Adath Jeshurun

100 Voices: A Jour­ney Home

from Can­tor Lipp

I never really thought I’d want to go to Poland.  

But there I was, walk­ing through the War­saw Jew­ish ceme­tery, one of the only loca­tions in that city that hadn’t been flat­tened dur­ing World War II by the Nazis; strolling through Krakow dur­ing its annual Jew­ish cul­ture fes­ti­val, the largest such gath­er­ing in Europe in a city with a Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion of around 200 (the JCC is kept alive by the city’s catholic res­i­dents); walk­ing through right­eous gen­tile Oskar Schindler’s fac­tory; or lead­ing the Torah ser­vice in a court­yard between the bar­racks of Auschwitz just a few hun­dred feet from the infa­mous “Arbeit Macht Frei.”

Unlike most teen trips to Poland and Israel, my expo­sure to Jew­ish life in Poland over one thou­sand years was far more exten­sive than my endurance of the intense death toll inflicted on us in less than a decade of the twen­ti­eth century.  

Whether or not you fol­lowed my Face­book jour­ney or heard my reflec­tions last Rosh HaShanah or read about them in the Com­mu­nity paper or AJ’s Mes­sen­ger last year, there will be another oppor­tu­nity to see these expe­ri­ences from a pro­fes­sional perspective.

As we trav­eled, a doc­u­men­tary film crew was with us, tak­ing down a record that would last per­haps even longer than my Face­book posts and photographs.

On Tues­day evening, Sep­tem­ber 21, 2010, at 7 p.m. the pre­miere of 100 Voices: A Jour­ney Home will be shown on roughly 500 screens nation­wide.  In Louisville, that will include Stony­brook and Tinseltown.  

I will be see­ing it for the first time myself.  Please watch for updates on poten­tial events sur­round­ing this one on the AJ web­site and in our weekly e-mail blasts.  Most impor­tantly, join me!  

Can­tor Lipp