Special
Report Her
mission: Jewish document recovery
By LESLIE WIRPSA
NCR Staff
A group of Catholics played an unusual role, one
symbolic of healing centuries of hostility, during a Jewish ceremony on July 31
at ReMa Synagogue in Krakow, Poland.
The R'fa-aye-nu Society -- whose honorary chairman is Cardinal
Joseph Bernardin of Chicago -- enabled Catholics and Jews to join in a ceremony
to return an exquisite, handwritten Torah scroll to the synagogue. Catholics
were invited to carry the poles sustaining the sacred canopy under which the
Torah is escorted through the synagogue and touched by those present.
The ceremony symbolized years of effort by Mira P. Brichto, a
retired professor of literature from Cincinnati, and supporters of R'fa-aye-nu
(translated "heal us") to bridge interfaith polarities in Poland and other
Eastern European countries where historical wounds still define the
relationship between Catholics and Jews.
Bernardin did not attend the Torah rededication, but Pope John
Paul II sent the cardinal a message in June expressing hope that the event
would "in its own way, contribute to the healing of the spiritual breach
between Christians and Jews."
The ceremony at ReMa Synagogue was scheduled to occur at a tense
time for some parts of Poland. In July, the country commemorated the 50th
anniversary of a 1946 pogrom when 42 members of the Jewish community were
beaten to death in the town of Kielce by a riotous, and some say largely
Catholic crowd.
Polish government officials and the nation's Catholic bishops
attempted to turn the Kielce ceremonies into what Prime Minister Wlodzimierz
Cimoszewicz called a "steppingstone" toward improved relations between Polish
Catholics and members of the Judaic faith.
But many Poles were not pleased at the reminder of this chapter of
history, when, reportedly, rumors of a blood libel -- the alleged stealing of a
Christian child -- incited a massacre that Jewish people worldwide point to as
one of the cruelest examples of post-World War II anti-Semitism.
A group of right-wing Catholics allegedly reprimanded a government
official for sending an "unfortunate and unnecessary" letter to the World
Jewish Congress apologizing for the pogrom.
During one ceremony, according to The Jewish Telegraphic Agency,
an Auschwitz survivor wore a concentration camp uniform and carried a poster
calling the Kielce killings "the shame of the Polish Roman Catholics."
Kalman Sultanik, vice president of the World Jewish Congress and
president of the Federation of Polish Jews in America said that "only when a
complete and truthful historical account of Polish-Jewish history has been
recorded shall Poles and Jews be able to engage in an open, constructive
dialogue that will bear fruit for future generations."
The R'fa-aye-nu Society is dedicated to promoting the kind of
dialogue and historical clarity of which Sultanik spoke. But understanding why
the return of a sacred Torah could provide salve for the wounded relationship
between Catholics and Jews in Poland requires a historical perspective. The
Torah returned to the ReMa Synagogue is just one of a treasure of Jewish
religious books, documents, newspapers and correspondence the R'fa-aye-nu
Society is attempting to recover in the former communist countries. Much of
Jewish historical literature and records are stored in Catholic institutions
throughout Europe, Brichto said.
"When villages were emptied out (under Nazi occupation), more
often than not, the village priest would take these materials to the monastic
library," Brichto said. "Who else knew how to read and write?"
Brichto, who has dedicated 17 years of her life to gaining access
to such material, said these documents are extremely important for the Jewish
community and for scholars of Judaism. "Records, correspondence, these are very
important in Jewish religious life. This is our responsum, our interpretation
of Jewish law -- like case law -- and it is scattered all over Europe," Brichto
said.
Recovering religious texts is also key, she added, because in
Jewish tradition, education, a highly valued asset, "is so tied to the ultimate
value of learning, of understanding God and God's law, to the Torah and the
Talmud." The Torah is as central to Jewish worship as the Eucharist is to
Catholic Mass.
Catholic Poland, in medieval times a haven for Jews forced out of
Western Europe, became home to the world's largest Jewish community and
contains a rich collection of Jewish documents from that era.
In the 14th century, King Casimir the Great extended laws
recognizing Jews as a distinct legal, national, religious and cultural
Judeo-Germanic language group. Prior legislation already protected Jews from
defending Poland and from the obligation to speak Polish. Casimir punished
anti-Jewish acts. Thus, during a 400-year period inspired by Casimir, Jewish
life thrived in Poland.
Brichto said "articles, books, publications from this time are
very important."
Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, in his Poland: A Historical Atlas, wrote:
"The Jewish community constituted an autonomous, Yiddish-speaking nation within
the Polish state. Poland made possible the survival of the Jews as a nation by
giving them unique political and cultural autonomy for several hundred years.
Modern Jewish legal and governmental culture as well as education system,
philosophical concepts and religious beliefs evolved in Poland." Pogonowski's
father, Jerzy Pogonowski, was arrested by the Nazis for helping the Jews in
Warsaw.
This knowledge of the existence of stores of Jewish literature
inspired Brichto to found the R'fa-aye-nu Society. It also led to unusual
friendships between between cardinals, generals and the indefatigable Brichto,
and it inspired a program to bring much-needed medical supplies to Catholic
hospitals in Eastern Europe, all in the name of interfaith healing.
The journey began when Brichto was contacted in 1979 by a group of
traditional rabbis in the United States who shared a concern for the lost
literature. Brichto's brother, Jacob Pollack, was among the group. "My little
brother thought I might know how to go to such places," Brichto, 68, said. At
the time, she said, she was afraid to approach the communist Polish government
about the project. "I did not want to alert the communists to a valuable cache
of resources they might be able to sell," Brichto said.
Since many of the materials were in the hands of Catholics,
Brichto shifted her attention to the church. Bernardin was at the time
archbishop of Cincinnati. Several years before, Brichto had initiated dinner
gatherings between Bernardin and "the reigning gurus" from Hebrew Union
College.
Thus, with her sights set on Poland in 1980, Brichto appealed to
Bernardin for help. A letter from Bernardin gained Brichto and her brother an
appointment with Cardinal Franciszek Macharski of Krakow, the former see of
John Paul II.
The appointment was switched to Gdansk, however, where Macharski
was attending a 10-year commemoration of a historic dock workers' strike.
Trailed by Polish secret service agents who were confused by these American
Jews who went from synagogues to cathedrals, the two arrived at the Gdansk
bishopric.
The following morning, before meeting the cardinal, a priest
escorted the visitors to the Gdansk cathedral, the largest in Poland. Brichto
said she was struck by empty spaces on the walls where religious paintings had
once hung. The paintings, the priest told her, were stored during the war for
safekeeping, and the government later gained possession of them and refused to
return them to the church.
It was the parallel between the loss of the paintings and the
Jewish community's loss of its written legacy that put Brichto and Macharski on
common ground. Macharski, Brichto said, told her the church preferred to leave
empty spaces because replicas would allow the communist government to "make of
us (Catholics) folklore."
Brichto solemnly told Macharski, "You cannot make folklore out of
ashes. You (Catholics) are still here. You can fight. Our people are not here.
We are ashes. All we have are our documents."
Little else was needed, Brichto said, to convince the cardinal
that the Jewish people should have full access to documents in the hands of the
church. "You are in the right. You should have the originals. We should have
copies," Macharski said, according to Brichto's account.
Fifteen years later, the R'fa-aye-nu Society, formalized as a
nonprofit agency in 1993, has made strides in conserving collections of
manuscripts and early printed books threatened by physical deterioration.
The R'fa-aye-nu Society's Bibliographia Judaica project is
supported by experts from the Hebrew Union College Library in Cincinnati, the
Catholic University School of Library Science, the Jagiellonion University in
Krakow and the Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. These institutions
will catalog and house microfilm copies of the documents located by
R'fa-aye-nu.
Brichto said she hopes access to this store of secular and sacred
documents "will deepen and enhance understanding of the complex interaction of
the past millennium, particularly between Jews and Christians in Central and
Eastern Europe."
The R'fa-aye-nu Society's brochure reminds readers that much of
"Jewry's self-perception is linked to its collective memory of enmity,
indifference and hostility encountered in the Christian ambience of Europe."
Within that memory, "myths and nostalgia abound." R'fa-aye-nu emphasizes the
need to "develop a way to confront our mutual past, as painful as that process
may be, and to build upon the best in today's relationships."
Brichto said her years of work as founder of R'fa-aye-nu is her
attempt to honor those Jews whose "line is wiped out, whose immortality is
destroyed" because of the Holocaust. "It seems what we owe them in the very
least is to remember who they were and what they said, what they wrote and
laughed and cried at," Brichto said. "They were the last links in their line."
The way to access their line, Brichto said, "is not through the
movies or through Holocaust museums, because that is commemorating their
deaths," but rather through accessing the history these people left in writing.
National Catholic Reporter, August 9,
1996
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