Jewish Heritage Trip in Poland 2022

Passport photos of my parents, Lewi (Leo-1929) and Fayga (Fay-1928) Dear friends and family, In the summer of 2019, Carol and I visited the Auschwitz exhibit at the Jewish Heritage Museum in NYC. I realized then that I did not understand enough about what was lost in the Holocaust. I did not understand enough about who I am. Not just millions of Jews but also a rich Jewish world and heritage was destroyed. That is my heritage. It is a treasure, writes Warsaw-born Jewish theologian and rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, that is “now contained in us... the present generation is still in possession of the keys to the treasure. If we do not uncover the treasures, the keys will go down to the grave with us, and the storehouse of the generations will remain locked forever ....”   So, we decided to visit Poland, seeking to uncover those treasures, and to learn more about my family’s roots. And here we are. We hope to physically, emotionally and intellectually experience as much as possible of that

The milk jug on display at the Ringelblum Historical Institute in Warsaw For many Jews, the mitzvah of enjoying the Sabbath (oyneg shabes in yiddish) means eating well, taking a stroll with your family, relaxing, connecting with your children. For Emanual Ringelblum, however, Oyneg Shabes was his secret code for resistance, and for the regular Sabbath meetings in the Warsaw Ghetto of his clandestine group. It’s an incredible story that teaches us a lot about Jewish resistance in general and more specifically resistance to the genocidal intentions of the Nazis. In Warsaw we visited the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, which is devoted to telling this story.  It is a story about a specific form of resistance, spiritual resistance. Knowing the likely fate of all those forced into the Ghetto beginning in November 1940, and realizing that memory and how a people will be remembered is a great treasure, Ringelblum and the sixty other community activists working with him asked,