Shavei Israel’s first ever Purim seminar for young Jews from Poland kicked off this week. Fourteen participants from across Poland landed at Ben-Gurion Airport on Monday and began touring the country as part of a quick, one-week trip to Israel. Shavei Israel has for many years run...
[caption id="attachment_26475" align="alignleft" width="300"] Preparing for Shabbat ata Polish Shabbaton[/caption] It was a cold Shabbat in February but for a group of young Polish Jews, it must have felt like Passover already. That’s because the focus of the mid-winter Shabbaton held at the Oki Doki Hostel...
Daniel grew up with just his mother in Lublin, Poland. When he was a teenager, his mother revealed to Daniel that his father was Jewish. “But the subject was a taboo,” Daniel says, and so he never discussed it further nor pursued his Jewish roots...
It can be hard to keep up with Rabbi Avi Baumol’s schedule. Shavei Israel’s emissary to Krakow, Poland is even busier this Hanukah, leading and participating in a range of activities for the not-so-Hidden Jews of Poland. Here’s the schedule. If you’ll be in Krakow...
The Jewish community of the Polish city of Lodz received its first new Torah scroll since World War II, its rabbi said. The scroll, donated to the community by British Jewish philanthropists was introduced during a special ceremony in the city’s synagogue, the rabbi of...
It has been nearly two years since Batya Wieczorek made aliyah, but regardless of whom she meets, her interlocutor’s initial reaction upon learning that she is from Poland inevitably follows a similar pattern. It starts off with a healthy dose of surprise, peppered by disbelief,...
Gan Matanel is now open! The first Jewish school in the Polish city of Lodz since 1968 is up and running with eight happy pre-schoolers and kindergarteners attending each morning. The school is co-sponsored by Shavei Israel and run by our emissary Miriam Szychowski who...
The Krakow Jewish Community Center last month hosted the largest Shabbat dinner in the city since World War II. Some 500 people – including local Polish Jews, tourists and non-Jewish volunteers – made Kiddush, said the motzei before breaking bread together, and sang Shabbat zemirot...
As her group sloshed through the waters of Hezekiah’s Tunnel, Sandra from Warsaw reflected on the remarkable journey that had brought her to Jerusalem for a two-week seminar sponsored by Shavei Israel. “I come from a Catholic family,” she explains. “I only began to discover...
When Miriam and Rabbi Dawid Szychowski agreed to move back to Poland, where Dawid was hired to take on the job of Shavei Israel’s newest emissary to Lodz, Miriam had one major concern: where would her three young children go to school? Miriam’s answer: she...
