I spent today observing the Sabbath in Krakow. I prayed in the morning at the Kupa Synagogue, which was built in 1643, and located in the Kazimierz section of the city, where the Jews of Krakow resided for hundreds of years.

There were about 100 men at the service (more upstairs in the women’s section). Many of them were tourists, mostly from Israel. There were but a few native Jews. The service seemed very disjointed and I did not particularly enjoy it.

After a delicious lunch at the Chabad run restaurant (more on Chabad in a later post), my wife and I walked around the city. It’s a very picturesque place. Unlike Warsaw, its buildings did not suffer at all during World War II. For the evening prayers, I prayed at the Izaac synagogue, which is now the Chabad center in Krakow. Like the Kupa synagogue, it is a large building, built in 1644. The interior is quite beautiful, with tall arches and hebrew inscriptions, most of which are now faded, on the walls.

 

Toward the back of the synagogue were photographs of Jewish Krakow in 1936 and scenes of the deportation of Jews to the Krakow Ghetto from where they were sent to their death at the Belzec Death Camp. Again, I felt rather uncomfortable at the services. Here are these buildings, but the community that inhabited them is no more. And here is this neighborhood, once populated by some 65,000 Jews, that is now home mostly to pubs and nightclubs. (To be sure, after the Sabbath ended, my wife and I did visit one of them where we drank some delicious locally brewed vodka.)

At the conclusion of the Sabbath, the Chabad rabbi recited the havdalah blessings, which mark the transition from the holiness of the Sabbath to the regular week. The third of the four blessings of the havdalah ceremony says, “Blessed are you, King of the Universe, who creates the light of the fire.” The overhead lights were turned off, so that only the light of the havdalah candle illuminated the room. I followed the custom of holding up my hands to the light to see the reflection of the candle’s light in my fingernails. As I was standing at the back of the room, far away from the candle, I could see only the faintest hint of the light. The rabbi then recited the fourth and final blessing, which states that God has created the distinction between day and night and between light and dark.

I thought to myself, there is a lot of darkness in this place, much more darkness than light. The image of my barest light in my fingernails reflected the outer reality of the history of this place. Still, there is some light. It is difficult to see, but it has not been completely extinguished.

Tomorrow though, I set out for the most difficult part of my journey, Auschwitz. There I expect to encounter no light, only the darkest of darknesses.