in for a number of years.

Move over Pisa (but not too far), Toruń has its own leaning tower.

But Jean had another higher priority intention.  She wanted to sample and purchase Toruń’s most famous product: gingerbread! 

With that mission accomplished, it was off on a four-hour drive to Poland’s second largest city, Krakow.

Poland’s largest city, Warsaw, was decimated during World War II. Up to 90% of its buildings were destroyed. Amazingly, Krakow came out of the war virtually unscathed.  A clever last minute Polish military maneuver made the difference. 

https://culture.pl/en/article/how-krakow-made-it-unscathed-through-wwii

Since Sebastian had set us up with a hotel near the city center, we spent the evening walking the historic and gorgeous streets of central Krakow. Below are some Krakow street scenes.

Indoor crafts hall in downtown Krakow.

Happy is our Jean who gets to add to her collection of pottery paraphernalia.

We ate a delicious and gorgeously displayed dinner …

which included a most fun dessert (see picture below).

A cotton-candy like exterior hid all sorts of sweet surprises in its center.

It was a long day of touring, including more than five hours on the road.  But the next day would be entirely different. It would start with the short drive to Auschwitz and proceed with our efforts to reckon with the nature of evil.

The next morning (Saturday), we had a fantastic hotel breakfast, then went on a tour of central Prague on a tourist rubber-tired trolley.  It was actually a helpful orientation to the area. We spent most of the rest of the daylight hours walking around.  But not by ourselves!

We were surrounded for the most part by massive and densely-packed crowds of tourists. Charles Bridge, Old Town Square, the National Theatre.  One can barely make oneself a way forward in the historic center of town.  One principal attraction, of course, is the extraordinary beauty and historic significance of the architecture and engineering. A beauty that also attracts famous people which in turn attracts more ogle-eyed tourists. 

But to tolerate the touristic “inauthenticity” of the place, I began to view the entire central part of town as itself a museum. The very presence of tourist hordes a part of the learning one takes in at a fine museum.  And in that, there was a phenomenal diversity of people. Clearly from all continents.

One tourist-themed draw: concert venues for classical music. These were primarily housed in grand churches. I suppose that it was one means of providing financial support for these gigantic romantic and gothic icons to the church’s historic majesty.   I counted at least five venues, each providing daily/nightly performances of Bach, Handel, Vivaldi and Mozart. Jean and I attended one on Saturday night.  The place was packed.  The performance was solid, but not spectacular, and the seating (pews or folding chairs), uncomfortable. But again, with the museum analogy, where else do classical music concerts take place daily for tourists?

After the concert we went for a nightcap of a small bite with drinks in the restaurant adjacent to our hotel. Our waiter advised us gracefully with wine and beer selections. Jean asked him, “How old are you? You look 16.”  Turns out he was 17. I then asked him, “Are you in school, or have you graduated?” 

He said he only went to elementary school.  He then told us that when the Ukraine-Russia war started, masses of Ukrainian students came into his school. He said he didn’t want to be seen as “racist” but that the Ukrainians were horrible. Not just ungrateful, but also derisive to the Czechs. “So,” he proclaimed, “I’ll get my certification, but I’ll never return to High School.”

At the same restaurant from the evening before – the hotel provides a great buffet breakfast – we chatted with an Ethiopian lady who was tasked with removing our dirty plates between trips back to the buffet.  She was so so sweet, with an endearing and gentle smile.

We then went for a tour of the Jewish Museum, which included multiple venues.

Our tour guide was a middle-aged Czech Jewess.  As a young woman she had toured the world. I asked her why she came back to live in Prague as there were so few Jews in the country. She said she was the only daughter of her parents and they needed care.  She had been a tour guide at the Jewish Museum for 15 plus years.

The tour itself touched on a half dozen Jewish sites in a small neighborhood.  Old synagogues. Cemeteries. Museums.  Even restaurants.  We ended up eating an absolutely delicious Ashkenazi lunch at a café which featured a front window display of famous folks who had dined there.  If it was good enough for Michelle Obama, it was good enough for us!

Now THAT’S gefilte fish!

That afternoon, after a well-deserved nap, we hopped on a tram just to see where it might take us.  Public transit is free for folks over 65 in Prague. That’s all the transit, including its subway system.  As luck would have it, our tram took us to Prague castle, a massive complex that housed Czech royalty for many centuries. 

Prague Castle and surroundings

For dinner, it was back to Old Town Square for a gigantic latke and afterward ended with a nightcap of wine and beer and the same 17-year-old waiter we saw the night before.  He was having a bad day and let us know it.

Now THAT’S a big latke!

The next and last morning in Prague, we ate a quick breakfast, and were driven to the airport by the same marginally disaffected taxi driver we had on the way in.

The last experience we had, prior to Poland, was a fabulous flight because we were in business class. Normally, I am adverse to luxury, but have given in to our senior status once in a while which makes the extras all the more appreciated.

The first, short leg of our journey together was now over. Next, comes the heart of our motivation for coming to Central and Eastern Europe. Family history for Jean in Poland. Family history for me in Lithuania. And the crucible of mid-20th Century evil, including Nazi death camps and other Axis horrors.

This is the first of several blog entries that tell some tales of the trip that Jean and I are on in a European June fortnight.

Crossing a continent and an ocean by air, with local grounded transport added in, is an exhausting 15-hour experience. A bit tougher for two 70-year-olds than in years past.

A few initial moments of Connections in transit

My Forest Gump-like interactions with seatmates continued.  From SeaTac to Paris, I sat next to Amanda Achen who turns out to be an extraordinarily popular singer. She has performed in an event before 30 thousand people and specializes in singing for a popular video game called Final Fantasy. She said it has 26 million players. Here is an example of her in concert:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fgB3M2y4wY

For a young “Hollywood” type, she said that she longed to move to Mexico City where housing was more affordable than LA and she could improve her Spanish language skills.

Next, on the flight from Paris to Prague, a young woman sat beside me.  We talked about our favorite books.  She was interested in love and referenced a book that talked about the non-sexual love between an older woman and a male child.  It got me to remembering – eventually – Harold and Maude. She will try to see it. Perhaps I will too.

Jean and I enjoyed the Ibis at the Paris airport. Our first of several wonderful breakfast buffets. The evening buffet too was excellent, and I was already failing to limit my calorie intake!

Prague

The Prague airport is modern and beautiful. We were greeted by a taxi driver holding large lettered sign with the name “Daniel Farber” prominently displayed.  He turned out to be a diffident kind of guy.  A pretty unhappy character who didn’t really want to keep driving a taxi. He was an employee of the hotel (or set of hotels) for at least part of his work. He asked where we were from and then referenced his knowledge of the Seattle Supersonics.  Seemed to know American sports a bit but also expressed cynical views.

Driving into the outskirts of Prague, Eastern Bloc communist apartment architecture dominates.  There is some effort to paint the exterior walls freshly, and we are told that the vast majority of the apartments’ interiors have been renovated. I find out later in Lithuania that they call those places Khruschevas – after the former Soviet leader who succeeded Stalin.

From its outskirts, the famously beautiful city of Prague looked anything but. The ugly, boxy apartments. A winding, poorly maintained street grid with inadequate sidewalks. Disordered land use, which didn’t appear to provide services to residents.  And a seemingly poor public transit system (we later saw that public transit was really super in the more central part of town).

But then we come, after about 20 minutes of driving, to see the town’s historic center, and it is an architectural masterpiece.  Known as the city of 100 spires, Prague’s provides a 700+ year continuum of spectacular and cohesive beauty.

Old Town Square Prague

The location of our small hotel is smack dab in the middle of the busiest tourist part of town.  Three blocks from the 650-year-old Charles Bridge – where kissing one’s sweetie is a joy and an obligation – strolling from our hotel finds one with grand, opulent edifices in every direction. And there were tourists. Also, in every direction. Tens of thousands of them. Probably hundreds of thousands within a mile’s radius.

We had come to Prague with some advice from friends as to what we should do and see.  But otherwise, we had no agenda. Reaching the hotel reception area, a couple hours before we could check in, I said to the receptionist, “assume we know nothing of Prague. In the next two hours what would you recommend we see?”

He provided us a map – way too small for my aged eyes – pointed to a few classic tourist haunts, and we took off by foot.  Also famous about Prague – the confusing warren of streets.  After some help from Jean in knowing how to return, we made it back from a quick orientation jaunt to the Jewish Quarter. After stowing our luggage in our room, we spent the remainder of the day exploring central Prague and eating our way through various encounters with meat.

In the evening, I attended Erev Shabbat services. The 300+ year old building where it was held, was located in the Jewish Quarter. There remain 6 synagogue buildings in the area, though only two are still functioning for that purpose and only this one allows non-members to drop in for shabbat.

The services were performed by the same congregation that also holds Shabbat day services in the Old New Synagogue. That older building began construction in 1270. It claims to be the oldest extant synagogue building in Europe.

Prague’s Old New Synagogue

What an extraordinary shul experience for me and what an ordinary infusion of practiced exultation for most of the rest of the participants.  INTENSE. 100 people crowded into a small square space, with anteroom added for extra women – though in the “box” were women also to one side. The walls of the sanctuary, along with other locations in the building, were plastered with Hebrew sayings and strewn with flags of the state of Israel.

The prayers were chanted and sung with great vigor, speed, and a mixture of routine and pure joy!  I sat next to an elderly Czech with a long, white beard.  We chatted briefly before services began and a bit afterward. Another beardless man said to my neighbor, “you win for the best beard in the place.”  My neighbor smiled.

Most everyone read from a purely Hebrew siddur.  While the Hebrew sped by – and over my head – I read a piece by Sir Jonathan Sacks who had provided an overview of the role of prayer in the English-Hebrew siddur I had in my hand.  About 15% of the time, however, I WAS able to follow along with the music and much of the lyrics to the prayers.  It was all, essentially, familiar. A universality – especially Ashkenazic – of Jewishness. I probably followed along the least of anyone in the room, including the women, but every man I was close to greeted me and vice versa with a genuine “Shabbat Shalom”, and at the end of the service, an energetic “Gut Shabbos. “ 

A word about safety and security in a Central European Jewish institution.

At the entry to the shul, out on the sidewalk in front of the synagogue door, an unarmed man asked everyone who wanted to enter a few questions. 

“Shabbat Shalom,” I said to him.

“I need to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind,” was his reply.

“Sure.” 

“Where are you from?” he asked me.

“I’m from America. I’m Jewish and would like to attend services.”

“Can I see your passport?” he replied. 

“Sure” I said and handed it to him. 

“How often do you go to shabbat services,” he asked. 

“Almost every week” I replied. “I’m President of my shul.” 

“What is its name” he asked. 

I replied correctly, and then he asked me, “What is a parsha?” 

“It is the weekly portion of the Torah,” I replied. 

He then shook my hand, we exchanged “shabbat shaloms,” and he let me in.  Inside the front door, there was a man in a control booth who needed to buzz me into the main foyer. Overall, it was a two-step security program similar to my shul, but of course, we aren’t asking about passports and quizzing folks about Jewish knowledge.

My Prague shul attendance happened on the same day that the FBI and Thurston County Sheriff’s office raided a home in Lacey, Washington, a few miles from my home. There they found a massive accumulation of weaponry, Nazi symbols and messages of antisemitic hate strewn about.  They arrested the men inside. But the juxtaposition of increasing antisemitic attacks back home, with our upcoming journey into the Central and Eastern European killing fields for a foreshadowing I wish we didn’t face.

After shabbat services, I returned to a sleeping Jean and fell into a fast jet-lagged sleep.  Our first day in Prague was done.

It somehow feels today like a slow-motion whirlwind.  An unknowable anxiety.  A misplaced redundancy. Or, perhaps, I’m just a bit apprehensive and reasonably so.

Typing from outside the departures gate at SeaTac, the next flight will take me to my lovely wife waiting for me at Paris’s De Gaulle airport. That’s not the apprehensive part. It comes a bit later, as we journey together to Prague, then Poland, then Lithuania, then Normandy before coming home.

It is a voyage very much centered on heritage of several sorts.  Deeply tragic Jewish heritage in the land of the mid- 20^th century antisemitic killing fields. Sweet family heritage visiting the youthful homes of Jean’s grandparents – and maybe even her great grandparent. Military heritage, of a time when the USA was on the courageous side in the fight against fascism.

The details, of course, will matter. The immediacy of the experiences, the presence amidst true site-based artifacts, bring a power that travel can provide.

Yet the state of the world… the sense of increasing danger to civilization itself due to wretched leadership and poor decisions by electorates (regardless of their overseers’ success at misinformation and digression) … leaves me wary of this trip unlike I have ever been wary before. 

Somehow, I felt safer on my Israeli trips, our Mexican trips, our South African trips; all places where violence is a more pronounced part of their image and their reality.  Perhaps it is all the Ukrainians I keep meeting (was checked in by one today). Perhaps it is the increasing antisemitic actions happening in our country and around the world, that I feel especially vulnerable as a Jew visiting Jewish heritage sites.

Nah… that last one’s not a perhaps. That is a big part of it.

But… away we go anyway.  On to another adventure.

At Monday morning’s YMCA Senior Fitness class, Beth Daniel, a fitness instructor at the Y for over 30 years, asked her elderly students a fun question.  Beth, an extraordinary leader, combines rigor, consistency and genuine care for people.  She takes the time to remember names, tell stories, share her experiences and ask others to share theirs. Yet somehow, after one hour of cardio, strength and flexibility training, she still manages to both promote health and keep you coming back for more.

Oh yeah… back to her fun question.

Midway through our regimen, she says she went up over the weekend to Whidbey Island and took in the local theatrical performance of “Fiddler on the Roof.” She was deeply moved by the play and told of a friend sobbing at the end when the song Anatevka was sung.  Then Beth asked whether anyone in the group (there were about 25 of us) had been in a play.  A couple of people told of their roles… and then we moved on.

After the class was done, I went up to Beth and thanked her for bringing up “Fiddler” and told her that I had played the Rabbi in our high school “Fiddler” production.  I have always thought that I got the role not because I could sing, dance or act, but because as one of the only Jews in my school, they kinda had to give it to me.

Beth had earlier asked people if they remembered any of their lines, and that set me back to my character’s only line, which was a response to a question from the rabbi’s son: “Is there a proper blessing for the Czar?”

“A blessing for the Czar?  Of course…  may God bless and keep the Czar… far away from us!”

Great art is always relevant to the moment, and is that ever relevant now!

In “Fiddler,” the Rabbi was both a peripheral and a comic figure. Yet, I felt a certain obligation to do the role correctly.  So, in preparation for the marriage scene, I contacted the rabbi who led me through my bar mitzvah ritual, Dr. Arthur Lagaweir.

Dr. Lagaweir was a fascinating and impressive man. Born a Dutch Jew in Amsterdam, he studied and became “ordained” before World War II under the tutelage of another rabbi, escaped Europe before the war, and made it to America.  The war, and the Jewish Holocaust, took away his belief in God, but not his knowledge and devotion to study.  He was an autodidact, reading and writing in at least seven languages, including ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, as well as modern Dutch, English, German and French. He filled his time at home with biblical study.  His work life in America involved the diamond trade. I don’t remember how he ended up in Seattle, but after age 50 he took advantage of his location and became an avid downhill snow skier.

My bar mitzvah tutelage with him has a fascinating backstory.  When my dad became the director of the Kline Galland Home for the Aged in Seattle – the first professional social worker to head that Jewish senior housing facility – he sought a rabbi to lead shabbat services.  There were no orthodox rabbis who were willing to travel by car on shabbat to meet that need. But Dr. Lagaweir was an exception. He no longer believed in God, but he did believe in service to others.  When it was time to find a tutor for his son, my dad prevailed upon Arthur Lagaweir to take on that task and based on their mutually respectful relationship, he agreed.

Visiting Dr. Lagaweir in his study during those six months of preparation was a visual and odiferous sensation.  The room was piled floor to ceiling with books, and he always was smoking a cigar. I felt a kind of awe and privilege to be with someone who was both learned and exuded a kind of holiness.

The bar mitzvah itself is a topic worthy of another blog entry all its own. It was the last gathering of a set of friends and relatives from both of America’s West and East coasts before so many passed away; an event that my irreligious grandpa found himself crying deeply at, surprised by his own connection to his Jewish soul; and a time where I first put my foot down on a major issue:  I’d only agree to do the whole megillah if there could be both potato AND macaroni salad available.

But I digress.  Back to the tale of rabbis and “Fiddler.”

There is a wedding scene in the play where the rabbi marries Motel and Tzeitel to the tune of Sunrise, Sunset. The script has no words for the rabbi, but the visual is that he is speaking. 

Four years after my bar mitzvah, I returned to Dr. Lagaweir’s office – by then he had given up smoking – to ask for the blessing prayer for marriage. I wanted to mumble it during my performance as a paean to authenticity. His reply to my request was unexpected and wonderful: he turned me down flat. 

“If you say that prayer during the play to those two students, they will in fact be married.  I cannot teach it to you under those circumstances.”

Over my nearly 70 years on the planet, I have encountered many rabbis.  Each, of course, with their personal and professional distinctiveness, and each with differing relationships to me. All leaving a deeper mark on my life than the average Joe or Jill, for the rabbinic calling comes with a certain intensity and magnetism.

As a poor college student, I lived a half-mile from the University of Washington Chabad House. In search of a filling meal, I visited for a free erev shabbat dinner accompanied by a mandatory service.  At my first such visit, a young rabbi came up to me before dinner, and asked me to lead a prayer.  “But rabbi, I don’t know Hebrew,” I protested.

“It’s ok,” he replied with a grin, “God understands English.”

Several years later, a friend from my teenage Jewish basketball team, who had become a devout Lubavitcher Jew, invited me to join him for a shabbat dinner at that same rabbi’s home.  I went and had a great time, taking in the richly engaging and comforting sights, sounds and smells of a life very different from my own. The next day, I went on a first date with Karen, who would become my first wife, and told her the story of the previous day’s Jewish adventure.  As for that very same rabbi?  Well, he became ensnarled in an international criminal operation. The courts found him both innocent and naïve to the smuggling operation.  He went on to a fine rabbinic career.

Never being an adult member of any congregation, when Karen and I decided to get married, about a year after my Lubavitcher dinner, we found a rabbi ordained in the Reform Judaism movement, Vicky Hollander, as a compatible guide to a Jewish marriage ceremony. After more than 3000 years of textual Jewish continuity, Rabbi Vicky was one of the religion’s first female rabbis. She was kind, warm, knowledgable, accessible and non-intimidating and led us through our preparations and the ceremony itself. And in retrospect, she must have been an incredibly courageous and self-actualizing person to have taken the rabbinic plunge as one of the “firsts.”

Several years later, when we moved to Olympia, I heard from a friend that of all things, Rabbi Vicky was the visiting rabbi at Temple Beth Hatfiloh.  At that time, TBH was an unaffiliated, historic synagogue located in downtown Olympia. There were perhaps a total of only 60 households. We went to a shabbat service led by Rabbi Vicky and instantly found a welcoming community of friendly people with whom we connected.  One of the men had actually dated Karen’s sister in Brooklyn! We stuck around and became members of TBH, even though Rabbi Vicky’s tenure was short.

TBH’s membership started growing dramatically, and lay leadership decided to recruit a rabbi to work slightly more than half time. As part of that search, different members, including us, hosted candidates.  We hosted Rabbi Marna Sapsowitz, trained in Mordechai Kaplan’s Reconstructionist movement, who would go on become TBH’s first fulltime rabbi. With Rabbi Marna at the helm, and local Jewish demographics ascendent, our temple’s membership more than doubled in size in the next five years. It was bursting with energy, and, of course, not a small amount of contention and controversy.

Rabbi Marna found herself at the center of some of that contention.  A portion of our membership were raised and desired to continue to practice in a more conservative/traditional Judaism. Those folks clashed with the more liberal/progressive orientation of not only our rabbi, but the majority of our congregation.  TBH membership made a collective decision to align with the Jewish Reconstructionist movement, where Rabbi Marna had been ordained.  This resulted in both a schism, with the more ritualistically traditional members creating another shul aligned with the Conservative branch of Judaism, and soon thereafter a decision by Rabbi Marna to leave her pulpit role at TBH.

I was a supporter of Rabbi Marna’s leadership during that difficult time.  After she left TBH and continued to live in Olympia, we became not just Rabbi and congregant, but friends.  And that relationship has continued for over 20 years.

Soon after Rabbi Marna and TBH separated, I became part of the Rabbi Search Committee.  I was the lead contact with the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in securing potential candidates.  We identified three or four final year students who would come out, conduct a shabbat service as part of an “interview” process, and from that, we would make a selection.

I remember my principal college contact at the time recommending that we seriously consider Seth Goldstein.  He wasn’t initially our first choice on paper, but I was advised “to really give this guy a shot.  I think he’d be a good fit for you out there.”

Rabbi Seth was invited to lead us during the High Holy Day services that coming fall, and he was an instant “hit.”  We indeed did hire him after that, and he is now in his 22nd (I think that’s right) year at TBH.

Over the many years of Rabbi Seth’s tenure, the temple has doubled again in size.    Eloquent, energetic, and humorous, he has also proven himself an exceptional temple leader, adept both as an inspiring orator, and compassionate pastor.  I have gotten to observe him take on many of the roles that rabbis play in the life of a local Jewish community and also have been aware of his interactions in the broader national/international Reconstructionism movement and his functioning as a community leader within the wider non-Jewish world around us.

But it has been in the last year, as President of TBH, that my interactions with Rabbi Seth have taken on a new and distinctly different tone and purpose.  As a rabbi who for 20 plus years is required to adjust to a new president every 1 – 3 years, it must be an enormous challenge to maintain a professional relationship with very different kinds of people with very different goals and styles of communication and leadership.  And that is what the rabbinic/lay leadership relationship is, a professional relationship.

It would, of course, be inappropriate in this public blog, to detail the specifics of our communications and the tasks we work on for TBH. But for me, there is constantly much learning, not only about the issues we face together, but the distinctive approach to the role of rabbi that Rabbi Seth has defined for himself, and indeed the nature of the role that the Reconstructionist Movement has defined which he uses as a guide.

In the history of the Jewish people, there have been many roles that rabbis have played. After the destruction of the temple more than 2000 years ago, and the banishment to Babylon, ritual animal sacrifice was mostly abandoned in favor of adherence to a range of ritual procedures from the Torah.  Correct interpretation of the Torah became essential, and with that, the Talmudic approach to learning and decision-making became ascendant.  

That approach required rabbis to be authoritative about ritual procedure, with a magnificent catch.  Rabbinic disagreements were exposed, explained, and honored through the act of documentation.  Thus, the two main extant Talmudic documents – the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds – contain a series of arguments between different rabbis about the correct interpretation of various Torah passages.  These disagreements are passionately stated. But always in the form of logic, not ad homonym attacks.  And it is in the reading of these Talmudic disagreements, that Jews have studied their laws for hundreds upon hundreds of years.

For some modern Jewish communities, the decisions of their rabbi are viewed as supreme, as absolute. Followers of the aforementioned Lubavitcher movement, led for decades by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, revered his stature as more than just a sage, but in many ways a direct connection to God.  Whereas the role of the rabbi in more liberal Jewish groups, including Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist synagogues, has been seen more as a knowledgeable guide to Jewish tradition and practice, than the final arbiter of faith.

At our synagogue, Rabbi Seth is given “freedom of the pulpit.” He has the right to say what he believes, and express himself as he chooses in all his official temple communications, both orally and in writing. He is there as an advisor and a consultant to all his congregants.  But he also must take care not to press himself upon those aspects of community decision making that are the domain of lay leadership.  His is a spiritual position, yes. It is a guide to ritual practice, yes.  And it is very much a political position, which requires staying in touch with the diversity of opinions and orientations of his constituents and finding ways to meet their varying needs.

Throughout my life, rabbis have played important parts of my growth and learning. I feel truly blessed to have been able to interact with them in all their diversity and all the different relationship roles we have had with each other.  And yes… there have been no czars among them.

Yes, I know. I haven’t added a new blog entry for awhile. Not just busy-ness, but finding myself pre-occupied with things that would likely be of little interest to readers.

But odd juxtapositions are always in order around these parts, and I’ve got a sweet little one here.

As I was reading the below column by David Brooks (yeah, you probably need a NYT subscription to see it), he made reference to a British urban planner named Sir Peter Hall.

The name threw me back to the fall of 1972 and my family’s time in London. It was as a 17-year-old that I first was gobsmacked by the telly show “Monty Python.” Just loved it. I made audio tapes of the show and when I got back to the states, played them for my friends. Monty Python didn’t come to US public television until 1974.

There was one skit where John Cleese was talking with a classically trained stuffed-shirt  British actor. The actor was pompously and boastfully declaring the number of words he had to memorize with different Shakespearean plays. And then said: 

“Now I don’t want you to get the idea that it is just the number of words, getting them in the right order is just as important – Sir Peter Hall used to say to me ‘Alan, here’s all the words now all we have to do is get them in the right order’

Move forward to 1980. I was in my second year of a graduate program in City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley. We had Professor Peter Hall visiting as a guest lecturer at our school. My interactions with Prof. Hall were pretty prosaic, but I did tell him about the Monty Python line and we got a good laugh out of that.

I knew at the time that he was a pretty renowned professor, but he came across as accessible and friendly.  I now thought how cool that David Brooks is quoting him, years after he passed away.  Then I looked him up on Wikipedia, and… wow! What an accomplished life!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hall_(urbanist)

Turns out that my old professor did indeed earn the title “Sir” for his teachings. And it only took me 371 words to share it here.

PS: Regarding Brooks’ article…. Non-reciprocal tariffs (when we do to other nations what they do not do to us) generally are horrible foreign policy and crazy economic policy as well. They can be seen as a kind of non-physical means of declaring war, and should require, in my opinion, Congressional approval to enact.

On warm Oaxacan winter evenings, when its streets and plazas are alit with vibrant dancing, music competitively blaring from bars and cantinas, street urchins hawking their wares, singers lilting in Spanish and English classical and modern songs,  musicians bowing their violins, strumming and picking their guitars, and squeezing their accordions, parades of wedding celebrants rolling down the streets dressed in modern and ancient formalwear, lunatic clowns mesmerizing children into ecstatic frenzied laughter, jugglers and daredevils twirling and spinning with fires and knives… well, it all smacks the foreign observer like a cacophony of celebration. Shared… public… joyfulness.

Oaxaca city’s central historical district is a tourist mecca.  In every direction, sights of extraordinary architectural magnificence – 500 years of Catholic majesty preeminent and powerful. In every direction food and drink and artisans’ creations. And people. Of all ages. Mixing.

The warmness of the place is key. Great, pleasant weather. An unmistakable and genuine sense of human friendliness.  People who say good morning – buenos dias – comfortably to strangers. Good evening and good afternoon as well.

The streets and plazas are also filled with security personnel.  Federal, state and municipal police.  Well-armed.  But in place of concern and fear at the presence of these cops, as a tall white old man tourist, I very much feel that they are all there for me and my ilk. The reality of this tourist mecca is that it will thrive as long as folks like me feel safe.  And the presence of the cops provides that measure of security.

So, on one hand, the Oaxacan street is a place of energetic, even exuberant, celebration of public life. Of being together. Sure, there are some English-speaking street strollers. But for the most part, the sounds of the public spaces are fully Mexican. And I love the sing-song music of Mexican Spanish.

And yet, I wouldn’t be me, without also feeling deeply a dark side to all this cornucopia of human interaction.  Never one to enjoy the buying and selling of things, I begin to recognize a kind of index of commercial misery. A misery-commercial hierarchy so to speak.

At its base, its lowest rung, are the sorrow-filled faces and crumpled bodies of the financial beggars. These are the old, very old, and decrepit asking for your pity and a few of your pesos. They have little movement, lack energy, and lack hope really. Their effectiveness is based on exploring the passersby’s’ sense of guilt.  But no matter how much one gives, sadness remains. Guilt remains.

Some want us Gringos gone.

But there are second opinions.

A step up the misery ladder are the strolling merchants of worthless trinkets. They walk toward you, displaying with rapid-fire words and outstretched arms their wares. The same tiny bracelets, wooden animal forms, plastic jewelry that can be found in every third shop, and every second meandering street vendor you cross on these warm, crowded passageways.  Who buys these items? How can the vendors make a living?  How can they spend day after day, evening after evening, reaching out to tourists with no hope of changing their financial existence, but to only see a future of growing older and doing the same thing.

Next up are the retailers, clerking the temporary street cubicles filled with themed items.  Some of these cubicles have stuff of some value. Nicknacks to take home from Oaxaca. Simple T-shirts or shawls.  Mostly, there are things for sale that are available ubiquitously.

Street musicians are up the ladder still.  Distributing themselves in such a way that they do not interfere with each other… much.  They offer creativity in exchange for your pesos.  At times, these musicians demonstrate great talent. Often, however, they appeal to the schmaltz in their audience.  

Next step up are the street vendors selling reasonable quality merchandise. For the most part, this requires you and the merchant to negotiate; to perform a tug of war. But why demean someone – someone with creative skills – to reduce the value of their labor?

And on top of the misery-commerce index are the fancy shops.  The beautifully designed, pure wool or pure cotton or pure natural colored luxury items, sold to wealthy people when there is poverty all around you. With even these items of much less cost than would be found in the States, who is benefiting from such commercial exchanges?

How do I respond to these pleadings? From the beggars… something comes over me and from time to time, I empty my pockets of change.  Mostly I do not.  Of the mobile vendors?  I do not buy anything. What would be the point? The product would only bring me memories of sorrow. And my purchase action from the vendor?  What value would there be for him or her if any one or two or four people buy something? It would only sustain a bare-survival existence, sitting exhausted on the street with marginal merchandise.

But yet and yet and yet again, that misery-commercial analogy mostly fails the test of gestalt. For overall I did not see misery (other than my own self-imposed judgments). Overall, I saw happiness.  Even the street urchins, of any age, seemed relaxed and even energetic. Satisfied with their lots. There were plenty of smiles from the sellers, and no apparent anger at or jealousy of the tourists.

The extraordinary craft of the weaver artists.

On this Oaxacan trip, we also booked a number of tours that took us away from our city neighborhood.  We visited waterfalls and pools.  Took architectural and historical tours.  Lingered in fun and amazing museums. Prayed in over-the-top baroque churches. Traveled the countryside to artisan villages and bought clay bowls and wooden painted figurines.  We ate tacos and drank mezcal and pulque at modest venues where we were the only tourists. We took cooking classes and shopped the markets for our meals. We were hosted by a Oaxacan family, whose father was a young man we stayed with the last time we were in Oaxaca 24 years ago. And the music and smells and tastes and light and interactions with people and more people left me with a distinct conclusion to all those varied experiences.  And it is this: For its residents, Oaxacan life is rich with all that makes life rich.