Journal 3 in 2003
Das eigene Erleben

weiter I Übersicht I zurück

Bella Szwarcman
Polish Purim;The Crown Jewel, My Daughter’s Bat Mitzvah.

Polish Purim

When I was a little girl I knew two good fairies: Queen Esther and Aunt Feigele, my mother's sister. Esther and Feigele were closely interconnected and played a very important role. They pacified my infant fears. When I found it hard to sleep, I asked my Auntie Feigele: "Please, tell me about Queen Esther!" Auntie never refused, and the story of bad Haman's fall and the victory over all enemies of Jewish people never failed to heal my little worries and cares. After listening to her I knew that everything would be all right as long as there was my Auntie telling me the story of Purim a few times a year.

Auntie also taught me to bake hamantashen – triangular cookies with poppy seeds and plum jellies. Although nowadays most housewives make them with sweet pastry, my childhood hamantashen were made of yeast dough. They were always accompanied by knishes, stuffed with cottage cheese, fried onions and egg yolks, and even though this was not a traditional Purim dish, I still make them today. And still, while making the dough, I sing Shoshanas Jaakov, just as my Mum and my Auntie did.

I remember very few of the Purim feasts celebrated by the Jewish community. Not because they were not held – there were a lot of children's parties, even fancy dress parties. But little, if nothing, was told about the meaning of the Purim holiday. Communist Poland tried to "cleanse" each holiday of all biblical or religious elements, leaving what could be seen as folklore.

Purimshpiles were performed, usually based on the text by Itzik Manger. I clearly remember the Purimshpile rehearsals of 1967. A well-known Polish Jewish vocal group from Legnica practiced the play in a children’s summer's camp headed by Rosa Gottlieb, of blessed memory. Due to a series of anti-Semitic excesses of 1968, she left Poland. All members of the group, as well as almost all the audience of the play, emigrated with her. For many, many years after, there was only silence about Jewish holidays in Poland. Fortunately, thanks to the collapse of Communism in Poland and neighbouring countries, my daughter, born in 1986, can experience the dazzling Purim parties organized in the Jewish Clubs. After 1989 we faced an old-new phenomenon: Jewish children and youth. A Jewish kindergarten and school were founded. I would have never believed it, if I had been told 15 years ago that I would have watched a Purimshpile again, and that my daughter would act the role of little Queen Esther! Every year I came to the kindergarten at Purim to bake hamantashen.

Nor would I have believed that I myself would perform, together with other members of the Jewish Community of Warsaw, a surrealist parody of Purimshpile that we wrote, nor that we would perform it in a full synagogue. It might be true that contemporary Jewish life does not pulse with as much joyfulness and variety as a few years ago, but I cannot now imagine that there could be no Purim ball in Poland.

(From "Esther's Legacy: celebrating Purim around the world". Editor Barbara Vinick, Brandeis University)

The Crown Jewel
My Daughter’s Bat Mitzvah in Warsaw

In Communist Poland Jewish girls did not even know what a bat mitzvah was. Their parents were non-believers, sometimes totally assimilated, and the older generation died in Shoah – so who was to take care of their religious education?

I did not have a bat mitzvah, so I was doubly happy when our daughter Róza announced that she would like to prepare for this important moment of assuming religious responsibility. She was then to become the third girl in our small community to undergo the ceremony.

Rabbi Michael Schudrich, whom she has known and liked since early childhood, helped her study. She worked on a commentary on the reading of Nicawim. Just before Tisha b'Av, Róza asked us if she could fast for 24 hours – like adults. "After my bat mitzvah there is Yom Kippur, so I am afraid that if I don't try now, later I won't be able to persevere," she said. Listening to these words and looking at her work on the commentary, my husband and I saw that she knew what she wanted and was persistent. We saw that the ceremony meant something more to her than an occasion on which one gets presents and a new dress.

A week before the ceremony we started our daily rehearsals of reading the commentary aloud. It seemed to me that Róza spoke too softly and too quickly. Frankly speaking, I was nervous. She was not.

When the moment came, she delivered the commentary in a stentorian voice, so unusual for a 12-year-old girl. She was self-assured and did not have the jitters. Listening to her with motherly pride I thought about what my mother told me about my grandfather. My pious grandfather, whom I did not know because he died during the war, did not worry that he did not have a son who could recite kaddish after his death. He adored his daughters (and there were seven of them) and used to say that to him they were like crown jewels.

There is one more thing: we have never before experienced such support, warmth and help on the part of the whole community. Facing the crowd of guests I felt a real tide of goodwill coming in our direction.

Eventually, the customs in our community have liberalised – now girls learn to read from the Torah. Sometimes I am sorry that it was not possible earlier, but Róza has her whole life ahead of her. There will be time for reading lessons.

Bella Szwarcman-Czarnota – scholar of philosophy, linguist and editor of the Jewish-Polish magazine "Midrasz" – translates from French, Russian and Yiddish, and is a member of Warsaw's Jewish community and the Jewish Forum