Tuesday, 8/28/12 Warsaw Region - Tikocyn, Lupochowa Forest, Treblinka

I'm writing this on Wednesday morning, since I was too exhausted physically and emotionally to write last night. The good news is that the fatigue I felt resulted in the soundest sleep I've had yet on this trip.

A few things I left out of Monday's blog - we stood in front of the house of Adam Czerniakow, a Jewish engineer and teacher in Warsaw and learned his story. In October, 1939 he was made head of the Judenrat, or 24 member Jewish Council, formed to implement Nazi orderers in the Warsaw Ghetto. He was the representative of the Jewish community in the Ghetto to the Nazis from 1939-1942, but ended up committing suicide when the deportations began. He could not/would not do what the Germans wanted. He pleaded for exemptions for the children of the orphanage, but when he was unable to accomplish this, he went back to his office and took a cyanide capsule.

And this leads me to the story of Janusz Korczak which is integral to Tuesday's visit to Treblinka. Korczak was an educator, author, and pediatrician. When the order came for the deportation of the orphans from the Ghetto to Treblinka, he refused to abandon them, personally leading them to the Umschlagplatz, the platform where the deportees were assembled, and accompanied them to death at Treblinka. More about Korczak later.

Now back to Tuesday
Our first stop is the Umschlagplatz memorial. It has two walls, giving the effect of a tallit, with a black skullcap on top with broken trees engraved symbolizing a broken people and broken community. Only the first names of people who assembled here are listed because they couldn't fit, or possibly know, all the names of the Jews who were transported from Warsaw to death at Treblinka.








We next drive a few hours north to Tikocyn one of border towns in the 14th Century. In the 16th century, Tikochyn flourished. The first Jews came there in 1522 when 10 Jewish families were allowed by the king to establish a synagogue. 100 years later, Tikocyn is still an important place for trade, as well as both a Christian and Jewish cultural and religious center. Into the 17th century it had the main Jewish cemetary for the region. In the 18th and 19th century, Bialystok became more important as a religious center and the Jewish community of Tikocyn became smaller and less important. The synagogue from before World War II, along with the Rabbi's house, remains in Tikocyn and has been restored as a museum.



We spent time in the synagogue and saw the outside of the Rabbi's house. The town itself has the original cobblestone streets and many original houses - it looked like my idea of a WWII Polish shtetl.





The inside of the synagogue is restored with Hebrew verses and painted decoration.





Bus loads of Israeli teens come to Tikocyn while we were there. They are singing and dancing in the synagogue, providing a perfect uplifting experience before we drive to Lupochowa Forest. We drive past the site of the old cemetery on our way to Lupochowa, now just a field with a few broken tomb stones.

During WW II, Stalin took the area of Tikocyn first, then the Nazis took it over in June of 1941. The closest Jewish Ghetto is in Bialystok, but the Jews of Tikocyn are not taken there. Instead, Lupochowa Forest is site of demise of community. Over two days in August of 1942 all the 1400 Jews of Tikocyn were taken to the square for relocation. The Nazis then marched or trucked them into the Lupochowa forest. The first day, half the Jews were taken to the forest, shot in waves, and then thrown into pits. When the rest learned their fate, a few Jews escaped Ticocyn, but none escaped their final fate. The next day the remaining Jews were take to the forest and shot.

We march into the Lupochowa Forest following the path of our ancestors to the location of the killing pits. The Israeli teens have preceded us there and their quiet sounds are calming. The sunlight dapples the trees, the birds sing, the butterflies and dragonflies flit around.



And death is everywhere. We see a number of large pits surrounded by fencing where the Israeli teens have left flags and small black teddy bears. Others have left stones, memorial candles, and prayers.


We say Kaddish as a group and everyone weeps. It is a day of sorrow, a day of knowledge, a day of memory.

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Thursday - Last Day in Jerusalem

Today is the last day of the Seminar, as well as the last day in Israel. We start the morning tracing the Sephardim who settled in Jerusalem, but outside the walls of the Old City. We walk to the neighborhoods of Mishkenot Sha'ananim and Yemin Moshe. Before entering, we read from the autobiography of Elie Eliachar, the great-uncle of Ann Elyachar, one of our Seminar participants.

The neighborhood of Mishkenot Sha'ananim was built in 1859 by Moses Montefiore, using money's bequeathed by Judah Touro, for the benefit of the poor. The idea was to remove the burden of paying rent from these people so they could lift themselves out of poverty. Unfortunately, the idea did not work and the inhabitants remained poor. The Book of Regulations for the complex included provisions for keeping this gated community closed to strangers; ensuring the cleanliness of the individual dwellings, the house of worship, and the entire complex; remembering Judah Touro in prayer daily and on the anniversary of his death; and stipulation that the residents have no claim to ownership of their dwellings. Today the complex is used to provide artists and dignitaries temporary housing by the State of Israel.








Yemin Moshe, on the other hand, was built a few years later as middle class housing. Montefiore also built this complex. Today it is one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Jerusalem.







From there, we moved to the neighborhood of Nahlaot, with it's winding alley ways and different ethnic neighborhoods.


In one section live the Jews who left Spain and went to Greece; in other sections are those from Yemen, or Algiers, or Turkey. We see the various synagogues, each belonging to a different ethnic group.






Children playing at a nursery school playground captured my attention.





We walk back through the beautiful, flower-filled Rahavia neighborhood where we see the inscription on a house belonging to the Eliachar family.





With some free time for lunch and shopping, Eric and I go to the King George - Ben Yehuda Street area to find a fabric store and to people watch. Here are some faces of Ben Yehuda Street.








Our final study session was with Rabbi Michael Melchior, Head of Mosaica and former Minister and MK. It was enlightening, provocative, and hopeful.

Our farewell dinner was bitter sweet. So sad to be leaving Israel, but happy to be heading home. I know I say this with each Melton Seminar I go on, but this is the best Seminar I've ever attended. Haim Aronovitz is the most knowledgeable, wonderful teacher I've ever had the pleasure of studying under. I will try to write one last blog entry soon summing up all my impressions of the Seminar, but for now let me just say that it was FABULOUS.


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Wednesday 9/21/11 Jerusalem

Started the day off with a study session with Dr. Zohar Raviv right in our hotel.


What a brilliant man! The session was basically about the politics of theology. He discussed the differing approaches of Maimonides, who was primarily a philosopher at heart, and Judah Halevi, who was primarily a theologian. Perhaps the most meaningful words he said were that when you engage in a true dialogue it is more than speaking and listening. It is being willing to take the risk that you may change my life.

We left the Inbal Hotel, a structure whose angles and lines have always intrigued me, to head to the Old City.


There we followed the story of the Sephardi Jews within the walls of Jerusalem. We walked past the newly opened Hurva Synagogue


and toured The Four Sephardi Synagogues, a complex of four separate, but connected, houses of worship. The were built at different times to meet the needs of different communities that immigrated to Jerusalem and practiced different Sephardi rites.















We spent some additional time in the Old City, which is always a great pleasure









and then went to Beit Avi Chai to meet with Yair Harel the founder of the website piyut.org. On this website he has gathered liturgical melodies, or piyutim, from around the world. Unfortunately there was a crisis going on over the two concerts he was hosting this evening and could not meet with us, but we went to the web site and listened to a number of different melodies.

A final lecture was a surprise to the group. We were addressed by Rabbi David Weiss Halivni whose son is married to the daughter of one of the members of our Melton group. He is a Talmud scholar and Holocaust survivor. Now in his 80's, he is frail and difficult to hear, but mesmerizing. We are so fortunate to have heard his words of wisdom.

Tomorrow is the last day of the Seminar. It will be a full day, ending with a farewell dinner for the group. We will be walking in Sephardi neighborhoods outside of the Old City in the morning and meeting with Rabbi Michael Melchior, head of Mosaica, in the afternoon to discuss modern Sephardi Israeli society. We fly out directly after the dinner from Tel Aviv to Philadelphia. I won't have a chance to blog again until I'm in Rochester and can add in some pictures from the last day.

What a marvelous experience this entire trip has been!

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Tuesday 9/20/11

What a fascinating day! We began the day in Kfar Kassem, an Arab city in Israel not far from Tel Aviv. We met with a Sheik (leader) of the Moslem community who spoke to us about his philosophy of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He described himself as a believing and practicing Muslim, a lawyer by training, the father of four, an author of many texts, and someone who has studied both the Quran and the Torah. The Sheik did not speak in his primary language of Arabic, but talked to us in Hebrew about his philosophy of שלומ לבבות or "peace of the hearts." Haim, our Seminar leader, translated his words into English. Since Hebrew was not the Sheik's first language, he spoke slower than the average Israeli, and I was able to understand phrases here and there. It was a moving, frustrating, stimulating, and hopeful morning all rolled into one. I took copious notes and will be happy to discuss this further with anyone when I return to Rochester.

Kfar Kassem was the site of a terrible occurrence in October of 1956. On the day the Sinai campaign began, a curfew was imposed on the Arab population. The workers of Kfar Kassem had already gone out to the fields to work before the curfew was imposed and did not know it had been announced. When they returned from the fields, fifty Arab people were shot by the Israeli border patrol, including a pregnant woman. The Israeli judge who presided over the investigation of the incident found not only the officer who ordered the shooting guilty, but also found all the soldiers who fired shots to be guilty. His ruling was that they should not have followed the officer's order. The sentences imposed on the officer and the soldiers were all commuted shortly thereafter by a Presidential order. These are the facts that were laid out for us prior to meeting the Sheik at the 1956 memorial.


Many, many emotions were running through our group even before the meeting took place and discussion of the morning continued throughout the day- right through dinner. I'm sure these discussions will continue through the end of the Seminar and even into our return to Rochester.

Our next stop was Tel Aviv University where we had lunch at ארומה or "Aroma" - the Israeli cross between Panara's and Starbucks. Finally got WiFi connection there and were able to download three days of email. After lunch we met with Catriella Freedman, Director of Curriculum and Program Development at Beit Hatfutsot, the Museum of the Jewish People, which is housed on the Tel Aviv University campus, a very beautiful site.








She gave us a quick tour of the section of the museum on "The Golden Age of Spanish Jewry" which reinforced and pulled together all we had done in Spain.


Catriella was funny, engaging, and very knowledgable. The Rochesterians in the group decided her breadth of knowledge and teaching style reminded us of Jan Katz - the highest praise we can bestow. After viewing the exhibits Catriella led us in a study session on the first revival of the Hebrew language in the Iberian peninsula during the 11th and 12th centuries.


My comment to Haim on the bus to Jerusalem was that the day was so filled with learning that my head was ready to explode. That definitely seemed to make him happy.

I snapped some interesting architectural shots as we left Tel Aviv for Jerusalem.





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Monday 9/19/11

A long and hot day in Tiberius and the environs. We began the morning with a visit to Maimonides' tomb. It was hotter than our hottest day in Spain and much more humid. It was very hard to concentrate and very frustrating to see that the Ultra-Orthodox have put a divider over his grave so that men have to go to one side and women to the other. You see half of the tomb and can read half of the inscription. The site itself is well planned out, with a walkway/staircase leading up to the tomb with 7 pillars on each side, representing the 14 Chapters of his major opus, The Mishneh Torah. The sun made interesting patterns on the walk and under the superstructure above the tomb when I viewed it through the gauze-like material covering the monument.










Next we went to a hotel that houses a collection of memorabilia dedicated to Doña Gracia. The docent spent over an hour telling us the story of Doña Gracia, a story I had never heard. She was a fabulous story teller and the story itself is most fascinating. Well worth googling her to learn more. Below is a replica of the table she commissioned in Venice to seat forty people.





I would tell you more myself, but I'm running out of time. I don't have my 3G Internet connection anymore, and it is way too expensive to buy a Sim card in Israel for the short time we are here. I'm paying for Wi Fi in the hotel tonight and only have 30 minutes total, so I'll upload some more pix and sketch out the rest of the day.

We next went to Mt. Meron, near Sefad, to the tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai for a study session. We learned that last Lag bar Omer 300,000 Israelis visited his tomb.






Next stop was Sefad where we had 20 minutes to shop (actually this was Haim's second concession of the day). I learned that the photographer I wanted to visit, Yaacov Kaszemacher, had died about a month ago. I had met him on a previous Melton trip and been introduced to him by Haim. He used mathematical patterns and mystical symbols in his work and we have two of his photographs hanging in our home.

Pomegranates were in full fruit all over Sefad.






We completed our visit to Sefad with another study session. As the sun set, we left Sefad for a fabulous multiple-course dinner at a lovely restaurant near Tiberius.








Tomorrow we leave Tiberius for Jerusalem.

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Shabbat/ Sunday

Shabbat was a day of rest - sleeping in after visiting the synagogue the night before. Eric and I spent several hours walking through the Prado and a bit more time people watching in a cafe. Haim ran an interesting study session, again pulling together all we had learned over the week in Spain.

After bringing in the new week with Havdalah, we had dinner at a sidewalk café with Melton friends (old) Ann Elyachar and (new) Maxine Fischbein. On this our last night in Spain, we marveled at how kind and helpful everyone has been. The owner of the tiny pizza and pasta café brought an extra table outside for us when we commented that it was too warm to eat inside. He worked with us to make sure we understood the menu, although his English and our Spanish were both minimal. a young girl (eleven years old) at the table next to us wanted to practice her English and helped us to take a group picture. She was even more delighted when we included her in a picture. All together, a lovely evening.

Sunday we left early for the airport to fly from Madrid to Israel. El Al security was tight and it took a long time to even get up to the ticket counter. The security person interrogating Eric and I asked me if I could speak Hebrew. I answered in Hebrew "a little." He then asked me in Hebrew where I had learned it. Jan, please forgive me!! As soon as he started speaking, my ears closed up, my panic mode set in, and I couldn't understand a thing. When I responded, "My name is Miriam" he and Eric couldn't stop laughing. Eric answered him in Hebrew and we were allowed through to the ticket counter. Not my finest moment!

The plane was delayed, the flight was long and bumpy, and Eric and I were seated in the last row next to the lavatories. We didn't arrive at the hotel in Tiberius until 10 PM. Haim let us start a little later the next morning. . .our one and only concession from him.

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Friday 9/16/11 Granada and the Alhambra

Today was devoted to touring the Alhambra with our local guide, Pablo. I was fascinated by the tile patterns and intricately carved decorations on doors and walls the last time I was in Spain (more than thirty years ago). Today I'm seeing it through new eyes - the eyes of one who has studied and taught about tessellations, symmetries, and patterns. The number of patterns, their intricacies, their layering, the decorations so fanciful and exquisite - it is totally overwhelming to the senses. I don't know where to look first, where to start photographing, where to concentrate my efforts. The Alhambra is a sumptuous feast for the eyes, literally dripping with richness and detail.

First, some history and background. The Alhambra is a palace/fortress complex whose name means "the red fortress" because of the red clay in the region. It was built for the last Muslim rulers of Granada in the mid 14th century. After the expulsion of the Moslems in 1492, parts of the complex were used, and the architecture adapted, by the Catholic kings. Columned arcades, fanciful gardens, reflecting pools, and fountains with running water are the main features of the complex. While each room is elaborately decorated on it's walls, ceilings, doors, and floors, the exterior is plain and austere.


Geometrical designs abound in the interior, including tessellating shapes on tiles and regular symmetric patterns. Here are just a few examples.
















We also had a tour of the formal gardens.


A study session on poetry written by Jews from the Granada area in the time of the Alhambra's use followed our tour.

After a quick picnic lunch in the main park of Granada, we boarded the bus for the long ride back to Madrid for Shabbat. We arrived with little time to spare in order to attend Kabbalat Shabbat services at the Madrid synagogue. Security is quite heavy. Upon entering the street, the first thing we noticed were the plain clothed security guards at the beginning, middle and end of the street. There was also a police car outside the synagogue. We were questioned before entering the first door and had to show our passports and submit to more rigorous questioning before being allowed through the second security door. It had quite a chilling effect and made me appreciate the freedom of attending services (usually) without security in the US. I loved sitting and listening to the chanting - feeling the rhythm of Shabbat despite being so far from home. We had dinner at the synagogue with some members of the Madrid Jewish community and some visiting students.


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