On Monday, August 20, 2012, Eric and I will leave for Berlin. Berlin is the pre-trip to our Poland-Israel Seminar with Melton (The Florence Melton Adult Mini-School of Hebrew University). It will be an emotional trip for both of us, as our families come from the area known as the Second Polish Republic (so called after World War I). This was a region of constantly shifting borders that included or was culturally linked to:
- Przemsyl, Poland (ancestry of Eric's father)
- Vilna, Lithuania (ancestry of my father's family)
- Ostropol (or Ostropolia), Ukraine (ancestry of my mother's family)
The constantly shifting borders of this region (Austria-Hungary, Poland, Germany, Russia) make it difficult to say exactly where one's family heritage originated. We have always said Eric's family came from Poland (father's side) and Romania or Austria (mother's side) and my family came from Russia (mother's side) and Lithuania (father's side). As Eric and I have been reading, watching DVDs, and pouring over maps in preparation for this trip, we realize how little we know of the geography, politics, and cultural history of Eastern Europe and our families.
Our parents did not talk about where their parents came from, probably because their parents would not talk about it. Life had been tough and probably very cruel to our grandparents and they considered the US a new start that negated the hardships they had endured. Becoming American meant forgetting the Old Country.
To explain the objectives of this trip, I will quote from the leader of this trip, Haim Aronovitz, Director of Florence Melton Israel Seminars. He says this trip will be
. . . a journey to Poland and Israel which will allow for a deep exposure to the Polish Jewish community over a thousand years, culminating in the terrible Shoah period and present-day efforts at resuscitation, and then continuing to look at the pivotal contribution of that community to the Yishuv and then the State of Israel. Our aim is by no means to undertake a Shoah-based journey, although the Shoah is central to the modern Polish story, for Jew and non-Jew alike. Instead, we shall focus on the enormous creativity that marked Polish Jewry in almost every sphere of Jewish life, including culture, theology, economics, and ideology. We will be based in Warsaw and in Krakow, with field excursion from those two cities in Poland.
Eric and I would not undertake this trip without the leadership and teaching that we know Haim will provide. He is a master teacher, a brilliant historian, and a wonderful friend. The pre-trip to Berlin will be with Joyce and Victor Poleshuck and Judy and Sheldon Katz, friends from previous Melton trips and co-participants on the Poland-Israel Seminar. We've arranged tours of Jewish Berlin along with time to explore the city on our own.
I will write again when the trip begins.
Adding a map to show where our families came from and the shifting boundaries. Click on the map to enlarge it. I've boxed in Vilna, Przemsyl, and Ostropol.
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