In Poland, you don’t have to be Jewish to love Jewish culture

(RNS) — When I arrived in Warsaw, my hosts took me to the apartment in which I would be staying.

“You will stay here,” they said.

“You will stay here.” — I had heard that line before.

Consider an old legend, about how the Jews first arrived in Poland.

In the Middle Ages, during the Crusades, Jews fled from (the future) Germany — Ashkenaz.

They came to the kingdom of Poland, where the king welcomed them. They came to Lublin, and on its outskirts, they found a forest. On every tree, there was a section of the Talmud carved on it.

They heard a voice uttering one of the greatest puns in Jewish history: PO-LIN – “here, you shall stay.”

“Stay.” As in: “Where are you staying when you are in Poland?” Or: “Are you staying in Poland?” Or: “Where are you going? Stay for a while.”

The Jews have stayed in Poland.

For more than a thousand years, Poland was not just a Jewish homeland; it was the Jewish homeland. For centuries, it was a Paradisus Iudaeorum (a Jewish paradise). Poland invented and shaped Ashkenazic Jewish culture. The largest percentage of Jews in the world lived here in Poland until 1939. You cannot tell the story of the Jews without Poland.

I am in Warsaw to conduct High Holy Day services for Beit Warszawa, a progressive congregation. As part of that visit, I attended the celebration marking the 10th anniversary of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

POLIN is a triumph. It is 43,000 square feet of multimedia presentations, interactive exhibits and historical reconstructions. In 2016, its core exhibition won the European Museum of the Year award. In my humble opinion, it is one of the best Jewish museums in the world.

Besides the core exhibition, which takes you a good three hours to visit and absorb, there is a temporary exhibit of the paintings of Mayer Kirshenblatt, portraying Jewish village life in Apt (Opatow). (He just happens to be the late father of Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, the Ronald S. Lauder chief curator of the Core Exhibition and advisor to the director at POLIN). The paintings are notable not only for their artistry, but for their realism and lack of sentimentality; we encounter rabbis and sages, but also Jewish prostitutes and gangsters.

The amazing thing? When I was at the museum yesterday, it was packed with families with young children. The vast majority of them would have been non-Jews. Poles are fascinated by Jews and Judaism. Witness, for example, the annual Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, complete with klezmer music and other elements of Jewish culture. Non-Jews run it, and non-Jews attend it.

Why? A mixture of curiosity, guilt, a longing to feel an essential part of Polishness that does not rely on Catholicism.

And also: I said that you cannot tell the story of the Jews without Poland.

Poles know the opposite as well: you cannot tell the story of Poland without the Jews.

The second amazing thing? Most of POLIN is about the greatness, richness and creativity of that culture. It is about political successes and economic successes and cultural successes beyond our imagination. It is also about Jewish optimism — how Jews were so hopeful in the interwar years of a revived Polish nationalism that would include them in their totality.

And, the Holocaust?

You would expect that a museum of Polish Jewish history would be a Holocaust museum.

But, no. POLIN is hardly another Yad VaShem. POLIN has several rooms devoted to the war years, but that is not its dominant theme. 

Instead, POLIN is a love song to Polish Jewish culture — its richness, depth and vitality — all of which happened before the end. It is about the positive aspects of Jewish life, culture, literature and longing.

There are lessons here for American Jews.

First, the thing about Jewish culture. I often hear American Jews say that they are “culturally Jewish.”

For those American Jews whose families originated in Poland or once-Poland — which is to say, the vast majority of them — this is their culture. It is a thick stew of literature, arts, language, communal structures — and yes, observance at any number of levels.

Second, the thing about American Jewish identity.

It is now a year since Oct. 7, and ever since that time, there has been a fabled “surge” in American Jewish identity, along with a parallel surge in antisemitism. The Jewish identity surge inspired us to create the ever-expanding Wisdom Without Walls.

Jews hunger for Jewish connections, Jewish learning and Jewish experiences.

The bigger question: Does fear and anger produce Jewish identity? There is that oft-quoted passage in the Talmud, which I paraphrase: The moment when King Ahasuerus of Persia handed his ring to Haman, his Jew-hating prime minister, was more effective in promoting Jewish fidelity than all the prophets and prophetesses put together.

As for me, I have long been suspicious about the long-term effectiveness of fear and anger as an engine for Jewish identity.

Ultimately, my Judaism is more about how God loves us than about how “they” hate us.

Will the post-Oct. 7 surge last? I am looking at the tangible metrics for Jewish identity: affiliation. Did synagogue and JCC affiliation grow in the past year?

A wonderful highlight of the 10th anniversary celebration was a wonderful concert — orchestral music, film and dance. Who was there? Yes, Jews and Jewish philanthropists and activists.

But once again: The vast majority of the audience members were non-Jews — including the president of Poland, Andrzej Duda.

The name of the event: “Mir zenen do.”

Translation: “We are here.”

Those are the final words of “The Partisan Song,” also known in Yiddish by its first words, “Zog Nit Keynmol” (“Never say that you are walking the final road”). I love this version by the late Theo Bikel at the Festival of Jewish Culture.

The song was written by Hirsh Glik, inspired by the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and became an inspiration for the fighters in the Vilna ghetto.

Those fighters would have included my relatives; the song always moves me to tears.

We are here. Such appropriate words to hear in Warsaw.

And such appropriate words to hear, inside our hearts, in America.

Despite it all, we are here.