3/14/2022: Rabbi Blake, Update from Poland

We arrived safely in Warsaw, a bit late, yesterday afternoon on account of a delayed flight out of JFK. Immediately we met our trip educator Agnes and bus security officer Paul, and drove to the JCC Warszawa to meet with Rabbi Michael Schudrich, Chief Rabbi of Poland. Beginning 3 weeks before the invasion of Ukraine, Rabbi Schudrich and amazing volunteer leaders from Warsaw and the Jewish community of Poland began to mobilize relief efforts in the expectation of possible mass displacement of Ukrainians. One member of the Warsaw JCC staff, Agata Rakowiecka, is traveling with us to the border today.

The Novotel in Warsaw and many other downtown hotels have become makeshift processing centers for refugees. Lobbies are filled with women and their children – using public WiFi, connecting with their loved ones back home and elsewhere, figuring out uncertain next steps. We met with Israeli volunteers and professionals who are working with the The Jewish Agency for Israel to help Jewish Ukrainians make Aliyah to Israel. Over 800 such refugees have already been processed and approved for Aliyah. Many more are not ready to leave, hoping still to be reunited with the men in their families who are fighting for their besieged country on the other side of the Polish border.

We departed for the town of Śródborów outside of Warsaw and met the incredible President of the Jewish Community of Poland, Leszek Piszewski, at a hostel run by the JDC that is taking in refugees and organizing donated supplies. I’m pictured with him in the included photos. (I’m the one with the foggy glasses; when I’m not being photographed or eating, my mask is on.)

At night we drove to the city of Lublin, not far from the border of Belarus. (Lublin is as close as I’ve ever come to the now-Belarusian cities of Minsk and Pinsk which all of my great-grandparents left in the wake of Russian oppression and violence against Jews around the turn of the 20th century.) We met with volunteers at the Hotel Ilan w Lublinie, a magnificent Jewish landmark that used to house the Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin, the most prestigious and largest Rabbinical academy in Poland—a house of Torah, Prayer, and Jewish scholarship that, like so much of Jewish civilization in Poland, was nearly brutally erased by the Nazis. This hotel has also become a refugee center. You can see pictures of rooms filled with supplies in the attached photos. Most of these represent only the goods donated and sorted that same day.

Our dinner (all food on this trip is Glatt Kosher) at the hotel was a meaningful reminder that a warm meal served with love is nothing to take for granted. We are immensely grateful for the hospitality we have been show. We are touched by how many people are thanking us for simply showing up to let them know that we are with them, that the American community and the global Jewish community cares and will not stand idly by.

Stay tuned for more updates as our trip proceeds. We boarded the bus in Lublin at 6:00 AM today (Monday) and are now about 30 minutes from the border with Ukraine. Today we will be meeting with refugees all along the border. About 2 million of Ukraine’s 45 million people have already left the country; millions more are internally displaced and remain within Ukraine’s borders.

Pray for Ukraine.

Rabbi Jonathan Blake