Jewish Renewal in Poland

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Nożyk Synagogue in Warsaw

Jewish life and a Jewish community exist in Poland. Neither Nazism nor Communism succeeded in destroying it.

   In Warsaw and Kraków we experienced two small but vibrant Jewish communities. In Warsaw, Rosh Hashanah services took place in three shuls, orthodox, reform and Chabad. The service we attended at Synagogue Ets Chaim (located in an office building) was mostly in the Jewish conservative tradition, though the congregation identifies as progressive or reform. There were at least 75 people attending, mostly young or middle-aged adults. The congregation dates from 2006 and is led by Rabbi Stas Wojciechowicz. An orthodox service also took place at the historic Nożyk Synagogue though we did not attend it.

   In Kraków we attended orthodox Kol Nidre services at the historic Remuh Synagogue, with 50-75 others, tending perhaps to be a little older on average than at Ets Chaim. We did not visit Gdańsk, but there is a community of about 150 Jews there based at the historic Wrzeszcz Synagogue; Wrocław has 800 Jews centered at the historic White Stork Synagogue.

   Also contributing to the vibrancy of the Jewish communities we visited are the Jewish Community Councils that exist in both Warsaw and Kraków. The JCCs provide a wide range of services and cultural activities. In Kraków the JCC in addition to its regular work in the Jewish community has become a major center for Ukrainian refugee support. The Warsaw JCC hosts a regular Sunday morning “Boker Tov” brunch (“Good morning” in Hebrew), regular, that is, except for the Sunday we arrived there with hungry stomachs. Besides the JCC in Warsaw, there is the Drejdel Preschool, and a thriving Jewish school complex (Lauder-Morasha), founded in the late 1980s and including kindergarten, elementary and high school.

   In Warsaw, Kraków, and maybe a dozen other Polish cities, there are also regular Jewish festivals – by one estimate forty in total. The most well-known is the annual Jewish cultural festival in Kraków, considered to be the largest in the world and focused on both the local community and thousands of visitors from abroad. There are also a number of Jewish-style restaurants and also Jewish-themed hotels, including Ilan in Lublin (located in the renovated historic Yeshivah with kosher food and a mikvah available). And, from an intellectual point of view, every year in Poland hundreds of books and articles on Jewish topics are published, and Jewish studies programs exist in major universities.     

   All that said, still the Jewish population in Poland is exceedingly small, maybe 7,000 (though other estimates are higher), and there are many Poles, perhaps a hundred thousand or so, with some Jewish ancestry not counted in that total and maybe some not even being aware of their ancestry. But despite the small numbers, especially compared to the prewar total (3.3 million), we cannot dismiss the reality that an impressive Jewish renewal is happening in Poland and wonderful to experience and celebrate.




Nożyk inside view


Ets Chaim Synagogue in Warsaw

JCC Warsaw Boker Tov Sunday brunch


JCC Kraków - Ukranian refugees lining up for assistance

Jewish culture festival in Kraków

Mandragora Restaurant in Lublin



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