When we were given the option to attend a Friday night Shabbat service in Kraków, the idea of reciting prayers alongside other “Holocaust tourists” felt forced. I made an excuse and declined the invitation. But then I changed my mind.
As the congregation finished singing Oseh Shalom—a Jewish prayer for peace—the room flashed with lightening. After a boom of thunder, rain began to fall from the vaulted ceiling and onto the people in the middle of the room. (I think there was an open window.) The crowd of American teenagers cheered and laughed at the fun of it. I started to worry, and I suppose others were worried too, that the rainwater would touch the hanging spotlights. Hesitating only briefly, the Rabbi and her accompanying musicians continued to play. The room was filled with both nervousness and excitement, a contradiction pulling me in both directions.
The Shabbat service was being held in the main hall of the Galicia Jewish Museum. The permanent exhibition had been pushed to the hall’s perimeter, allowing for some 250 people to form a makeshift community; around 150 adults on chairs, around 100 teenagers from NFTY (North America's Jewish Reform youth movement) sitting on the floor, at the front.
I was an observer. The adults swayed their shoulders and tapped their knees to the melodies of the familiar Hebrew prayers. The teenagers sang loudly and clapped along to the beat. Between songs, their leaders shushed them whenever they became too rowdy. My eyes took me to the museum’s walls covered by exhibition panels of beautiful color photographs of the Polish countryside, green fields under blue skies, a garden in bloom, the ruins of a building, gravestones, the empty bunks of a Nazi camp barracks. This was the museum’s permanent Holocaust exhibition, pushed to the sides of the room to make space for this joyful prayer service. The realization was jarring; we were surrounded by remnants of the fields and Nazi structures that witnessed mass-murder.
The Rabbi had started the service by reminding us that we were in the middle of the three weeks between the Fast of Tammuz and the Fast of Av when Jews around the world mourn the destruction of the biblical temples. Traditionally, during this time, music and most celebrations are prohibited. But, keeping her words vague while referring to the main purpose of the congregation’s pilgrimage, the Rabbi suggested that we make an exception.
As the musicians played another uplifting prayer, my eyes took me to the exhibit signs hanging from the museum’s ceiling: “Massacre.” “Jewish Life in Ruins.” I glanced down at the photocopied songbook in my hands and began to read the translation. “Unending love have you shown the House of Israel.” My eyes shifted back to the walls and onto the images of encampments and killing fields—God’s unending love! The teenagers continued to clap to the rhythm and harmonize at the tops of their voices in holy praise. As the Rabbi began to sing “Shema, Yisra’el...”—Hear, O’Israel...—the Hebrew words fell from my mouth as if they had been buried inside me and finally had the chance to escape.
As the congregation finished singing Oseh Shalom—a Jewish prayer for peace—the room flashed with lightening. After a boom of thunder, rain began to fall from the vaulted ceiling and onto the people in the middle of the room. (I think there was an open window.) The crowd of American teenagers cheered and laughed at the fun of it. I started to worry, and I suppose others were worried too, that the rainwater would touch the hanging spotlights. Hesitating only briefly, the Rabbi and her accompanying musicians continued to play. The room was filled with both nervousness and excitement, a contradiction pulling me in both directions.
The Shabbat service was being held in the main hall of the Galicia Jewish Museum. The permanent exhibition had been pushed to the hall’s perimeter, allowing for some 250 people to form a makeshift community; around 150 adults on chairs, around 100 teenagers from NFTY (North America's Jewish Reform youth movement) sitting on the floor, at the front.
I was an observer. The adults swayed their shoulders and tapped their knees to the melodies of the familiar Hebrew prayers. The teenagers sang loudly and clapped along to the beat. Between songs, their leaders shushed them whenever they became too rowdy. My eyes took me to the museum’s walls covered by exhibition panels of beautiful color photographs of the Polish countryside, green fields under blue skies, a garden in bloom, the ruins of a building, gravestones, the empty bunks of a Nazi camp barracks. This was the museum’s permanent Holocaust exhibition, pushed to the sides of the room to make space for this joyful prayer service. The realization was jarring; we were surrounded by remnants of the fields and Nazi structures that witnessed mass-murder.
The Rabbi had started the service by reminding us that we were in the middle of the three weeks between the Fast of Tammuz and the Fast of Av when Jews around the world mourn the destruction of the biblical temples. Traditionally, during this time, music and most celebrations are prohibited. But, keeping her words vague while referring to the main purpose of the congregation’s pilgrimage, the Rabbi suggested that we make an exception.
As the musicians played another uplifting prayer, my eyes took me to the exhibit signs hanging from the museum’s ceiling: “Massacre.” “Jewish Life in Ruins.” I glanced down at the photocopied songbook in my hands and began to read the translation. “Unending love have you shown the House of Israel.” My eyes shifted back to the walls and onto the images of encampments and killing fields—God’s unending love! The teenagers continued to clap to the rhythm and harmonize at the tops of their voices in holy praise. As the Rabbi began to sing “Shema, Yisra’el...”—Hear, O’Israel...—the Hebrew words fell from my mouth as if they had been buried inside me and finally had the chance to escape.
Standing for Kaddish, the mourners’ prayer, the Rabbi acknowledged the photographs of graves and empty landscapes on the walls around us. She reminded us that we mourn the loss of many lives and she invited us to speak the names of our dead. I began to whisper the tongue-twisting words of the ancient prayer, but the names of my grandfather’s murdered family were stuck in my throat.
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