Find the Light. Be the Light. By Jodi Garber-Simon

This is my second trip to Poland in two years. Last time I left feeling like I would never ever want to return. I felt darkness and fear and sorrow. I mourned the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, I mourned what could have been. I imagined the earth soaked with blood. My amazing husband encouraged me to keep my heart open. And so, when I was given the opportunity to return in a leadership position, I decided to go for it with the hope of seeing Poland differently. 

While planning for the trip we pondered how to bring our incredibly diverse group of women together and came up with the idea that if we all searched for the light in each other and ourselves we would forget our differences. We wrote an introductory class and made glow in the dark arm bands that say “Find the light. Be the light.”

What I didn’t connect at the time was that maybe these bracelets/this attitude would help me find the light in the country itself. 

I am riding on a bus through Poland and the sun is shining. I met a Polish man who has made it his life’s work to care for the synagogue in Lancut, Poland where the Jewish population used to be 30% of the town and there is no longer one Jew. He goes to swap meets and purchases any Jewish objects he finds, often with his own money, and restores them. 

Our Polish guide shared her family’s story and told us how her mother remembers her grandmother baking bread rolls and tossing them over the ghetto wall to the Jews living there. She has dedicated her life to guiding Jewish groups in Poland and has learned our history. She told us about the trauma her family went through during the war and about her fear of the German language. Who could have imagined how much we have in common. 

I am finding the light. 

We met with the assistant Rabbi of Poland, Rabbi Yehoshua Ellis, and he said “There is a tremendous amount of Tumah (impurity) here. There is so much death still in the air that you cannot escape it. There is also a tremendous amount of Kedusha (holiness). It’s here and readily available to be accessed. Tap into it in this place and tap into it in each other”.

Three days into this trip and I think we are doing that. I can see light in Poland. Thank G-d.