The synagogue is no longer there, so the prayer marking the beginning of the Day of Judaism in the Catholic Church in Poland - and this year Siedlce is the venue for the main meeting - will begin on the morning of 17 January at 4 Berka Joselewicza Street, at the monument commemorating the extermination of 17,000 Polish citizens of Jewish origin, though not even necessarily of Jewish faith. The site of the former synagogue has been left empty.

Prayer at a place commemorating the presence of the Jewish community is a regular feature of every Day of Judaism, which has been present in our Catholic life since 1998. Archbishop Grzegorz Ryś, recently chairman of the Episcopal Committee for Dialogue with Judaism, pointed this out, writing: "On this day, let us also remember the Holocaust, which was an attempt to annihilate the Chosen Nation".

The recently deceased Pope Benedict XVI constantly reminded us of this, from the very first days of his pontificate. He spoke about it both during his first visit to his homeland - in Cologne, on the occasion of World Youth Day, immediately in 2005 - and later, not only in Germany. However, it is worth recalling a few words from his meeting with the Jewish community, which took place during his subsequent stay in Germany (2011). It took place in the Reichstag, and the Pope said then that he was speaking in the place where "the Shoah, the annihilation of fellow Jews in Europe, was planned and organised". He pointed out that "the National Socialist regime of terror was built on a racist myth, part of which was the rejection of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Jesus Christ, and of the people who believe in Him".

- "Almighty" Adolf Hitler was a pagan idol who wanted to be a substitute for God, the Creator and Father of all men. Along with the refusal to respect the one God, respect for human dignity is also lost. The terrible images from the concentration camps showed what a man who rejects God is capable of and what face a nation can take on when it says "no" to such a God, Benedict XVI stressed (quoted after a dispatch from the Catholic News Agency, KAI).

Now, after the death of Benedict XVI, Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki recalled his attitude in the sermon during the funeral Mass celebrated by the Polish Episcopate on 7 January at the Temple of Divine Providence in Warsaw:

"The relationship with Judaism automatically brings to my mind Benedict XVI's pilgrimage to our homeland in 2006. One of the extremely symbolic images was the sight of the German Pope praying at Auschwitz. The words spoken there, in that place of special witness, can also be applied to us; especially to those moments when we are faced with the temptation to conform to the way of life and thinking of our contemporary world. Benedict XVI said: "Here we are confronted with the face of Edith Stein, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Jewish and German, who, together with her sister, perished in the darkness that shrouded the concentration camp. As a Christian and a Jew, she agreed to die with and for her people. The Germans, who at that time were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau and murdered here, were regarded as the 'Abschaum der Nation' - the outcasts of society. Today, we remember them with gratitude as witnesses to the truth and goodness that has also survived in our nation. We are grateful to them for not submitting to the power of evil and today they are like a light in the darkness of the night" (Auschwitz, 28 May 2006). Those who did not conform to the demands of their contemporary world and for this reason were in contempt at the time, saved the honour of the nation" .

It's not just us

We have become accustomed in Poland - both those who view dialogue with Judaism positively and those who still have more doubts than anything else - to having John Paul II, our Polish Pope, at the beginning of this path. He was the first pope in history to go to a synagogue in Rome (although, as Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, he visited Krakow's Tempel Synagogue). And it is only John Paul II that we see in dialogue with Judaism and with Jewish communities around the world. Benedict XVI, meanwhile, followed resolutely the path of his predecessor and immediately at the start of his pontificate addressed "the brothers of the Jewish people, to whom we are bound by a great spiritual legacy, rooted in the irreducible mysteries of God".

In the same Roman synagogue where John Paul II spoke of "elder brothers in the faith", Benedict XVI said in 2010: "Christians and Jews share a great spiritual heritage, they pray to the same Lord, they share the same roots, but often they still do not know each other. It is up to us, responding to God's call, to work so that there is an increasingly open space for dialogue, for mutual respect, for growing in friendship, for a common witness in the face of the challenges of our time, which call us to work together for the good of humanity in this world created by God, the Almighty and the Merciful."

He patiently explained - using various occasions - the greatness and importance of the declaration 'Nostra aetate' of the Second Vatican Council, 1965. Education is never enough, and in this area - as the extraordinary nun Sister Dominika Zaleska NDS taught me - one has to start from scratch every day. Thus, even though it would seem that everything and everyone has already been said about 'Nostra Aetate', successive popes, and in Poland successive bishops leading the Committee for Dialogue with Judaism and other people of good will are explaining the essence of this declaration. Now, on the eve of our Day of Judaism AD 2023 , Archbishop Grzegorz Ryś, at a meeting with journalists, spoke of the great upheaval that has taken place mainly because of the 'Nostra Aetate' declaration and called it a "milestone" in the understanding of mutual Christian-Jewish relations.

Archbishop Rys recalled the three key theses of the declaration, which make up the "Copernican Revolution of the Church's teaching on Judaism". - The first statement is that the Jews continue to be the chosen nation. God has not rejected Israel. This is easy to talk about today, but it must be remembered that from the second to the twentieth century, the Church had a so-called theology of substitution, which proclaimed that God had rejected Israel and that He had replaced it with a new people of God, which is the Church. This also had the consequence that Israel after biblical times, after 70 AD, when the Jerusalem temple was demolished by the Romans, no longer interested Christians. We had the last traces of this thinking, to our horror, in our Good Friday liturgy for the Jews, in which, until two years ago in Poland, we used the formula: "The Jews are the people who were once the chosen nation". Praise God, this formula has been changed and today we pray as the whole universal Church does for the Jews, who are the nation of the first choice," Archbishop Ryś said (quoted by KAI).

Certainly, far from everyone has followed this years-long, almost Benedictine work on the - supposedly almost impossible for technical reasons - change of the incompatible formula of the Good Friday prayer with the Roman Missal. So I would add from myself that there was no shortage of priests who, with understanding and dedication, inserted the correct translation into the prayer, and no shortage of faithful who waited with bated breath each year for this moment, not knowing which words would appear: old or new. In my prayer book for Holy Week ('The Victor of Death. Liturgical Texts and Commentary for Holy Week and the Octave of Easter", St. Cross Publishing House, Opole 1984), I have a handwritten note (in pen!) dated 14 April 2006, when in the Church of the Most Holy Saviour, the Papal Nuncio Archbishop Jozef Kowalczyk - because he presided over the Good Friday liturgy in our church - delivered the simple formula "that the people who first were chosen". Phew! I remember my disbelief - and satisfaction - to this day! Admittedly, he went back to the old formula in subsequent years, but the beginning was made! One can? One can!

The second thesis of 'Nostra aetate' concerns responsibility for the death of Christ. The declaration says that neither the Jews historically living with Jesus, nor even less the Jews in general, must be blamed," Archbishop Ryś now reminded. 'Nostra aetate' emphasises that it is not permitted to think or speak of Jews in this way. And, following on from this, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says that "Christians bear far more responsibility for the death of Jesus than the Jews, on whom they have willingly thrown this responsibility over the centuries".

The third breakthrough made in 'Nostra aetate' is "the condemnation of all anti-Semitism, regardless of who would commit it". - This document is so important that, summing it up after 50 years, Pope Francis said in his Wednesday audience that, as a result of 'Nostra aetate', we have experienced an upheaval in the Church. Today we no longer speak of ourselves and think of ourselves as enemies or strangers, but as friends and brothers," Archbishop Ryś stressed (after KAI).

After the death of Benedict XVI, some commentators, also citing cardinals, stressed that "after Pope John Paul II spoke of the Jews as elder brothers of Christians, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of them as our fathers in the faith".

Let's listen to the rabbi

The region of Siedlce was, from the 18th century onwards, a true centre of the flourishing of Hasidism - a movement whose aim was the renewal of the religiosity of the followers of Judaism. In Martin Buber's famous and still-read "Tales of the Hasids", we will meet many a tzaddik of this land, to whom men, and often entire families, would come from even the remotest parts to pray. A good example in Siedlce would be Rabbi Mendel of Kock - Menachem Mendel Morgenstern (1787-1859) from the same Kock at which the last battle of the September campaign was fought in 1939. To this day, both memory and some memorabilia are kept in Kock - some will come to Siedlce for the exhibition - and the town itself is a pilgrimage destination for contemporary Hasidic Jews. It is Mendel from Kock precisely - in Buber - who says: "Everything in the world can be counterfeited, only truth cannot be counterfeited. For a counterfeit truth is no longer the truth".

Just in time for today, as Pope Benedict XVI has said more than once: "In our world, many do not know God or regard Him as something superfluous, unimportant for life. In this way, many new gods have been fabricated to whom man bows down. To awaken, to open our societies to the transcendent dimension, to bear witness to the one God - this is a precious contribution that Jews and Christians can give together."

For the Day of Judaism in Siedlce, in the land of the Hasidim, the invitation was accepted by Rabbi Boaz Pash, rabbi in Krakow from 2006 to 2012. Widely regarded as a man of great faith, but also of great openness towards his fellow man - he did not refuse to meet with Christians, which is not at all obvious (the great rabbi of Rome, Elio Toaff, before John Paul II's historic visit to the synagogue, is supposed to have said that each of them, he and the Pope, has his "lefebrists" who raise a shout to prevent a meeting). When the Polish Council of Christians and Jews honoured Boaz Pasha with the title Man of Reconciliation in 2013, Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki, who was present at the ceremony, said that this title leads to peace-building. And he quoted the words of Benedict XVI: "And whoever builds peace cannot fail to draw closer to God".

Rabbi Boaz Pash is a philosopher, considered an eminent expert on Kabbalah. He has worked in Kiev, Sao Paulo and Lisbon. He has published commentaries on the Torah entitled "Whispers of the Cracovian Rabbis", and listeners to his open lectures have said with delight that he is a "charismatic teacher". In Siedlce - after the history conference and before the interreligious service in the cathedral, as this is the programme planned - Rabbi Boaz Pash will give a lecture on the interpretation of the Old Testament. Catechists, leaders of parish Bible circles, priests are invited. The rabbi's delight in the Word of God will surely be shared by them.

SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE Historian Dr Witold Bobryk, a teacher at the Hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski IV High School in Siedlce, writes in an article prepared for KAI: "Siedlce went down in the history of the Polish Jews in a special way, as a place of gehenna inflicted on them by the Russians and the Germans. Looking back, we can see how both these nations were keen to exploit anti-Semitism in their political struggle. In Russia - as long-time Chief Rabbi of Moscow Pinchas Goldschmidt recently reminded us - 'whenever the political system was in danger, the government tried to redirect the anger and discontent of the masses towards the Jewish community'. This was the case during the revolution that swept the Empire after losing the war with Japan. In September 1906, a three-day pogrom of the Jewish population by the Russian army took place in Siedlce. However, the expected results were not achieved by the partitioning authorities. The Polish population showed solidarity with their Jewish neighbours. Aid to the victims of the pogrom was provided by an Aid Committee made up of Poles and Jews, including the canon priest Józef Scipio del Campo and Rabbi Szymon Dow Anolik".

After the Holocaust perpetrated by the Germans in World War II, very few representatives of the Jewish community remained in Siedlce. Their history was not easy either, neither was that of the entire Podlasie region. Archbishop Ryś told journalists that the conference part of every Day of Judaism has the task of documenting the memory of the Jewish presence in Polish lands. "What historians work out can become the memory of the people. Before the war, there were three million Jews in Poland, in Łódź alone there were 250,000, and today the community there numbers 100 people. I don't even know very much how to comment on this. But I do know that we must not forget," he stressed.

– Barbara Sułek-Kowalska
-Translated by Tomasz Krzyżanowski

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists