“Keeping Kashrus Alive in Poland” – article from Hamodia
Class being taught in Poland
After an unprecedented four-day seminar in the laws of kashrus hosted in Cracow by the nonprofit organization Shavei Israel, 17 Polish Jews began the certification process to become kashrus supervisors – the first event of this kind to take place on Polish soil since the Holocaust. The groundbreaking seminar, attended by 40 students, is one of the many signs that Polish Jewry is making a strong comeback.
The Lost Jews
Polish Jewry, comprising some three million Jews in 1939, was the largest Jewish population in Europe before the war. More than 90 percent were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. The majority of the 300,000 survivors emigrated to North America,England, or Israel, leaving the great Polish graveyard behind them.
Of the fifty thousand who remained in Poland, many abandoned or hid their Judaism out of fear of repercussions from their gentile neighbors or Communist leaders – both of whom were virulently anti-Semitic. The majority of these survivors’ children became completely assimilated into Polish society and in many cases never even knew about their Jewish roots.
They were not the only Jews to disappear into the Polish nation. During the Holocaust, hundreds of Polish Jews gave their children to Catholic orphanages or to their non-Jewish neighbors, hoping to return after the war and reclaim them. Tragically, the vast majority did not return.In 1946, Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Halevy Herzog, zt”l, met with Pope Pius XII and presented him with a list of ten thousand Jewish children known to be under Catholic auspices throughout Europe.
That list was just the tip of the iceberg; there were many more children whose names remained unknown. Although Rabbi Herzog demanded that these children be returned to the Jewish people, the pope flatly refused, basing his decision on the Christian principle that once a Jew is baptized, he can never return to his native faith.Popular Jewish historian, Rabbi Berel Wein recalls that when Rabbi Herzog told this story to a group of Jewish students in Chicago shortly after it happened, he put his head down on the podium and broke into bitter tears. “They are lost forever to the Jewish people,” he said.
Today about 4,000 Jews are registered as living in Poland, but according to various estimates, we can reasonably triple that official number. If nature had run its course, these children would have been lost to the Jewish people completely. Fortunately over the past few decades, hundreds of Poles who were raised as Catholics have rediscovered their Jewish roots and are actively looking to become more involved in Judaism. Both of these groups have been collectively called the “lost Jews of Poland.”
Out of the Closet
There are a number of famous stories of “lost Jews” returning to their roots. Perhaps the most well-known is the story of Pinchas, formally known as Pawel.
Pinchas was once a neo-Nazi who hated Jews with a passion – until he and his wife found out that they were both of Jewish descent; their parents kept it from them all their lives. Together they became baalei teshuvah (those who return to Jewish tradition) and are now raising their family in a Chassidic lifestyle in Warsaw. Pinchas works as a mashgiach in many local food factories and has trained to become a shochet.
Another example is Yaakov Wexler, a former Catholic priest and professor of theology in Lublin. After her husband died, Wexler’s mother confessed that she was not his biological mother. His birth mother had given him to her before she perished in the Holocaust, and he had been raised as a Catholic. He subsequently made aliyah and started keeping Shabbos and kosher.
“Hundreds of people throughout Poland are making these discoveries all the time,” said Michael Freund, the founder and director of Shavei Israel, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to strengthen ties between the Jewish people and Israel, and the assimilated descendants of Jews around the world.“In Poland, for many, the realization that they are Jewish shakes them to the core of their being and leads them on a quest to reclaim their heritage,” Freund said.
There is a real need to service this rebirth.The phenomenon of Poland’s “lost Jews” is just one example of the many assimilated Jewish communities around the world that are now seeking to reconnect to their heritage in large numbers. Shavei Israel is currently active in nine countries and provides assistance to a variety of different communities, such as the Bnei Menashe of India; the Bnei Anousim [“Children of Marranos”] in Spain, Portugal, and South America; the Subbotnik Jews of Russia, and the Jewish community of Kaifeng in China.
“Our goal isn’t to go out there with an agenda to get lost Jews to convert or make aliyah,” Freund says. “We simply want to increase their connection to their heritage. In cases where people do wish to return to Judaism, we help connect them to a reliable beis din, but we emphasize that Judaism is not a missionary religion.
”The beis din of Harav Nissim Karelitz , shlita, in Bnei Brak is one that is frequently consulted. Although in many cases Poland’s “lost Jews” are fully Jewish, it is often necessary for them to convert l’chumrah due to lack of proof. Whenever possible, Shavei Yisrael helps individuals track down the documents necessary to prove their Jewish identity.
Seven years ago, Rabbi Michael Schudrich, the current chief rabbi of Poland, approached Mr. Freund seeking a rabbi for the growing baal teshuvah community in Cracow. “No one is under the illusion that Polish Jewry will return to its past glory, but whether we like it or not, there are Jews living there, and like Jews everywhere in the world, they need the basic infrastructure to live as Torah-observant Jews. We cannot turn our backs on them,” Freund said. “They are victims of the Holocaust. The sweetest revenge for what was done to us in Poland is to bring back as many of our people [as possible] to Judaism.”
Since then, Shavei Israel has stationed rabbis in Cracow and Katowice, and it has translated many siddurim and sefarim into Polish, even publishing the first Polish-Yiddish dictionary since before the war.
“What Michael Fruend and Shavei Israel invest to help the lost Jews of Poland return to their roots again is indescribable,” Chief Rabbi Schudrich said emotionally. “He’s my hero!”
Chief Rabbi Boaz Pash of Cracow, originally from Jerusalem, has been working for Shavei Israel for over a decade in Kiev, Brazil, Portugal, and now Cracow. “These communities are hundreds of years old,” he said. “There was always a minyan in those cities, but they were dying communities. Now people want to come back, and thank G-d, we have begun to rejuvenate Jewish community life.”Today, several dozens of Cracow Jews have become more observant.”
Kosher Cracow
Along with Rabbi Schudrich, Shavei Israel recently organized a four-day mini-yeshivah to cover the laws of kashrus. The seminar was conducted by local rabbis and by Rabbi Dov Landau, a leading Gerrer chassid who teaches at Yeshivah Sfas Emes in Yerushalayim and is a senior kosher supervisor of the Chug Chasam Sofer of Bnei Brak.
“The idea was to help them integrate ideas that they never heard before regarding kashrus,” Rabbi Pash explained. “They can study the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch about what to eat, but they have never seen anyone do it practically. Four days wasn’t enough-we were just getting started. If 55 people actually came, you can imagine all the others who wanted to come but were unable to take off from work. It means they are really interested in what we are offering.
”Seventeen of the participants have taken their interest a step further by training to become certified mashgichim. The need for additional kosher supervisors in Poland has increased lately due to a number of factors. First, there is an increasing need for local kosher food resources to satisfy the growing community of baalei teshuvah. Secondly, there are thousands of Jewish tourists from abroad who pass through Poland each year, many of whom need kosher food.
As many as 8,000 visitors come each year for the yahrtzeit of Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk, zy”a, and close to 30,000 students will visit this year under the auspices of the Israeli Ministry of Education and other trip organizers. In fact, the Marriot Hotel in Warsaw is kosher, under Rabbi Schudrich’s hashgachah!
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, a growing number of Polish food products are being exported around the world due to their low cost and high quality. Poland is also becoming a major center of shechitah for worldwide kosher supervision organizations such as the Eidah Hachareidis of Yerushalayim and the Manchester Beis Din, considering that Poland has some of the cheapest labor in the European Union (EU), along with good-quality meat.
Tapping local Jews to work as mashgichim is much more efficient and reliable than requiring the kashrus agencies to fly their own men to Poland. “Instead of bringing in mashgichim from the outside, we figured that members of our community could provide basic supervision with guidance from a rabbi,” Rabbi Pash said. Not only is it more efficient to hire local workers, but it also provides valuable opportunities for Polish Jews to work in “kosher” environments.
“When they become religious, it’s very challenging for them to continue working in their non-Jewish job environments,” Rabbi Pash continued. “We try to find them jobs in Jewish venues so that they won’t have to stay late on Fridays or go places they don’t want to go.”Rabbi Schudrich himself often works with the American-based Orthodox Union (OU) certifying agency to provide hashgachah for certain local products. “Now we have a greater pool to work with,” he said. “If the demand exists, we will continue to expand our kashrus operations.”
There is more to this article on the Hamodia website.